Japan’s notorious ‘Mr Fixit’ dies

Press, 3 February 1984, Page 17

Japan’s notorious ‘Mr Fixit’ dies

From

PETER McGILL

IN Tokyo

For a man on intimate terms with many of the high and mighty in Japan and the United States, the death of Yoshia Kodama in Tokyo last month drew a largely cold silence.

Ultra-Rightists and “Yakuza” (Japanese gangsters), outfitted in tight-fitting dark suits, dark glasses, and short frizzy hair, went to great lengths to keep the identity of mourners at his funeral a secret. Two hundred large floral tributes had the names of their senders removed.

Of his political chums, only Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone dared send along his secretary in memory . of his long association with Japan’s most infamous “Kuromaku,” or “Black Curtain” fixer. Kodama’s big break came in the Second World War, thanks to the perennial squabbling between the navy and army over priorities and allocation of resources. Despite the lightning success of Pearl Harbour, the navy air wing suffered! miserably in the scramble and had to look outside Japan for material. Kodama was on the spot to set up

an “agency” to funnel supplies. Throughout the war Kodama bought, traded, or plundered all he could get his hands on: radium used in Chinese hospitals and universities for X-rays, platinum (needed for aircraft engines, among other uses), diamonds (drill tips, or when crushed for polishing, cannon bores). He managed in the process to embezzle a vast fortune for himself and his stalwarts.

Disgusted with the inefficiency of the Japanese weapons industry, he even started a successful ammunition factory in Shanghai. By the end of the war, when every raw material was in short supply, the army joined in recruiting Kodama to supply tungsten via the “Showa trading firm” (Showa is the name given to Emperor; Hirohito’s reign). ’ When the war was lost, Kodama closed shop and bundled his loot

into safekeeping in Taiwan or back to Japan. He later said he brought back cash equivalent to $lOO million in today’s values, “half a room full” of platinum, and “three large sacks” of industrial diamonds from Shanghai and Singapore. With unerring directness, he deposited most of it in the safest place he could think of in Tokyo: a vault inside the divine precincts of the Imperial Palace, where Emperor Hirohito was keeping a large quantity of canned food at the time. It lay there for two days, until the Emperor became concerned about advancing General Douglas MacArthur’s reaction to the “hot stash” in his cold store. Kodama removed it. Most was sequestered by the American occupation, but a sizeable bundle was entrusted by Kodama to a politician friend. On Kodama’s direction, he used the proceeds to fund the

start of an “ultra-conservative” political party “dedicated to upholding the Emperor system,” which became the Liberal Party, forerunner to today’s Liberal Democratic Party. In the initial post-war days Kodama feared he was to share the same fate of the executed Tojo, but the American priority of turning Japan upside down and preventing forever the revival of fascism and ! militarism changed to the cold war priority of containing communism in Japan and forging United StatesJapan security links. Recruited in jail by American intelligence, Kodama was sent to northern Hokkaido Island to intimidate striking communist miners, earning him the lasting gratitude of a coal mine boss who turned up at his funeral. The United States Embassy paid his new company, Tokyo Rare

Metals, $150,000 to smuggle a pile of his tungsten from Taiwan. During interrogation by United States (sficials, he had admitted having obtained this tungsten for the Showa trading firm with heroin

bought from a dealer, who had been supplied by a Tokyo drug firm.

Kodama soon earned the reputation as an indispensable mediator between the United States and Japan. In the late 1950 s he started his best known role as “secret agent” in Japan for the Lockheed Corporation, and was paid $750,000 for getting the Kishi Cabinet to switch from purchasing a Grunman fighter to the Lockheed FlO4. By the time the scandal over sales of Lockheed Tri-Stars blew up in 1976, which was to cause the resignation of Prime Minister Kakufi Tanaka, Kodama had amassed $7 million in commissions from Lockheed for influence-peddling. Tax inspectors estimated Kodama’s total estate in 1976 to be worth $6OO million, almost certainly below the true figure. Kodama escaped sentence in the Lockheed trial because of “cerebral thrombosis” illness. After his death from heart failure at the age of 7'l last month, his doctor sbid he had been “mentally deranged” for years.