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- Dustbin of History: The Pearl Harbor Spy
- Cyber Monday!
- Merry Christmas Microbes Tree Ornaments
- RIP Leslie Nielsen
- Skateboard with a V8 Engine
- Photos of the Year from Reuters
- PVC Pipe Instrument
- The 25 Best LGBTQ Comic Book Characters
- Dramatic Movies Depicted as Star Wars Movies
- A Mobius Bacon Strip
- Make Your Own Sock Cthulhu
- The New Tron Chic
- Could David Tennant Be Bilbo Baggins?
- This Robot Is Wired For Sound
- 309,959,570 Lightning Strikes
- Iron Sky
| Dustbin of History: The Pearl Harbor Spy Posted: 29 Nov 2010 05:10 AM PST The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, remains one of the most infamous events in U.S. history. Yet the spy who played a key role in the sneak attack is a forgotten man, unknown even to many World War II buffs.
UNDER COVER On March 27, 1941, a 27-year-old junior diplomat named Tadashi Morimura arrived in Honolulu to take his post as vice-consul at the Japanese consulate. But that was just a cover- “Morimura” was really Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese Imperial Navy Intelligence officer. His real mission: to collect information about the American military installations in and around Pearl Harbor. Relations between the United States and Japan had been strained throughout the 1930s and were now deteriorating rapidly. In 1940, after years of Japanese aggression in China and Southeast Asia, Washington froze Japanese assets in the U.S., cut off exports of oil and war material, and moved the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet from southern California to Pearl Harbor, bringing it 2,400 miles closer to Japan. The fleet was in Pearl Harbor to stay. But if Japan wanted its funds unfrozen and the crippling economic embargo lifted, the United States insisted that all Japanese troops had to leave China and Southeast Asia. This was a demand that Japan was unwilling to meet. Instead, it began preparing for war, and by early 1941, the eyes of Japan’s military planners had turned to Pearl Harbor. THE AMERICAN DESK Yoshikawa had become a spy in a roundabout way. He’d been a promising naval academy graduate, but his career hopes were dashed in 1936 when, just two years after graduation, stomach problems (reportedly brought on by heavy drinking) forced him out of the Japanese Navy. The following year he landed a desk job with Naval Intelligence, where he was put to work learning all that he could about the U.S. Navy. From 1937 until 1940, Yoshikawa pored over books, magazines, newspapers, brochures, reports filed by Japanese diplomats and intelligence officers from all over the world, and anything else he could find that would give him information about the U.S. Navy. “By 1940 I was the Naval General Staff’s acknowledged American expert,” he recounted in a 1960 article in the journal Naval Institute Proceedings. “I knew by then every U.S. man-of-war and aircraft by name, hull number, configuration, and technical characteristics. I knew, too, a great deal of information about the U.S. naval bases at Manila, Guam, and Pearl Harbor.” In August 1940, Yoshikawa was ordered to begin preparing for a spy mission in Pearl Harbor. And he was probably surprised by what his superiors told him next: He wasn’t going to receive any training in the art of espionage- none at all. He wasn’t going to receive any support from Japan’s Hawaii spy network, either, because there wasn’t one. He would be the only Japanese spy in Hawaii, posing as one Tadashi Morimura, a low-level diplomat assigned to the consulate in Honolulu, and only the consul-general would know his true identity and mission. The job paid $150 a month, plus $600 every six months for expenses. In March, 1941, Yoshikawa arrived in Honolulu. A MAN WITH(OUT) A PLAN Now what? Yoshikawa had received very little guidance on how to go about his job, but his worries ended when the consul-general, Nagao Kita, took him to dinner at Shuncho-ro, a Japanese restaurant on a hill overlooking Pearl Harbor. From a private dining room on the second floor of the restaurant, Yoshikawa could see both the Navy base and the nearby Army Air Corps base at Hickam Field laid out below. The Shuncho-ro was the perfect location for studying the flow of ships and aircraft in and out of the harbor, and it even had telescopes. It also happened to be owned by a woman who came from the same prefecture in Japan as Yoshikawa, and she happily made the private dining room (and telescope) available to the up-and-coming young diplomat whenever he requested it. THE NATURAL Yoshikawa quickly discovered that he could accomplish much of his spying without attracting attention, and without even breaking any laws. After all, Pearl Harbor was no isolated military installation; it was part of Honolulu, the Hawaiian Islands’ capital city and largest commercial port. Civilians, foreigners, and sightseeing tourists were everywhere. Even if the military had tried to shield Pearl Harbor’s operations from prying eyes, it would have been virtually impossible.
NICE TO MEET YOU After a long day of spying on land or in the water, Yoshikawa passed many an evening picking up hitchhiking U.S. soldiers or buying drinks for servicemen in bars, prying as much information out of them as he could without arousing suspicion. (Soldiers who were tight-lipped around male foreigners often happily spilled the beans to the geishas at Shuncho-ro, so Yoshikawa made sure to question them, too.) After the restaurants and bars closed, he would pose as a drunken bum and scour the dumpsters outside of military installations for any documents he could get his hands on. Yoshikawa rarely took photographs, and he never drew diagrams or wrote anything down while making his rounds. He never carried a notepad; Instead, he relied on his photographic memory to record every detail -locations and numbers of ships and aircraft, the timing of their arrivals and departures, the depth of water in different parts of the harbor, everything- so that if he were stopped and questioned, there would be no evidence on him that suggested he was a spy. He never even carried binoculars for fear they would call too much attention to him or arouse suspicion.
If Japan had planned its attack on Pearl Harbor without the data Yoshikawa gathered, it’s quite possible it would have been a mere glancing blow, one that damaged the Pacific Fleet but did not knock it out of commission. But the information Yoshikawa provided was devastating: * When he reported that air patrols rarely watched the waters north of Oahu (where the seas were thought to be too treacherous for an enemy to mount an attack), the Japanese military planners decided to attack from that direction. * When he told them the water in the harbor wasn’t deep enough for ordinary torpedoes, they devised a torpedo with special fins that would work in shallow water. * When Yoshikawa told them that the ships along “Battleship Row” were moored in pairs to protect the inboard ships from torpedo attacks, the planners decided to attack those ships with armor-piercing bombs dropped from dive-bombers. * When he reported that ships commonly left the harbor for maneuvers on Monday and returned to the port at the end of the week, the planners set their attack for the weekend. * When they asked Yoshikawa which day of the weekend the most ships were likely to be in the harbor, he replied simply: “Sunday.” Part two of this story will be published here next week. ___________________
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader is having their annual Holiday Sale, in which you can save 30% on your purchase! Get free shipping on orders of $35 or more by using the code HOL10SHIP.  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2010 01:14 AM PST It’s Cyber Monday and every order made today (Monday Nov 29, 2010 here in California, USA) from the NeatoShop and partner stores will *automatically* get a free Mystery Bonus. What will you get? In the past, we’ve given away amazing stuff like the hottest gadgets, geeky watches, and more … so there’s no telling what neat stuff Cyber Monday’s Mystery Bonus will bring you. Get your holiday shopping done all in one place: the NeatoShop has great gifts for geeks, him, her, and kids. See also our stocking stuffers, new and bestseller items. Your purchase helps support the blog – so thank you in advance for taking a look (and hopefully, buying!) |
| Merry Christmas Microbes Tree Ornaments Posted: 28 Nov 2010 09:31 PM PST Merry Christmas Microbes Tree Ornaments – $24.95
In true geek fashion you can now trim your tree with very merry Christmas Microbes Tree Ornaments. The set comes with Common Cold, Brain Cell, Kissing Disease, E. Coli, and Amoeba. All the things you might expect to encounter this wonderful holiday season. For more microbe fun be sure to visit the NeatoShop. |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 07:08 PM PST Leslie Nielsen, the star of the movie Airplane! and the TV series Police Squad! has died from complications of pneumonia at a hospital in Florida. Originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, Nielsen appeared in over 200 movies and TV shows in a career spanning six decades.
Nielsen was 84. Link |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 06:16 PM PST (Video Link) V8 Supercars, an Australian car racing organization, built a somewhat oversized skateboard powered by a 630-horsepower V8 engine. They made it to honor skateboarding master Tony Hawk, who will be in Sydney from Dec. 3-5 to attend a race. The skateboard will be on public display with Hawk during that time. Link via Ace of Spades HQ |
| Photos of the Year from Reuters Posted: 28 Nov 2010 06:04 PM PST
Content warning: some of the photos show graphic violence and human suffering. Link via The Agitator | Photo: Denis Sinyakov |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 05:54 PM PST (Video Link) Inspired by Blue Man Group, YouTube user snubbyj made a musical instrument out of varying lengths of PVC pipe. In some of this videos, he actually dresses up like a Blue Man Group performer. In this video, he performs the instrument at a talent show at Loyola Marymount University. Here’s his playlist: -Office Theme Song (0:18) via Geekologie |
| The 25 Best LGBTQ Comic Book Characters Posted: 28 Nov 2010 05:41 PM PST
Link via Geekosystem | Image: DC Comics |
| Dramatic Movies Depicted as Star Wars Movies Posted: 28 Nov 2010 05:31 PM PST |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 03:30 PM PST Just imagine Homer Simpson’s response to this brilliant tee shirt by John Sumrow, “mmm…infinite bacon.” Link via Laughing Squid |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 02:13 PM PST Sock monkeys are so passe, the new hotness is sock Cthulhus. Lear to make your own with this helpful book, Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred, that can also teach you how to build your own electric guitar, kites and screen printed tee shirts. Really though, doesn’t the Cthulhu sock toy make it worth it on its own? |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 02:07 PM PST If you’re one of the many people who is already missing sleep waiting for the new Tron movie to come out finally, then you’ll be happy to know that you can Tronify your life in the meantime with these awesome Tron products. |
| Could David Tennant Be Bilbo Baggins? Posted: 28 Nov 2010 02:04 PM PST Doctor Who star David Tennant is one of a handful of actors being considered for the role of Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming Hobbit film. As someone with a bit of a crush on the Doctor, I wholeheartedly support this suggestion. What do you guys think? UPDATE: That was my bad for not looking at the date of the article. You are all right, Martin Freeman is locked down as Bilbo. But this still gives us a chance to think about the Hobbit that could have been. Link Image via TineyHo [Flickr] |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 12:40 PM PST |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 11:40 AM PST Worldwide lightning strikes for the six month period May-Oct 2010 have been compiled into a database and plotted on maps. Embedded above is the distribution of lightning in the United States; the deep purple color represents 32 ground strikes within a 20-km grid. A map of worldwide lightning distribution is available at the Accu-Weather link. |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2010 05:18 AM PST The film Iron Sky has been in development for years. It’s a Finnish-German-Australian sci-fi parody involving Nazis -a premise that cannot fail!
Filming is going on now in Germany and the process is documented for you to follow. Link to website | Blog | Flickr stream -Thanks, Janos! |
Yoshikawa collected a lot of useful information from his observations at the Shuncho-ro, and also by hiking the hillsides that overlooked Pearl Harbor. He could even rent planes at a nearby airport whenever he wanted to take aerial photographs of the ships at anchor. He blended in easily with the large Asian-American population, and he was careful to vary his routine, never visiting any one place too frequently, and never staying any longer than necessary. Sometimes he posed as a laborer; other times he put on a loud Hawaiian shirt and masqueraded as a tourist. When he felt conspicuous traveling alone on, say, a visit to a military air show or plane or boat ride around the harbor, he’d take one of the geisha girls who worked at the Shuncho-ro or one of the female consular staff on a “date”, always being careful not to reveal his true identity or mission to his companion. An experienced long-distance swimmer, Yoshikawa also made many swims around the harbor to study its defenses. By breathing through a reed, he could swim underwater when needed to avoid detection.
PACKING A PUNCH
The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute’s newest book, Uncle John’s 
The editors at Reuters have compiled the most stunning pictures taken by their photographers during the past year. You can view large versions of all fifty-five on one page at the link. To the left, you’ll see one snapped by Denis Sinyakov on August 7th in the Ryazan region of Russia. Sinyakov writes:
LiveJournal user Neo_Prodigy compiled information and pictures of 25 LGBTQ (well, actually LGB) characters that appear in comics books. Among them is Det. Renee Montoya, a Gotham City cop in the DC Universe:
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