John Semer Farnsworth - Meetings With A Journalist

Meetings With A Journalist

When Commander Yamaki was replaced by Commander Bunjiro Yamaguchi on November 1935, the latter decided to pay Farnsworth on a piecemeal, rather on a retainer, basis. Faced with a sudden drop in income, and somehow having got wind that investigators were closing in on him, he approached the Washington correspondent for the Hearst newspapers, Fulton Lewis Jr. in early 1936. He proposed to Lewis that he would write a series of articles entitled: "How I was a Spy in the American Navy for the Japanese Government" for $20,000 in an apparent effort to convince him that he was a double agent. He also gave the condition that he would be given a head start to catch the zeppelin Hindenburg for Germany. Lewis promptly informed Capt. William D. Puleston, the Director of the ONI of the encounter.

The next time Farnsworth and Lewis met, the latter demanded proof of the former's relations with the Japanese. Farnsworth then called up Commander Yamaguchi in Lewis' presence and demanded money from the officer. A meeting was arranged, and Farnsworth tried to convince Lewis to accompany him by posing as a cabdriver. Lewis refused, but so anxious was Farnsworth to prove his bonafides that he took Lewis to the office where he had the confidential manual photostatted, as well as proving other corroborating evidence to his story.