[SIZE="3"]Former GSDF officer says he led spy unit[/SIZE]
BY KUNIICHI TANIDA ASAHI SHIMBUN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
2010/08/02
Hiromichi Hirajo (THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)
A former Ground Self-Defense Force officer in charge of a secret spy unit revealed for the first time some of the unit's activities during the Cold War.
In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Hiromichi Hirajo, 89, said that the unit was created under an agreement reached between the GSDF and the U.S. Army based in Japan. A former major general, Hirajo had a long career in intelligence mainly dealing with the former Soviet Union.
The intelligence unit, dubbed "Musashi," worked closely with U.S. military intelligence officers. Hirajo led the unit for two years from 1964.
From 1956, training of GSDF members in intelligence work began under the instruction of U.S. Army officers.
According to Hirajo, the training involved utilizing the basic know-how accumulated by the U.S. Army in gathering human intelligence as well as impersonating civilians.
The Musashi unit was based at the U.S. Army's Camp Drake, which is now the GSDF's Asaka base. Camp Drake was the site of the U.S. Army's military intelligence unit.
A 1961 agreement led to joint spying activities and actual intelligence work began the following year.
"In order to better communicate with the Japanese-American officers, I played golf on a number of occasions even though I was not very good," Hirajo said.
There were about 15 members from either side. Fronts were set up in Japan in the form of camera shops or small trading companies.
Japanese working in trading companies or in the fishing industry and who traveled on business to Communist nations, such as China, the Soviet Union, North Korea and North Vietnam, were approached in an attempt to gather information about signs of hostile activity against Japan.
For example, contact was made with individuals belonging to a delegation making a trip to the Soviet Union to pray at the graves of Japanese prisoners of war interned in Siberia. Those individuals were asked to take photos within the Soviet Union and to collect maps.
Hirajo also said efforts were made to create in the future an independent network of intelligence sources among the Japanese living abroad.
When Hirajo was active in the intelligence unit in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Cold War confrontation had deepened.
Among the major incidents of that period were the deployment of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in 1958 after China fired on Quemoy as part of the second Taiwan Strait crisis as well as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
While contact between members of the Musashi unit and the SDF was strictly prohibited, indirect instructions were passed from the Ground Staff Office via liaison officers.
The intelligence gathered was shared with both Japanese and American officers. The Defense Agency used the intelligence in compiling defense plans and the information was exchanged with reconnaissance satellite images and eavesdropped information gathered by the U.S. military.
Hirajo said that the unit's monthly budget was about 1 million yen a month during the 1960s, a time when a university graduate entering the national civil service received a starting salary of about 12,000 yen a month.
When asked how long the Musashi unit existed, Hirajo only said, "I recently heard that the unit's activities had come to an end, but there is no way of confirming that so I don't know when it stopped operating."
Akahata, the party organ of the Japanese Communist Party, reported allegations in the 1970s that the Musashi unit was involved in the 1973 kidnapping of the late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung from a Japanese hotel.
However, Hirajo rejected such allegations.
"Our mission was to gather information about foreign nations while working in Japan," Hirajo said. "We never were involved in conspiracies, destructive acts or overseas activities."
When asked why he decided to reveal the inner workings of the Musashi unit now, Hirajo said, "I wanted to wipe away the image of the unit as a malicious conspiracy unit and make clear that it was only involved in legitimate information gathering for the nation."
Hirajo currently operates a real estate agency in Tokyo. He plans to publish a book in September about the Musashi unit that will include names of GSDF officers involved.
A spokesman for the Ground Staff Office denied that such a unit had ever existed within the Defense Ministry.
This is also interesting as it might better explain what Chiune SUGIHARA had been doing for 16 years in the Soviet Union around the same time from 1960 to 1975 using the aliases Sempo Sugiwara and Sergi Pavelovitch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara#Later_life
Sugihara settled in Fujisawa in Kanagawa prefecture. To support his family he took a series of menial jobs, at one point selling light bulbs door to door. He suffered a personal tragedy in 1947 when his youngest son died just seven years old. He later began to work for an export company as General Manager of U.S. Military Post Exchange. Utilizing his command of the Russian language, Sugihara went on to work and live a low-key existence in the Soviet Union for sixteen years, while his family stayed in Japan.
