Read The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy: And Other Tales From Home-Front America in World War II for Free Online Page A
Authors: William B. Breuer
the cards are filed with the FBI, a person could be discharged for subversion by one federal agency and hired by another with no one the wiser.”
Months later the FBI received the fingerprint cards from the FCC. No doubt President Roosevelt himself had intervened in the dispute. 17
Mission: Halt Ambassador’s Hara-Kiri
I N WASHINGTON, Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long was charged with containing the diplomats who were in the Japanese embassy when war broke out in the Pacific. If furious Americans were to break into the building and kill Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura, U.S. diplomats waiting repatriation
Japanese Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura was reported to be planning hara-kiri while in U.S. custody. (National Archives)
in Tokyo might also be murdered. Consequently, heavily armed law enforcement officers guarded the Japanese embassy around the clock.
Ambassador Nomura and his staff had been trapped in the building for the first week after Pearl Harbor. The warlords in Tokyo had kept Nomura in the dark about the sneak attack, so such provisions as food soon ran out. A staff member telephoned for groceries and paid the deliveryman with a check. Soon the American was back with the check. Banks would not accept it. So forty people in the embassy pooled U.S. currency to pay the bill.
There were sleeping accommodations for only ten people, but four times that number were holed up in the embassy. So most of them had to sprawl on the floor at night without blankets or mattresses.
After the eight days of confinement, the Japanese delegation was moved to West Virginia and Virginia, where they were ensconced in luxury resort hotels to await an exchange for Americans in Japan.
A few days later Breckenridge Long received an alarming report: Nomura was preparing to commit hara-kiri, the historic ritual in which disgraced Japanese kill themselves.
Accelerating Long’s problem in dealing with his potentially explosive situation was the fact that the media got hold of the report and began speculating in print and on the air. Could the suicide be performed on foreign soil, or did it have to be done in Japanese controlled territory?
In this thorny situation, Long called on Charles Bruggmann, the Swiss minister in Washington, to intervene. He was a fifty-two-year-old career diplo
A Field Marshal Is Shocked 25
mat who was married to the sister of Henry A. Wallace, the vice president of the United States. The Swiss had met Mary Wallace in Washington and the couple was married the next year in Paris.
Unbeknownst to Breckenridge Long (or anyone else in Washington) Bruggmann had dispatched a series of telegrams to Bern, Switzerland, after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. These messages described in detail what had transpired in President Roosevelt’s office on the afternoon of December 7.
Bruggmann told Bern that the U.S. fleet was a twisted, smoking mass. This fact was to be kept from Japan. However, copies of the communications were stolen and sent on to Berlin by a German agent (code named Habakuk) who had been planted a year earlier in the Swiss Foreign Ministry in Bern.
Habakuk advised his superiors in Berlin that the information about the destruction of the U.S. fleet had to be authentic, because, he pointed out, Vice President Wallace had to be the source.
Within hours, Berlin flashed the high-grade intelligence to Tokyo. For the first time, the Japanese warlords knew that their sneak strike had been a rousing success.
Now, in Washington, Bruggmann was driven to the resort hotel where he pleaded with Ambassador Nomura not to kill himself because that action would cause grave consequences for many people. The Swiss might as well have saved his breath. Nomura soon made it clear that he had no intention of committing hara-kiri. 18
A Field Marshal Is Shocked
C HRISTMAS 1941 WAS NEARING WHEN Field Marshal John Dill arrived in Washington to take up his new duties as British Prime Minister Winston S.
Months later the FBI received the fingerprint cards from the FCC. No doubt President Roosevelt himself had intervened in the dispute. 17
Mission: Halt Ambassador’s Hara-Kiri
I N WASHINGTON, Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long was charged with containing the diplomats who were in the Japanese embassy when war broke out in the Pacific. If furious Americans were to break into the building and kill Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura, U.S. diplomats waiting repatriation
Japanese Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura was reported to be planning hara-kiri while in U.S. custody. (National Archives)
in Tokyo might also be murdered. Consequently, heavily armed law enforcement officers guarded the Japanese embassy around the clock.
Ambassador Nomura and his staff had been trapped in the building for the first week after Pearl Harbor. The warlords in Tokyo had kept Nomura in the dark about the sneak attack, so such provisions as food soon ran out. A staff member telephoned for groceries and paid the deliveryman with a check. Soon the American was back with the check. Banks would not accept it. So forty people in the embassy pooled U.S. currency to pay the bill.
There were sleeping accommodations for only ten people, but four times that number were holed up in the embassy. So most of them had to sprawl on the floor at night without blankets or mattresses.
After the eight days of confinement, the Japanese delegation was moved to West Virginia and Virginia, where they were ensconced in luxury resort hotels to await an exchange for Americans in Japan.
A few days later Breckenridge Long received an alarming report: Nomura was preparing to commit hara-kiri, the historic ritual in which disgraced Japanese kill themselves.
Accelerating Long’s problem in dealing with his potentially explosive situation was the fact that the media got hold of the report and began speculating in print and on the air. Could the suicide be performed on foreign soil, or did it have to be done in Japanese controlled territory?
In this thorny situation, Long called on Charles Bruggmann, the Swiss minister in Washington, to intervene. He was a fifty-two-year-old career diplo
A Field Marshal Is Shocked 25
mat who was married to the sister of Henry A. Wallace, the vice president of the United States. The Swiss had met Mary Wallace in Washington and the couple was married the next year in Paris.
Unbeknownst to Breckenridge Long (or anyone else in Washington) Bruggmann had dispatched a series of telegrams to Bern, Switzerland, after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. These messages described in detail what had transpired in President Roosevelt’s office on the afternoon of December 7.
Bruggmann told Bern that the U.S. fleet was a twisted, smoking mass. This fact was to be kept from Japan. However, copies of the communications were stolen and sent on to Berlin by a German agent (code named Habakuk) who had been planted a year earlier in the Swiss Foreign Ministry in Bern.
Habakuk advised his superiors in Berlin that the information about the destruction of the U.S. fleet had to be authentic, because, he pointed out, Vice President Wallace had to be the source.
Within hours, Berlin flashed the high-grade intelligence to Tokyo. For the first time, the Japanese warlords knew that their sneak strike had been a rousing success.
Now, in Washington, Bruggmann was driven to the resort hotel where he pleaded with Ambassador Nomura not to kill himself because that action would cause grave consequences for many people. The Swiss might as well have saved his breath. Nomura soon made it clear that he had no intention of committing hara-kiri. 18
A Field Marshal Is Shocked
C HRISTMAS 1941 WAS NEARING WHEN Field Marshal John Dill arrived in Washington to take up his new duties as British Prime Minister Winston S.
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