Kishi-Moon Tie Still Afflicts Japan As Abe Assassin Faces Verdict

It clearly indicates a polite refusal to Kishi's request. Before Reagan sent the reply, his deputy attorney general sent a memorandum to the counsel to the president, saying the US Department of Justice opposed clemency. Separately, records of Moon's trials were sent to the White House, and one of the issues on which it focused was the suspicious financing network of the Unification Church.

According to court documents, the prosecutors alleged that bank accounts were used by Moon to purchase real estate in a New York suburb and furniture, as well as to cover his children's school fees. The documents also alleged that the church had produced a set of false account books with spurious donations from Japanese members. The tax evasion trial of Moon exposed the shady financing network of the Unification Church.

As early as the 1980s, criticism had already been growing in Japan about the church's high-pressure methods for soliciting donations, which led to financial ruin for members' families. And as the documents indicate, a former prime minister of Japan asked the US president to pardon the church's founder.

It appears that Kishi himself was aware that his action might backfire. The letter was delivered to the White House through a Japanese friend, Kagehisa Toyama, the then president of RF Radio Nippon. And Reagan's reply was sent to Kishi's private office. This indicates that the correspondence was exchanged through back-channel diplomacy, bypassing Japan's foreign ministry. Had such correspondence been leaked to outsiders, it very likely would have plunged the minister into a scandal.

Japan's foreign minister at the time of the Kishi-Reagan exchange was Shintaro Abe, husband of Kishi's daughter Yoko. And Shintaro Abe's secretary was their son, 30-year-old Shinzo.

As events transpired, the shadow cast by Abe's assassination was considerably longer. Why did Kishi request Reagan to release Moon from the prison in the first place? A document from the 1940s may be considered its starting point. In the document, dated April 24, 1947, it was recommended that Nobusuke Kishi, a suspected class-A war criminal, be released from confinement.

It is a matter of historical record that Kishi served as minister of commerce and industry in Hideki Tojo's cabinet. He was among the co-signers of the declaration of war against the United States immediately after the attack on the Pearl Harbor and was deeply involved in Japan's war efforts.

In the 1930s, Kishi, then a senior bureaucrat of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, was dispatched to Manchukuo, Japan's short-lived (1932-1945) puppet state, where he oversaw industrial development. The Chinese minister there was simply a figurehead, with Kishi effectively in charge. The power structure there was under the absolute control of Japan's Kwantung Army. The GHQ's investigation files described Kishi as a member of the“Manchuria gang.”

In the early stages of the allied occupation, GHQ prioritized the democratization and demilitarization of Japan. It arrested war criminals, banned former leaders from taking roles in the new government and promoted labor unions.

Just after Japan's surrender in 1945, Kishi was arrested as a suspected class-A war criminal by the allied powers and was held at Tokyo's Sugamo prison.

In 1947, however, an April 24 memorandum from the General Headquarters G2 Section, which was responsible for intelligence and maintaining security, to the Legal Section and International Prosecution Section, said:

What was G2's motive in calling for the release from prison of one of the Manchuria gang's leaders? The action was intended to counter the perceived immediate threat of communism at the time. The Cold War had already begun with the US and the Soviet Union engaged in a worldwide confrontation. In 1947, America's Central Intelligence Agency was newly launched, and the Japan Communist Party was expanding its influence.

In the United States, concerns were growing that excessive and hasty reforms might weaken Japan and enable communist influence to expand. The business community in New York, wielding its influence on the Congress and media, lobbied the government to alter GHQ's occupation policies. Eventually, suspected war criminals were released and large numbers of former bureaucrats and politicians were allowed to return to the government.

Referred to as the“reverse course,” a GHQ document clearly outlined that change. The document, dated December 23, 1948 – coincidentally the same day that former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and six other class A-war criminals were executed by hanging – ordered the release of 15 alleged war criminals from Sugamo Prison the following day, Christmas Eve. The list of inmates included Nobusuke Kishi, Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa.

The three men had been arrested as suspected class-A war criminals. Later, Kishi would enter politics and rise to the post of prime minister, while Kodama and Sasakawa became known as powerful right-wing fixers. And all three would become active supporters of the International Federation for Victory over Communism, the anti-communist political organization set up by Sun Myung Moon.

Viewed in this light, Kishi's 1984 letter to Reagan requesting Moon's release, and the GHQ's advisory for releasing Kishi in 1947, could be said to share a common thread: the fight against communism, particularly the Soviet Union, against the backdrop of the Cold War.

According to this view, the West, to advance freedom and democracy, could justify using any means to defeat the communist bloc. In support of that goal, an accused class-A war criminal and leader of the Manchuria gang could be released from prison without hesitation. So why not dismiss tax fraud conviction of an anti-communisst Korean religious leader in a New York suburb? Compared with the imminent threat of communism, those were minor irritants. That is the logic behind the two documents related to Nobusuke Kishi.

And then there was Shinzo Abe, who idolized his grandfather.