The Power Elite Playbook:

Burn All, Steal All, Kill All!

Beneath Jacob Schiff's portrait, (left to right) Gilbert W. Kahn, son of Otto Kahn, and Schiff's grandsons, John M. Schiff and Frederick M. Warburg. (source)

Burn all, steal all and kill all was the official policy of Japan's imperialistic military and paramilitary groups like the Black Ocean and Black Dragon societies. Japanese citizens regarded their emperor as omnipotent or sanctioned by God; therefore obedience to government was deeply entrenched. Weapons technology, driven by the orchestrated Cold War with its staged enemies, has improved. Now it is nuke all, steal all and kill all. The Power Elite prototype, in most nations, reveals their consistent goal of depopulating the earth (to 500 million) and seizing all resources. "Those nations who ignore history are doomed to repeat its tragedies." Or, those U.S. citizens who ignore readily-available history are doomed to suffer the consequences of their deception and ignorance.

During the night of October 7, 1895 Japanese assassins from the secretive terrorist organization Black Ocean Society (Gen'yosha - ultranationalist paramilitary founded by an ex-samurai) entered the private quarters of Korea's queen who had refused Japan's imperialistic demands. They stabbed, slashed and then tossed the kerosene-soaked, screaming Queen Min into a blazing fire in the palace garden. The predictable civil turmoil provided the trumped-up justification for a military occupation facilitated by the Kempeitai (Army military police), the arrest of thousands of dissenting Koreans and the eventual annexation (August 22, 1910) of Korea. The majority of Japanese citizens believed they were in Korea to help.¹ Cloaked in patriotism, humanitarianism and nationalism, ordinary citizens of imperialist nations rarely recognize the covetous, covert agenda of their rulers or more correctly - the banksters and conglomerates that direct their rulers.

The subsequent massive plunder of Korea began an era of intense Japanese brutality and systematic looting that ended in early June 1945 with a farewell party followed by the dynamite-charged entombment of 175 intoxicated, unsuspecting chief engineers in Tunnel-8, 220 feet underground just after General Yamashita, Prince Chichibu and Prince Takeda hastily exited. Tunnel-8 was just one of the 175 vaults the engineers had designed for the burial of tons of gold bullion and other treasures seized from twelve Asian countries. To eliminate witnesses, allied POWs and civilian slave laborers had suffered similar fates after building the treasure vaults. At the end of the war, 5,000 Korean laborers, supposedly "bound for home," were sealed in the cargo hold of a ship that was soon scuttled. Tens of thousands of Korea's young men had been conscripted into the Japanese army to serve as cannon fodder.²

With financial backing totaling $196 million from Jacob H. Schiff (who also financed the Russian Revolution of 1917³), Kuhn, Loeb Morgan and Rockefeller, resource-poor Japan declared war on Tsarist Russia on February 8, 1904. At war's end on September 5, 1905 and through the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by Theodore Roosevelt, Japan gained the South Manchurian branch of the China Far East Railway which became the South Manchurian Railway (Mantetsu); half was then owned by the Japanese government "with Emperor Hirohito as the largest private shareholder, followed by Mitsui (Japan's first private bank; invested heavily into weapons⁴) and Mitsubishi industrial and banking conglomerates."⁵

The reason Japan fared so well in the Treaty of Portsmouth is that an agreement (Taft-Katsura Agreement) was made on July 27, 1905 in a confidential meeting held in Tokyo between Japanese Prime Minister Katsura and U.S. Secretary of War, William Howard Taft. The U.S. agreed that Japan could colonize Korea if Japan relinquished the resource-rich Philippines to U.S. dominance. This secret agreement with Japan violated our friendship agreement with Korea signed in Incheon on May 22, 1882, negotiated after our assault on Korea on June 10, 1871, known as Shinmiyangyo (Western Disturbance of the Year Sinmi year), during which about 350 Koreans and three Americans died.⁶

Japan gained control of the "Russian interests" in Manchuria which economically destabilized thousands of Russian residents; the commercial port of Dalian and the naval base at Port Arthur. Mitsui and Black Dragon (Kokuryukai - another paramilitary, ultra-nationalist right-wing group) collaborated with the Japan's Kwantung Army (the corporate enforcement arm) to seize Chinese concessions that Mitsui had targeted. Mantetsu employees began "itemizing" Manchurian resources for future confiscation. In Tokyo in September 1905, Black Dragon thugs staged riots, burned churches and engaged in other destructive activities to intimidate the government who considered selling the South Manchurian Railway to Edward H. Harriman who was attempting to build a world-wide railroad network. Amused, Harriman actually witnessed the staged riots in the company of Baron Matsui.⁷ The Power Elite are voyeuristic!

Despite Schiff's influence and diplomatic machinations by Senator Philander Knox (Attorney General April 5, 1901 - June 30, 1904; Secretary of State March 6, 1909 - March 5, 1913) Japan rejected Edward H. Harriman's offer. Knox, known for his Dollar Diplomacy and loan brokering in Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba for his bankster buddies and lying about the ratification of the 16th amendment was instrumental in resource/land grabbing for some of his clients: Carnegie, Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller and Harriman.⁸

Edward Harriman was the father of future U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union - William Averell Harriman (CFR, Skull and Bones, Marshall Plan Administrator) who also secretly financed the Bolsheviks. Harriman convinced Lenin to let "him take over the Czar's cartels, which exported manganese, iron ore and other raw materials" which he shipped "to his German partners, the Thyssens, who had been secretly bought out by the Rockefellers," who were able to buy the stock of many German companies due to Germany's worthless currency. Brown Brothers Harriman financed this Rockefeller front company, Thyssens, and their slave labor camp, Auschwitz. Their money would be secure no matter who won the war. Rockefeller lawyers, the Dulles brothers, "had established three banks," one each in Germany, Holland, and Union Banking Corporation (Rockefeller owned 98%) in New York run by Prescott Bush, son-in-law of Herbert Walker. Union Banking was seized in 1942 "as a Nazi front," only to be returned by the accommodating U.S. government in 1951. Bush and Walker's two shares netted them about $1.5 million in 1951 dollars.⁹ Same names, same schemes, different generations.

Back in South Manchuria, Japanese rogues, called tairiku ronin, turned the country into a poppy-producing paradise to supply thousands of Japanese-established opium dens throughout China; drugs demoralize and diminish dissent.¹⁰ Heroin-laced cigarettes were even introduced to 10-year old children. Ultimately Japan supplied 90% of the world's illegal suppressive, mind-numbing narcotics. The Power Elite have used other countries, like Afghanistan, Laos and Nicaragua to grow and process drugs. Morphine and heroin produced in army factories were stored in warehouses owned by Mitsui, Mitsubishi and other conglomerates, the same firms that would later use slave labor.

Using a staged provocation in which one expendable Japanese man was killed, hundreds of Yakuza (organized crime groups) and members from the Black Dragon Society along with 90,000 Japanese troops invaded Shanghai, China in January 1932. As a result, 18,000 civilians were slaughtered and 240,000 Chinese lost their homes. The Japanese bombed Shanghai on January 28, 1932 and retreated on March 2, 1932.¹¹

To diminish international criticism regarding the massive random rapes of local women during the Shanghai and Nanking (Nanjing) invasions, the Japanese government enticed, deceived, kidnapped, or purchased between eighty thousand to two hundred thousand women, including adolescent girls, from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia and forced them into sexual slavery (reusable bodies are Power Elite profit centers) in battlefront brothels all over Asia. Only 25 percent of the Comfort Women survived their horrific ordeal. Government involvement is substantiated by a document entitled "Regarding the Recruitment of Women for Military Brothels" uncovered in the Japanese Defense Department's archives in 1991.¹²¹³

In the 1930s Shanghai was rife with drugs, alcohol, gambling and over 100,000 prostitutes. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Kuomintang (KMT) government, received his share of drug profits from Tu Yueh-sheng, China's most powerful godfather, boss of the Green Gang and a big financial backer of the general. The KMT established the Opium Suppression Bureau which "turned over confiscated opium to the Green Gang for conversion to heroin and morphine."¹⁴ The head of the government's drug control pretext, Du Yuesheng, was an active member of the Green Gang.¹⁵ Highly funded fake, deliberately ineffective "drug wars" are used to transfer wealth to the criminal government class and their cronies while pretending to eliminate the problem. A drug-burdened (illicit or pharmaceutical) country is not evidence of government incompetence but rather complicity.

The Second Sino-Japanese War started on July 7, 1937 when the highly-militarized, submissive-to-authority, morally bankrupt Japan again invaded China. In the first month of the war, nearly a quarter million Chinese, mostly women and children were slaughtered. The war would end on September 9, 1945.

On December 2, 1937, Prince Asaka, uncle of the emperor, replaced General Iwane Matsui, as commander of the Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force (SEF), for the invasion of Nanking, China's Nationalist capital at that time. "To preserve his own KMT army, which was his only means of staying in power, Chiang Kai-Shek abandoned all of North China." Although Chiang Kai-shek had a "numeric advantage" he "inexplicably moved his armies and his headquarters" away from Nanking just as the Japanese encircled the city, "the generalissimo decided once more to abandon his civilian population without a fight." The few uninformed KMT forces that remained surrendered on 13 December 13, 1937 with minimal military resistance.¹⁶ Wars are choreographed to produce winners, losers and cultural and geographic changes. Warfare enriches the bankers who fund both sides and their cohorts, the munitions manufacturers.

During the next six weeks Nanking residents were subjected to rape, grisly mutilations, decapitations, arson, looting, burning and live burial, bayonet practice, castration, disembowelment and mass executions. Japanese soldiers also engaged in cannibalism. The noncombatant death toll during that six week period, according to the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE, May 3, 1946 to November 12, 1948), was more than 260,000 and may have been as many as 350,000.

Recently declassified documents (December 2007) estimated the number of deaths for Nanking and the surrounding area at about 500,000.¹⁷ Compare that to the civilian casualties for the entire war in European countries: Great Britain - 61,000 civilians; France - 108,000; Belgium - 101,000; and the Netherlands - 242,000. More civilians died in Nanking than in the British air raids on Dresden - 60,000 dead, 30,000 wounded. America's raids on Tokyo - an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 civilian deaths. Estimated deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 140,000 and 70,000 respectively.¹⁸

On August 6, 1937 Emperor Showa¹⁹ (name of the era that corresponded with the Emperor's reign and means Enlightened Peace), better known by his personal name, Hirohito (an emperor's personal name is never used in Japan), had issued a directive to remove all the humane constraints of International Law (Hague Conventions) regarding prisoners of war which included the mandate to stop using the term "prisoners of war" (in favor of enemy combatants?). Torture could then be used as a means of acquiring intelligence.

General Iwane Matsui, due to chronic illness, was not in Nanking during the atrocities but was tried by the IMTFE and hanged for war crimes in December 1948. Matsui's more moral instructions were changed on December 13, 1937 to "kill all captives" to eliminate the possibility of guerrilla retaliations and the necessity of feeding prisoners. Prince Asaka was questioned but never charged and died at the age of 93 on April 12, 1981.²⁰ General MacArthur granted immunity to all members of the Imperial family. About 50 major suspects including the future Prime Minister, Nobusuke Kishi, and Yoshisuke Aikawa, head of the zaibatsu Nissan, were charged but released without going to trial. The tribunal essentially functioned to exonerate the imperial family from all criminal responsibility and for the victors (who committed similar atrocities) to selectively mete out justice for a morsel of satisfaction for the victims.

To facilitate large scale plundering, Emperor Hirohito, educated as a marine biologist, had appointed one of his three brothers, Prince Chichibu, to head a secret organization called kin no Yuri (Golden Lily) to accompany the military. He was assisted by Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda, a cousin of Hirohito. A first pass was conducted by the Kempeitai who seized and crated government, bank and private family assets including gold, jewelry, furniture, rugs, gold fillings from cadavers, antiques, artwork, and other transportables. Special Service Units focused on the influential Chinese and emptied banks, pawn shops, treasuries, factories, private homes, and art galleries. General Kenji Doihara recruited Kodama Yoshio, Japan's government-friendly top gangster to plunder China's underworld and black economy. Kodama, before the war ended, would also facilitate the plundering of Asia's underworld.²¹

In the spring of 1938, more than a thousand Japanese "experts" sifted through China's imperial collections in Nanking which included over 100,000 pieces of "priceless jade and over 1.2 million books and manuscripts and millions of porcelain pieces. Priceless books and manuscripts "were used to set up the Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute of Oriental Culture, Institute of East Asian Economy," Great East Asia Library and other facilities where these items remain. China recovered less than six percent of their rare volumes.²² The Japanese even managed to steal the 500,000-year old teeth and bones of the Peking Man after the Peking Union Medical College staff made arrangements for thirteen Americans to move them to the Smithsonian Institute until after the war. The padded steel boxes containing the bones were confiscated and the men were taken to Hokkaido where they spent three and a half years as slave labor in Mitsubishi coal mines.²³ Certainly, Iraq's gold, treasures, antiquities and rare manuscripts were confiscated and not destroyed by the Iraqis as reported. Where are they now?

All of South-East Asia fell to the Japanese during the winter and spring of 1941-42 including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia. Nothing and no one was off-limits including land: Prince Chichibu's Golden Lily operatives seized valuable assets from American, Chinese (the biggest victim²⁴), Dutch, British and French citizens; the Japanese "tore gilt from Buddhist temples" and took gold Burmese Buddhas, even opened Korea's ancient tombs under the pretext of preserving them. All gold was "melted down into ingots at the Japanese-run smelter in Ipoh, Malaya. The plundered treasures, ancient books and artifacts were transported to Japan in "boats disguised as hospital ships" up until the 1943 allied blockade of Japan.²⁵

Prince Chichibu moved his "industrial scale" Golden Lily operation to Manila and the Philippine ports and then, along with a cousin Prince Takada Tsuneyoshi, supervised the construction of 175 storage sites (34 in deliberately scuttled ships) using slave laborers and POWs who were later "buried alive" when each of the sites were sealed. The sites, all booby-trapped with 1,000- and 2,000-lb bombs and poisonous gas were located in areas less likely to be bombed by the Americans. Japanese leaders anticipated that they could negotiate and retain control of the Philippines and later recover the plundered treasures.²⁶ "As the war came to an end, Chichibu and Takeda escaped back to Japan by submarine."²⁷

The Asian Holocaust perpetrated by the Japanese military took the life of about 30 million people: Chinese (23 million), Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese. The Nazis purportedly killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians. The U.S. reparations and accountability policies towards Germany and Japan were noticeably and deliberately inequitable though both countries used dehumanizing forced labor, plundered their victims, conducted lethal medical experiments and slaughtered millions while arrogantly viewing themselves and their countries as superior and destined to rule the world. German archives were protected and later declassified, German war criminals were prosecuted and the German government was totally dismantled. Conversely, Japan's postwar records, in the custody of the U.S., are sill highly classified; the Emperor, his cronies and relatives were exonerated by the U.S. and the elite ruling class was restored to power by 1948.²⁸ What became of the gold?

Endnotes

1. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, Gold Warriors, America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold, Verso Publishing, 2003, Prologue and Chapter 1, pg 14-15, This book was exhaustively researched and has copious documentation to support it claims.
2. ^ Ibid
3. ^ Jacob Henry Schiff
4. ^ Wikipedia, Matsui Group
5. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, op. cit.
6. ^ Report of Rear Admiral John Rodgers Detailing the Events Leading Up to the U.S. Assault on the Korean Forts; See also Thomas Duvernay, The 1871 U.S.-Korea Conflict: Cause and Effects
7. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, op. cit., pg 23-31.
8. ^ Naomi Wiener Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership, Brandeis 1999, pgs. 32-35
9. ^ John Loftus, The Bush-Rockefeller-Dulles-Harriman Nazi scandal, Federal Prosecutor
10. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, op. cit., pg 32-43.
11. ^ Ibid
12. ^ Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, Penguin Books, New York, 1997, pgs. 35-59
13. ^ David E. Sanger, Wako Journal; History Scholar in Japan Exposes a Brutal Chapter, New York Times, January 27, 1992
14. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, op. cit., pg 32-43.
15. ^ Opium History, 1858 To 1940 by Alfred W. McCoy
16. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, op. cit. pg 32-43.
17. ^ Nanking Massacre, Wikipedia. Also read The Rape of Nanking by the late Iris Chang
18. ^ Iris Chang, op. cit., pgs 5-7
19. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, op. cit., pg 23-31
20. ^ Iris Chang, op. cit., pgs. 35-59
21. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, op. cit., pg 32-43.
22. ^ Ibid
23. ^ Ibid, pg 42
24. ^ Interview with Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, Authors, GOLD WARRIORS: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold, (Bowstring Books, 2002, 330 pp., 2 CDs with 900 MB documents optional) Interview Conducted 1 November 2003
25. ^ The Looting of Asia By Chalmers Johnson, London Review of Books, November 20, 2003
26. ^ Ibid
27. ^ Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, op. cit., pg 14-15.

- by Deanna Spingola, 29 September 2008

About the Author

Deanna Spingola has been a quilt designer and is the author of two books. She has traveled extensively teaching and lecturing on her unique methods. She has always been an avid reader of non-fiction works designed to educate rather than entertain. She is active in family history research and lectures on that topic. Currently she is the director of the local Family History Center. She has a great interest in politics and the direction of current government policies, particularly as they relate to the Constitution. Deanna's Web Site