Spy Games: The Cold War and Japan

First in a three-part series

Postwar Intrigue

TOKYO — The United States and Russia have a long history of espionage with each other in Japan, dating back to the early years of the Occupation when the Cold War began. The G-2, or GHQ intelligence wing, chief General Charles Willoughby was alarmed by the rise of Mao Tse Tung in China and growing communist influence in North Korea and established a number of Counter Intelligence operations designed to suppress rising left wing activists in Japan, enlisting the services of intelligence officers of the defunct Japanese Imperial Army who monitored communist activity in Japan as well as in Korea, Manchuria and the Soviet Union.

One of his operations was the Canon Agency (previously introduced on this site). It was named after the Major Jack Canon, a former Texas Border Patrol Agent and explosives expert who had served in Borneo. Canon had arrived in Tokyo in September 1945. He blew open the safe at the German Embassy, where he discovered documents that showed the notorious Sorge Soviet spy ring was still in operation.

Richard Sorge was a legendary Soviet spy, who worked undercover in Tokyo from the early 1930’s posing as a Nazi journalist. His real job was to keep Moscow informed of Japan’s military intentions. The dashing Sorge’s exploits have been chronicled in many publications starting with Shanghai Conspiracy by Willoughby in 1952. Sorge was a heavy drinker, a womanizer who slept with his colleagues’ wives and a reckless motorcycle rider who rode at high speeds through the streets of the capital at all hours of the day or night. But he also supplied his superiors with intelligence that revealed that Germany would invade the Soviet Union in June 1941, which Stalin ignored, and that its ally Japan did not intend to participate, intel the Soviet leader this time apparently believed. It was valuable information that allowed the Russians  to move forces from Siberia to Moscow to repel the German invasion.