On Six December 1941

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Japanese spy Yoshikawa reported US ship locations in Pearl Harbor; the message was decrypted aboard Japanese carrier Akagi 36 minutes later.

Much of the credit for the attack on Pearl Harbour goes to spies like Yoshikawa, a youngish looking naval reserve ensign who had only arrived in Hawaii nine months earlier. He was employed as a cover by the Japanese foreign ministry using an alias while actually working for the Imperial Japanese Navy. He had been providing continuous and rather thorough updates on U.S. Navy deployments, arrivals and departures from Pearl Harbor, centerpiece of U.S. naval operations in the Pacific. Takeo Yoshikawa was scrupulously careful, carrying no camera, maps, or documents with him and never jotting down notes on what he observed on his outings around Hawaii.

In many ways, Yoshikawa was the perfect man for the mission. He had a solid naval background, having graduated in 1933 from the Japanese Naval College as well as from torpedo, gunnery, and aviation programs in the Imperial Japanese Navy. He also had served as a code officer aboard a cruiser. He then had worked three years in Tokyo with the Imperial Japanese Navy’s British affairs section before expressing an interest in working abroad as an agent. That led to his assignment in Hawaii working for Japan’s foreign ministry as a cover.

Yoshikawa did not have diplomatic immunity, and he was not officially linked to the Imperial Japanese Navy when he arrived in Hawaii. Otherwise, he would have been known to the American counterintelligence officials nearly immediately. Only Nagao Kita, the new consul in Hawaii, and Vice Consul Okuda, who had done some prior spying in Hawaii, were aware of Yoshikawa’s true role in providing Japan with updates on the U.S. Navy.

Takeo Yoshikawa’s information wasn’t always accurate, but he was an effective spy nonetheless. While monitoring U.S. Navy messages in Tokyo, he had received a personal letter of thanks from Adolf Hitler for alerting the Germans to a British troop convoy that subsequently suffered heavy losses. He was always careful not to arouse suspicion in his work or do anything to draw the attention of the authorities to himself. Nevertheless the Americans had been onto him from the start. He was clearly too young for his diplomatic responsibilities at the consulate. There was no Tadashi Morimura listed in the Japanese diplomatic register. As a consequence the Americans had tailed him for months. However they had never managed to pin anything on him that could lead to his arrest and expulsion from the islands.

When he heard the "East wind, rain" code phrase on the short wave radio bringing the news from Tokyo to signal that an attack against the United States was to proceed, Yoshikawa destroyed all evidence of his activities. When the FBI picked him up on the day of the attack, there was no incriminating evidence of his espionage. He eventually returned to Japan in August 1942 in a diplomat prisoner exchange. It was not known for some time that he was the chief Japanese agent in Hawaii.

Yoshikawa never received official recognition of his services during the war. In 1955, he opened a candy business but it failed as word spread of his role in the war. The locals blamed Yoshikawa for the war. "They even blamed me for the atomic bomb," he declared in one interview.

Takeo Yoshikawa died on the 20th February 1993.

[Subdeacon Joe]

Thank you.

And there is a western connection to the story:

 

https://www.azcentral.com/story/travel/local/history/2015/07/17/pearl-harbor-spy-detained-triangle-t-ranch/30153079/

 

[Diamond Jake]

I recommend the book "To Wake the Giant" by Jeff Shaara.  I couldn't put it down..