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Japan's Intelligence Reform Inches Forward

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Summary

When the Allies defeated Japan at the end of World War II, they dismantled the Japanese security apparatus and deliberately left the country dependent on outside powers. This entailed not only taking apart the military, but also the extensive imperial intelligence apparatus that had facilitated Japanese expansion in Asia. As it reconstituted itself, postwar Japan opted for a decentralized intelligence system as an alternative to its prewar model. The result was more a fragment of an intelligence apparatus than a full system, with Tokyo outsourcing the missing components to its allies. This system worked through the Cold War, when Japan was more essential to U.S. anti-Soviet strategy. Since then, however, Japan has found itself unable to count on its allies to provide vital intelligence in a timely manner. The Islamic State hostage crisis in January, during which Japan depended on Jordanian and Turkish intelligence, reinforced this lesson.

In response to the recent incident, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has started drafting a proposal to create a new agency specializing in foreign intelligence. To address Japanese dependence on outsiders, the new system will shift away from a decentralized model with limited collection capacity to a centralized system with in-house capabilities. This plan would support Japan's slow normalization of its overall military capabilities in order to face new threats.

Analysis
During the Cold War, Tokyo could depend on Washington to provide for Japan's external security, while relying on its own economic muscle to gain access to resources. But Japan is no longer the vital Cold War bulwark in the Pacific, giving the United States less incentive to cooperate. Meanwhile, both China and North Korea have emerged as threats to Japanese security. Farther afield, Japanese nationals have become more deeply involved in regions such as Africa and the Middle East. Today, Japan needs fast, accurate and reliable intelligence. Nearly a quarter century since the end of the Cold War, however, Japan is still using a vintage system maladapted to the changing world.

Japan's current intelligence apparatus is fragmented among five organizations. The Cabinet Information and Research Office focuses on open source and geospatial intelligence. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs collects diplomatic intelligence. The Defense Intelligence Headquarters gathers signals intelligence, including electronic and telecommunications systems. Under the Ministry of Justice, the Public Security Intelligence Agency mainly conducts internal investigations and monitors subversive domestic groups. The most powerful of these is the National Police Agency, which is responsible for domestic law enforcement, counterterrorism and combating transnational crime. This agency also has personnel positioned in the four other institutions as high-level intelligence directors.

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This system lacks two key components: Its greatest weakness is the absence of a clandestine intelligence arm, depriving Japan of reliable access to human intelligence. The country also does not have an institution that pools the intelligence gathered by the different branches. Such an institution would provide comprehensive analysis to top policymakers and ensure effective information-sharing among agencies. Instead, Japan's intelligence agencies each report directly to the prime minister's office. The absence of these two key nodes has left Japanese policymakers with huge gaps in awareness, forcing them to react to crises instead of pre-empting them. Time and again, this has led to tragic consequences for Japanese citizens.

Imperial and Cold War Roots
To understand the current limitations of the Japanese intelligence system, one must look at the country's militarist past and its Cold War-era grand strategy. Before 1945, the Japanese military dominated the government structure. The armed forces saw the conquest of Asia as the island nation's best means of securing access to the resources it needed. To destabilize its foes and prime Asia for conquest, the military developed a strong foreign intelligence apparatus modeled along German lines: the army and navy ran their own intelligence services, while the military police corps, or Kempeitai, conducted counterintelligence and secret police functions.

The empire's intelligence system was highly effective. The military ran clandestine operations through spy networks called Tokumu Kikan, or special services agencies. In addition to collecting intelligence, the Tokumu Kikan conducted a range of activities to keep Japan's adversaries off balance, carrying out assassinations and false flag operations, as well as training fifth columns like Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army.

Officially, military intelligence commanders reported to the intelligence branches of various regional armies and navies but their connections in Tokyo gave them wide latitude. Like the rest of Imperial Japan's military, the Tokumu Kikan had little oversight and subverted civilian authority with impunity, at times running politically motivated operations aimed at justifying military expansion. During the 1931 Mukden Incident, for example, Japanese military intelligence agents acting on their own initiative bombed the South Manchuria Railroad and blamed local Chinese forces. The operation provided the pretext for Japan to seize resource-rich and industrialized region of Manchuria in modern-day northeast China.

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Japanese experts inspect the scene of the alleged sabotage of the South Manchuria Railway on Sept. 18, 1931, leading to the Mukden Incident and Japan's occupation of Manchuria. (Rekishi Syashin)
After World War II, the victorious United States dismantled Imperial Japan's military, along with the military intelligence apparatus. Disarmed and occupied by the United States, Japan was forced to fall back on its economic strength to acquire resources. From this emerged the Yoshida Doctrine, named for then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, in which Japan outsourced external security to the United States while concentrating on economic reconstruction.

Fortunately for Japan, its location made it indispensable for U.S. containment of the Soviet Union. The United States guaranteed Japan's external security in a 1952 mutual defense treaty. The intelligence system followed this model. Japan came to depend on the CIA to collect intelligence and inform the Japanese government, which retained reliable access to timely intelligence throughout the Cold War.

However, Japan continued to face domestic threats. These included Soviet support for the Japanese Communist Party and terrorist groups such as the Japanese Red Army. Japan's police force moved to fill the gap by collecting domestic intelligence. From this foundation, Japan developed a decentralized intelligence network focused primarily on domestic threats. The National Police Agency dominated this intelligence structure — a position it continues to hold today.

Although the Cold War-era intelligence system was limited and dependent on the United States, it met Japan's needs throughout this period. Attempts to strengthen the intelligence system ran into strong opposition from both lawmakers and from the public, which remembered the excesses of the imperial-era military intelligence services.

Post-Cold War Challenges
After the end of the Cold War, Japan found itself in a new context. Its economic involvement deepened in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile, China's explosive growth since 1978 had transformed it from a weak economic backwater to an aggressive peer competitor in both security and economics, just as Japan's own growth began to decline precipitously. The collapse of the Soviet Union jeopardized North Korean security and led Pyongyang to redouble efforts to acquire and test nuclear and ballistic missile capability. It also diminished U.S. interest in underwriting Japan's security, particularly once Washington began channeling more of its resources and attention toward stabilizing the Middle East. As the interests of the United States and Japan diverged, fewer and fewer intelligence resources were directed toward objectives that Japan found important.

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Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (C) with special forces troops inside the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in April 1997 after releasing the 77 hostages captured by the Revolutionary Movement Tupac Amaru guerrilla group. (MARIE HIPPENMEYER/AFP/Getty Images)
Declining U.S. support exposed the inherent weaknesses in Japan's underdeveloped intelligence system. In 1996, for example, Peru's Tupac Amaru Marxist Revolutionary Movement occupied the Japanese ambassador's official residence in Lima, taking 24 Japanese hostages including the ambassador and several high-level officials. The Japanese foreign minister flew to Lima, where he needed to be briefed by the Canadian ambassador and spend time collecting firsthand information. Japan was then caught off guard in 1998 by the launch of a North Korean Taepodong rocket and its inability to track the missile's flight. This incident led Japan to invest in reconnaissance satellites and develop its own geospatial intelligence program housed in the Cabinet Information and Research Office. This small step was insufficient, however, and Japan found itself once again caught unawares by the recent Islamic State hostage situation — spurring the ruling party to propose more wholesale intelligence reform.

Reform Attempts and Challenges
In the post-Cold War period, the Liberal Democratic Party has championed intelligence reform. In 2006, a party parliamentary committee produced the Second Machimura Report, which proposed a new agency to collect foreign intelligence operating out of Japan's embassies. The proposal also called for an agency to perform centralized intelligence analysis in a manner akin to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Second Machimura Report did not change the Japanese intelligence system, but the latest Liberal Democratic Party proposal — nine years later — addresses the same deep-rooted problems. However, Japanese intelligence reform continues to face several challenges. The first are the persistent anti-militarist sentiments of the Japanese public. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution famously contains an article that forbids the use of war to solve international conflicts. Though there is no intelligence equivalent to Article 9 forbidding a clandestine intelligence service, in the eye of the public, intelligence and militarism are deeply intertwined. Memories of World War II still run deep.

Bureaucratic hurdles also stand in the way to reform. The Cabinet Information and Research Office's geospatial wing established after the incident with North Korea in 1998 was intended to play a role fusing the separate intelligence streams. However, the other intelligence agencies opted to bypass it entirely. Any new central analysis organization would face similar resistance, especially from the influential National Police Agency, which has historically been reluctant to share information. The same holds for a new foreign intelligence agency, which would most likely divert personnel and fiscal resources from existing agencies. The United States, too, dealt with the same issues in establishing its Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Homeland Security's "fusion centers" in the wake of 9/11. The U.S. oversight agency has yet to succeed fully in its objective of collating intelligence from the 16 other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.

Japan, however, is moving slowly and inexorably toward intelligence reform, just as it is moving forward with its military normalization. Since the end of the Cold War, the Japanese have added capabilities when absolutely necessary. In the wake of the 1998 North Korean rocket launch, for example, Tokyo managed to fill critical gaps by investing in reconnaissance satellites and building up its geospatial intelligence capabilities. Today, geospatial intelligence is a strength of the Japanese intelligence system. In 2013, the Liberal Democratic Party pushed through the Special Secrecy Law, which established a unified classification system among agencies and laid out clear consequences for leaking secrets. Previously, the different agencies protected information in different ways, meaning that they could not trust one another to keep secrets safe. The standardization of classification schemes encouraged collaboration. The law is highly unpopular with the public, but it ended a long struggle to impose such a reform.

There is no guarantee that the Liberal Democratic Party's current proposal will lead to immediate or sweeping changes. However, the demands for fast and accurate intelligence are rising, and Japan cannot depend on its allies to meet its needs. The reform process will be slow, but Tokyo will eventually acquire and fully develop its own human intelligence and central analysis capabilities. The country will invest in its cyber intelligence capabilities as well as it strives to develop an intelligence system to manage all aspects of intelligence operations. The maturation of the technical aspects of this system will take time, but Japan's institutions have historically proven capable of mastering new procedures within a relatively short timespan.

The United States is likely to encourage Japan throughout this process by sharing its own experiences and expertise. This will ease Japan's growing pains as it builds its missing capabilities from scratch. For its part, the United States wants to empower Japan to shoulder more alliance burdens. However, the long-term effect will be to afford Japan the autonomy needed down the road to independently pursue and protect its own interests abroad.


Japan's Intelligence Reform Inches Forward | Stratfor
 
Firstly, I am concerned whether the initiative is real or if it’s a Western conspiracy to give false sense of security to Japanese people.

Secondly, I know West will leave no stone unturned to disrupt this reform processes. For instance, telling lies and harping on false propaganda – for instance lying that Japanese intelligence tried to subvert civilian authority, lying that it carried out false-flag operation against Japanese themselves, lying that it tried to snatch other country's resources etc.

Thirdly, West will try to structure the organization in such a way that it’s efficiency is decreased.

Fourthly, if at all the building of the organization materializes I am afraid even without Western interference Japanese intelligence will be a shadow of it’s former self.
 
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Japan's largely insular policy and limited international involvement in terms of military action was has been a major reason for limited intelligence activities , then again one has to understand that our intelligence agencies were broken up after the end of the war. Prior to that we had one of the best intelligence networks in the world, in equal footing with many great powers.

Nevertheless in introspective analysis, the use of intelligence network sharing has remained largely dependent on our partners due to the lack of an actual (official) Japanese Intelligence Agency, more or less predicaetd due to the limitations set before the nation. When Japan normalizes its defense articulations , then the intelligence network must develop in lieu with the military's normalization.

Japan , as i'm sure she is already in active phase of this, should invest in an NSA-like security apparatus , which will provide comprehensive situational awareness around the world and on all Japanese interests.

We live in quite exciting times. :)
 
You dodged my question. What do you say about other countries trying to sabotage this process of setting up Japanese intelligence agency?
 
You dodged my question. What do you say about other countries trying to sabotage this process of setting up Japanese intelligence agency?

That is the very reason why we are going to develop an independent intelligence agency, unlike the one we are using right now. :)
 
Will it be used in below mentioned issue? Will Japan's formidable institutions be used against Russia?

Japan-Russia border dispute

The Kuril Islands dispute (Russian: Спор о принадлежности Курильских островов), also known as the Northern Territories dispute (Japanese: 北方領土問題 Hoppō Ryōdo Mondai?), is a dispute between Japan and Russia and also some individuals of the Ainu people over sovereignty of the South Kuril Islands. The disputed islands, which were annexed by Soviet forces during the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation at the end of World War II, are currently under the Russian administration as South Kuril District of the Sakhalin Oblast (Сахалинская область, Sakhalinskaya oblast), but are claimed by Japan, which refers to them as the Northern Territories (北方領土 Hoppō Ryōdo?) or Southern Chishima (南千島 Minami Chishima?), arguably being part of the Nemuro Subprefecture of Hokkaidō Prefecture.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan from 1951 states that Japan must give up all claims to the Kuril islands, but it also does not recognize the Soviet Union's sovereignty over the Kuril Islands. Furthermore, Japan currently claims that at least some of the disputed islands are not a part of the Kuril Islands, and thus are not covered by the treaty. Russia maintains that the Soviet Union's sovereignty over the islands was recognized following agreements at the end of the Second World War. However, Japan has disputed this claim. The disputed islands are:

Iturup (Russian: Итуруп)/Etorofu Island (Japanese: 択捉島 Etorofu-tō?)
Kunashir (Russian: Кунашир)/Kunashiri Island (Japanese: 国後島 Kunashiri-tō?)
Shikotan (Russian: Шикотан)/Shikotan Island (Japanese: 色丹島 Shikotan-tō?)
 
The Spy Who Doomed Pearl Harbor

Edward Savela 11/8/2011

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Armed with intelligence supplied by spy Takeo Yoshikawa (left), Japanese pilots decimated the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941. (Left: Library of Congress; Right: U.S. Navy/National Archives)

At 1:20 a.m. on December 7, 1941, on the darkened bridge of the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo was handed the following message: “Vessels moored in harbor: 9 battleships; 3 class B cruisers; 3 seaplane tenders, 17 destroyers. Entering harbor are 4 class B cruisers; 3 destroyers. All aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers have departed harbor….No indication of any changes in U.S. Fleet or anything unusual.”

Nagumo was commanding a task force about to strike Pearl Harbor, crush the Pacific Fleet there, and open Japan’s war with the United States. The message, the last of many sent from the code room at the Japanese consulate in Honolulu, was received only hours before the attack—now 70 years ago.

Astonishingly, such critical intelligence was not the work of a brilliant Japanese superspy who had worked his way into the heart of the fleet’s installation. Rather, Takeo Yoshikawa, a naval officer attached to the consulate and known to the Americans, had simply watched the comings and goings of the fleet from afar, with no more access than a tourist. He made little effort to cloak his mission, and almost certainly would have been uncovered if American intelligence had been more on the ball, or if America’s lawmakers had recognized the mortal threat Japan presented. Instead, he raised little suspicion, and his observations helped the Japanese piece together an extraordinarily detailed attack plan, ensuring its success.

On March 27, 1941, the following appeared in the Nippu Jiji, an English-and-Japanese-language newspaper in Honolulu: “Tadashi Morimura, newly appointed secretary of the local Japanese consulate general, arrived here this morning on the Nitta Maru from Japan. His appointment was made to expedite the work on expatriation applications and other matters.” The announcement should have drawn the attention of American intelligence agents, as there was no Tadashi Morimura listed in the Japanese foreign registry. This suggested that he was new to the foreign service—or that he was something other than a diplomat.

Morimura was in fact Takeo Yoshikawa. A 1933 graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy, Yoshikawa served as a midshipman aboard the battleship Asama and the light cruiser Ura before training as a naval aviator. Promoted to ensign in July 1935, the young officer seemed well on his way to a promising career in the Imperial Navy.

About this time, however, Yoshikawa was stricken with a stomach ailment and sent home to recuperate. He felt his career was over. It’s not clear whether he was ever formally discharged from active military service—an ambiguity not unusual for a military officer transitioning to spy work.

By Yoshikawa’s own account, he was approached in 1936 to work as a civilian for Japan’s naval intelligence service: “Since I had been studying English, I was assigned to the sections dealing with the British and American navies. I became the Japanese navy’s expert on the American navy. I read everything; diplomatic reports from our attachés, secret reports from our agents around the world. I read military commentators like [New York Times military affairs editor] Hanson Baldwin. I read history too. Like the works of Mahan, the famous American admiral.” Yoshikawa also studied Jane’s Fighting Ships and memorized the silhouettes of all the American ships, something that would later prove critical.

In August 1940 Yoshikawa was tapped to go to Hawaii on an intelligence mission. He was ordered to keep the mission a secret, even from his peers at the Naval General Staff. Yoshikawa eagerly learned all he could about the Hawaiian Islands and grew his hair longer to fit in better with civilians.

His orders were to monitor the activities and movements of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor and report on the U.S. military on Oahu and the other Hawaiian Islands. But he was to be employed by the Foreign Office in Tokyo, and his connections to the navy were severed. To conceal his true identity, he was given the name Tadashi Morimura. (Throughout the 10-million word Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Attack on Pearl Harbor (PHA), published in 1946, the name Takeo Yoshikawa is never mentioned, while Morimura abounds. Dr. Gordon W. Prange, who was General Douglas MacArthur’s chief historian during the U.S. occupation of Japan, interviewed Yoshikawa as early as July 1950, when his identity was revealed to the Americans. But it was not until 1953, a year after the occupation ended, that Yoshikawa publicly revealed his role.)

In April 1941, Yoshikawa arrived in Hawaii and presented his credentials to Nagao Kita, Japan’s consul general in Hawaii and his superior in the espionage operation. He also handed Kita six hundred-dollar bills, the cash to fund his espionage. Assigned living quarters within the consulate’s compound, he assumed the title of Foreign Office chancellor. When Kita briefed Yoshikawa, “caution flowed through every sentence,” according to Prange. Kita’s advice, said Prange, was: “Don’t make yourself conspicuous; maintain a normal, business-as-usual attitude, keep calm under all circumstances; avoid taking unnecessary risks; stay away from guarded and restricted areas and be aware of the FBI. In short, Kita reminded Yoshikawa of the Eleventh Commandment—Thou Shalt Not Get Caught.”

Ever since the U.S. Pacific Fleet had permanently moved from San Diego to Pearl Harbor in May 1940, the consulate had supplied regular intelligence to Tokyo from what could be gleaned from Honolulu newspapers and casual observations. By the time Yoshikawa arrived in Hawaii, however, the plan for an attack upon the American fleet at Pearl Harbor was well under way. It was critical that the consulate increase its intelligence gathering without compromising its diplomatic cover. The inherent danger was real: Not long after Yoshikawa came to Hawaii, American authorities shut down German consulates in the United States and expelled the staffs for what they said were “activities…of an improper and unwarranted character.”

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Japan's spies provided precise locations of U.S. warships at Pearl Harbor, as evidenced by this diagram found on a captured Japanese midget sub after the attack. (U.S. Navy/National Archives)

Yoshikawa eagerly got to work, devoting most of each day to his clandestine mission. After carrying out the routine duties that provided his cover, he typically left the consulate around 10 a.m. and headed by bus or foot downtown. From there he hailed a taxi, and went to Aiea Heights, which had an excellent view of Pearl Harbor. Returning to the office after lunch, Yoshikawa reviewed the products of his scouting. At around 3 p.m. he changed his clothes, got another taxi, and returned to Aiea or the pier. He would then taxi up north to Wheeler Army Airfield or even farther north to the beach at Haleiwa.

Returning to the consulate, he wrote and dispatched a coded message to Tokyo, then adjourned to a teahouse for supper, relaxation, and the company of geishas. Even during this downtime, he remained vigilant. The teahouse overlooked Pearl Harbor, and he sometimes stayed all night. “I watched the searchlights from the ships in the harbor,” he recalled later. “From those things I could guess what was happening out there. In the morning I could see how many ships were leaving and what direction they were taking. I watched them leave the narrow channel. How long did it take them to leave? How quickly could they leave? Then I would hurry back to the consulate and tell Tokyo.”

Yoshikawa asserted he worked mostly alone. He apparently received little help from the Japanese community in Honolulu and did not break laws to obtain information. The “consulate was concerned only in ‘legal’ espionage” and did not attempt to enter restricted areas, the PHA concluded in 1946.

Thanks to Hawaii’s large Japanese-American population, Yoshikawa easily blended in. And with its relatively open landscape, sloping elevations, and limited restrictions on movement, he readily compiled useful intelligence. His encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. ships and his methodical charting of their movements made his reports all the more valuable. Prange would conclude that his contribution to the Japanese effort was ultimately “an important one.”

Ironically, the Americans could easily have uncovered this spy working in their midst. Before Yoshikawa’s intelligence was sent to Tokyo, it was carefully encoded using the J-19 diplomatic code. But because there were no shortwave transmitters at the consulate, the messages were transmitted via two commercial companies, Mackay Radio and Telegraph and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), that had offices in downtown Honolulu. The consulate’s chauffeur delivered the messages to be sent.

Neither Yoshikawa nor Kita seemed concerned that outside parties were handling their sensitive information. What they did not know was that U.S. intelligence had broken the J-19 code in the summer of 1940. Sometime in 1941, an American intelligence officer sought to obtain copies of the consulate messages from Mackay and RCA. Both companies refused, citing U.S. laws that prohibited the interception of messages to and from foreign countries. Eventually, RCA yielded and agreed to surreptitiously share the communiqués.

Without the messages sent via Mackay, the Americans didn’t have the whole picture. But even with the cables they did crack, authorities should have uncovered the Japanese espionage activities—and the plan to attack Pearl Harbor. On September 24, 1941, Tokyo wired the Honolulu consulate with what became known as the “bomb plot” message. It read:

#83 Strictly secret. Henceforth, we would like to have you make reports concerning vessels along the following lines insofar as possible:

1. The waters (of Pearl Harbor) are to be divided roughly into five sub-areas. (We have no objections to your abbreviating as much as you like.)
Area A. Waters between Ford Island and the Arsenal.
Area B. Waters adjacent to the Island south and west of Ford Island. (This area is on the opposite side of the Island from Area A.)
Area C. East Loch.
Area D. Middle Loch.
Area E. West Loch and the communicating water routes.

2. With regard to warships and aircraft carriers, we would like to have you report on those at anchor, (these are not so important) tied up at wharves, buoys and in docks. (Designate types and classes briefly. If possible we would like to have you make mention of the fact when there are two or more vessels along side the same wharf.)

Tokyo wanted in effect to place each American ship at Pearl Harbor in a grid. Perhaps most revealing was its final request: Why would the Japanese need to know when two or more vessels were docked side by side? This should have alerted American intelligence that Pearl Harbor might be a target, as such information would be critical in an attack; if two ships were at one wharf, dive-bombers would be needed to supplement submarine torpedoes, which likely would not be able to penetrate the outside ship’s hull and still reach the ship anchored on the inside.

The Americans deciphered message 83 on October 9, two months before Pearl Harbor. But neither Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the naval commander at Pearl Harbor, nor Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, the army commander there, read it until after the attack. The U.S. War Department in Washington did not generally share intercepted messages with its field commanders, for fear that disseminating too much intelligence gleaned from Japanese cables could alert the Japanese that their code was broken. General Short later testified to Congress that he should have been informed of message 83. That dispatch “analyzed critically,” he said, “is really a bombing plan for Pearl Harbor.”

Admiral Kimmel agreed wholeheartedly: “No one had a greater right than I to know that Japan had carved up Pearl Harbor into sub-areas and was seeking and receiving reports as to the precise berthings in that harbor of the ships of the fleet.”

As the attack drew near and Tokyo pressed him for ever more intelligence on the fleet, Yoshikawa expanded his reconnaissance, albeit through “legal” means that would not jeopardize his diplomatic status. On several occasions, playing the role of a tourist, he hired an airplane. Often accompanied by a woman, he flew near various military installations, sometimes taking photographs. He also took cruises on glass-bottom boats and evaluated alternate anchorages for ships.

Meanwhile, U.S.-Japanese relations were deteriorating. Yoshikawa was never told when Pearl Harbor would be attacked, but he felt sure his country would move in either late 1941 or early 1942.

One day in late October, Kita gave Yoshikawa a torn piece of paper and an envelope stuffed with some $14,000 in cash and instructed him to meet someone at a beach house on the eastern side of Oahu. When Yoshikawa arrived at the house, a man offered a torn piece of paper whose edges matched his own—about as close as Yoshikawa got to classic cloak-and-dagger espionage.

The man was Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn, a German national who in 1935 had been sent to Hawaii as a spy by German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. The Japanese intended for Kuehn to continue espionage on Oahu after the Pearl Harbor attack, when presumably Yoshikawa would have been arrested, deported, or worse. A few days after receiving Yoshikawa’s payment, Kuehn gave Kita a plan that would provide intelligence after the attack to Japanese ships and submarines by signaling them with lights, fires, radio—even clothes on a line. (The message describing this plan was decrypted by American intelligence but too late; Kuehn was arrested on December 8 and later tried and convicted of espionage.)

In mid-November 1941, the Japanese liner the Taiyo Maru arrived in Honolulu carrying 340 passengers, including the youngest lieutenant commander in the Japanese Imperial Navy, Suguru Suzuki. His secret mission was to confirm information about the Pearl Harbor defenses and obtain more intelligence from Japan’s sources in Honolulu.

Suzuki passed a list of 97 questions to Yoshikawa through Consul General Kita on a “tiny ball of crumpled rice paper,” according to the spy. He was given 24 hours to respond. Years later, in a 1960 article, Yoshikawa recalled some of Suzuki’s questions and his answers:

This is the most important question: On what day of the week would the most ships be in Pearl Harbor on normal occasions?
A: Sunday.

How many large seaplanes patrol from Pearl at dawn and sunset?
A: About 10, both times.

Where are the airports?
A: For this question, I was able to provide a map with every detail, plus aerial photos which I had taken…as late as October 21, and considerable structural detail on the hangars at Hickham and Wheeler Fields.

Are the ships fully provided with supplies and ready for sea?
A: They are not ready for combat; [they are] loaded with normal supplies and provisions only

Yoshikawa also handed over maps, sketches, and photographs for the attack. Clearly this was a goldmine for Japan. “We knew then that things were building to a climax and that my work was almost done,” Yoshikawa said.

Yoshikawa’s messages were sent to Tokyo, then relayed to Admiral Nagumo’s Pearl Harbor task force as it steamed through the icy waters of the northern Pacific. On the evening of December 6, Yoshikawa encoded that last message detailing the U.S. fleet’s numbers in Honolulu. Pearl Harbor had a very relaxed air, he said, with no barrage balloons or aircraft carriers in sight—critical information for the raid to follow.

The first bombs fell the next morning at 7:55 a.m., while Yoshikawa was having breakfast. America’s Pacific fleet, completely surprised, erupted in flame. Kita and Yoshikawa rushed to the consulate and, tuning in to Radio Tokyo, heard a weather forecast that included the phrase “East wind, rain”—a prearranged signal that war against the United States was imminent. The two locked the consulate doors and began burning all their codebooks and classified material. “Smoke was pouring out of the chimney,” recalled Yoshikawa.

Kita and the consulate staff were arrested at about 9:30 a.m. on December 7. It appears that the staff was confined to the consulate for about 10 days, then shipped to San Diego and on to Phoenix, where Yoshikawa was interrogated. “In the Triangle Lunch Hotel in Phoenix [Yoshikawa] was grilled every day for a week,” Prange wrote, “but he assures me he did not spill the beans. He merely stated that he took excursion trips around Oahu and that was all.” The United States did not have any idea of the extent of his espionage until years later.

Yoshikawa had never expected to return to Japan alive. But in August 1942, he was repatriated to Japan via the much-celebrated diplomatic prisoner exchanges of the SS Gripsholm. (The Gripsholm and another Swedish ship made 33 prisoner exchange voyages between Japan, the United States, Britain, Germany, and Italy during the war.) After arriving back in Japan, he returned to work for the intelligence division of the Naval General Staff. Then Takeo Yoshikawa faded into obscurity, his death in 1993 unremarked, his critical role in ensuring the success of the most deadly attack on American soil earning him few accolades in his defeated homeland.



Churchill Recruits America for His Harem

Just days after the work of Japanese spy Takeo Yoshikawa came to fruition at Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill happily accepted an invitation to Washington to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. MHQ contributor Stanley Weintraub describes the British lead-up to this war council (called the Acadia Conference) in his new book, Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, 1941.

The worldwide disasters of the weekend of Pearl Harbor made it urgent for the prime minister as well as the president to pool global strategies. “As soon as I awoke,” the morning after, Churchill claimed, “I decided to go over at once to see Roosevelt.” He feared that the immediate impact of Pearl Harbor would be a retreat into an “America-comes-first” attitude in Washington, withholding aid to Britain and Russia while concentrating resources to strike back at Japan. In solidarity with Japan, Adolf Hitler would make that “Europe last” likelihood moot by declaring war on the United States, but isolationists who had inveighed against involvement in European wars were still influential in Congress, and the attacks on the United States had come in the Pacific. Roosevelt’s cordial invitation to the White House put a new slant on everything.

Before the PM embarked on December 12, he engaged in strategy sessions with his advisers, who recommended continuing the careful language they had employed with America before the new dimension to the war.

Sir Alan Brooke, the new chief of the Imperial General Staff, recalled that Churchill turned to one in the cautious circle “with a wicked leer in his eye” and said, “Oh! That is the way we talked to her while we were wooing her; now that she is in the harem we talk to her quite differently!”

The Spy Who Doomed Pearl Harbor
 
Firstly, I am concerned whether the initiative is real or if it’s a Western conspiracy to give false sense of security to Japanese people.

Secondly, I know West will leave no stone unturned to disrupt this reform processes. For instance, telling lies and harping on false propaganda – for instance lying that Japanese intelligence tried to subvert civilian authority, lying that it carried out false-flag operation against Japanese themselves, lying that it tried to snatch other country's resources etc.

Thirdly, West will try to structure the organization in such a way that it’s efficiency is decreased.

Fourthly, if at all the building of the organization materializes I am afraid even without Western interference Japanese intelligence will be a shadow of it’s former self.
Public support plunges for Japan PM Abe over defence bills

Support for the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has plunged to to 35 per cent, an all-time low after it pushed unpopular defence bills through parliament despite public anger, according to a poll published in the Mainichi Shimbun.

POSTED: 19 Jul 2015 17:23

TOKYO: Support for the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has plunged to an all-time low after it pushed unpopular defence bills through parliament despite public anger, according to a new poll.

Public approval for the cabinet slumped to 35 per cent - its lowest point since Abe came to power at the end of 2012 and down seven points from two weeks ago - according to a poll published on Sunday (Jul 19) in the Mainichi Shimbun.

Meanwhile, the government's disapproval rating surged eight points to 51 per cent, added the newspaper, which has been critical of the nationalist premier.

Japan's lower house of parliament on Thursday passed controversial security bills that would expand the role of the military and could see Japanese troops fighting abroad for the first time since World War II.

The change marks a historic turning point for Japan, which has used its well-funded military frequently for disaster relief missions but has kept out of combat zones because of a clause in its US-imposed constitution.

The bills have been sent to the upper house for review, but the lower house can override any conflicting verdict.

The approval was seen as a victory for nationalist Prime Minister Abe and other right-wingers, but the issue has galvanised public opinion and opponents say the bills are unconstitutional and undermine 70 years of national pacifism.

The day before the Thursday vote, as many as 60,000 people took part in a rally outside parliament where scuffles broke out with police and two men in their 60s were arrested on suspicion of assaulting officers - a rarity in orderly Japan.

"Public criticism is strengthening against the defence bills. The way the government and the ruling party (has) handled the issue is seen to have dragged down the cabinet's approval rating," the Mainichi said.

The survey came a day after another from Kyodo News that showed the Abe government's approval rating falling to 37.7 per cent, from 47.4 per cent a month ago. The disapproval rating rose to 51.6 per cent, compared with 43.0 per cent last month.

Both polls asked around 1,000 people and were conducted by telephone on Friday and Saturday.

Public support plunges for Japan PM Abe over defence bills - Channel NewsAsia
 
Japanese MPs adopt bills disavowing 70 years of pacifism

AFP — UPDATED JUL 17, 2015 10:34AM

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TOKYO: Controversial security bills that opponents say will undermine 70 years of pacifism and could see Japanese troops fighting abroad for the first time since World War II passed through the powerful lower house of parliament on Thursday.

The vote marks a victory for nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other right-wingers, who have ignored popular anger in a bid to break what they see as the shackles of the US-imposed constitution.

They say restrictive clauses preventing Japan from having a fully-fledged military serve as a straightjacket that stops Tokyo from doing what it must to protect its citizens, allies and friends.

Abe’s ruling coalition was left alone to vote after all main opposition parties walked out of the chamber in protest, a move intended to reflect widespread public fury over the legislation.

“The security situation surrounding Japan is increasingly severe,” Abe told reporters after the vote, in an apparent reference to the rise of China.

“These bills are necessary to protect Japanese people’s lives and prevent a war before it breaks out.” The vote came a day after as many as 60,000 people took part in a rally outside parliament, after the bills — which will give Japan’s tightly-restricted military greater scope to act — were pushed through a key lower house panel.

There were scuffles as police pushed protestors back, and two men in their 60s were arrested on suspicion of assaulting officers, local media said. Demonstrations in Japan are usually small and very orderly, but the issue has galvanised opposition across a wide swathe of the population.

The bills — a hotchpotch of updates to existing provisions that will allow, amongst other things, Japan’s military to take part in non-United Nations peacekeeping missions — now go to the upper chamber.

Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner have a majority in that house, but commentators say it is possible the chamber could reject, or amend the bills.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2015

Japanese MPs adopt bills disavowing 70 years of pacifism - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

@Nihonjin1051
 
Shinzo Abe expresses World War II remorse, but says next generation need not apologise

AFP | August 14, 2015, 19.09 pm IST

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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. (Photo: AP)

Hong Kong: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed deep remorse today over World War II and said previous national apologies were unshakeable, but emphasised future generations should not have to keep saying sorry.

In a closely watched speech a day ahead of the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, the nationalist premier appeared to tread a fine line between regret over Japanese wartime aggression while also focusing on what his pacifist country had done since the end of the conflict.

"Japan has repeatedly expressed feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology for its actions during the war.... we have consistently devoted ourselves to the peace and prosperity of the region since the end of the war," Abe said.

"Such position(s) articulated by the previous cabinets will remain unshakable into the future." When speaking about China, which suffered from Japan's imperial march across Asia, Abe referred to "unbearable sufferings caused by the Japanese military".


Referring to those who perished in the war, Abe expressed "profound grief and my eternal, sincere condolences". He added that we have "engraved in our hearts" the suffering of Asian neighbours, including South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan.

But he added later that future generations of Japanese should not have to continually apologise. "We must not let our children, grandchildren and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologise," he said.

China and South Korea had previously made clear they wanted Abe to stick to explicit prime ministerial apologies. They did not give immediate reactions to Abe's speech on Friday.

China says more than 20 million of its citizens died as a result of Japan's invasion, occupation and atrocities, while Tokyo colonised the Korean peninsula for 35 years until 1945.

Japan's wartime history has come under a renewed focus since Abe swept to power in late 2012. The 60-year-old has been criticised by some for playing down Japan's past and trying to expand the role of the military.

The statement has been top news in Japan as media outlets speculated on whether Abe would follow a landmark 1995 statement issued by then-premier Tomiichi Murayama.

The so-called Murayama Statement, which became a benchmark for subsequent apologies, expressed "deep remorse" and a "heartfelt apology" for the "tremendous damage" inflicted, particularly in Asia.

Abe causes concerns

Abe has raised concerns with his Asian neighbours with previous comments about the need for a "forward-looking attitude" that concentrated on the positive role his country had played in Asia in the post-war years.

He had also made waves by quibbling over the definition of "invade", and provoked anger by downplaying Tokyo's formalised system of sex slavery in military brothels.

A 2013 visit to Yasukuni Shrine -- seen by Japan's neighbours as a potent symbol of its militarist past -- sent relations with Beijing and Seoul to their lowest point in decades, aggravating long-running territorial disputes.

While Abe's nationalism tends to be popular on the political right, Japan's own national self-narrative has over the decades been one more of victim of the US atomic bombings and a war-mongering government, rather than colonialist aggressor largely responsible for an ill-fated Pacific conflict.

Unlike in Germany, there has been little in the way of a national reckoning. Emperor Hirohito, who was seen as god-like figure, died in 1989 without answering to his own responsibility over a war fought in his name.

This sharply contrasted with the blame heaped on Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. German chancellor Angela Merkel waded into the fraught subject of wartime forgiveness during a visit to Japan in March, saying that "facing history squarely" and "generous gestures" were necessary to mend ties.

A poll published in the Mainichi newspaper on Friday found 47 per cent of those surveyed thought Japan's involvement in WWII was "wrong" because it was an invasion. It also said 44 per cent of respondents thought Japan had apologised enough over the war, while 31 per cent thought it had not.

Thirteen per cent believed Japan had no reason to apologise in the first place.

Shinzo Abe expresses World War II remorse, but says next generation need not apologise
 
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