Kuehn Family

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Bernard's mugshot after his FBI arrest with Attack on Pearl Harbor in the background
Bernard's mugshot after his FBI arrest with Attack on Pearl Harbor in the background

Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn (sometimes referred to as Kuhn) was a Nazi who had close ties to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.[1] In 1935, Goebbels offered Kuehn a job working for Japanese intelligence in Hawaii; he accepted and moved his family to Honolulu on August 15, 1935. The family included Dr. Kuhn, a pleasant scholarly man of 41; his wife, Friedel; a daughter, attractive Susie Ruth (at 17, she was the former mistress of Goebbels[1]); and her half-brother, Hans Joachim, sometimes called Eberhard, aged 6.

His daughter dated US military personnel and opened a beauty parlor that offered the best and cheapest services in the city. Wives of high-ranking military personnel would spend hours gossiping about the coming and going of their husbands and boyfriends. "They talked so much," she would later say, "that it was a relief when they left the place."[1].

His wife's job was to record all intelligence that the family obtained and he used their young son, Eberhard to get access to ships. Bernard would often dress him up in Navy whites and US Navy officers seeing this display of "patriotism" would invite the little Eberhard aboard ships on official "tours".

When Japanese master spy Takeo Yoshikawa arrived in Honolulu, Dr. Kuhn would flash coded messages from the attic of the Kuhn household--a system that went undetected until the end.

The family lived the good life on Japanese pay, but soon came to the attention of the FBI as a possible suspect because of his Nazi connections and seemingly no source of income.[2] After the Attack on Pearl Harbor, he was arrested and on February 21, 1942, he was sentenced by a military commission to be shot "by musketry" as a spy.[3] After volunteering valuable information about the Japanese and German spy networks, his sentence was commuted to 50 years hard labour but after the war he was deported to Germany. His daughter and wife also did time in prison and both went back to Germany upon their release.

[edit] Sources

  1. ^ a b c David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace. Pearl Harbor and the Japanese Spy Family Part. Retrieved on 2006-12-18.
  2. ^ Wil Deac. Takeo Yoshikawa: World War II Japanese Pearl Harbor Spy. Retrieved on 2006-12-18.
  3. ^ FBI (02/21/05). Sheets, Sails, and Dormer Lights: The Case of the Pearl Harbor Spy. Retrieved on 2006-12-18.