Tadamasa Goto—Yoshiro Ogino

Tadamasa Goto and Yoshiro Ogino were blood brothers, a personal bond that connected two yakuza figures whose liver transplants at UCLA became part of the book’s investigation into cross-border access to scarce organs. The account distinguishes their relationship from their routes to treatment: Goto negotiated with the FBI for a visa, while Ogino was among other yakuza patients whose arrival at UCLA was linked to Goto only tentatively.

The Bond Between Goto and Ogino

The book identifies Ogino as a gang boss in the Matsuba-kai and states that he and Goto were blood brothers. It offers no account of when or how they became brothers; the relationship is presented as an established tie between men in different yakuza groups, rather than as a bond explained through a particular scene.

That personal connection matters in the account because Ogino appears among the other yakuza patients whose liver transplants came to light as the author examined materials concerning Goto. Their shared history as blood brothers gives the two cases a direct personal link, but the book does not say that their medical arrangements were identical.

Separate Routes to UCLA

In early 2001, Goto’s doctors told him that he needed a liver transplant soon. Because he was an unlikely transplant candidate in Japan, he approached the FBI through Hoshi Hitoshi and offered information about the Yamaguchi-gumi, its associated businesses and financial institutions, and North Korean activities. In exchange, Goto sought a visa to receive treatment at UCLA; the FBI pressured U.S. immigration authorities to grant it. The surgery took place on July 5.

The book presents Ogino differently. It names him as the next of the other yakuza patients to receive a transplant after Goto and says he allegedly donated $100,000 to UCLA after his surgery. A later note states that, to the author’s knowledge, Ogino and the other yakuza patients did not make FBI deals and entered under false names or pretenses. It also says Goto allegedly played a role in getting them into UCLA, while leaving unclear how the other three were placed on the transplant waiting list. The proposed assistance from Goto is therefore reported as an allegation, not as a fully established account of how Ogino obtained treatment.

What the Connection Does and Does Not Establish

The book sets the brothers’ cases against the scarcity of transplant organs in Japan, where donors were few and operations rare, and raises questions about why foreign patients with criminal records received treatment in the United States. It also notes that an investigation by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and UCLA found no evidence of improper conduct by the medical center or its staff. UCLA and Dr. Busuttil said they treated patients according to medical need and did not make moral judgments; the account says it was never proven that they knew of the patients’ yakuza ties at the time of the transplants.

The blood-brother relationship establishes a personal connection between Goto and Ogino, but it does not by itself establish that Ogino participated in Goto’s FBI arrangement, that Goto secured Ogino’s place on the waiting list, or that UCLA knew of either man’s underworld ties. The book’s careful separation of these points makes the relationship significant without turning association into proof of a shared bargain or institutional wrongdoing.