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Edan Corkill with an introduction by Chalmers Johnson

Long reviled in his homeland and all but forgotten by Moscow, an Okinawan former Soviet agent in Tokyo is finally accorded the respect that his devoted niece has sought for so long

The Sorge espionage case concerns one of the most spectacular instances of clandestine influence in the history of international relations. In the mid-1930s, the former Soviet Union enlisted the German national, Dr. Richard Sorge and four others in Tokyo, secretly to collect information on the likely policies of the Japanese government and to do what it could to alter them in favor of peace. This concerned above all whether Japan would join Nazi Germany in an attack on the U.S.S.R. Since Germany had already virtually defeated Russia in the summer of 1941, had Japan joined Germany it would have meant the probable victory of the Axis powers over Russia. As it was Russia and Japan maintained their neutrality vis-à-vis each other until the final months of World War II, one of the most amazing achievements of Soviet espionage and secret operations in history. Sorge did not survive the defeat of Nazi Germany, but the Soviet Union and its successors have celebrated his achievements ever since.

Sorge found the following four individuals to assist him in his mission: Ozaki Hotsumi, senior Japanese journalist on China and a clandestine conspirator hoping to prevent a Sino-Japanese war; Max Clausen, who worked as a rich businessman in Tokyo in the export-import industry to cover his activities as the ring's chief radio operator for contacting Russia; Branko Vukelic, a senior journalist for the French Havas News Agency and a major source of information for the ring on trends in international relations; and Miyagi Yotoku, an artist from Okinawa who was living  penuriously in Japan and assisting Sorge by translating Japanese documents into English. They were all crypto-Communists but each had personal motives for being involved in the work of the Communist International, motives that often clashed with the official policies of the Soviet Union. The diverse functions, abilities, and networks of the five principal members of the ring never melded easily, and the complexities of their personalities and interactions contributed greatly to the emergencies and misunderstandings that often influenced their work as spies. The Japanese government hanged Sorge and Ozaki during the war, Vukelic and Miyagi died in prison, and only Clausen survived the war.


Edan Corkill is a staff writer in the arts, entertainment and features department of The Japan Times. This is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared in The Japan Times on January 31, 2010.

Chalmers Johnson is the author of An Instance of Treason and of three books on the crises of American imperialism and militarism. They are Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006). All are available in paperback from Metropolitan Books.

Recommended citation: Edan Corkill and Chalmers Johnson, "Sorge's Spy is Brought in From the Cold. A Soviet-Okinawan Connection," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 6-1-10, February 8, 2010.

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