Word: yoshikawa
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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...
Sunday Rainstorm. While Yoshikawa did not know the date of "X-Day," he did know that it was rapidly approaching. Near the end of November, a Lieut. Commander Suguru Suzuki arrived in Honolulu disguised as a ship's steward. He called on 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...
...thought it probably a maneuver, but rose and switched on the shortwave" to get the 8 o'clock news from Radio Tokyo. Twice during the weather forecast, the announcer reported "East wind, rain." That was the code 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...