Shed your blood for the state, shed tears for your friends, and sweat for your family.
—Yoshio Kodama
A powerful yet shadowy Japanese ultranationalist, Kodama also shed much sweat for Lockheed Aircraft Corp.
Last week it was disclosed that for many years he was Lockheed's secret agent in Japan, collecting more than $7 mil lion since 1960 to help the firm sell air planes. An enormously wealthy man (worth an estimated $1 billion), with no readily identifiable occupation, Ko dama helped to found Japan's ruling party, assisted in the naming of Prime Ministers, and presumably used his connections on Lockheed's behalf.
His unmasking as a paid Lockheed operative was the highlight of a week of corporate scandals; the others involved entertainment of Defense Department officials at hunting lodges by military contractors and a Christmas vacation for Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz paid by the Southern Railway.
Wide Pattern. Lockheed has admitted paying out $22 million abroad over the years to increase sales of its military aircraft, but has refused to name the recipients. The company did not itself name Kodama, but documents from Arthur Young & Co., Lockheed's auditors, fell into the hands of a Senate subcommittee investigating multinational corporations, and the subcommittee made them public. They revealed not only the Kodama connection but also a pervasive pattern of corporate influence buying: payments to Italian politicians, "gifts" to Turkish officials, and the pur chase of industrial secrets.
Among the extraordinary documents are signed receipts for Lockheed cash. One, from Hiroshi Itoh, an executive of Marubeni Corp., a trading company that acts as agent for Lockheed, reads, "I received one hundred peanuts"—meaning 100 million yen, or $333,000.
Carl Kotchian, Lockheed president, told the Senate subcommittee that that and other payments were passed on to Japanese government officials, with his "knowledge and concurrence," because Marubeni people told him it was the only way to sell planes.
Four other documents are English translations of receipts signed by Kodama (in Japanese fashion, with surname first) for payments totaling $2 million. They are dated November 1972—the same month that All Nippon Airways agreed to buy $130 million worth of Lockheed's TriStar jetliners, in a deal that was regarded as crucial to the company's survival.
Powerful Friend. That was not the first big deal that coincided with payments to Kodama. He began receiving Lockheed money in 1960 (some was eventually sent to him in yen-filled packing crates, some in checks made out to "bearer"). That year the government bought Lockheed's F-104 Starfighters—although it had seemed certain rival Grumman would get the order. No connection was ever established; however Kodama's longtime friend Nobusuke Kishi was Premier of Japan at the time.