Konoe's confidant and the spy who helped save Moscow
I would like to go and die splendidly as a communist.
Hotsumi Ozaki was a journalist for the Asahi Shimbun and a committed communist who became the most vital Japanese asset in Richard Sorge's Tokyo spy ring. As an advisor to Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe and a member of his inner 'Breakfast Club,' Ozaki accessed the highest-level cabinet secrets, and in September 1941 he supplied Sorge with the decisive intelligence that Japan would strike southward rather than invade the USSR, enabling Stalin to transfer Siberian divisions that turned the Battle of Moscow. Arrested in October 1941, he was the only Japanese civilian hanged for treason during the war; his prison letters to his wife and daughter, published postwar as Love Is Like a Falling Star, became a bestseller.
Career Timeline
- 1926–1927Journalist, Asahi Shimbun
- 1928–1932Shanghai correspondent, Asahi Shimbun
- 1930Met Richard Sorge in Shanghai
- 1934–1941Key informant, Sorge's Tokyo spy ring
- 1937–1941Researcher, Shōwa Kenkyūkai; cabinet advisor
- 1938–1941Member, PM Konoe's Breakfast Club inner circle
- 1941.10Arrested in Sorge Incident
- 1944.11.7Hanged at Sugamo Prison