1. Hotsumi Ozaki was a Japanese journalist working for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, communist, Soviet intelligence agent, and advisor to Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe.
20 Facts About Hotsumi Ozaki
1. 2.
The only Japanese person to be hanged for treason by the Imperial Japanese government during World War II, Ozaki is well known as an informant of the Soviet agent Richard Sorge.
3.
Hotsumi Ozaki was born in what is the town of Shirakawa, Gifu, and a descendant of a samurai family.
4.
Hotsumi Ozaki's family relocated to Taiwan when he was a youth, and he grew up in Taipei.
5.
Hotsumi Ozaki's father worked for the Japanese colonial government and taught his son that as Japan was the most advanced of the Asian nations it had a special "civilizing mission" - not only in Taiwan, but in all of Asia.
6.
Hotsumi Ozaki was brought up bilingual, and had an education steeped in the classics of both Japanese and Chinese literature in order to better understand China.
7.
Hotsumi Ozaki was opposed to the crude anti-Chinese racism of the Japanese ultra-nationalists, who saw the Chinese as a people fit only to be slaves, which led him to an increasing estrangement from his country as time went on.
8.
Hotsumi Ozaki returned to Japan in 1922, and enrolled in the Legal department of Tokyo Imperial University.
9.
Hotsumi Ozaki reached a turning point in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, wherein extreme right-wing groups engaged in vigilante killings of ethnic Koreans and left-wingers with impunity, amidst rumors that these groups were looting.
10.
Hotsumi Ozaki was greatly upset at the way that the government tolerated these killings and turned to Marxism.
11.
Hotsumi Ozaki left school without graduating in 1925, after becoming involved in the activities of the Japanese Communist Party.
12.
Hotsumi Ozaki was transferred to the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun the following year.
13.
From November 1928, Hotsumi Ozaki was dispatched to Shanghai in China.
14.
Hotsumi Ozaki arrived in Shanghai believing that it was Britain that had a parasitical economic relationship with China, and the Chinese nationalist movement was largely anti-British.
15.
In Shanghai Hotsumi Ozaki soon made contact with members of the Chinese Communist Party, the left-wing journalist Agnes Smedley, and members of the Comintern leadership based in Shanghai.
16.
In 1932, Hotsumi Ozaki covered the First Battle of Shanghai, and was shocked to see Japanese soldiers execute Chinese POWs on the streets of Shanghai on the grounds that Chinese were mere "ants", not human beings, an event that deeply traumatized him.
17.
Hotsumi Ozaki, therefore, was in a position to participate in the making of decisions he was supposed to uncover.
18.
Hotsumi Ozaki learned that Japan wanted to avoid a war with the Soviet Union, and let Sorge know of it.
19.
Hotsumi Ozaki was outspoken in his opposition and concerns with regards to the decision reached at the Gozen Kaigi conference of September 6,1941 that war with the United States was unavoidable.
20.
On October 15,1941, Hotsumi Ozaki was arrested in conjunction with the Sorge Incident.