The Sad Life of Pearl Harbor Spy Takeo Yoshikawa

Pearl Harbor Spy Takeo Yoshikawa

Just a short excerpt from a fascinating article at Edit International:

Takeo Yoshikawa was World War Two's most famous Super Spy - so successful it ruined his life forever.

For years thousands of Americans who didn't know his name cursed him. Many Japanese hated him for getting their nation involved in a lost war. Some even blamed him for the atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yoshikawa, one of the most successful spies in recorded history, has received no awards,, no honors, not even a pension from the Japanese government he served so well. When I met him he had no job and lived as a down-and-out on the island of Shikoku south of Tokyo.

The famed spy died several years ago in a nursing home in Tokyo, alone and without honors except for his old wife Etsuko who had supported him for years by selling insurance.

Even though my Dad still walks around with a limp he received from a Japanese bullet in 1944, the only time I ever remember him cursing the Japanese was when Walter Cronkite interviewed Yoshikawa in 1961 for his show The Twentieth Century and he muttered "Damn Jap" under his breath. Just that once.

Comments

[Spoons]

Seems to me the only sad thing about his story is that he didn't suffer more before he died. On the other hand, a quick death from an American bullet to his head would also have been satisfactory.

[Sage McLaughlin]

A war that brought ruin and devastation to the Japanese on a level unequaled since the destruction of the Carthaginians and this man recieves no honors for his ignominous role in it? Damn, I wonder how that could be?

Sheesh.

[Sigivald]

What's ignominious about spying on an enemy military installation preparatory to a war?

It's not like the war was his idea, or he had any idea that Japan would be ruined by him doing what he thought (reasonably, at the time) was his duty to his nation.

Sheesh, indeed.

("Unequaled since the destruction of the Carthaginians"? Well, since the Japanese were not sold off into slavery, and only two of their cities (and not even the biggest ones, let alone their "main" city) were destroyed, they actually got off pretty light, historically, let alone compared to the utter destruction of Carthage and its citizenry.)

[Benjamin Kepple]

Actually, the reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the targets for America's atomic bombs were because they were two of the only cities left intact by 1945. The rest were pretty much wiped out through firebombing. Still, it is fair to say Japan's defeat was not on a level with the destruction of Carthage.

[rendall]

He was just a typical Japanese at that time who was blinded by the Loyalty towards his Emperor. The do whatever the emperor say.

Too bad for him, though his sad life but still recieve no sympathy at all cause he is just like the many Japanese who deserve nothing more than dirt.

[alinee]

before you say all that, search up victims from hiroshima bombings...

no one deserves anything
the japanese civilians didn't do anything to deserve that

[Tom McMahon]

alinee, pretty much nobody gets what they deserve in war.