Word: yoshikawa
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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...
...Yoshikawa trained for his job for four years, studying everything on the U.S. Navy that he could get his hands on: Jane's Fighting Ships, U.S. books, brochures, newspapers, magazines (including United States Naval Institute Proceedings). Arriving in Honolulu, he set up his one-man operation. "I habitually rented aircraft at the John Rodgers airport...
...Yoshikawa never dared to seek an accomplice among the local Japanese, who, he 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...