New York Mob Indictment Charges 32 People

A federal indictment unsealed Thursday charges 32 people with racketeering crimes, including people described as the acting boss, members and associates of the Genovese organized crime family.

The 42-count indictment says the defendants engaged in crimes for more than a decade.

Those crimes include murder, violent extortion of individuals and businesses, labor racketeering, obstruction of justice, narcotics trafficking, money laundering and firearms trafficking.

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Since the elected Government in Japan is so weak and the bureaucrats who have extensive power were never elected, the Japanese state has been forced to incorporate a number of bodies that play little or no role in other states to serve all the functions required of it by Japanese capitalism. Among the more important of these bodies are major business associations (run by former bureaucrats) who often participate in planning and coordinating the economy to help in the accumulation of capital and the realization of value. The Chairman of one of them, Keidenren, is popularly referred to as the 1st Prime Minister of business. Another is the U.S. Government, particularly its military arm, which still occupies l50 bases in Japan and has the legal right to quell internal disorder. This should not be surprising when one considers that colonial Governments have always been part of the state in their colonies, and for several years after World War II Japan came very close to being an American colony. Another is the Emperor system which plays, as we shall see, a crucial role in legitimation. Still others are the major media, educational institutions and foundations, religious organizations, the main trade union, Rengo, and, again as I hope to show, organized crime, the Yakuza.

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Japan, though formally a democracy, is largely governed by a small group of people whom no one has elected. Their decisions benefit one class far more than others. To the extent that the Japanese people know this, and most do to one degree or another, why do they accept it? Why do they go along? The answer one hears most often is that this is what the Japanese are like, meaning either culturally or psychologically, or both. But this is to introduce as the main explanation what itself is in great need of being explained. Where does this element of Japanese culture or psyche come from? Who benefits from it? How does it work? And how do those who benefit manipulate it to help them deal with their most pressing problems? Without dismissing either culture or psychology (or, it should be added, accepting a particular version of them) and without refusing them a place in the total explanation, these questions redirect our attention to the rational dimension of our inquiry, to the kind of account that people give (or could give) as to why they willingly obey the established authority.

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In l945, with Japan's defeat in World War II, all this came to an end—or did it? One of the first acts of the American occupiers was to have the Emperor announce to the Japanese people that he was not divine and that the war for which he was at least partly responsible was a tragic mistake. At a stroke, two mainstays of the Emperor's hold on the Japanese people—his pretended divinity and his inability to err in matters of public interest—disappeared. The Allies also took great care not to give the Emperor any political role in the new Constitution, where he is only mentioned as a "symbol of the Japanese state and of the unity of the people". The position itself is said to derive "from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign political power".13 Even though unnamed bureaucrats succeeded in mistranslating the term "will" here as "integration" in the Japanese version of the Constitution—leaving the relationship between Emperor and people more ambiguous than MacArthur intended—most students of Japanese post-war politics have treated the Emperor as a simple anachronism, even less important than the British monarch, with no necessary function in the operation of the state.(Unlike his British counterpart, for example, the Emperor plays no role in appointing ambassadors; he has no right to see state papers; and legislation does not require his seal.) I consider this a major misunderstanding.

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Reference:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1521072/posts?page=33#33

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Unlike the Jewish Holocaust, Japanese Rape of Nanjing, WMD Biological Warfare unit 731, 100, WMD Chemical Warfare unit 516, Opium Monopoly Bureau, Sex Slaves, Slave Laborers are barely mentioned in most histories of WWII and is absent from almost every textbook.

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As the Cold War deepened, U.S. desparately needed the speedy rebuilding of Japan as a constitutional monarchy that would provide an anti-Communist bulwark in Asia.

U.S. granted immunity to the Emperor and Prince Asaka. Evidences show that senior aides to Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Japanese court officials schemed to fix testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials so as not to implicate Hirohito.

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After the surrender, Japanese government and military moved swiftly to destroy evidence that might assist in the prosecution of any Japanese for war crimes, including Emperor Hirohito. The Imperial Army, Navy, and almost all government ministries, destroyed their incriminating files.

Vast archive of Japanese military records were in the hands of U.S. for 9 years after the war. In 1957, all Japanese military records were ordered to be returned to Japan. The reason given to the 1986's congress PoW hearing. John H. Hatcher, Army Record Management of US Army explained, "because the problem of language was too difficult for us to overcome.".

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Therefore after the war, U.S. conducted a half-hearted show trial - The Tokyo Trial which most historians agreed was a flawed trial focused only on the maltreatment of PoW ignoring all other unspeakable brutalities (e.g. Unit 731) committed against the Asians by the Japanese.

**>>>For the same reason, the US called a abrupt halt to further war crimes prosecutions. MacArthur released large number of the remaining Class-A suspects from detention. Many of these suspected war criminals were able to move smoothly into politics, bureaucracy, and big business.<<<**

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The Yakuza's ties to the state go back to the late l9th century when they did strong arm work for local conservative politicians, controlled labor unrest, and served as spies and assassins for the Government, going so far as to murder the Queen of Korea in an incident that triggered off a war with that country in l895. The close collaboration between the Yakuza and the new bureaucratic rulers of Japan was no doubt facilitated by the fact that both groups emerged out of the lower samurai of the previous period. Their cooperation continued into the 20th century, where the list of victims—often at direct Government request—broadened to include communists and radical students. In World War II, the Yakuza helped the Japanese army organize and rob occupied Manchuria and China, forcing drugs on the Chinese in a replay of British policy in the l840's.

After the war, with the introduction of a republican constitution and democratic elections, a new era had begun, but the political role of the Yakuza does not seem to have diminished. The Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated electoral politics since l945, was founded largely with the money of Karoku Tsuji, who liked to call himself the "Al Capone of Japan".18 Yoshio Kodama, the most important figure in the Liberal Democratic Party until the late l970's, also had wide Yakuza connections, as did several Prime Ministers and a host of Cabinet Ministers. In l963, in the midst of internal squabbling between the different factions of the L.D.P., a coalition of Yakuza chieftains felt sufficiently concerned with what was happening to their party to send a letter to all L.D.P. members of Parliament urging them to end their infighting as this could only benefit the Left.

***THESE NOTES are from a cartoon!***

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The current Yakuza is a blend of crime families from all over the world. That includes the members of the Italian Mafia, headed by Lex and Glyde Loath, and the heads of several Japanese crime families. However, the most unusual addition to the Yakuza in recent years are the African families, many of them immigrants to Japan who followed Sera when she became Kumichou. As the families combine, they continue to grow in strength, and the addition of new technology to the Yakuza ranks have made them a global player in the wars.

The majority of yakuza criminal activity is in the areas of selling and distributing stimulant drugs, the infliction of bodily injury, blackmail, and gambling. If it's illegal, the Yakuza probably has some small hand in it. They also cover some operations with legitimate business. In general, they are not afraid to deal with anyone. They are not as secretive as they used to be, and many of their members are well-known for their criminal activities.

The most well-known alliance that the Yakuza perpetuate is their dealings with the Robot Masters. Currently, they allow the Robot Masters to remain legally living in Japan, in exchange for non-agression from the Masters and the occasional trade of technology, missions, and manpower. Many of the African members are genuine followers of Wily, and keep the alliance open, but most of the Japanese families dislike him and would rather do away with him and his kind when they are no longer useful.
Structural Organization

Yakuza are organized into "families", members adopting a relationship known as oyabun-kobun ("father/child-role"). The oyabun is the "father," providing advice, protection and help; the kobun act as the "children," swearing unswerving loyalty and service whenever the oyabun need it.

The divisions after the number two man ("wakagashira") and number three man ("shateigashira") are somewhat arbitrary, with each holding sway over a fluctuating number of sub-gangs. There are also the senior bosses (shatei, "younger brothers") and a multitude of junior leaders who personally head up the numerous sub-gangs.

The Yakuza allow membership from humans and cyborgs, and frequently upgrade human members with their brand of cybernetics. They also construct their own androids, the Shadow Hunters. Membership from reploids occurs occasionally, but is far rarer: the families involved usually do not make dealings with this type of mechanical life because they find them to be most unpredictable and are worried about training potential Mavericks in their ways.

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NOT from a cartoon:

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October 25, 1984, the commission gathered in New York to address the issue of Asian organized crime, and the yakuza was to occupy one-third of the agenda. Certainly, the attention was by then justified. Verifiable police reports placed yakuza from Roanoke, Virginia, to Arizona to Seattle. **>>>The yakuza were highly involved in the Japanese tourist industry, were smuggling guns and pornography out of the country, allying themselves with American gangsters and gamblers, and laundering funds. They were, in short, getting well entrenched in America, and it was time to place them under closer scrutiny.<<<***

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The nameless oyabun also elaborated on the organizational charts of the Yamaguchi-gumi and Sumiyoshi-rengo that the commission had provided, and explained how the yakuza are active in his own specialty, economic crime. Gangsters in Japan, he told the panel, try to find companies in financial trouble, and engage in a number of schemes to take them over. Through bogus notes and threats to company officials and creditors, they assume control of the ailing business, sell off the assets, and profit from the failure.

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**>>>...another hooded witness made an appearance. Also a Japanese national, this anonymous informant had been a U.S. resident for ten years, and he described yakuza activity in New York. Card games, with stakes in the many thousands of dollars, were being run by a combination of yakuza, yakuza associates, and Italian American hoodlums. The customers were both Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans. He believed that the Italians, who wore guns and sold stolen goods at the games, were actually in charge of the action.<<<**

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None of the testimony by police, and little by the witnesses—except the finger-cutting and other exotic Japanese customs—was particularly startling crime news. Activities from money laundering to murder are, of course, the basic stuff of organized crime. No, the news was that it was Japanese, and it was occurring both in Japan and in the United States, and it contradicted popularly held beliefs. The public, to the extent that they thought about it at all, believed that the Japanese had virtually no crime problem, and that Japanese Americans were the most law-abiding of citizens. Now, the issue of yakuza coming to America would stir up some ugly ghosts from the past.

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By the late 1980s, Asian organized crime had become a priority for the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement agencies. Yakuza money launderers, Chinese drug smugglers, Korean prostitution rackets, and more were now of pressing interest to American cops. New hearings were held before the U.S. Congress in 1992, in which the yakuza's reach into the United States was detailed. The billion-dollar developments in Hawaii were highlighted, as were similar investments on the mainland from New York to California. It had taken U.S. law enforcement some fifty years to acknowledge the existence of the Mafia; now, some twenty years after the modern yakuza had landed in America, the Yamaguchi-gumi was suddenly a topic of national discussion.

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Yet there was still something of a fad in the approach to tackling Japanese organized crime. Instant experts abounded in law enforcement, often with little clue of how the gangs really operated. This held true regarding much of Asian organized crime, which for too long had been shielded in America by a bamboo curtain that separated immigrant communities from the rest of the country. **>>>Few cops on Asian gang squads were even aware, for example, that Japanese crime syndicates not only had a future in America, they had a past.<<<**

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NOT from Skolnick. This is replacing post 20

Following is from David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro Yakuza Japan's Criminal Underworld

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8278/8278.ch12.html

On April 21, 1982, the manager of the powerful sokaiya group Rondan Doyukai, a gentleman named Shigeru Kobayashi, attended a stockholders' meeting at the Chase Manhattan bank in New York. Kobayashi sat through Chairman David Rockefeller's opening remarks, and forty minutes of questioning from the floor—undoubtedly fighting the urge to silence the dissenters—and then turned and addressed the crowd. Said Kobayashi: "We represent your stockholders from Japan. I am happy to be here at your general meeting. Now I have the honor of seeing Chairman Rockefeller. . . . He is a great man because he met with His Majesty the Emperor when he visited Japan a couple of years ago, and very few people in Japan can shake hands with the Emperor. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation for your high dividends."

Kobayashi's statement probably amused those stockholders present, but some were also puzzled. Why should Rondan Doyukai send one of its top people to New York merely to flatter the company? Kobayashi later told a Japanese newspaper: "We rode into New York to show them what Japanese sokaiya are. But, just before the meeting, the Wall Street Journal carried a sensational article with banner headline saying, 'The Sokaiya are coming, the Sokaiya are coming,' as if the Japanese gangsters were invading the U.S. This raised a stink. We know that the public peace is bad in New York, so we thought we might be eliminated by the Mafia."

Kobayashi somehow avoided a trip to the bottom of the East River, but he needn't have worried in the first place. Nearly six years earlier, in equally violent Los Angeles, another sokaiya group made its appearance. In 1976, according to police sources, fifty Japanese executives filed into one of the ballrooms of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown L.A. They were the top-ranking officers of the largest Japanese corporations operating on the West Coast, and they had come to pay their respects to a group of visiting sokaiya (who had neglected to announce their presence to the press). Police at the same time observed sokaiya Masato Yoshioka making a tour of Los Angeles to present himself at Japanese-owned banks, conglomerates, and securities investment firms, possibly to hit any companies missed at the Biltmore meeting. Although the businesses were reluctant to talk about the incident, informants revealed to law enforcement agents that, as in Japan, it was cheaper to pay up than to risk the consequences.

Rondan Doyukai also had made earlier trips to America. They had sent representatives to the 1981 annual meeting of the Bank of America in San Francisco. They were, in the words of corporate secretary John Fauvre, "polite but insistent." The group approached the microphone, said Fauvre, with their own photographer and translator, and introduced themselves with lengthy formality. The sokaiya then did little more than wish the bank good luck, much as Kobayashi would do to Chase Manhattan a year later. Rondan Doyukai's interests extended to other Western companies, as well. The group invested $232,000 to gain shareholder status in a strategic handful of American and European companies, according to the Wall Street Journal report that so terrified Kobayashi. Among those targeted besides Chase and Bank of America were General Motors, IBM, and Dow Chemical.

Other sokaiya operations got under way. Los Angeles and New York City police discovered that sokaiya-type scandal sheets were being used to extort money from Japanese corporations, and sokaiya continue to remain a threat to American branches of Japanese companies, particularly the smaller ones. In the early 1990s, at least one sokaiya group formed in the Los Angeles area, calling themselves the Japanese Defense Society. And a report from Japan warned that some gangs are believed to have sent some of their brighter members to pursue advanced business degrees in American universities, to prepare for sokaiya-style rackets in the United States.
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Cross Reference:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1521072/posts?page=4#4

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Upon his arrival in Japan, Sanders was immediately under the deception of his interprete Lt. Col. Ryoichi Naito. He was a student of Ishii at the Tokyo Army Medical College. When serving as assistant professor at the college in 1939, Naito was sent to America. His mission was to get yellow fever strain from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, which was refused. Later at Pingfang, he became the right-hand man of Ishii. Eager to secure the experiment data of Unit 73 1, Sanders approached General Douglas MacArthur saying: "My recommendation is that we promise Naito that no one involved in BW will be prosecuted as war criminal." The recommendation was readily accepted by MacArthur. By September, Sanders discovered that Unit 731 was involved in human experiments and he took the issue to MacArthur whose response was, "We need more evidence. We can't simply act on that. Keep going. Ask more questions. And keep quiet about it."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1584360/posts?page=31#31

>>>"We rode into New York to show them what Japanese sokaiya are. But, just before the meeting, the Wall Street Journal carried a sensational article with banner headline saying, 'The Sokaiya are coming, the Sokaiya are coming,' as if the Japanese gangsters were invading the U.S. This raised a stink. We know that the public peace is bad in New York, so we thought we might be eliminated by the Mafia."<<<

Who are the Sakaiya?

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The yakuza also make millions of dollars a year through corporate extortion, and the sokaiya (shareholders' meeting men) are the masters of this enterprise. Sokaiya will buy a small number of shares in a company so that they can attend shareholders' meetings. In preparation for the meeting, the sokaiya gather damaging information about the company and its officers; secret mistresses, tax evasion, unsafe factory conditions, and pollution are all fodder for the sokaiya. They will then contact the company's management and threaten to disclose whatever embarrassing information they have at the shareholders' meeting unless they are "compensated." If management does not give in to their demands, the sokaiya go to the shareholders' meeting and raise hell, shouting down anyone who dares to speak, making a boisterous display of their presence, and shouting out their damaging revelations. In Japan, where people fear embarrassment and shame much more than physical threats, executives usually give the sokaiya whatever they want.

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