Word: harboring
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Swimming Spy. The vice consul was not a diplomat, and his name was not really Morimura. He was Takeo Yoshikawa, former ensign in the Japanese Imperial Navy, who had been sent to Honolulu in April 1941 on espionage duty. Now, 19 years after Pearl Harbor, writing in the authoritative United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Yoshikawa details his role as Japan's eyes and ears in the days before Pearl Harbor...
Honolulu for my surveillance of the military air fields, and walked nearly every day through Pearl City where I could readily survey the airstrip on Ford Island and battleship row in Pearl Harbor." It was all quite simple: "I made many observations on underwater obstructions, tides, beach gradients, and so forth, while on swimming expeditions...
...felt, were distressingly loyal to the U.S. "However, with all of my various sources of information, plus the local newspapers and radio ... I was able to send a constant series of messages to Tokyo." In that stream was included information about the number and type of ships at Pearl Harbor, local defenses, location of fuel dumps, disposition of ships. He noted, among many other things, that U.S. battleships were often moored in pairs; this indicated that torpedo attacks against the inboard ships would be ineffectual. That report, he says, "caused a strong emphasis on dive-bombing with specially built bombs...
...Consul General Nagao Kita, and, "in the course of their conversation, slipped a tiny ball of crumpled rice paper into Kita's hand." The list contained 97 questions. The key question, promptly referred to Yoshikawa: "On what day of the week would the most ships be in Pearl Harbor on normal occasions?" Yoshikawa's reply: "Sunday." The final indication that the time was approaching came when Yoshikawa received orders to send his reports daily instead of thrice weekly...
...signal indicating an attack against U.S. territory.* Yoshikawa immediately began burning his code books and other intelligence materials. When Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived that day to pick him up for eventual repatriation, the only incriminating sign of his activities that they found was a sketch of Pearl Harbor...