Canon Agency - The inside story of U.S. black ops in post-war Japan

(First published on February 11, 2022)

TOKYO — Lieutenant Colonel Jack Canon's spook agency was all about guns, midnight assignations and the third degree.

I first came to Japan in 1962, in the U.S. military, assigned to Fuchu Air Station in the Tokyo suburbs.

I was 19, a trained electronic intelligence analyst working in the Elint Center, a windowless bunker protected by armed guards — under the joint supervision of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was making top-secret U-2 spy flights over the Soviet Union and Red China three times a week, and the National Security Agency, which operated low-altitude flights and coastal surveillance missions in those areas.

The Elint Center was an important cog in the overall U.S. defense scheme of things at the time. It was a primary target of the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At one point during that 13-day standoff, our superior told us to write our farewell letters home.