児玉誉士夫（こだまよしお）という人物について

現代において、ほとんど語られない人物。
しかし、戦前戦後においての政界に裏で暗躍した人物であることは間違いない。

1953年に記録され2005年に機密解除されたCIA文書で、児玉は次のように評されています。

児玉誉士夫の諜報員としての価値はゼロに等しい。
彼はプロの嘘つきであり、ヤクザであり、詐欺師であり、完全な泥棒である。
彼の主な目的は、国への影響に関係なく、自分自身の富と権力を手に入れることだ。
事実、児玉は諜報活動などまったくできず、利益以外にはまったく関心がないのだ。

日本の戦争犯罪記録の調査（英語版）

https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf

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原文書き出し

Kodama Yoshio
Arisue recruited and employed several infamous individuals for intelligence work. Among the worst was the ultra right-wing gangster and backroom political fixer Kodama Yoshio.
Born in Fukushima Prefecture in 1911, Kodama spent much of his childhood in Korea.
When he was sixteen he came to Tokyo, where he worked as a laborer and sales clerk. In 1931, Kodama began serving a six-month prison sentence for threatening to assassinate members of the Imperial Diet. By twenty-three, he had accumulated a lengthy criminal record. The CIA claimed that, in 1934, Kodama founded the Tengyo Society, a right-wing fringe group that sought to bring about a reactionary government by intimidating and murdering leading businessmen and politicians. That same year, he was a key actor in a failed plot to murder several government officials in a series of bombings. Arrested before the plan could be carried out, Kodama was sentenced to three and half years in prison, during which time he attempted suicide. After release from prison, Kodama started the Japan Youth Movement and quickly gained the attention of many influential arch-conservatives in government and military circles.
In December 1941, after ingratiating himself with high-ranking naval officers, in particular Vice-Admiral Yamagata Seisho, Kodama went to Shanghai and set up what came to be known as the Kodama kikan, a purchasing and procurement organization for the Japanese Naval Air Forces. He received millions of yen from the navy to start this work. Eventually, Kodama employed hundreds of operatives, primarily professional criminals, right-wing thugs, and members of the kenpeitai. Originally tasked with delivering copper and airplane parts to the navy, Kodama rapidly expanded and diversified his activities.
He established contacts with army officials in China and expanded his organization from its base in Shanghai to the Amur River in Manchuria and the Irrawaddi and Salween Rivers in Burma. In addition to war supplies, Kodama procured raw material, food,clothing, vehicles, and many other goods necessary for the Japanese war machine. He also allegedly engaged in drug trafficking, setting up a large opium ring in China which he ran out of Shanghai. In early 1944, the Kodama kikan received the navy's permission to acquire and operate mines in China. It worked at least four of these mines, which provided the navy with a large supply of rare metals such as tungsten and molybdenum.

According to the CIA, the navy paid handsomely for his work, sending Kodama's group approximately Y3.5 billion between 1941 and 1945.46 As the war was reaching its end in mid-summer 1945, Kodama transferred vast sums of money from Shanghai to Japan,even managing to bring more than a thousand gold bars back from China. By the end of the war, Kodama had allegedly amassed a fortune worth over $175 million. After serving briefly as an advisor to Prince Naruhiko Higashkuni's "Surrender Cabinet," Kodama was arrested and held in Sugamo prison for one year. U.S. authorities dropped the charges against him and released him in December 1948.
Allied prosecutors had missed an opportunity to try a dangerous gangster who made his fortune at the expense of the Chinese. Several CIC and CIA reports stated that most of the material supplied by Kodama's kikan to the Japanese armed forces was obtained illegally. His henchmen simply expropriated and stole whatever material they thought might be useful for the Japanese war machine, including food and clothing, from the Chinese. They often traveled into central China and held community leaders ransom until the local populace gave them the goods they sought. Kenpeitai members, whose operations Kodama supported financially, frequently provided the muscle for such forays.
When Kodama's brigands actually paid for the acquisition of large amounts of goods,they usually forced the Chinese to sell for well below the market value and pocketed the balance of the money provided by the navy, profiteering at a rate that quickly impoverished many desperate Chinese. According to CIA reporting, even many Japanese in occupied China viewed Kodama as "one of the worst profiteers." The same report indicated that Kodama also organized slave labor during the war, but corroborating documentation has not been discovered.
The Japanese government was well aware of Kodama's activities, but did nothing to stop them. A CIA report on the subject stated that "The Japanese government, including the Foreign Office, the War Ministry, the Navy Ministry, and the Special Higher Bureau paid him well for everything he brought them, but turned a blind and almost condoning eye on his methods of operation. The army and navy are said to have profited well from the resale of looted articles 'procured' by Kodama and his strange consortium." Many Japanese made money because of Kodama's crimes, and since the only ones suffering in the bargain were the Chinese, few paid much attention to his methods. Although some details of Kodama's activities in occupied China remain clouded, he did head a vast operation dealing in drugs, thievery, looting, and illegal expropriation of property to exploit the Chinese resources and population, all with the tacit support of the Japanese government.
The Kodama kikan also handled an item of major attraction to U.S. forces in the immediate postwar period: intelligence. A 1952 CIA report describing Kodama's

operations in China gave a positive assessment of his resources and stated that "the item in which traffic was especially heavy, and of signal interest to Allied censorship in Japan, is intelligence. Kodama supervised a group of talented and persistent spies." Populated as they were with smugglers, black marketers, and former kenpeitai officers, Kodama's extensive networks of contacts across China made him an excellent potential source of intelligence information. This was especially true after the Chinese Communist Party seized control of mainland China in 1949, precisely when G-2 began concretely exploring the possibilities of sponsoring Japanese covert action as part of Operation Takematsu. Indeed, according to the CIA, it was rather widely known in intelligence circles that Kodama had offered his services to occupation authorities.
Given the lack of documentation in the recently released CIA files attesting to direct conversations between Kodama's representatives and G-2, a reasonable assumption is that Willoughby's staff ignored Kodama's overtures. Arisue, however, seized this opportunity and made extensive use of the Kodama kikan for his operations on behalf of Willoughby's intelligence service.
Indeed, Kodama's network was deeply involved in some of Arisue's most ambitious covert actions. In 1949, Arisue began laying plans to exploit Japanese commercial connections on mainland China in order to gather intelligence. He planned to use the Daiko Trade Company (a front company established by Kodama) to conceal illegal smuggling activities, as the route by which Japanese covert agents would get into China.
The CIA-not to mention many Japanese-thought little of this plan:

Arisue intends to give some of the product to American GHQ agents in return for financial support, but will so disguise the means and methods of operation that GHQ will believe that it is completely the work of his own unit. The entire plan is considered by most of the other groups to be highly dangerous in view of the looseness of operations security that the two operating kikan have demonstrated in the past and particularly in view of the tight surveillance and close watchfulness of the Chinese People's Government regarding Japanese shipping to their ports.

The CIA foresaw an intelligence disaster. Moreover, Kodama's agents-including ex-kenpeitai Col. Kawai, who helped catch Soviet spymaster Richard Sorge in 1942-also began cooperating with Watanabe Wataru's efforts to develop a covert intelligence net in North Korea and Manchuria in 1950. This relationship may have developed because one of Watanabe's chief assistants was Otsuka Kenzo, another former colonel in the kenpeitai. How much G-2 knew about what amounted to Arisue's subcontracting of Kodama's services is not revealed in the CIA documents, but there is little indication

that Willoughby's staff took any time to investigate how its money was being spent. If they did, they would have also discovered that at the same time Arisue was shelling out cash for Kodama's assistance, Kodama was also involved in blackmail, including allegedly swindling the Mitsui Corporation out of ¥1 billion by threatening to flood the stock exchange with counterfeit Mitsui stock certificates.58 The CIA claimed that members of the Kodama kikan had also infiltrated the CIC and were supplying information back to Kodama personally. If this claim is correct, the influential power broker stood to profit handsomely at U.S. expense.
By 1953, the CIA had changed its assessment of Kodama. Agency analysts recognized that, despite the size and scope of Kodama's network, his greed made him a horrendous liability. One report (see next page) stated that

Kodama Yoshio's value as an intelligence operative is virtually nil. He is a professional liar,gangster, charlatan, and outright thief. His main objective throughout all his career was to get wealth and personal power for himself, regardless of consequences to his country ...
The truth is that Kodama is completely incapable of intelligence operations, and has no interest in anything but the profits.

When the occupation ended in 1952 and the CIA took greater responsibility for intelligence gathering in Japan, the agency steadfastly refused to deal with him.
Kodama's money and connections ensured that he would remain a player in Japanese politics, always operating backstage, and as an important go-between in restoring diplomatic relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea.62 After surviving the Lockheed-Martin bribery scandal and a rather theatrical assassination attempt in the 1970s, Kodama died of cancer on January 17, 1984.

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人物像

児玉誉士夫 - Wikipedia

Wikipediaより

自称CIAエージェント。
暴力団・錦政会顧問。
戦争中、海軍航空本部のために物資調達を行い、終戦時までに蓄えた物資を占領期に売りさばいて莫大な利益を得た。
この豊富な資金を使って、戦後分裂状態にあった右翼を糾合し、鳩山一郎など大物政治家に政治資金を提供した。
「政財界の黒幕」、「フィクサー」と呼ばれた。
日韓国交正常化交渉に関与した。

右翼活動家。
反共活動家。
暴力団との関係も深い。
関係の深い政界人には、笹川良一氏、渡邉恒雄氏（ナベツネ）、岸信介氏。

ロッキード事件では、ロッキード社の秘密代理人だった。