OPIUM KING'S TIES BELIEVED WENT TO THE TOP

Trader Allegedly Pipelined 'Secret Funds' To Tojo, Kishi, Other Tokyo
Bigwigs

An obscure tomb in a small graveyard at a Chiba Prefecture temple
marks the final resting place of Japan's wartime "Opium King,"
although the site betrays nothing of this dark cloud, nor the
relationship the deceased had with key historical figures.

The kanji on what looks like an ordinary tombstone at Soneiji Temple
in Ichikawa reads "Satomi-ke no Reii" ("Tomb of the Satomi Family").
The inscription was written by the late Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi,
grandfather of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to mark the grave of Hajime
Satomi, who died in 1965.

Kishi was a senior government official in the Japanese puppet state of
Manchukuo in Manchuria between 1936 and 1939 when he, as well as Gen.
Hideki Tojo, reportedly established close relations with Satomi, who
at the time headed Hung Chi Shan Tang, a Japanese opium firm that
dominated the market in central China during the Japanese occupation.

Kishi had claimed he came to know of Satomi only after the war, saying
he wrote the calligraphy on the opium dealer's tombstone at the
request of an acquaintance.

"I know of a man named Satomi, who dealt with opium," Kishi said in a
1979 interview in the monthly magazine Chuokoron.

"But while I was in Manchukuo, Satomi was in Shanghai. Probably he
engaged considerably in opium issues and gained money, too, but he
didn't come to Manchukuo and I didn't know him," Kishi was quoted as
saying.

However, insiders have alleged many politicians and military officers
at the time, including Kishi and his ally Tojo, who went on to become
prime minister, approached Satomi for political funds stemming from
the opium trade.

Kishi came to know Tojo when the latter headed Japanese military
police units in Manchukuo. When Tojo became prime minister shortly
before the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, he appointed Kishi as
his wartime industry minister.

"Most of the profits from (opium) sales in Shanghai and other Chinese
cities went directly to Tokyo. According to (an) investigation, at the
time of the Tojo Cabinet, this kind of money was allotted as secret
funds for the Cabinet, and the Cabinet used this money to subsidize
members of the Diet," wrote Mei Sze Ping (Mei Siping in the current
spelling) in a written statement submitted to the postwar Nanjing
trial of Chinese leaders accused of collaborating with Japan.

Mei had headed the internal affairs department in the wartime puppet
government Japan set up in Nanjing in 1940.

Satomi's firm had an exclusive operating license from the puppet
government. Mei was one of three Chinese officials of the government
who gave separate but similar testimony in the trial. They said much
of Satomi's opium money was sent as "secret funds" for the Tojo Cabinet.

"This was an open secret, although it was guarded (as) strictly
confidential," Mei said in the statement.

On the Japanese side, there were allegations, too.

Major Gen. Ryukichi Tanaka, who divulged a number of top secrets of
the Imperial Japanese Army at the postwar Tokyo war crime tribunal,
claimed Tojo scooped "great sums of money" from Satomi's secret opium
funds.

Tanaka testified during a 1946 pretrial interrogation by prosecutors
for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East that Lt. Gen.
Kiyonobu Shiozawa, Tojo's most-favored protege, was also a close
friend of Satomi.

Shiozawa went from Beijing to Tokyo about every two months and
"brought back great sums of money for Tojo" each time, Tanaka testified.

Shiozawa headed the Beijing office of the China Affairs Board
(Ko-a-in), a Japanese wartime government body. In the Tokyo tribunal,
Satomi also testified as a witness that he handed over all the profits
of his opium business to the China Affairs Board and Imperial army as
well.

Satomi headed Shanghai-based Hung Chi Shan Tang, the wholesaler that
dominated the opium market in central China, backed by the Imperial
army between 1939 and early 1944.

Satomi was arrested as a Class-A war criminal suspect by the Allied
powers, but for unknown reasons he was not indicted. He was later
released and died in 1965 of cardiac failure at age 69.

People who had personal contacts with Satomi said he was not greedy.
This "cleanness" was apparently one of the reasons why the army
entrusted the opium business to Satomi, who boasted wide local Chinese
connections.

Satomi at the same time was very generous with money, said Hidezumi
Hayashi, a close friend who headed special Japanese military police
units in Shanghai.

"I think (Satomi's) salary was astoundingly high in Chinese terms. So
he didn't hesitate to give money to others. Many bad people approached
him (for money)," Hayashi was quoted as saying in a 1974 publication
of interviews with historians.

Satomi "took care of many military officers," Hayashi was quoted as
saying, indicating Tojo was one of them.

Records and memoirs showed that rumors circulated during the war that
Kishi also approached Satomi and received shady opium funds.

"It was well known that former Prime Minister Kishi, then industry
minister, asked Satomi to provide Y5 million at the time (when he ran
in a Diet) election on April 19, 1942," Munetsugu Date, a postwar
secretary to Satomi, wrote in an appendix to a 1986 book of historical
documents on Japan's opium dealings in China.

Experts question the credibility of those allegations, however,
because no hard evidence has been found to prove Kishi's involvement
with Satomi.

"Kishi was a very cautious man. I don't think any documentary evidence
was left behind," said nonfiction writer Shinichi Sano, a noted
journalist who in 2005 published a book tracing Satomi's life.

But at least one thing is clear: Many of Kishi's close aides were
considered key figures in Japan's opium operations in China, and thus
many people to this day suspect Kishi was involved in the dealings.

Among them are Tadayuki Furumi, a high-ranking Manchukuo official who
was one of Kishi's closest aides when the latter was posted to the
puppet state.

Another is Hideoto Mori, a Finance Ministry official who possessed a
secret document outlining Satomi's opium company that is now archived
in the National Diet Library.

Furumi and Mori were key designers of Manchukuo's opium monopoly
system in 1933, according to a statement Furumi wrote in a Chinese war
criminal prison in 1954.

Mori was also a member of a policy study group of "progressive
bureaucrats," including Kishi, who advocated strong wartime state
control over the economy.

In 1946 pretrial interrogations, Gen. Tanaka said Mori "can tell more
about the inner workings of the opium dealings in China. This man
should be able to give the most information on the opium traffic.

"(Mori) is a very close friend of Satomi's," Tanaka said.