Takeo Yoshikawa - A Spy in Hawaii

A Spy in Hawaii

Because of his expertise on the U.S. Navy, Yoshikawa was sent to Hawaii under the cover of being a vice-consul named Tadashi Morimura (森村 正 Morimura Tadashi), arriving on March 27, 1941 with Nagao Kita (長尾 北 Kita Nagao), the new Japanese Consul-General aboard the liner Nitta Maru. He rented a second story apartment that overlooked Pearl Harbor and would often wander around the island of Oahu taking notes on Fleet movements, and security measures. He rented small planes at John Rodgers Airport and flew around observing U.S. installations as well as diving under the harbor using a hollow reed as a breathing device. He also gathered information by taking the Navy's own harbor tugboat and listening to local gossip. He worked closely with German Abwehr agent Bernard Kuehn, as well as another former Etajima graduate, Kohichi Seki (関 宏一 Seki Kō'ichi), an untrained spy who served as the consulate's treasurer.

According to Yoshikawa, although some 160,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived in Hawaii at that time, he never made use of this resource in his espionage activities. He and Seki agreed while Hawaii should be the "easiest place" to carry out such work in view of the large Japanese population, both looked at the locals with disdain. "hose men of influence and character who might have assisted me in my secret mission were unanimously uncooperative..."

Although he had no knowledge of a planned attack on Pearl Harbor, Yoshikawa assumed that the intelligence would help prepare for such an eventuality and worked tirelessly to that end. His reports were transmitted by the Japanese Consulate in PURPLE code to the Foreign Ministry, which passed them on to the Navy. Although the code had been broken by American codebreakers and messages to and from Tokyo were intercepted and decrypted, communications between Tokyo and the consulate were considered low-priority because they contained so many messages that were entirely commercial in nature. However, one such message addressed to Kita (but actually to Yoshikawa) and sent on September 24, 1941 should have received more attention. It divided Pearl Harbor into five distinct zones and requested that the location and number of warships be indicated on a "plot" (i.e., grid) of the harbor. However due to delays caused by staff shortages and other priorities the message was not decrypted and distributed until mid-October, and then dismissed as having little consequence. But it was the reports that he sent twice a week based on this request that enabled Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto to finalize his plan for the attack.."

When he heard the "East wind, rain." code phrase on the short wave radio bringing the news from Tokyo signaling an attack against America, 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. Yoshikawa 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.