Uneasy and with a deep sense of futility, on October 20 Nomura sent his congratulations to Shimada, scrupulously routing the message through Shigenori Togo, the new foreign minister. He castigated the Navy for its failure to cooperate with him, then added, “I cannot tell you how much in the dark I am. I have talked along my own lines with the Secretary of State so often that, if we now explored the situation from a new angle, all my presence would do would be to confuse the situation. . . .”1
Nomura had not yet received a policy statement from the new government and obviously believed that, if he carried the Tojo ball, he would have to reverse his field. The foreign minister hastened to reassure him:
. . . The new cabinet differs in no way from the former one in its sincere desire to adjust Japanese-United States relations on a fair basis. . . .
We urge, therefore, that choosing an opportune moment, either you or Wakasugi let it be known to the United States by indirection, that our country is not in a position to spend much more time discussing this matter. Please continue the talks, emphasizing our desire for a formal United States counterproposal. . . .2
Evidently Togo’s message with its all-too-familiar refrain and its whiff of chicanery struck Nomura as the last straw. He countered with one so moving that in reading it, even after all these years, one has the sensation of having inadvertently violated a friend’s privacy:
. . . I am firmly convinced that I should retire from office along with the resignation of the previous Cabinet.
From the first, the Secretary of State has recognized my sincerity, but it has been his judgment that I have no influence in Tokyo. So is the President’s opinion, I hear. . . .
I am now, so to speak, the skeleton of a dead horse. It is too much for me to lead a sham existence, cheating others as well as myself. I do not mean to run away from the battlefield, but I believe that this is the course I should take as a public man.3
But Tokyo still had a use for Nomura. Togo fairly purred across the miles his “hope that you will see fit to sacrifice all of your own personal wishes and remain at your post.”4 Having put his hand to the plow, Nomura would not look back as long as his Emperor needed him. Many Japanese were glad to die for their country; Nomura was willing to do something perhaps more difficult: suffer humiliation on behalf of Japan.
On October 23 the liaison conference met in Tokyo to convene every day until the end of the month, except for October 26, when Premier Tojo and Shimada went to Ise to worship at the Grand Shrine. These conferences, all lengthy and some stormy, took up a series of eleven questions pertaining to national policy, and for historical purposes they may be considered as a unit.
A number of things rapidly became evident at these meetings. In the first place, despite the Emperor’s calling for a clean slate when he appointed Tojo premier, the conferees could not lure the moving finger of time back to cancel the imperial conference of September 6. In fact, no one tried very hard to do so.
In the second place, Tojo quickly discovered that it was one thing to be war minister and chivvy the premier, quite another to be the head of government himself. He seemed to develop a mild political schizophrenia which both puzzled and disturbed his Army and Navy colleagues.
Thirdly, the rift between the Supreme Command and the War and Navy ministries had never been wider. Tojo insisted that the government take the time to study the situation, and Shimada was characteristically vague in his statements; but Sugiyama and Nagano clamored for a quick decision one way or the other.5
On October 30 the conference approved a program later known as Proposal A, which may be summarized as follows: There would be no change in regard to the Tripartite Pact and withdrawal of troops from either French Indochina or China; however, Japan would negotiate over China on the understanding that troops would remain there for twenty-five years. As for the Hull Four Principles, “to accept on principle with conditions attached” was impossible. The Japanese were willing to apply the concept of nondiscrimination of international trade in China if this also applied to the rest of the world.6
Meanwhile, the Navy forged full speed ahead. Once the Naval General Staff capitulated to Yamamoto, it incorporated his daring design into Japan’s overall war plan. And because the Navy and Army must cooperate in this endeavor, the Army had to share the secret. So in late October and early November the Navy, through various channels, officially informed a group of key Army officers about the Pearl Harbor attack.7 Of course, some of them had known what was in the wind since early September. But now at last the word was official.
The number of Army officers who found out about Operation Hawaii before the fact is too long and involved to examine here. When they heard about the operation, they had little to say. Tojo and his generals realized that much depended upon the Navy’s ability to carry the war to the enemy and to sustain the offensive against the U.S. Pacific Fleet. So the Army would cooperate to the fullest extent possible.
Yet another governmental level remained to be told—the highest in the land. As soon as Nagano had accepted Yamamoto’s Pearl Harbor operation in principle, the Operations Section under Tomioka prepared an outline of the overall war plan for Nagano to present to the Emperor. With this document, which carried the personal stamp of himself, Shimada, Ito, Fukudome, and Tomioka, in hand, Nagano arranged an audience with the Emperor in the Imperial Palace sometime between October 20 and 25.8
We do not know how Hirohito reacted to the news of Yamamoto’s bold plan. But he must have realized that military preparations had gone much farther than he had anticipated and that his government had chosen to ignore his specific instructions to approach the Japanese-American negotiations with a clean slate. Versed in naval strategy, Hirohito could not have failed to note that this war plan reversed the traditional image of the fleet as Japan’s floating Great Wall. The Emperor’s shield had become the Emperor’s sword.
Helping polish that sword was one of the least conspicuous of His Imperial Majesty’s subjects, Yoshikawa. He wondered whether the “Big Island” of Hawaii might not hide something Japan should know about. So, at 0815 on October 13, he scrambled into a commercial aircraft and soared away to inspect Hawaii.
His main purpose was to discover any possible alternative anchorage to Pearl Harbor which the U.S. Pacific Fleet might use. He also made a special effort to check the number of Army personnel and installations. He told Kotoshirodo, who accompanied him at Okuda’s request, that he was particularly interested in four sites: (1) Hilo Harbor; (2) Kilauea, which had a National Guard camp; in addition, there had been some talk of a new airport’s being built in the lava flats; (3) South Point, where a new airfield was already under construction; and (4) Kohala with its Inter-Island Airways landing at Upholu.9 By the time the two men left Hilo at 1000 on October 17,10 Yoshikawa’s sharp eyes had discovered a naval radio station and a military airfield. More important, he had come to the definite conclusion that no special hideaway for the U.S. Pacific Fleet existed in the outlying islands. The Americans were concentrating all their eggs in one basket.11
During a conversation at the consulate about Japanese espionage Yoshikawa held forth on the subject of “other kind of people,” meaning nonnationals of the country which employed them. All nations, including Japan, engaged in this practice, but Yoshikawa doubted that such agents were worth their salt. They started off by submitting a large volume of information, but soon “the law of diminishing returns began to operate.” The employer found himself paying the same amount for less and less information.12
On October 25 Yoshikawa’s path crossed that of a man whose case is tailor-made to prove the validity of the consular spy’s strictures on “other kind of people.” This individual was Herr Doktor Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn. Suffice it to say of Kuehn’s background that he had joined the Nazi party in 1930. Since April 1936 he and his wife, Friedel, and their family had been established in Honolulu, ostensibly to enable him to study Japanese at the University of Hawaii. He also attempted a career in real estate and in the furniture business, without success. He spent some time in Japan in 1935 and again in 1936. The general picture which Kuehn’s career presents is that of a well-bred, fairly well-educated drifter.13
The Nazi party could have decided quite early that this man had the temperament for espionage. In his original statement to the FBI of January 1942, Kuehn made no mention of the interesting fact that during the period 1928 through 1930 he belonged to the German Navy’s secret police, although this came out later. Nor did he confide the still more interesting detail that he had been under contract to the Japanese Navy since 1935. In that year he contacted Captain Tadao Yokoi, the Japanese naval attaché in Berlin, and signed an initial contract for two years at a salary of $2,000 a month plus $6,000 bonus at the end of each year, with the contract renewable at the close of each period if all went well.14
Kuehn also remained discreetly silent about an interview with Kanji Ogawa in Japan that same year, at which time Kuehn discussed intelligence plans with other officers of the Naval General Staff. Ogawa accepted Kuehn, although with some misgivings. He worried about Kuehn’s ability to do the job, not so much because he mistrusted his recruit as because the man appeared too nervous and jumpy for such an assignment.
Duly approved, the Kuehns settled in Honolulu and made themselves agreeable. The Japanese renewed Kuehn’s contract in 1938, although he had earned the reputation at headquarters in Tokyo of being a “money eater.”15
In March 1939 Ogawa stopped off in Honolulu en route to Washington to give Kuehn a portable radio transmitter of special design with a “quickly devised” aerial. The entire transmitter fitted into a suitcase and had a range of 100 miles. Ogawa also gave Kuehn instructions to lie low. If war came between Japan and the United States, he was to use the equipment to send messages to Japanese submarines waiting off Oahu. These submarines would relay the messages to Japan.16
Naturally all these goings-on did not pass unnoted. The Kuehns had incurred the suspicions of the District Intelligence Office, and by 1938 or early 1939 the DIO had spotted Kuehn as a probable agent for either Germany or Japan, or both.17
After the freezing of Japanese assets in July 1941 Kuehn contacted Okuda to request that he send a private code message to a friend in Tokyo concerning some funds due Mrs. Kuehn; moreover, he hinted that the money was payment for services rendered. Okuda then agreed to send the message.18 No doubt he would have agreed to anything within reason to get Kuehn out of the consulate compound, where his presence must have caused him some uneasy moments.
When Tachibana returned to Tokyo to Naval Intelligence, he, too, took a good hard look at Kuehn and did not like what he saw. As he explained in his fluent but flavorful English:
Kuehn was not only considered doubtful as to whether he would be loyal to his work, but his ability as a spy was so poor and primitive that it was feared he would not be able to get sufficient information for our intention of launching an air strike upon Pearl Harbor. He was not bold enough, too, to commit espionage activity in the face of danger. Moreover, there was a fear that our relation to him would be suspected by the U.S. with a result that he would play false to Japan and our secrecy might be leaked out through him. Therefore, it was decided to use him only when other means were of no avail, and preparations were made for that end.19
On the morning of October 25 Yoshikawa told Kotoshirodo that Okuda wished him to drive the two of them somewhere that afternoon, but he did not say where. Kotoshirodo asked Seki, “Where do you think we are going?” Seki had not the slightest idea.20 At 1530 that afternoon Okuda and Yoshikawa left the consulate with Kotoshirodo at the wheel of his Ford. Holding something that resembled a money bag, Okuda sat in the back with Yoshikawa. At the intersection of Kuulei and Mauluni roads Kotoshirodo stopped the car, and Yoshikawa got out. Okuda directed Kotoshirodo to drive on a little further, park, and wait for Yoshikawa to return.21
Yoshikawa had to walk some distance before he reached the Kuehns’ house. There he turned over to Kuehn a package and a letter. Kuehn stated that this contained a note typewritten in English, asking if he had a shortwave transmitter and if he “would be willing to make a test at a certain stated time which was on a night several nights later, on a certain wavelength.”
This was not the sort of message Kuehn liked to receive from his employers. Yoshikawa handed him an envelope and a sheet of paper on which Kuehn scrawled his answer: He “was unable to make the test.” He was “quite nervous” as he stuffed the reply into the envelope and gave it back to Yoshikawa. Declining a receipt, Yoshikawa departed. Kuehn promptly opened the packet and counted out $14,000, “mostly in new $100 bills, some $20 bills.” Then he hastily shredded the note about the radio test and burned the scraps.22
Yoshikawa claimed that he did not know much about the relations between Kuehn and the Japanese Navy or Kita, although the consul general briefed him a bit about Kuehn before sending him on this errand. Any clerk could have delivered this money and the envelope with the message; however, Kita had told Yoshikawa that this was “a very important mission.”23 Probably he wanted Yoshikawa to have the opportunity of sizing up his successor because the Japanese Navy was keeping Kuehn on ice to take over Yoshikawa’s duties once war started. In that event the Japanese would need “other kind of people” to keep the information flowing to Tokyo.
The information and funds which Yoshikawa passed to Kuehn had arrived by ship from Tokyo in the keeping of a “certain naval officer,” concerning whose identity there is a conflict of evidence. He had a fivefold mission in relation to Kuehn: (1) to formulate an objective for the information to be procured and to revise Kuehn’s code; (2) to establish a method of communication and outline of a test; (3) to prepare a radio transmitter and establish a reserve communications channel; (4) to expand the Kuehn spy ring; and (5) to deliver the necessary funds.24
Yoshikawa recalled Kuehn as being “very upset,”25 and Kuehn himself admitted to nervousness. Did he suddenly realize that his pleasant path might soon end in an abrupt precipice—that matters were mounting to a climax when his employers would expect him to take up the real burden of responsibility and risk? Did this dilettante recognize that he might have to step into shoes much too large for him? Did this European who had dabbled in Oriental lore look into the flat dark eyes and see the soul of Asia, fathomless and ages old? We cannot know what troubled Kuehn’s heart at that dramatic moment. We only know that the Nazi met the samurai—and the Nazi was afraid.