Beheiren
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Beheiren ("Betonamu ni Heiwa o Shimin Rengo" — Citizen's League for Peace in Vietnam) was a Japanese activist group active from 1965 to 1974. As a coalition of a few hundred anti-war groups it protested Japanese assistance to the United States during the Vietnam War.
They claim to have helped 20 U.S. soldiers to desert, in some cases providing them with false passports and other paperwork and helping them escape to Sweden via the Soviet Union.[1] They also used shareholder activism techniques — buying single shares of Mitsubishi stock so that they could address shareholders meetings about the company's support for the American war effort.[2] The group also assisted American soldiers who were publishing and distributing underground papers and pamphlets in Japan.
Members included Makoto Oda (Representative), Yuichi Yoshikawa (Secretary-General), Michitoshi Takabatake, Amon Miyamoto, Ichiyo Muto, Shinobu Yoshioka, Takeshi Kaiko, Yoshiyuki Tsurumi and Shunsuke Tsurumi.
In 1993, The conservative national newspaper Sankei Shimbun reported that Oda and Yoshikawa were 'KGB agents.' This evaluation was based on previously classified Soviet documents showing that Yoshikawa had requested a small sum of money from the Soviet government. The documents in question show the intent of the Politburo not to interfere with the movement of millitary deserters through Russian territory but provides little or no support for the allegation that it had manipulated the politics of the group.
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