interim government of Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni. Since Kodama feared the confiscation of his property by the US occupation authorities, he gave parts of it to the Yakuza chief Karoku Tsuji. Other possessions were kept on the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. In March 1946, Kodama was arrested by the United States as a suspected Class A war criminal. He was held in Sugamo Prison with Ryoichi Sasakawa, where the two formed a long friendship. Kodama also formed a close relationship with fellow suspected Class-A war criminal (and future prime minister) Nobusuke Kishi. Since he had a lot of time, Kodama was able to keep himself up to date on current events and far-reaching political changes in East Asia in all available daily newspapers. He realized that the new democratic forces in Japan were weak, observing that "in the midst of all this rapid change, there is one thing which is lagging behind. This is parliamentary power." While imprisoned, Kodama wrote Sugamo Diary (a chronicle of his experience in prison) and I Was Defeated (an autobiographical work). Like many other alleged Japanese war criminals, Kodama was recruited by the US G-2 (Intelligence) under Charles A. Willoughby while in custody. In 1948, the US intelligence community was able to drop all charges against him on the condition that he would support all anti-communist activities of the G-2 CIC division in Asia. On December 24, 1948, he left Sugamo Prison as a free man and was never imprisoned again for the rest of his life. Kodama spent a total of six and a half years of his life in prisons. Kodama, being a right-wing ultranationalist, eagerly fulfilled his end of the bargain, using his fortune and network of contacts to quell labor disputes, root out Communist sympathizers and otherwise fight socialist activities in Japan. In 1949, the CIA paid him to smuggle a shipment of tungsten out of China. The shipment never arrived but Kodama kept his money. Political fixer In 1949 Kodama led the Meiraki-gumi gang against labor unions at the Hokutan coal mine. He began to use the fortune he had accumulated in China and subsequently hidden, which supposedly amounted to 70 million yen (not including the platinum and diamonds he spirited away), to covertly influence electoral politics in postwar Japan. In 1955, Kodama's Sugamo Prison acquaintance Nobusuke Kishi, with the covert backing of the CIA, engineered the formation