WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
B.C. Lee in 1950.A year later he expanded to buy a Japanese-founded beer brewery,
Chosun, which he later sold off for a small fortune.
B.C. was probably eyeing the success of Mitsubishi (“Three
Diamonds”), the Japanese carmaker, given the company’s remarkably
similar name and early “three diamonds” logo. Longevity, strength, and size
were some of the characteristics of Japanese zaibatsu (“wealth clan”)
groups that B.C. admired the most.
The zaibatsu were some of the largest and most powerful corporations
in the world, as industrial and financial conglomerates run by family
dynasties, that transformed Japan from a backwater into a world power in