by Patricia Lee Holt
Millions of Americans still recall “a date which will live in infamy.” At approximately 7:55 a.m., 7 December 1941, the Japanese began an attack on Pearl Harbor.
That Day of Infamy, as President Roosevelt called it, is especially memorable because it was on a Sunday, a time of families to be together. It is ironic that a little-known family of spies helped make the sneak attack possible.
The Bernhard Kuhn family were likable people, had many friends on the island, and aroused absolutely no suspicion among them. They, like all successful spies, had a genius for becoming inconspicuous, having established a perfect cover.
Kuhn, a middle-aged man, his matronly wife, pretty teenage daughter and six-year-old son, projected the image of an average Honolulu family. But the fact remains that the entire Kuhn family spied for the Japanese and succeeded in pulling off one of the greatest intelligence feats in history.
The story began with Kuhn’s young daughter, Susie Ruth. At 17 years of age, back in Berlin, Ruth became the mistress of a powerful Nazi, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. But the club-footed Goebbels, despite his repulsive appearance had his pick of many beautiful women in pre-war Berlin. He soon tired of his young mistress, but faced a problem in ridding himself of her. Ruth was the daughter of Dr. Bernhard Julius Otto Kuhn, who had great influence in the Nazi Party in 1935. Doctor Kuhn cultivated a close relationship with Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, and later became a minor official of the dreaded secret police. Goebbels knew it wouldn’t be easy to get rid of a girl with such connections. But he finally hit on a plan. The Nazis had close ties with Japan at the time, and had been requested to supply an Occidental spy to work at Pearl Harbor, as it was almost impossible for an Oriental to work unnoticed in an American community. It would be a kind of “lease-a-spy” arrangement, with the Japanese paying a great deal of money and picking up all the expenses. When Goebbels heard about the request, he quickly recommended Ruth Kuhn and her family.
Doctor Kuhn accepted Goebbels’ proposition, and on 15 August 1935, the Kuhns arrived in Honolulu. The family included Dr. Kuhn, am amicable, educated man of 41, his wife Friedel, alluring Susie Ruth and her half-brother, six-year-old Hans Joachim. Kuhn bought a house in Pearl City and a cottage very close to the ocean in Kalama—overlooking Pearl Harbor. For his cover, he claimed to be a retired doctor with a big inheritance, to others he was a student of Hawaiian history, to still others he posed as an inventor. None of his friends who visited his house filled with fine paintings and sculpture ever suspected his true identity, not even when Mrs. Kuhn traveled to Japan twice and returned the second time with $16,000 that she deposited in an expanding bank account. If there were any questions, Dr. Kuhn would simply explain that he had made successful investments abroad.
In the meantime, the Kuhns were collecting and transmitting secret military information on a remarkable scale. By 1939 they had been instructed to obtain all intelligence possible about U.S. ships in the Pacific—primarily those in Hawaii. The Japanese were training to implement Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto’s daring plan to cripple America at Pearl Harbor.
Early in November 1941, C-in-C of the Combined Fleet, Adm. Yamamoto, began his plan to destroy Pearl Harbor, an operation to which six regular aircraft carriers, two battleships, three cruisers and eleven destroyers were allocated. Yamamoto set Monday, 8 December (Japanese time) as the approximate day of the Pearl Harbor attack.
In preparation for the attack, the Kuhn family worked diligently to supply information that would be of extreme importance to the Japanese. Everyone in the family supplied valuable information. The beguiling Ruth obtained information in several ways. At first she dated military personnel. She excelled in tennis, dancing and swimming. This outgoing, charming girl found it an easy task to extract information from her dates about their ships, bases or assignments. After becoming engaged to a young Navy officer, her task was made even more simple. But the beauty parlor she opened in Pearl Harbor turned into her most important source of valuable information. Ruth made it a policy to give the best and least expensive service on the island for the wives of high-ranking military personnel. These wives’ wagging tongues lived up to Ruth’s greatest expectations. “They talked so much,” she would later say, “that it was a relief when they left the place.”
So much information seeped into the beauty parlor that Ruth’s mother had to come in on certain days to help eavesdrop on the conversations.
Frau Kuhn, who resembled everybody’s favorite grandmother, worked busily at her own method of spying. She bought and often used 18-power binoculars to spy on ships in the harbor and military installations below. Sometimes Friedel and the doctor sailed around Pearl Harbor itself, mentally taking notes of everything they saw, while smiling at the crews aboard the big ships.
Even little Hans Joachim worked as a spy, probably the only bonafide child spy in history. Hans worked as an active agent before he turned 11. Dressed as a little sailor, Dr. Kuhn would take him aboard the warships in port. Officers often invited the friendly “little sailor” aboard, taking him on tours of their ships and answering all the questions this bright little fellow asked about the vessels and their operations. Doctor Kuhn had trained the ten-year-old to observe, ask key questions and remember anything unusual. Little Hans was questioned as soon as he and his father arrived back home. The information was recorded, like all information the family gathered, by Frau Kuhn in written form. In the beginning this intelligence was secretly delivered to the Japanese consul general, who forwarded it to Tokyo via couriers with diplomatic immunity. Toward the end, more elaborate precautions were taken. Takeo Yoshikawa, the Japanese master spy, came to Honolulu to work with the Kuhns.
Using binoculars, Yoshikawa watched while Dr. Kuhn flashed him coded messages from the attic of the Kalama cottage. As amazing as it seems, this ancient system of lantern signals went undetected until the end.
The Japanese knew virtually everything there was to know about Pearl Harbor, thanks to the efforts of the Kuhns and Yoshikawa over the years.
On 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. The base at that time was accommodating seventy U.S. fighting ships, twenty-four auxiliaries, and some three hundred planes. All eight battleships present were hit (five of them being sunk and another heavily damaged), two destroyers were sunk and nine other ships sunk or crippled; 140 aircraft were destroyed and eighty more damaged, and 2,330 servicemen were killed and 1,145 wounded, apart from a hundred civilian casualties. But the Pacific Fleet’s three carriers, then at sea, escaped as did shore installations and oil storage facilities.
Most people immediately think of bombs dropping when the words “Pearl Harbor” are mentioned. The slogan “Remember Pearl Harbor” is as famous as “Remember the Alamo.” Yet the story of the spy family who helped the Japanese plan the attack on Pearl Harbor is largely unknown. The contributions from the Kuhns cannot be too strongly emphasized. For example, only five days before the attack, they had transmitted to the Japanese an account describing every American ship in Hawaiian waters.
The Kuhn’s operations continued until after the Pearl Harbor attack. They were busy observing the repercussion of their endeavors through binoculars and flashing this information to Yoshikawa. Military intelligence finally noticed the blinking lights emanating from the cottage and traced them to their source. The Kuhns were arrested while still enthusiastically at work.
Doctor Kuhn was tried and ordered shot as a spy. But when he volunteered valuable information about his Japanese and Nazi contacts, his sentence was commuted to fifty years at hard labor. He was released after serving four years of his sentence. Yoshikawa eventually returned to Japan in exchange for an American diplomat and became a prominent businessman in Tokyo. Frau Kuhn was given a light sentence and later returned to Germany. Ruth returned to Germany also after serving a few years in prison.
Should you ever get into a discussion about that “Day of Infamy,” remember the Kuhns—the family that gave you Pearl Harbor.
Sources
Encyclopedia Britannica: Knowledge in Depth, Volume 19. Chicago, 1974, page 989.
Wallenchinsky, David, and Irving Wallace. The People’s Almanac. Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1975, pages 651, 653.
World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 21. Field Enterprises Educational Corp., Chicago, 1976, page 39.
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| Bernhard Julius Otto Kuhn. |
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| Mug shot of Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn in 1942. |
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| Friedel Kuehn. |
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| The Kuehn home in Hawaii. |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |
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| Sample page from the FBI file on the Kuehn (Kuhn) family's activities as spies. Four FBI files on the Kuhn family can be can be viewed at: https://vault.fbi.gov/bernard-julius-otto-kuehn |