Nobusuke Kishi

Nobusuke Kishi (1896-1987) was a pre-1945 Japanese cabinet member who was a signatory of the declaration of war against the United States, was imprisoned and investigated after the Surrender of Japan for possible complicity in war crimes but was not charged, assisted U.S. intelligence, and later became Prime Minister of Japan.

Early life

Born Nobusuke Sato in Yamagata Prefecture, his father, orginally born into the Kishi family, had been adopted, as was common in Japanese custom, by the Satos to preserve their family line and name. Similarly, Nobusuke was adopted by his father's elder brother and took the family name of Kishi. Both families belonged to the Chosu Clan. "His older brother, Ichiro Sato, became a rear admiral; his younger brother, Eisaku Sato, became prime minister in 1965; and an uncle by marriage, Yosuke Matsuoka, was Japan's foreign minister during 1940-1941. " Yamagata Prefecture has produced more Prime Ministers of Japan than any other area.

He entered Tokyo University in 1917, studying, at first, under the conservative Shinkichi Uesugi. After his graduation in 1920, however, he was much influenced by the radical reformer Ikki Kita.

World War II

Before the war, Kishi had been a friend of U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew. Grew, along with journalists, diplomats and lawyers, all of whom had had prewar ties with the Japanese elite. In 1941, he was a Cabinet member who co-signed the declaration of war against the United States. During the war, he had held portfolios for Commerce and Industry and later Munitions, and directed forced labor by Koreans and Chinese.

Immediate postwar

In 1945, he was arrested as a suspected Class A war criminal, and spent three years, in Sugamo Prison, being investigated. Eventually, he was not charged. His cellmate was Yoshio Kodama . While the Occupation originally had bold goals to restructure and democratize Japanese society, ambitions became more modest as the Cold War chilled. Kennan's containment doctrine was the priority of the Truman Administration. United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal said that real security against communism required the "restoration of commerce, trade and business" worldwide. This meant putting "Japan, Germany and other affiliates of the Axis back to work." They opposed the Supreme Commander Allied Powers policies calling for the renunciation of military capability.

Prime Minister

After the end of the Korean War, and economic repercussions for Japan, the Yoshida government fell. The U.S. Ambassador in 1954, not intelligence officials, urged the conservative parties to name Kishi as Prime Minister. Another official who had been purged after the war, Hatoyama Ichiro, was selected. Hatoyama was reluctant to rearm, and wanted peaceful relations with China and the Soviets. These positions infuriated John Foster Dulles, United States Secretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration, whose brother Allen was Director of Central Intelligence.

His political rehabilitation led to his becoming Prime Minister in 1957. The Eisenhower Administration's support of Kishi became more and more obvious, when he made a state visit in 1957, addressing Congress and played golf with Eisenhower,

While detailed documentation has not been declassified, if it exists, indicates that early in 1958, Shaller states that Eisenhower, making what he and his aides earlier called a "big bet," authorized the CIA to provide secret campaign funds to Kishi and other members of the Liberal Democratic Party. The Administration agreed to renegotiate the 1951 security treaty and end the Occupation. In return for the right to use Okinawa as a base for nuclear forces, the U.S. renegotiated the treaty. While the Kennedy administration continued the secret payments, Although the Kennedy administration in 1961 continued secret payments to the LDP and other parties, "it viewed trade expansion as a better way to stabilize Japan and bind it to the United States."