This passage argues that the release of the Venona Papers revealed how Soviet, Comintern, and American Communist operations inside the United States deeply influenced Roosevelt’s Democratic administration, the Second World War, and even postwar occupation policy toward Japan.
By revisiting such issues as the Tokyo Trials, the making of Japan’s current Constitution, and the Yalta Conference, it challenges conventional interpretations and highlights the importance of the emerging academic field known as intelligence history.
It is an important discussion that invites not only Japanese readers but also readers around the world to reconsider the very foundations of postwar Japan.

2019-05-26
With the release of the Venona Papers, it became possible for the study of how the “Comintern” and the “Communist Party USA” influenced Roosevelt’s Democratic administration and the Second World War through their operations in the United States to stand as a legitimate academic field.

As far as Japan is concerned, the chapter I published on 2018-10-21 under the title, “It has become clear that Soviet and Comintern operatives were deeply involved in the formulation of occupation policy toward Japan, including the Tokyo Trials and the drafting of the current Constitution,” entered the real-time top ten last night.
What follows is an excerpt from the major work of Ezaki Michio, a book that is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people throughout the world, indeed for all who wish to live in the twenty-first century with intelligence intact.
If one reads his work, one will clearly understand why the Asahi Shimbun, their broadcasting outlets, NHK, opposition politicians, so-called cultural figures, and so-called civic groups are as I have continued to describe them.
In other words, Ezaki Michio’s latest book below is a historical book in the true sense.
Preface omitted.
“Agents” Inside the Roosevelt Administration.
There was a time when to speak of the “Communist Party USA” or the “Comintern” was to be laughed off as lunatic conspiracy theory.
The great turning point came in 1995, when the Venona Papers were made public by the United States government.
The Venona Papers are the records of decoded encrypted communications between Soviet operatives inside the United States and Moscow, communications secretly intercepted between 1940 and 1948 by U.S. Army intelligence and deciphered through cooperation between the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and British intelligence.
With the release of these Venona Papers, it became possible for the study of how the “Comintern” and the “Communist Party USA” influenced Roosevelt’s Democratic administration and the Second World War through their operations in the United States to stand as a legitimate academic field.
It is called “intelligence history.”
According to Professor Emeritus Nakanishi Terumasa of Kyoto University, who taught me of the existence of this discipline, since the 1990s, as classified documents such as the Venona Papers have been opened to the public, major universities in Europe and North America have one after another established departments, courses, or programs in intelligence history and intelligence studies, and research into Soviet and Comintern foreign operations has advanced in earnest.
This movement has not remained confined to the English-speaking world, but has spread to the Netherlands, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere.
At this point, Japan is about the only advanced country that does not study intelligence history as a university department or discipline.
Through the progress of intelligence history and the publication of the Venona Papers, it has become clear that within Roosevelt’s Democratic administration in the United States, which fought the war against Japan, at least more than 300 operatives and collaborators were engaged in Soviet and Comintern operations against the United States, and that many high-ranking government officials were among them.
Moreover, these research findings have also forced a全面的 reconsideration of the history of the Pacific War and the occupation policy that followed.
This is because many of the government officials identified by the Venona Papers as Soviet and Comintern operatives were deeply involved in both the war against Japan and the formulation of postwar occupation policy toward Japan.
According to the Venona Papers and FBI investigations, even taking only one agent organization within the federal government, the “Silvermaster Group,” there were 27 known members spanning at least six government departments.
Many held important positions, and among the best known were the following people.
Their code names are given in parentheses.
Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
“Lawyer,” “Jurist,” and others.
Alger Hiss, senior adviser to the Secretary of State.
“Ales.”
Lauchlin Currie, presidential adviser.
“Page.”
All three were figures involved in the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States and in such matters as the Yalta Conference, which determined the postwar international order, and all are indispensable key figures in narrating the history of Japan-U.S. relations.
Moreover, this Silvermaster Group was also in close coordination with Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party.
In relation to Japan, it has become clear that Soviet and Comintern operatives were deeply involved in the formulation of occupation policy toward Japan, including the Tokyo Trials and the drafting of the current Constitution.
The simplistic view that “America carried out occupation policy toward Japan and weakened Japan” now requires revision.
Incidentally, Soviet foreign operations were mainly carried out through three lines of organization.
The first was the Comintern.
Established by Lenin in 1919, it directed the international communist movement as the “international headquarters” of Communist parties around the world.
Although it was dissolved in 1943, its network continued thereafter.
The second was the Soviet intelligence and security agency, the “Committee for State Security.”
In Stalin’s era it was at times called the GPU or the NKVD, and after the Second World War it came to be known as the KGB.
The third was the Soviet military, that is, Red Army, intelligence agency, the “Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff.”
Its official name changed over time, but it is generally known as the GRU.
Strictly speaking, there was also a naval GRU as the intelligence agency of the Soviet Navy, and it operated independently.
These three foreign-operation agencies changed in name over time, and their mutual relations also changed in complex ways, while operatives and collaborators sometimes altered their affiliations from time to time, but in the sense that they were agents of Lenin and Stalin, the leaders of the Soviet Union, there is no essential difference among them.
Therefore, in this book, for the sake of convenience, operatives of Soviet and communist foreign-operation agencies will be referred to collectively as “Comintern operatives.”
I ask the reader’s indulgence.
This section will continue.