Tokyo-based American author Ronald Drabkin has written a riveting, fast-paced account of a Beverly Hills-based spy who engaged in intelligence collection for Japan and provided the Japanese Navy with naval aviation technical expertise before Japan’s attack on American ships, planes and forces at Pearl Harbor. Frederick Rutland was a British naval hero in the First World War, worked for the Japanese Navy in the years between the wars, and had connections to American intelligence agencies in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor. Months before the attack at Pearl Harbor, Rutland offered his services to the United States and Britain when he sensed that a surprise Japanese attack was in the offing. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, Rutland was interned in a British prison and later on the remote Isle of Man as an enemy spy. A few years after the war, then living in Wales, Rutland either committed suicide or was murdered; Drabkin isn’t sure which.
Drabkin’s interest in Rutland and the efforts of American and British counter-espionage agents to uncover enemy spies before and during World War II stemmed initially from bits and pieces of information he learned about his father’s and grandfather’s work in counterintelligence in the Los Angeles area before, during, and after the war. Drabkin’s father and family friends who had also worked for US intelligence shared stories that piqued his interest. He was later able to access declassified FBI and MI5 files on Rutland, as well as useful books and documents from Japanese sources. The FBI, Britain’s MI5, and America’s Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), Drabkin writes, had botched opportunities to use Rutland against Japan, and later did what they could to cover-up their errors. Drabkin even speculates that one or more of those intelligence services murdered him after the war as part of a cover-up.
Rutland was a World War I British naval pilot who flew “wood-and-canvas” biplanes that were launched not from the decks of warships, but rather lowered by crane into the water from where they took flight. He is credited with designing important improvements to the planes’ electronics and tactics, and his heroic acts during the Battle of Jutland earned him the Distinguished Service Cross and the Albert Medal, First Class. Rutland, writes Drabkin, “became a symbol of both British heroism and technological supremacy.” He subsequently helped to pioneer flat-deck aircraft carriers.
After a messy “wife-swapping” matter with a fellow officer, Rutland—now in his 30s—was deemed too old and of insufficient social class for higher rank. So in the early 1920s, Rutland began working secretly for the Japanese Navy under the guise of working for Mitsubishi. He visited Japan and began to provide the Japanese with information about British naval aviation technology. He became friendly with some rising stars of Japan’s Navy, including then-Captain Isoroku Yamamoto, who would later as Admiral Yamamoto plan the Pearl Harbor attack. This activity brought Rutland to the attention of British naval intelligence and MI5.
For a time, Rutland moved to Japan and provided what one Japanese naval officer called “invaluable” help in making Japanese aircraft carrier design better. Rutland and Japan’s top naval commanders understood that “the next war would be fought not by battleships, but by aircraft flying from ships.” Some Japanese political and naval leaders viewed the United States as a potential enemy and naval rival. In the early 1930s, a group of young Japanese naval officers hatched a plot to assassinate the popular American actor Charlie Chaplin when he visited Japan, hoping to start a war with the United States. Some in the US, including ONI’s director Ellis Zacharias, envisioned a future war with Japan and tried to warn governmental officials about the gathering storm in the Far East.
The Japanese Navy also wanted to learn as much about US naval capabilities and vulnerabilities as possible, so they sent and recruited spies to gather such intelligence at the Los Angeles naval base and nearby aircraft facilities. One of the people they recruited was Frederick Rutland, who was known as “Agent Shinkawa”. Rutland and his family moved to the United States, eventually settling in Beverly Hills. He traveled to navy yards in Washington, Boston, Newport News, and to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, taking photographs and making notes about the facilities, warships, and warplanes that he forwarded to his handlers in the Japanese Navy. He was well paid by Japan, enabling him to lead an “upscale lifestyle” in Beverly Hills. In the event of war between Japan and the US, Rutland planned to go to Canada or Mexico.
Drabkin notes that British intelligence was aware of Rutland’s activities on behalf of Japan, but they had no evidence that he broke any British laws. More importantly, British intelligence failed to pass on their knowledge of Rutland’s intelligence gathering for Japan in America to the FBI or other US intelligence agencies. And Rutland managed to persuade Zacharias of ONI that he would work as a double agent against Japan.
As war grew closer between Japan and the US, the FBI and American intelligence started paying more attention to the activities of possible Japanese spies on the west coast of America. But American intelligence and counterintelligence efforts suffered due to turf wars and mistrust between the various agencies. Drabkin notes that the FBI’s J Edgar Hoover and ONI’s Zacharias distrusted each other. Both agencies eventually suspected Rutland of working for Japan’s navy but they failed to share information even after some arrests of other Japanese spies were made in Los Angeles.
When Rutland sensed that American counterintelligence was closing in on him, he offered his services as a double agent, but also kept his options open. To save his skin, Drabkin notes, he appeared willing to work with the US, Britain, or Japan. He offered his services to Britain, which after interviews with British naval intelligence (including a young Ian Fleming) and MI5, decided not to use him. British authorities didn’t have enough to charge him with any crimes, but after Pearl Harbor and Britain’s declaration of war against Japan, suspected spies were fair game for internment.
Whether Rutland the spy had a genuine change of heart as war seemed closer is open to debate. Drabkin thinks so. But that does not erase the fact that Rutland, as Drabkin writes, contributed “to the naval aviation capabilities of the Japanese Navy, without which the Pearl Harbor attack might not have been possible.”