Despite the arrival of Commodore Perry in Japan and the subsequent opening of trade relations, Japan was still an extremely homogeneous society in the 1930s. Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy, succeeded in infiltrating this society by recruiting Japanese agents for eight years, from 1933 to 1941. Sorge, a German who became a Soviet citizen and worked for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, maintained the cover story of being a German journalist.
Hotsumi Ozaki
Sorge recruited Japanese journalist, Hotsumi Ozaki, whose family had high-level government connections, and would prove to be Sorge’s most valuable asset during his eight years in operation. Sorge’s job was to provide intelligence on relations between Japan and Nazi Germany and to assess Japan’s intentions toward the Soviet Union. Moscow feared Japan’s territorial ambitions on her eastern borders.
Stalin and Japan
In 1935, Ozaki photographed a classified document that revealed Japan had indefinitely postponed war with the Soviet Union. Based on this information, Josef Stalin saw no reason to fear for his eastern flank, and in the winter of 1941, Stalin sent 40 divisions of troops from Siberia to the western front and drove back the German advances.
Japanese Counterintelligence
Japanese counterintelligence soon began investigating unexplained radio transmissions and suspicions that information was leaking from the German Embassy from contacts that Sorge had established there. A long investigation led to Sorge’s radio operator and eventually to Sorge himself.
In October 1941, the Kempei Tai, Japan's military counterintelligence arm, and Tokko, the domestic "thought police," moved on Sorge’s network. Sorge and his chief asset, Ozaki, were arrested, tried, and found guilty. They were executed by hanging on November 7, 1944. Ozaki said before his death, “I sometimes thought secretly that, as a Communist in Japan, it is even something to be proud of that I engaged in such a difficult and disadvantageous work.”
Sources:
Whyman, Robert. Stalin’s Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring. London: I.B.Taurus Publishers, 1996.
Prange, Gordon W., Goldstein, Donald M., and Dillon, Katherine V., Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1984.
For more information on the Kempei Tai and Tokko, or Thought Police, read "Japanese Intelligence in Manchuria and the Emergence of the Kempei Tai and Thought Police."
For a look at early Japanese intelligence, read "Japanese Intelligence: Origins of Japan's Espionage Activities" and " Japanese Intelligence in the Early 20th Century: The Black Dragon Society."
Cleve Gray - Cleve Gray is a former intelligence analyst and has worked as an associate editor for the Marine Corps Gazette magazine. He has lived in ...
