⭐Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave¶

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Truman also was told that the very existence of so much black gold, if it became public knowledge, would cause the fixed price of $35 an ounce to collapse. ^ref-39792

• Location: 366

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Today, these conglomerates deny any obligation to compensate those who survived, on the argument that their management changed at the end of the war, so today’s corporations are not the same. Strangely, their corporate banks escaped any punishment during the U.S. occupation. ^ref-49087

• Location: 1674

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When the war ended, Bigelow and other POWs were taken to Guam, where they were harangued and browbeaten by U.S. military intelligence officers and forced to sign papers promising not to tell anyone about their terrible experiences. “We were told to read and sign and keep our mouths shut,” Bigelow said, “and I’m just putting that politely.” For some reason both Washington and Tokyo wanted total silence on the abuse of POWs. ^ref-26065

• Location: 1711

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To this day the State Department and the Justice Department, shielding the government and zaibatsu of Japan, still invoke Article 14 of the 1951 Peace Treaty to block any attempt by victims to sue these immensely rich corporations. ^ref-6056

• Location: 2956

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This comes as no surprise because it is now known that the Vatican bank sheltered Hirohito’s assets and Nazi assets during the war. ^ref-26966

• Location: 2966

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Secretly, Truman simultaneously authorized the use of Axis war loot and other unvouchered funds to do precisely that – to interfere in the political life of sovereign nations, to buy elections, to undercut the rule of law, to control the media, to carry out assassinations, and to impose America’s will on countries with whom it was not at war. ^ref-1442

• Location: 2986

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While literally an employee of the U.S. Government, Kodama continued to oversee Japan’s postwar drug trade. ^ref-38520

• Location: 3055

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We now know that the U.S. Government and other Allied governments browbeat POWs when they were liberated from Japanese slave labor camps. They were bullied into signing secrecy oaths before they were allowed to go home, forced to swear that they would not reveal anything they knew about war looting or about the chemical and biological weapons testing of Unit 731. Even men who had been victims of Japanese medical experiments were forced to take this oath. At the time, they were told it was their patriotic duty to remain silent. Today they are realizing that they were victimized by their own governments, which were less interested in justice than in staying in power, and preparing for the coming Cold War. ^ref-18761

• Location: 3183

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During the occupation, many ordinary Japanese worked two jobs to earn enough to buy one potato each day. During the same period, Hirohito was earning $50-million a year in interest merely on his Swiss bank accounts. ^ref-46000

• Location: 3276

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FDR’s Executive Order 6102 made it illegal for private American citizens living in the United States to hold gold coin, gold bullion, or gold certificates. Interestingly, this applied only to American citizens in the continental United States. ^ref-35150

• Location: 6915