Though he was eventually acquitted, the jail time and the subsequent appeals process took a total of six years, leading up the opening year of World War II. In 1935, Sasakawa and twelve other leading members of the PPP were arrested and held for three years on suspicion of having ordered the blackmail of several leading companies, such as Takashimaya, the Hankyu Railway, and Tokyo Life Insurance. It was in this connection that he first met Yoshio Kodama, who was at that time a member. This small organization was one of the many right-wing groups that sprang up in Japan in the lead-up to World War II. In addition, the 1930s saw Sasakawa take the helm of the Kokusui Taishu-to, or Patriotic People's Party (PPP). that his mining ventures were not as profitable in wartime as they could have been'.

Sasaka was more interested in supporting the war effort than making a profit, with one biographer noting that 'his family records show. In addition, he used the various mining interests that he had accumulated to support the army in a more concrete fashion. Once Japan began to coordinate its air power in 1941, Sasakawa dissolved his voluntary flying group and gave all of its facilities and aircraft to the nation. He also built an air defense field, donating it to the army. In 1939, Sasakawa flew his air squadron to Rome to meet his personal hero Benito Mussolini, whom he admired as 'the perfect fascist and dictator'.

In the 1930s, during the Sino-Japanese War, Sasakawa rose to prominence by using wealth gained in rice speculation to build a voluntary flying squad within Japan for the purpose of providing trained pilots in case of a national emergency. The foundation has done charitable work around the world, for which it and Sasakawa have received many official honors. In 1951 he helped found the Nippon Foundation and became its first president. He supported anticommunist activities, including the World Anti-Communist League. After Japan's defeat he was imprisoned for a time, accused of war crimes, and then found financial success in various business ventures, including motorboat-racing gambling events ( Kyōtei) and ship building. He was elected to the Japanese parliament during the war. In the 1930s and during the Second World War he was active both in finance and in politics, actively supporting the Japanese war effort including raising his own paramilitary units. Ryōichi Sasakawa ( 笹川良一, Sasakawa Ryōichi, in Mini City, Osaka – Jin Tokyo) was a Japanese suspected war criminal, businessman, far-right politician, and philanthropist.

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