King of the Ocean

Lest anyone forget about the strange career of Sun Myung Moon, right-wing nutjub, and king maker, who apparently supplies raw sushi to the majority of the country. Am I going to have to change my diet again?

Despite controversy, Moon and his church moving into mainstream Two decades after serving time in federal prison, Rev. Sun Myung Moon had so effectively worked his way back into the political establishment that some congressmen attended his “coronation” on Capitol Hill.

In an unusual ceremony held in March 2004 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) donned white gloves and placed a gleaming crown atop Moon's head. Moon informed the group that Hitler and Stalin had, from beyond the grave, proclaimed him “humanity's savior, messiah, returning lord and true parent.”
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Inside the church, though, followers saw the coronation as evidence that world leaders were recognizing Moon as a messiah. “Members of the U.S. Congress gathered to crown me as the king of world peace,” he said in a sermon in May of that year. “How can this possibly be a human work?”

The ceremony was another example of Moon's evolution into the American mainstream, including having former President George H.W. Bush speak at the 1996 launch of a Moon-affiliated newspaper in Argentina, news accounts show. In 2005, another Moon-affiliated company donated $250,000 to President George W. Bush's inaugural committee.

and True World Group (mentioned in a recent WSJ article about sushi, excerpted below) is apparently well on its way to taking over the sushi distribution of the entire country.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In a remarkable story that has gone largely untold, Moon and his followers created an enterprise that reaped millions of dollars by dominating one of America's trendiest indulgences: sushi.

Today, one of those five Elston Avenue pioneers, Takeshi Yashiro, serves as a top executive of a sprawling conglomerate that supplies much of the raw fish Americans eat.

Adhering to a plan Moon spelled out more than three decades ago in a series of sermons, members of his movement managed to integrate virtually every facet of the highly competitive seafood industry. The Moon followers' seafood operation is driven by a commercial powerhouse, known as True World Group. It builds fleets of boats, runs dozens of distribution centers and, each day, supplies most of the nation's estimated 9,000 sushi restaurants.

Although few seafood lovers may consider they're indirectly supporting Moon's religious movement, they do just that when they eat a buttery slice of tuna or munch on a morsel of eel in many restaurants. True World is so ubiquitous that 14 of 17 prominent Chicago sushi restaurants surveyed by the Tribune said they were supplied by the company.

Over the last three decades, as Moon has faced down accusations of brainwashing followers and personally profiting from the church, he and sushi have made similar if unlikely journeys from the fringes of American society to the mainstream.

These parallel paths are not coincidence. They reflect Moon's dream of revitalizing and dominating the American fishing industry while helping to fund his church's activities.

“I have the entire system worked out, starting with boat building,” Moon said in “The Way of Tuna,” a speech given in 1980. “After we build the boats, we catch the fish and process them for the market, and then have a distribution network. This is not just on the drawing board; I have already done it.”

In the same speech, he called himself “king of the ocean.” It proved not to be an idle boast. The businesses now employ hundreds, including non-church members, from the frigid waters of the Alaskan coast to the iconic American fishing town of Gloucester, Mass.

Records and interviews with church insiders and competitors trace how Moon and members of his movement carried out his vision.