Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer

By Ellis M. Zacharias

An instant bestseller when it was first published in 1946, this memoir recounts the author's nearly forty years of service in naval intelligence, beginning in 1908. One of the first to venture into the realm of psychological warfare, Ellis Zacharias was awarded the Legion of Merit with two gold stars for his contributions. Among the highlights of his impressive career was the role he played in convincing the Japanese to accept surrender in 1945, a subject he deals with in fascinating detail in this book. Zacharias gives readers access to rare psychological profiles that he prepared for the Office of Naval Intelligence on leading political and military figures in Japan. His book also recounts his exploits as a young naval attaché with the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo in the early 1920s. In the early months of the war readers join him in the thick of combat in the Pacific, first aboard a cruiser under his command and later in a battleship. Of particular interest are descriptions of his one-man radio broadcasts beamed at Japan between V-E and V-J days that received kudos from Adm. Ernest J. King for helping bring about the surrender.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781612517698

Book preview

BOOK ONE

PRELUDE TO CONFLICT

1

ASSIGNMENT IN TOKYO

"When directed by the Director of Naval Intelligence you will regard yourself detached from present duty and will proceed to Tokyo, Japan, for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the Japanese language and the Japanese people.

This employment on shore duty beyond the seas is required by the public interest.

THESE ORDERS, issued by Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, were handed to me on October 4, 1920, by Captain Andrew T. Long, USN, Director of Naval Intelligence, in his office in the Navy Department. It was obvious to me even then that the order sending me to shore duty beyond the seas was in reality my passport to adventure. With one stroke of his pen Mr. Daniels had opened a new world before me, so different from the monotony of routine and regulations which marks the career of a naval officer. There may be occasional thrills and excitements to punctuate the repetitious life in the Navy: cruises to faraway lands, maneuvers, ceremonies on gala occasions, parties, receptions, and pretty girls. But broad as the oceans are, the life of a naval officer is narrowed to the bridge of his ship, to the room where the engines pant, to the gun rooms and turrets, to the wardroom with its stereotyped discussions of the drills of the day, and the cook’s gastronomic imagination.

There in Captain Long’s office the memories of a long-forgotten day returned to me, the day when I first decided to enter upon a naval career. I was then eight years old, a fascinated witness to great events, as from the coast line of my native Florida I watched American warships deploy for the Spanish-American War. Enraptured, I stood watching the steaming parade, the battle-clad men on the decks, the guns elevated for the range. Then and there, the lure of the Navy, rather than the sea, gripped me—and it has held me captivated ever since.

Since late August 1920 I had been attached to Naval Intelligence for temporary duty. I was quite hazy about the meaning of the word intelligence*; and I shared the indifference and even suspicion with which some of my fellow officers of the line habitually regarded intelligence work. With an attitude mixed of ignorance and mistrust, I had emphasized in my mind the temporary character of my intelligence duties rather than the duties themselves.

But standing in Captain Long’s office, I suddenly realized the implications of the word. The Captain tried to discourage me from placing too much emphasis on my assignment to Naval Intelligence. Although you are attached to Intelligence, he said, you are going to Japan as a language student and not as an intelligence officer. In fact, I would advise you to keep away from intelligence work as far as possible. We expect you to bring back the most valuable information we now need: knowledge of the Japanese language and the Japanese people. We don’t expect you to tie your hands with other activities. These are your orders.

But as he tried to minimize the importance of my connection with Intelligence, he merely opened my eyes wider to its manifold aspects and phases. I thought to myself: How can the knowledge of a foreign language and strange people be divorced from intelligence? How can I, even if I want to, refrain from learning Japan while studying its language and folkways? Indeed, my assignment is an intelligence mission in its most highly developed form, no matter how the Director of Naval Intelligence may regard it.

An incident which followed immediately my call on Captain Long served to reinforce this intuition. Quite abruptly and without warning I was introduced to the adversary: Japanese Intelligence, then trying its wings in Washington. It was suggested to me that while waiting for my travel orders I lease an apartment in the Benedict, a bachelor apartment house near the Army-Navy Club. I do not know whether it was only coincidence, but the apartment recommended to me was just above the quarters of Captain Uyeda, who was then Japan’s naval attaché in Washington, and known to our own Naval Intelligence as a promising member of that country’s budding espionage organization. Perfunctory and haphazard though our system of surveillance then was, we kept a watchful eye on Captain Uyeda, and I was to report any untoward incident observed during my stay over his head.

Impressed with my task, and following the urges of natural curiosity, I did a little investigating of my own and found that Captain Uyeda was a merry bachelor indeed, at least here in the United States, who made widespread use of the apartment’s liberal rules regarding ladies. Night after night I could hear shrill Japanese laughter interspersed with feminine giggles. Patches of conversation floated through the open windows; and it did not take much effort to find out that these girls were secretaries in the Navy Department. This, of course, gave a new impetus to our interest in Captain Uyeda’s parties, and soon we discovered that among his most frequent guests was a confidential stenographer in the office of the Secretary of the Navy. Soon after our discovery in the Benedict there were some sudden transfers in the secretarial staff of the Navy Department, which removed any danger of the Arnold having to be added to the name of the apartment house. However, we did not wish to be kill-joys and were happy to provide carefully briefed replacements. Captain Uyeda’s social life then proceeded merrily both for him and for us.

The incident in the Benedict revealed to me the two fundamentally different aspects of intelligence. In Captain Long’s office I was initiated into what the lingo of our profession calls positive intelligence. In the Benedict I was introduced to negative intelligence. Few people realize that in the broad field of activities which are usually classified as intelligence functions, a sharp distinction must be made between these two forms of operations. Positive intelligence may be defined as the collection of information regarding an enemy or a prospective enemy as to his intentions, strength, organizational structure, and deficiencies, to enable us to base our plans on the knowledge of these data. Intelligence material, then, is this information in its evaluated form.

Negative intelligence is the gathering of information regarding foreign agents to prevent them from obtaining the same type of information of our activities which we seek of theirs. Neither phase has much to do with the cloak-and-dagger work which receives widespread publicity in the wake of every war. The overwhelming majority of basic intelligence data is obtained by open observation, by studying reference books, consulting libraries, reading the newspapers of foreign countries, listening to their radios, interviewing bona fide travelers. The collection of information by surreptitious means is no longer intelligence. It is espionage. Both are closely related, but there are some crucial distinctions—as our Axis enemies discovered too late.

By the time my orders to proceed to Tokyo were handed to me in Washington, I knew as much about intelligence as it was possible to learn in two months of intensive study, seasoned with a dash of field experience as has just been related. Now everything was ready and waiting for me to turn my newly acquired knowledge to use.

The War Department has been requested to furnish you transportation on the Army Transport ‘Sherman,’ sailing from San Francisco on or about 11 October 1920 for Japan.

At the time of my arrival in Japan, the country was in a peculiar ferment. The tide of militarism was ebbing in the wake of the Siberian expedition, which was turning out disastrously for Japan. It may be remembered that the turmoil which followed in Siberia subsequent to the Bolshevik revolution, and the presence there of certain Czech prisoners of war, induced the Allies to send an expeditionary force to Siberia, ostensibly for the purpose of enabling the escape of the Czech troops. Japan was invited by Great Britain and the United States to participate in the expedition and was asked to send a contingent of 7,000 men. The invitation was avidly accepted in Tokyo, where the militarists, still glorying in the defeat of Germany, to which they had contributed precious little, now hoped for an easy conquest across the sea on the Asiatic mainland. Instead of dispatching the contingent of 7,000 men, they sent 70,000—but even this force could not ultimately secure the Russian Far East for Japan.

The failure of the militarists encouraged the people to raise their voice against the clique of armed adventurers. Protest meetings were held in Hibiya Park, petitions were presented to the government, and speakers representing political groups and trade unions vociferously demanded the recall of the expeditionary force of Japan. By the time of my arrival in Tokyo in November 1920 I could see the backwash of these protests. I was told in the United States that militarists dominated Japan’s political life and that they rode arrogantly high on the shoulders of the people. But when I made my first contacts in military and naval circles, I could not help noticing a subdued atmosphere in their midst. Indeed, they were bemoaning a lost opportunity and discounting the Siberian escapade as a dismal failure.

The people vented their anger in various forms. Soon it became quite dangerous for an officer to show himself in public wearing his uniform or to display his military rank on the name plates on his doors. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff was forced to resign, and military appropriations were cut in the budget, an unprecedented effrontery, my military contacts told me.

During the early part of my stay I did not quite grasp the political significance of these events and failed to discern the forces which boiled deep in Japan’s imperialistic volcano. As usual with newcomers on a quasi-diplomatic mission, I was thrown into the whirlpool of diplomacy. Reporting to the Naval Attaché, Captain Edward Howe Watson, and striking up friendships with the younger set in the Embassy, I had gained access to that part of life in Tokyo which I was least eager to study. As I now turn back to the pages of my engagement book recording my early days in Japan, I find entries like these:

I found it somewhat difficult to fit myself into the rigid social procedure which seemed to delight some of our younger diplomats. A newcomer to diplomatic etiquette, I committed a few faux pas and was promptly denounced for them to the counselor of our embassy, Ned Bell, a brilliant and energetic diplomat, who did not seem to be greatly disturbed by my first stumbling steps in the drawing rooms. When on one occasion a second secretary, who later rose to the rank of ambassador and became a most valuable member of our foreign service, reported to the Counselor that, horribile dictu, I had dared to take a picture at the Emperor’s garden party, he just laughed and told his eager subordinate: Forget about it!

In Captain Watson I found a most gracious chief and an understanding guide to the scenes backstage of Japanese naval politics, or what Admiral Sato himself called Japanese Navalism. Captain Watson was one of the most likable and dynamic, intelligent and alert naval attachés we have had in any country. He was extremely popular with the Japanese naval officers, who were mystified by his technique of telling them too much so that they could learn too little. On one occasion the chief of Japan’s Naval Intelligence visited him to inquire about certain matters which required elucidation. Captain Watson erupted in his usual manner and went on talking about the matter for almost an hour, but as the dazed Japanese captain left his room, he frankly told Watson:

Eddie, I don’t think I have a right to complain. You certainly were not a bit taciturn. But frankly, I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.

To me, however, he confided that his loquaciousness was one of the many tricks he had up the sleeve of his uniform coat. He had an immense job in Japan and needed a whole set of similar tricks to cope with his task. When he had first arrived in Japan and inspected the files in the office of his predecessor, he was flabbergasted to find that they were almost empty. It was not his custom to swear, but on this occasion he broke his resolution, and he did it beautifully. And then continued to the officer he was relieving: Is this all you’ve got?

That is all.

You mean to tell me that these few sheets of paper represent all the information you have obtained during your three years in Tokyo? he demanded.

I couldn’t take advantage of my peculiar position with an ally in time of war to extract information from their files, explained the other.

Watson was thus forced to start from scratch; but by the time he left, the files were bulging with reports and documents, and the Japanese Navy was accurately delineated in our office.

His first step when I arrived was to introduce me to the bigwigs of the Japanese Navy. To the Minister of the Navy and the chief of the Naval General Staff we paid merely a short courtesy call, but not so to the chief of the famous Joho Kyoku, Japan’s Naval Intelligence. I had my first taste then and there of the seriousness with which the Japanese Navy regarded intelligence, far different from the haphazard improvisations and nonchalance with which we handled this important function.

We drove to the Navy Ministry building and entered through the main entrance, but that was as far as we were permitted to go. A guard conducted us to a waiting room, took our cards, and disappeared. Soon a junior officer accosted us, inquiring about the nature of our business, then bowed himself out only to disappear completely. Another aide finally came and conducted us up to the second floor, where was located the large but simple office of the Chief of Naval Intelligence.

A tall Japanese officer wearing the uniform of a Navy captain received us at the door, holding out his hand for a hearty handshake with Captain Watson: I am glad to see you, Eddie, he greeted my chief in excellent English and with a smile which immediately put me at ease.

Zacharias, Watson turned to me, this is Captain Kichisaburo Nomura, then to Nomura: This is Lieutenant Commander Zacharias, the new language student of whom I spoke.

The friendly atmosphere in which my first meeting with the later Ambassador Admiral Nomura took place persisted throughout my stay in Japan and even long after. Here again I found a Japanese to whom Westernism was no empty mode of manners. A man with a broad outlook and critical mind, Nomura was able to perceive the pros and cons in every argument and weigh against realities the chimerical plans which were then being woven in that same building.

We were on the eve of what Yamato Ichihashi, secretary to the Japanese delegation attending the Washington Naval Limitation Conference in 1921, later called the great diplomatic adventure. In London, Washington, and Tokyo the offices of naval intelligence were already maneuvering for position to learn about the proposals and schemes with which the others planned to go to the conference. Captain Watson’s time was almost entirely taken up with study of possible Japanese plans, of which we happened to know more than most Japanese themselves, despite certain of our organizational deficiencies. The messages which passed between the Tokyo Foreign Office and its envoys in London and Washington were intercepted, decoded, and transcribed. The story of this has been told in full though somewhat exaggerated detail in Major Yardley’s book, The American Black Chamber. I was amazed at these revelations; and I could never understand why the existence of this activity, much more the details of it, were permitted to be revealed. An irreparable harm was thereby done to our intelligence technique, a harm second only to the disclosures of a similar nature made before the Congressional Committee investigating the Pearl Harbor disaster. Furthermore, I could never understand the subsequent decision of the State Department to discontinue the activity, with so many other nations concentrating on it. Statecraft has many activities which, like the virtue of a lady, are better left undiscussed.

It was through Captain Watson that I gained my first insight into what may be called the Haute Ecole of international diplomacy. Although the intercepted and decoded cables told most of the story, there were innumerable little gaps which the naval attaché was expected to fill in. The cables dealt only with the over-all diplomatic aspects of the complex problem; they contained but few references to naval details and the minutes of the proposals which the Japanese planned to place before the conference. Nor did they indicate how far the Japanese were willing to go in their claims and at what point they were ready for a compromise.

In long and serious discussions, Captain Watson explained to me the whole background of a then existing diplomatic triangle—United States, Great Britain, and Japan. In 1920 the Japanese Navy received its first major appropriation since 1912, when a corruption scandal within the Navy had undermined the admirals’ prestige and enabled the Imperial Diet to withhold from them the appropriations for which they were always lobbying. The memories of that scandal were all forgotten and forgiven by 1920, and the Imperial Navy was permitted to embark upon an ambitious construction program envisaging the building of eight battleships and eight battle cruisers, known as the Eight-Eight Program. The strategists of the Kaigun-Sho, as the navy ministry is called in Japan, calculated that the possession of sixteen capital ships would provide them with a well-balanced fleet, at least for the time being.

In the middle of this program Lord Curzon’s suggestions for a naval limitation conference reached Tokyo, threatening to cancel the whole construction schedule and relegate Japan to the role of an inferior sea power. The dilemma with which the admirals of the Kaigun-Sho were confronted was a difficult one indeed; but Captain Watson never doubted that they would solve it with a compromise.

Japan, he told me, knows well that the choice is between armament limitation and an armament race. They know that we prefer a limitation agreement, but would not shrink from the race either. If it comes to a race, Japan will be far outdistanced and will remain a minor sea power if only by the comparative strengths of the American, British, and Japanese navies. They will try to take the bitter medicine with a pleasant smile and forget about the Eight-Eight Program if absolutely necessary. It was also clear that the British would abandon their alliance with Japan rather than antagonize the United States.

Captain Watson gained this accurate estimate of the situation during long and intimate meetings with Japanese naval officers who were destined to play an outstanding role in shaping Japan’s destiny. Shortly after my return to Tokyo in September 1921, after a summer in the mountains, I was permitted to watch Captain Watson girding for battle and going into action. The locale of this first naval battle was not the ocean. It was a teashop in the Shimbashi district, one of the geisha houses where Nomura and his colleagues gathered frequently for business—and pleasure. As the preparations for the Washington Conference were now in full swing, these meetings became more frequent. Both Watson and Nomura were anxious to sound out each other, to pick up a remark inadvertently dropped during these intimate talks, and fit it like a colored stone into the mosaic of the whole.

The meeting to which I accompanied Captain Watson was well attended on both sides. In our corner sat the Captain; his assistant, Lieutenant Commander John Walter McClaran; and myself. Japan was represented by Captain Nomura, who brought with him Captain Nagano and Commander Yonai, two of the most promising men on the Naval General Staff. The significance of these meetings can be seen in the fact that all three of these Japanese officers attained top positions in their country’s political line-up. Nomura became ambassador to the United States just when the long-strained relations flared into war; Nagano was at the head of the Naval General Staff at the outbreak of hostilities and during its early years; Yonai rose to the rank of navy minister, and held that position until just prior to the signing of the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940, and also at the time of Japan’s surrender.

In those early days of our teashop meetings, however, Yonai was, like myself, a language student, oriented in another direction—toward Russia. At the time of our first meeting he, too, was a newcomer to Tokyo, freshly returned from an assignment in Moscow, where he was ostensibly studying the Russian language.

In September 1921 Captain Watson called me into his office for what turned out to be a momentous occasion in my life. It was to be my first secret mission. It was evident from the Captain’s opening remarks that I had earned my spurs in diplomacy and that he now regarded me as ready for the assignment.

Zack, he started, there is certain information I would like to send to Washington. It is vital information. We must know in as great detail as possible the extent to which the Japanese are willing to go in accepting a compromise solution in a projected naval limitation agreement. I have a lot of data myself, but I have to check and countercheck my information before I can vouch for its validity in a report to the Navy Department. I want you and McClaran to do the checking for me.

I’ll be happy to serve you, Captain, I responded eagerly as Watson outlined his little plot:

You remember our Shimbashi meetings with Nomura and his crowd?

Yes, sir.

"Well, I want you and McClaran to make them as frequent as possible. I can no longer attend them myself. They have grown too intimate. Their frank exchange of opinion prevents the presence of an official of my position. As Nomura runs these meetings on a quid pro quo basis, I have outlived my usefulness from his point of view, since I can no longer oblige him with the tidbits of information he hopes to obtain from me. I am confined to official calls on top-ranking naval officers and parties where I can gather my stuff, but you and McClaran can go ahead freely, in your give and take."

Have you any further orders, sir?

No, just go to Shimbashi with the Nomura crowd and try to find out from them what their plans are for the Washington Conference. Pick up whatever information you can, and keep me posted on what goes on behind the scenes.

Captain Nomura was to make my assignment rather simple for me, since it was he rather than we who initiated the next meeting after my conversation with Captain Watson. Apparently he did not share Watson’s personal qualms about the dangers of the quid pro quo and was willing to continue our little Shimbashi game of give and take. Just as anxious to get an insight into American plans as we were to learn theirs, he called Captain Watson and asked him to the Shimbashi for cocktails and tea.

It was September 21 at the usual six o’clock of our meetings, with Nomura and Nagano already waiting for us, when our two jinrikisha boys pulled up with us in front of the teashop entrance. Sitting on the highly polished steps, we changed our street footwear to the slippers provided by the house and were escorted to the second floor to a private room to join Nomura and Nagano, alternately sipping Japanese tea and American Martinis.

Captain Watson regrets, we said in the stiff words of diplomatic etiquette, but he is unable to attend the party. Nomura did not seem to mind our captain’s absence. He regarded him as a mute placed on our own youthful strings that toned down the information he was to gain from us. Without him, he hoped, we would open the floodgates of information and tell him all and more. But we had been carefully briefed, the information we were permitted to dole out carefully apportioned and weighed, leading questions rehearsed in advance, even the tone of our conversation, feigned surprises, the pauses between sentences practiced ahead of time so as to play our role as perfectly as possible when the performance came.

It turned out that we did not burn the midnight oil in vain. The meeting was to provide us with the exact information Captain Watson wanted to obtain: it gave us the clues to the Japanese plan which Baron Kato, the chief Japanese delegate to the Washington Conference, was eventually to take with him. Through leading questions in the course of the conversation we lured both Nomura and Nagano into conceding that there was a conciliatory attitude taking shape in Japanese councils and that a compromise would be possible, even on America’s terms.

When we returned to Captain Watson’s house he was waiting for us and hung upon every word. With his own information the picture was complete, and he was able to tell our Navy Department that Japan would eventually accede to the proposed 5:5:3 ratio. This prediction was borne out when the conference finally accepted the naval limitation program on this basis.

The value of the advance information thus gleaned was shown clearly. I saw how the course and results of a conference depended on it, and that the importance of such information could not be overemphasized. Even as early as 1921, the efforts of our intelligence officers enabled us to enter the conference with a knowledge of the problems with which we were to be confronted.

* Intelligence, of course, is used here and throughout the book in its meaning of information and knowledge, and the activity of obtaining them. When capitalized, it refers to specific organizations engaged in that activity, such as Naval Intelligence. To avoid confusion, the word will be used only in those senses, not in the psychologists’ sense (I.Q.) or the everyday usage meaning brains.

2

THE STRANGER IN ZUSHI

IT WAS April 1922. I stood on the long, curving sea wall in front of my house at Zushi, where I had taken up residence that day. Now, a year and a half after my arrival in Tokyo, I could survey the new vistas of my naval life and all its manifold implications. Tokyo with its cosmopolitan whirlpool and international intrigues was already behind me. I had had a taste of diplomatic life and made an excursion into secret diplomacy gathering confidential data in connection with the Washington Naval Limitation Conference. Now I was on the road to new undertakings. A milestone on the road was this tiny Japanese fishing village called Zushi, and there, standing in the fresh spring breeze that whipped the waves against the sea wall, I could survey the past and look straight into the future.

The contrasts which these months between October 1920 and April 1922 presented to me were striking. Far behind me was Captain Long’s simple office in Washington, the fifty-day journey on the Sherman to Tokyo, my first visit to the closely guarded Navy Ministry of Japan, the dances, the dinners, the receptions of the capital and even the secretive little conclaves with Japanese naval officers in private rooms of fashionable geisha houses—they all belonged to the past. Zushi was like a serene but living hyphen between my memories and my plans and hopes.

There I stood, overlooking the grayish-green waters of this inlet of Tokyo Bay. Scores of little sampans were gently rocking in the swell. The afternoon’s rapidly setting sun painted the dark red sails an uncanny crimson, a color which only nature can mix on its own palette. There was quiet around me; only a few of the home-coming fishermen remained squatting on the shore, discussing the catch of the day, the repairs which their overworked nets needed, or the local gossip of the village marriages.

From time to time the crisp breeze brought to me the boom of Japanese naval guns carrying out their customary practice. The huge Yokosuka naval base was to the north, just beyond the horizon. The sound of the guns faded into the silence that was settling on the bay of Zushi like the off-stage music that accompanies the action of an Oriental drama. Little heaps of whitebait were piled up on the shore, tiny silvery fish which the men of Zushi discover in their nets when the bigger haul is removed. A short, stocky fellow whose muscles revealed that his body was disciplined to the sea squatted over the heap and watched them with hungry eyes. Then he scooped his palms and lifted a mouthful of the wriggling bait for a strange hors d’oeuvre to the sukiyaki* which perhaps his wife had prepared as a luxury for him at home.

Soon the hungry little fisherman departed, and I was left alone on the beach to watch the Japanese sunset. The quiet which surrounded me was not matched by my emotions as I glanced backward over the eventful past which had brought me to this strange present. It was just ten years ago that I had graduated from Annapolis with the class of 1912, a proud class destined to provide scores of heroes for the war that was at this time still twenty years away.

As I reviewed the past on the screen of memory, a late sampan came in to Zushi, dragging its empty net behind. There must have been some disagreement on board, or perhaps her six-man crew was just discussing the weather in somewhat heated terms; but as the breeze brought their conversation to me with every syllable clear on the evening air, their chatter suddenly recalled vividly the moment on the other side of the world when I heard Japanese spoken for the first time. There was an immediate connection between that experience and my presence in Zushi. Without that conversation overheard ten years ago, my life would have taken a different turn.

It was long ago, in the fall of 1913, on board the battleship Virginia, where I served with my one lone stripe as senior assistant engineer officer. I was in the wardroom mess, sitting near the foot of the table, the forgotten man. We waited for lunch that was already some fifteen minutes late, the tenseness of the atmosphere growing more and more with the darkening scowls of some thirty hungry officers. The stillness was suddenly broken by an outburst from Lieutenant Fred F. Rogers, the mess treasurer for that month, sitting at the foot of the table where his duties had relegated him.

Steward! Send that steward in here! yelled Rogers in a sharp, incisive voice.

In half a minute, a little old man, some five feet in height, shuffled through the wardroom door, adjusting his ill-fitting coat which he had evidently put on hurriedly, his deep-set eyes blinking as if he had come from darkness into sunlight, but with a smile on his face that was half inquiry and half guilt. And then, as he reached Lieutenant Rogers, the steward, clasping his hands in front of him, made a half bow and said through his teeth, which still showed through his disarming smile, Sayo de Gozaimas.

Lieutenant Rogers, as if finding it difficult to put his American indignation into the language of a people who consider it the height of ill breeding to show one’s feelings, suddenly took on that Oriental composure which he had learned through three years’ close association with the Japanese. But to a careful observer his flashing eyes and the lack of the usual suave smile disclosed that he was highly peeved. I had seen the steward many times before and was accustomed to him as one of the fixtures of the wardroom as he efficiently supervised the serving of the meals. But today this little man in his blue petty officer trousers and white mess jacket now buttoned up to his chin attracted my attention. He was a Japanese. In those days, incredible though it may now seem, many alien Japanese served on our warships as mess stewards and cooks. Although we did not bother about their loyalties and extracurricular activities, I am certain that even then in their frequent conversations with their fellow countrymen they discussed the details of the U.S. Navy in knowing terms.

The little steward bowed to Rogers, who addressed him in what sounded like a very strange language to my inquisitive ears. I was certain that it was not the lingua franca of the mess, or some kitchen dialect of overworked American slang. There was no doubt, Rogers was talking to the steward in some foreign tongue.

Hiru-han, mo ju-go fun osoi yo. Hayaku motte kitte koi, came the proper colloquial form for the master of the house when speaking to the head servant, as Rogers told the steward that lunch was already fifteen minutes late and to hurry up and get it served.

Ishiyama, apparently as unmoved as his name, Stone Mountain, implied, made two little bows as he backed out, and without a change of expression repeated his only words, Sayo de Gozaimas, one of the most polite forms for Yes, sir.

During this short but apparently comprehensive conversation, I looked from one to the other as many thoughts raced through my mind. Where does such perfect self-control come from? I tried to picture the East and Japan; but from what little I had read of it, all that passed before me was the rikisha man trotting down the street or the little women with the children lashed to their backs.

And then, as Rogers began an explanation of the Japanese mentality, I remembered that he had lived in Japan as a language student. I found myself asking innumerable questions about their customs, habits, and language, and wondering how anyone could master such sounds and speak without even separating the teeth.

From then on I attached myself to Rogers if only to hear him talk about his years in Japan. He told me in gruesome detail his struggle with this forbidding tongue; how he had to devote almost all his waking hours to classes with two teachers; how he had had to memorize the ideographs imported to Japan from China in the year 600 A.D. to provide a written language for the Japanese, each ideograph standing, like a picture, for a different sound and meaning a different word; how he watched the people and tried to understand their folkways; intimate little stories ranging from life in the Imperial Palace in which old Meiji still ruled supreme down to the geisha houses in Shimbashi where, he confided to me, he usually made the greatest progress, particularly in the study of Japanese character.

Like a kakimono* unrolled before my eyes, I saw the picture of a strange land with all its peculiarities and mysteries, the differences standing out in my mind in far stronger relief than the similarities. I began to read about Japan and occasionally tried to memorize a colloquial word which would come out in our discussions. I picked up a few words of everyday usage, like machi for street, denwa for telephone, and, of course, beppin for beautiful girl. They remained with me for years, just as my yearning to go to Japan persisted as I shifted from ship to ship, from assignment to assignment. I recall how overjoyed I was when I managed to memorize the phrase to be used when introduced to another: Hajimete O Me ni Kakarimashita—For the first time I have hung myself on your honorable eyes. Then I found the game turning into a real purpose to learn this language.

But how and where was anyone to begin? It seemed such a hopeless jumble of sounds—half muffled, half exploded—but still there was a subtle fascination in those sounds, like the dangling prize jerked from beyond one’s reach when almost within his grasp, or the vivid dream that is still heavy in the dimness of incomprehension. The little mannerisms, almost perfect in their significance, immediately tempt one to imitate them. And then I began to drift back to my boyhood days when in the center of an admiring and amused circle I used to repeat with almost perfect tones the sounds of the steamboat, the train, the woodcutter, the scissors-grinder, and what not; and later at the Naval Academy, where in the period of relaxation after study hours these same sounds gained for me in the graduation yearbook the title of the Man of Funny Noises.

Suddenly it dawned upon me that here was an opportunity for the application of these funny noises. It has been said that there is a place in the world for everything, so why not my little power of imitation in this language where everything seemed to depend so much on intonation? Day by day my enthusiasm increased, and even later when it had apparently subsided, it seems that its full force had remained latent in the subconscious.

I realized that Japan was beyond my reach. It might be possible to visit some of her ports on courtesy calls which our ships made in return for the frequent visits of Japanese vessels to American bases. But those days are usually crowded with the ceremonial of international naval etiquette, and one has to spend more time with American diplomats than with his native hosts, continuing the American way of life in the midst of a strange environment. These trips, even if I were privileged to participate in one or two of them, would show me only the contours of Japan. What I wanted was to penetrate the shell of international etiquette, to divorce myself from the routine duties on shipboard, and to devote months or, if possible, years to the study of the Japanese language and people.

I inquired casually as to whether there was a chance of sending more language students to Japan and if volunteers were needed for such a detail. But the Navy seemed to be satisfied with just one officer in the whole naval service who was capable of speaking Japanese. Previously there had been two; but the other had resigned by then, and no plans were afoot to enlarge this one-man task force; so it seemed that my hopes would remain forever unfulfilled.

Then suddenly there came one of those strange turns of life which change everything. I was accompanying the midshipmen on their 1920 practice cruise and not even contemplating more than a possible routine trip to Japan some day. While we were in Honolulu, a dispatch reached me from Rogers, who was then a commander attached to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington. It read:

The Navy has decided to send two language officers to Japan. Do you still desire to go?

My reply was prompt and unequivocal.

Your message, affirmative.

Another dispatch from Rogers arrived next day:

You will be detached and ordered to Japan as soon as the practice squadron returns to the United States. Your running mate will be designated later.

Immediately I was looked upon by my shipmates as some strange being. Think of going out there to study Japanese. Will you go to school? Will you wear Japanese clothes? What kind of food will you eat? A thousand and one foolish questions were shot at me as I tried to digest the possibilities and realize that this was just the thing for which I had been waiting.

After what seemed an unending voyage, at last we dropped anchor in Annapolis and I hurried to Washington to get the details. Rogers told me that Lieutenant Commander Hartwell C. Davis would go with me to Japan. Then he took me to the office of Captain Long, Director of Naval Intelligence, who provided the necessary confirmation and instruction. And thus intelligence, a new interest which captivated me from the start, and which has never lost its fascination for me in all the years since then, became a vital part of my life. Intelligence, the core of national defense was not then—nor is it now—adequately appreciated. The whole Far Eastern Section of ONI (the Office of Naval Intelligence) occupied just one room, holding one officer and one stenographer. ONI itself comprised a handful of officers and a few yeomen, filing the occasional reports of naval attachés about naval appropriations of the countries to which they were attached, a few notes on vessels building or projected, most of them clipped from local newspapers, and descriptions of parties given in honor of some visiting American celebrity. The last-named usually represented the most illuminating and comprehensive of these so-called intelligence reports.

It was not the fault of Intelligence that it had to play the role of a naval Cinderella, still waiting for someone to turn up with the legendary slipper. The world had just gone through a devastating war and yearned for lasting peace. Armaments were derided, and disarmament was the slogan of the day. Most of our ships were already collecting barnacles in ports, and so were our statesmen who mobilized to conduct their private war against the U.S. Navy which, they felt, was blocking our return to peacetime normalcy. In other countries, too, anti-naval campaigns were in full swing, even in Britain where the Royal Navy is the untouchable senior service. There was but little an office of naval intelligence could record or a naval attaché could report, unless he joined in the hysterical clamor against his own service.

Even so, I felt that there was much Intelligence could do in support of the statesmen’s work for peace. As is only natural with a continental power like the United States, the vast resources and territories of which make it self-sufficient and, psychologically at least, isolated between two oceans, we knew but little about the lives and ways of other peoples, real friends or potential foes. Whatever knowledge we had was haphazard and colored by sympathies or antipathies, and by that sterile intellectual pacifism which followed in the wake of the last war. Although not generally recognized, it is nevertheless a truism that professional soldiers and sailors hate war. True, the legendary Russian grand duke hated war because, in his own words, it usually spoiled the Czar’s armies, and the witty French general opposed war only because it interrupted spirited conversation. But deep down in the heart of the professional officer is a hatred of war, for he knows better than anyone else what it costs in life and blood.

In all my years in the Navy I have heard more pacifist talk among naval officers than among the ill-advised civilians who persist in accusing the professional soldiers and sailors of being warmongers. I know that I express a general opinion when I say that the personnel of the U.S. Navy fully realize the implications of war and do not glory in the temporary glamour of battle. We regard our ships and our bases as the guarantors of peace, the symbols of security, and look to the diplomats and statesmen to maintain them moored to safe anchorages. This does not mean, however, that we are unaware of the true meaning of the term security. To us, the term has a broad meaning. It rests in physical force embodied as it is in the ships and their bases, but also in intellectual factors among which Intelligence plays an outstanding role. To know what the others think and how their actions are stimulated by their thinking processes; to know what they have and what they intend to do with their forces; to know our opponents and partners in the international chess game lends immense strength to ourselves and should save us from unpleasant surprises.

In 1920, when I stood in front of Captain Long’s desk in his Office of Naval Intelligence, we lacked much of this essential knowledge and had no means of filling the gaps. The small force of the office with its mechanical routine, the ephemeral reports of the attachés and the general reluctance on the part of the high command to assign to Intelligence the place it fully deserved, were accepted by me as a challenge. I was standing at the crossroads of my life and determined to go the way of my inclinations. Japan and Intelligence stood written on one road sign, and I eagerly chose the road to which they pointed.

My memories thus caught up with me as I stood alone staring out to the sea. I hardly noticed the fading of the day and the swiftly encroaching darkness which embraced me like an invisible giant. Suddenly the coast was ablaze with little lights, merging into a yellowish patch to the north where Hayama and the summer palace of the Emperor were situated. Across the peninsula at Yokosuka the batteries were still firing intermittently, and now I could see the flash stabbing through the blackness. It was cold and quiet, and I felt alone. Alone with a host of ideas and tasks which had accumulated in my mind ever since I settled down in Japan.

I turned around and returned to my house which bordered on the sea wall. My two servants, who were named O Haru-San (Miss Spring) and O Natsu-San (Miss Summer) waited for me, squatting on the doorstep as Japanese women usually do while awaiting the return of their master. They rose and bowed deeply as I approached and (Miss Spring announced:

Sato-San awaits you in the living room, Zakurai-San.

* Pronounced Ske yakĭ. Thinly sliced beef cooked with vegetables and soy sauce.

* Translated hanging thing. A water color on silk in scroll make-up.

3

SATO-SAN MAKES A VISIT

IF I were writing an intelligence report, I would now in retrospect describe Kishiro Sato as an A-1 contact. For the next year and a half he was my best source of information, my guide into the intricate web of Japanese politics and aspirations, a man whose statements I could trust implicitly. He was my neighbor and first visitor in Zushi. But his first call on that spring night in 1922, motivated by the insatiable curiosity which drives the Japanese to innumerable little adventures, was followed by many visits. When I left Zushi eighteen months later, Sato was the last of my newly won friends to grasp my hand in a final handshake.

By then he was risking much with this friendship, since he was closely watched by the police and suspected of disclosing to me certain information which the Black Dragon Society regarded as best kept from foreigners in general and from an officer of American Naval Intelligence in particular. But Sato-San had a mind of his own, and then shaping in that mind was a plan. He assigned to me an important role in his scheme.

Now, however, he was still groping his way toward my confidence and friendship in that peculiar mixture of shy reserve and brutal frankness which characterizes human relations in Japan, even among the closest friends. As I entered the room, I saw him standing in front of a kakimono which adorned a niche in the wall. In deference to Japanese custom which prescribes a change of these hanging scrolls with every change of the season, I displayed a spring scene in Kyushu dominated by a branch of the cherry tree, its blossoms painted in mellow pastel. Framed by the pink colors of the tree, in the background, was a bluish lake whose waters carried a raft with a maiden on it, looking toward the grayish contours of a majestic peak which gave the picture both force and balance, despite the gentle strokes with which it was drawn. It was painted on silk, and a broad silk ribbon provided a fitting frame In front of the scroll to the right stood a vase with just one branch of a cherry tree in it. I designed the whole arrangement with the help of Miss Spring as my own little shrine to the Muse of Art.

Sato turned around when he heard me enter, and even before he introduced himself, he complimented me on the selection of the picture and the arrangement of the niche. I feel, he said, you understand Japan.

I had been in Japan long enough then to know that this was a unique compliment; but Sato was a unique Japanese, not blinded by the ethnocentrism which characterized the majority of his countrymen. He bowed, and as I returned his ceremonial greeting, he said: Watakushi wa, O tonari de Gozaimas. Then he continued: I am your neighbor, and my name is Sato. From the window of my house I watched you this afternoon, standing alone on the sea wall and absorbed in thoughts. I was sorry for you because I felt that the loneliness of this place must be a burden on your mind. My wife suggested that I pay you this call so that you can share your thoughts with me.

Here again Sato revealed a different slant in the uniform Japanese character. His average countryman would not give credit to his wife for a pleasant thought. In fact, he would not have mentioned her at all.

We sat down on the tatami* which formed a square around the charcoal burner on which tea was now boiling. As if he had run out of the few English words of his limited vocabulary, Sato sat quietly, but watching me with curious eyes, perhaps waiting for me to start the conversation, or trying to penetrate my thoughts. Then and without transition, in a tone which was almost hostile in its bluntness, he asked:

Why did you come to Zushi?

So Sato-San isn’t different after all, I thought. Did his nonchalant Western approach conceal the mission of a policeman? Or was his suspicion generated by the jealousy which motivates Japanese hatred of foreigners? But his question echoed in my mind. Indeed, why had I come to Zushi? There it was, just off Tokyo Bay with a view of the surroundings of the Yokosuka naval base and neighboring airfields—certainly a logical hide-out for an intelligence officer to do a bit of observation. Could I blame Sato for being suspicious? But I had no such sinister plans in Zushi and answered Sato’s inquiry with his own bluntness:

I am a student of the Japanese language, Sato-San, and found that the urban hustle and bustle of metropolitan Tokyo deprived me of the opportunity of making rapid progress. Here in Zushi I hope to be able to concentrate on my studies and also to gain an insight into the real Japanese way of life.

This truly was my motive in coming to this pleasant fishing village of a little over four hundred families. It was recommended to me as a place where I could