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The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor - 2
By Dr Khalid Siddiqui
Ohio

 

For Rutland, the closest meeting place with the Japanese agents was a casino, Molino Rojo, in Mexico just across the border south of San Diego. In 1936, for the first time, Rutland crossed the border to Mexico and handed over a highly sensitive gadget to a Japanese agent in Molino Rojo to be hand-carried by ship, and delivered to Sonada at the JAC (Japan Aircraft Company). This gadget was being tested by the US Navy and, if successful, would have saved weight, and increased the storage capacity of the fuel- and oil tanks on the submarines.

War broke out between Japan and China on July 7, 1937. Shanghai fell to the Japanese. Rutland sensed an opportunity there. Using his connections he made some money from the Chinese Americans by providing mercenary American pilots for the Chinese airline and air force, and made even more money by reporting to the Japanese Navy what the Chinese were doing. Even at this point, the FBI was not aware of Rutland’s activities.

Around that time Rutland was in London on vacation with his family. While in England he found out that the British had made a fighter plane, Spitfire  – the most advanced fighter in the world at that time. He passed that information on to Oka in Japan. MI5 (British Military Intelligence – Section 5) didn’t find out about this. Surprisingly, the Chinese army did better than expected against the Japanese. The Japanese asked Rutland to apprise them of the capabilities of the planes that the Chinese were using. He went to Shanghai and gave the information on the Chinese planes to the Japanese after receiving a huge sum of money.

In early 1939, the US made two great combat aircraft. Dauntless dive bomber at Douglas Aircraft plant in El Segundo; and P-38 Lightning fighter plane that could carry so much fuel that it could fly farther than any other American plane. It also had two engines which made it very safe. The Japanese wanted Rutland to get as much technical information as he could on these two planes. Rutland had problems with getting into, or infiltrating spies into, the Lockheed plant in California but, somehow, he got some information on the two airplanes. Before he could give it to the Japanese, it appeared in the 1939 German Manual of Aviation. According to MI5 files, Rutland had traveled to Germany and sold the information to the Germans.

Rutland came to Japan in August 1939 with detailed information on the Douglas and Lockheed planes and even specific suggestions on how the Japanese planes could be improved to counter it. He had also figured out how to solve the vibration problems with the Japanese dive bombers. He gave the relevant information to Oka.

On September 1, Germany invaded Poland while Rutland was in Japan. He thought that if Japan allied with Germany, and Britain with the US, then all of a sudden there could be a war between Japan and Britain. The possibility of a Japanese attack on the Royal Navy base in Singapore using planes he had designed himself made him quite nervous. He made up his mind that given that situation he would protect his motherland, England. Interestingly, Rutland was the only person in the world who was the confidant of the admirals in the US Navy, the Japanese Navy, and the British Navy.

In 1935, The British United Services Club (BUSC) was established in Los Angeles. It was open to British citizens, and prominent Southern California residents. Rutland was a member. Many British, and Americans, who found Rutland’s activities mysterious assumed that he was a British agent. One of them, Norman Glover, a cement company CEO, reported his suspicion to the FBI in charge of the LA office, Richard Hood, who started an investigation. Two weeks later he received a memo directly from J. Edgar Hoover ordering him to stop the investigation. Hoover had received a telegram from Ellis Zacharias, the head of the West Coast Office of the Navy Intelligence (ONI) to stop the surveillance of Rutland because he was an active and key US Navy intelligence asset!

Commander Itaru Tachibana, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was a Japanese agent enrolled as a language student at the University of Southern California. In Los Angeles, his assignment was to keep an eye on the activities of the US Pacific Fleet stationed at San Pedro. He was spotted by the guards at different naval bases in San Pedro and San Diego, but the FBI left him alone. He was able to get information about oil installations, diagrams of naval ships under construction, etc. quite easily. He would cross the border and drop off the information in Mexico.

Toraichi Kono had been working with Charlie Chaplin since 1916 – first as a chauffeur, then as a butler, and later as his personal assistant. He was fluent in English. Charlie Chaplin got married to his third wife, Paulette Goddard, in 1936. When Kono reported Chaplin about her excessive spending, Chaplin blew up at him. Kono quit the job. He, then, launched several lofty projects which all failed. Eventually, he came to the attention of Tachibana in 1938. He and the Japanese Navy Intelligence found him a great asset because of his command over the English language. Also, his connections helped to hire and run American agents in Los Angeles.

Initially, Rutland himself was convinced that Japan was not that naive to pick up a fight with the US, but the naval activities that he saw in Japan during his last visit in August/September 1939 made him change his mind. He mentioned it to Claude Mayo, an officer of the Navy Intelligence. Mayo arranged for Rutland to meet Zacharias who also had felt for a long time that a war between Japan and the US was a certainty. Rutland told Zacharias frankly that he had been working for the Japanese thinking that the war would never come but as the war seemed imminent he had decided to work for the Americans. Rutland suggested that he could entice a Japanese submarine to Paradise Cove in Malibu to receive information from him. Once there, the US Navy would capture it. This was the perfect alibi for Rutland proving that he was actually helping the US. Rutland felt that if his relationship with the Japanese Navy was exposed, Zacharias might be able to convince everyone that he was actually working for the Americans. Zacharias was also happy that he had secured someone from inside the Japanese spy network who, he believed, had turned to the American side. Zacharias did not mention that meeting to the ONI director or FBI. He, however, mentioned it to his second in command, Kenneth Ringle. 

In 1940, President Roosevelt decided to move the home port of the US Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to intimidate Japan. This move worked in favor of Japan because her target came much closer than when she was stationed in California.

During the fall and summer of 1940, more and more reports from the members of the BUSC (British United Services Club) reached the FBI regarding Rutland’s suspicious activities. Zacharias once again sent a telegram to Hoover requesting him not to take any further action because Rutland was a valuable ONI (Office of the Navy Intelligence) informant. After some heated arguments, Zaharias reluctantly allowed the FBI to go ahead and investigate Rutland. Rutland was put under surveillance. The rift between Zacharias and the FBI, however, continued; so the secretary of the navy transferred Zacharias to Hawaii as the captain of the USS Salt Lake City. The record of Rutland’s letters, telegrams, and phone calls revealed nothing suspicious other than usual business matters. Checking the post offices showed no hidden boxes. Although he had businesses in Japan, no name from Japan appeared in these logs. That raised the suspicion that he was contacting the Japanese via hand-delivery. The FBI also contacted the British Embassy in Washington DC. All they said was that Rutland was not a British agent. They didn’t want to discuss anything else.

An intercepted telegram sent by the Japanese foreign minister to the Japanese embassy in Washington DC revealed Mexico as the hub of Japanese espionage. It was discovered that Rutland was going to Mexico frequently. Further investigations showed that he was setting up a bottling plant for the bottling company called Sierra Club. That was his legal cover. So, that investigation led to nowhere. In December 1940, the Japanese naval attaché in Mexico sent a message to Japan that the technical details of the new and secret American four-engine bomber, the B-29, had been obtained. The FBI was not monitoring the Japanese electronic communication in Mexico. After the war, the interrogation revealed that this vital information was also passed on by Rutland. 

Ringle from ONI got the hint of the espionage activities of Tachibana and his subordinate, Sadatomo Okada. Both were arrested in June 1941. A treasure trove of incriminating documents was discovered in their apartments. The news of the arrest of two Japanese spies didn’t bode well with the US negotiators who were having peace talks with the Japanese delegation at that time. The Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, without informing the FBI, released the two spies to keep the peace negotiations on track. Both left for Japan quickly. Later, Kono was also arrested for helping the Japanese spies. He was imprisoned in Kooskia Internment Camp until 1948. He went back to Japan in the 1950s.  

Rutland read the news of the arrests in the newspaper, Herald. He knew that he was also in danger of getting arrested. He was worried that the FBI might not believe Zacharias or Ringle. His protector, Zacharias, was in Hawaii anyway. He made an appointment with the new ONI director, Alan Kirk, at ONI’s headquarters in Washington DC. Rutland emphasized to him that, based on the record of previous Japanese wars, the war would start with a surprise naval attack. He said that if he was paid for the trip to Mexico City by the US Navy then, because of his connections there, he would be able to find out when and where the Japanese were going to launch a surprise naval attack. Kirk told him that he would look into the matter. On July 26, 1941, Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets in the USA.

Rutland then went to the British Embassy. The priority of the British Embassy in London at that time was to somehow convince the US to enter the war against Germany. Roosevelt was supportive of Britain, but the public opinion was against participating in a foreign war. The FBI had informed the Embassy that it had enough information on Rutland to arrest and prosecute him, but it would be embarrassing for the British when the news would hit the press. Based on the recommendations from the FBI, the two staff members of the embassy who met him offered him a trip back to the UK. But Rutland declined the offer. He repeated the same request that if given money he would go to Mexico City and would be able to inform them of the Japanese Navy’s next move. The two officers asked him to come back the next day.

Rutland, then, went to the Japanese embassy to meet the naval attaché Yokoyama, who was busy with the peace negotiations with the US officials and was not available. So, Rutland met with his secretary. He requested the secretary to send a telegram with a very important message to Oka in Japan. The secretary agreed to try to do so for him. The telegram read that Rutland (or one of his couriers) would likely be able to get to Mexico and give the latest information on the US Navy’s preparation in California to them. So, within two days Rutland was in the ONI headquarters, British embassy, and Japanese embassy while under surveillance by the FBI all along!!

He went back to the British Embassy the next day as scheduled. He was told that if his knowledge of the Japanese Navy could save British lives in the future conflict with Japan, then he should go to the UK and work with British Intelligence. Rutland agreed to do so in a day or two. Instead, he tried to escape to Mexico but because of tight security, he was not able to get a visa. On August 1, 1941, the US cut off oil exports to Japan. Rutland was now 100% convinced of the Japanese naval attack on the US naval bases. He decided to leave for the UK. He was short on cash but didn’t want to go to a bank, so he sold the list of Japanese spies to an interested party!! He was sent back to the UK in a British bomber.

When Tachibana arrived in Japan, his aggressive style impressed the investigators during his debriefing. He was given the top-secret job of planning an attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Navy had a very efficient spy, Yoshikawa, on the ground in Pearl Harbor. He was given a crash course in English and sent to Pearl Harbor as an unemployed Filipino. He was hired to wash dishes at the officers’ club. He provided valuable information about the US fleet. As asked, he would swim around the ships and dive down to measure the depths of the water, and to check if the ships were surrounded by the net. The presence of nets would preclude an attack using torpedo planes. To another critical question from Tachibana, he answered that the largest number of ships docked at one time in Pearl Harbor was just after dawn on the first and third Sundays of every month.

In London, Rutland met with Sir John Godfrey, director of British Naval Intelligence. Godfrey’s personal assistant, Ian Fleming, took the notes. (Ian Fleming later became famous as the writer of the James Bond series. He said that Rutland was the inspiration for the fictional character of James Bond.) Rutland mentioned that the Japanese naval junior officers whom he worked with in the 1920s had become the leaders of the Japanese Navy by then. According to him, there was no one else, other than him, in Britain or America who knew and had a trusting relationship with the general staff of the Japanese Admiralty. He said the Japanese Navy needed his help in the 1930s, based on his experience, which he duly provided. However, after tension started building up, according to him, he began to work for the United States Navy. When asked what type of work he did for the USA, he said that it was classified! Although, traditionally there was very limited information exchange between MI5 (British Military Intelligence – Section 5) and FBI, of late the British Navy Intelligence and ONI (Office of the Navy Intelligence) had started sharing information just out of necessity. Even the British Intelligence and MI5 were not on the same page.

Rutland said that an attack by Japan was coming and the Royal Navy in Singapore might be hit. He said that the Japanese had set up a sophisticated radio intercept team in Mexico which could tip off the Germans about the location of the Royal Naval ships in the Atlantic. He boasted that he had infiltrated the Japanese intelligence network in Mexico and, if sent there, he would be able to get the information on the surprise Japanese attack. At that point, the meeting ended with Godfrey assuring him that he would contact him soon. Godfrey, instead, contacted Courtney Young at MI5. Young dismissed all the lofty claims of Rutland. He had received information on Rutland’s suspicious activities in the USA. However, both agreed that because of the lack of evidence of illegal activity against Britain, they couldn’t bring him to trial.

There was another reason to keep Rutland out of the news. Churchill’s top priority was to have the USA join the war on the British side. The news at that time of a British decorated Squadron Leader spying for Japan against the US would have been very damaging to Britain. Rutland was kept under surveillance. Young of MI5 had prepared orders to have on hand, so that whenever war with Japan did start, he would have Rutland arrested immediately.

In the USA, ONI was still embroiled in the battles with the FBI. ONI, finally, did recruit two agents on the ground in Tokyo but they didn’t provide any useful information. However, no agent was stationed at Kagoshima where hundreds of Japanese planes were practicing low-level attacks in a harbor that was quite similar to Pearl Harbor. In mid-November 1941, the US codebreakers lost the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet’s radio signals. The Japanese carriers had stopped using their radios altogether, which was a clear sign of an upcoming attack.  

All six Japanese world-class aircraft carriers were parked about 250 miles north of Hawaii. Two were partially designed by Rutland himself, but all the six were updated later based on the information provided by Rutland. From the carriers, the planes had to fly for an hour and a half to arrive at the Hawaiian island of Oahu. This long distance flight, without refueling, was also possible by the updates performed by the designers based on the information provided by Rutland. And the starters on the planes were manufactured at Kayaba, a company in which Rutland remained a major shareholder. It was obvious that this surprise attack couldn’t have been successful without technical help from Rutland.

Captain Ellis Zacharias was not at Pearl Harbor, but 230 miles to the west on the aircraft carrier Enterprise, returning from Wake Island. When he received the radio message of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he launched planes to find the Japanese ships. He was fortunate that his planes couldn’t locate the Japanese because the Americans had only one aircraft carrier in the area against six that the Japanese had. In Washington DC, FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, made sure that he was not blamed for the Pearl Harbor attack. So, he immediately sent a memo to Roosevelt naming the naval officers in charge in Hawaii for the debacle.

Rutland seriously wanted to rejoin the Royal Navy to offer his expertise and services. He wrote a letter to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to that effect, but they didn’t respond. Courtney Young of MI5 received the information from the FBI that Rutland had worked against the US navy while he was in Los Angeles. Rutland denied the allegations and requested Young to check it with Zacharias, Ringle and Claude Mayo of US Naval Intelligence. He also offered his services to the Royal Navy but his request was denied by Young.

In desperation, Rutland wrote a letter to ex-Royal Navy Admiral, Sir Roger Keyes, to facilitate his reappointment in the Royal Navy. Keyes raised the issue with Churchill but he didn’t want to interfere with MI5 matters. In July 1942, Keyes raised the issue of Rutland in the Parliament. He admitted that initially Rutland did work for the Japanese, then he had a change of heart and worked for the US Navy which could be verified by US Naval officers like Zacharias. The story appeared in the British newspapers as well as New York Daily News and the Washington Post. FBI and MI5 both instructed their respective staff not to discuss this matter with anyone.

Rutland was never tried in a court of law for three reasons: 1. He didn’t do any illegal activity against Britain. 2. The Navy didn’t want to face embarrassment when it would become known, through the press, that its most-decorated war hero was a Japanese spy. 3. Both the FBI and MI5 would have been blamed for not sharing the vital information and, thereby, not preventing thousands of deaths.

Soon thereafter, Rutland was moved to a jail on the Isle of Man to keep him away from the press. He was finally released on December 20, 1943 on certain conditions. One of them was that he couldn’t go to the USA. Rutland settled down in a small Welsh village of Beddgelert. Dorothy couldn’t afford that palatial house anymore, and moved to Pasadena with her two children. Rutland requested his children to stay away from him as much as possible, because he didn’t want the stigma or accusations about him to impact their lives or careers. All Rutland’s files dealing with his agreement with Zaharias have been blacked out by the FBI. Not being allowed to rejoin the Royal Navy made him very depressed and he committed suicide by inhaling gas from the stove on January 28, 1949. He was 62. However, the author of the book ‘Beverly Hills Spy’ thinks that he was murdered because many people wanted to keep him quiet.

In an interview in the 1960s, retired Navy captain Zacharias – then a TV host, maintained that Rutland was innocent! FBI files were still classified at that time.

There is a good possibility that a movie on his life will be made sometime in the future.