The Yamamori-gumi was a Japanese yakuza family which was founded in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture by Yoshio Yamamori in 1946. The family was initially based in Kure, and it was initially allied with the Okubo-gumi and Doi-gumi. However, Kenichi Okubo persuaded Yamamori to help rig a municipal assembly vote against Kiyoshi Doi's political ally Shoichi Kanamaru in 1949, resulting in a gang war between the two families which resulted in Doi's assassination. The Yamamori-gumi boomed during the Korean War after the family was granted a contract by the United States military to ship arms to South Korea, but some of its lieutenants' involvement in methampthetamine trafficking and Yamamori's insistence on receiving a 70% cut of his lieutenants' income led to divisions forming within the family. In 1954, these divisions resulted in a mob war between Tetsuya Sakai and Toru Ueda's faction (which advocated for more decentralization and against the meth trade) and Uichi Shinkai and Shuji Yano's faction (which supported Yamamori's unquestioned power and supported meth trafficking) which resulted in the deaths of Ueda and Shinkai. After the enfeebled Yamamori's plans to kill Sakai were betrayed to Sakai by Shozo Hirono, whom Yamamori had previously set up following Doi's assassination, Sakai blackmailed Yamamori into stepping down as patriarch, and he took the reins of the family and established his own investment company with Yamamori's income and made overtures to the Kaito-gumi family of Hiroshima. Factional tensions lingered, and Yano was assassinated in 1956 after he attempted to prevent Sakai from allying with the Kaito family to form a new organization. Yano's assassination turned Hirono against Sakai, and Sakai was gunned down by hitmen sent by Yamamori's last remaining loyal lieutenant, Masakichi Makihara, on 19 February 1956, allowing for Yamamori to return to power over a wounded clan.
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