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The Pearl Harbor Essay

Decent Essays

The Pearl Harbor Spies On 7 December 1941, the Japan Naval fleet launched a precise and devastating bombing of Pearl Harbor, which stunned the United States. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Naval Fleet, so they could advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies to access natural resources to further their war effort. However, the Pearl Harbor bombing became an everlasting memory to Americans. Two little known contributors to this event had a profound effect on the planning and execution of the attack. This paper will explore the actions of Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn and Takeo Yoshikawa, two spies who initially went undetected to collect intelligence on the U.S. Naval fleet, and how their actions affected the U.S.
Background
Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn served as a midshipman in the German Navy during World War I and was a member of the German Navy’s secret police from 1928 through 1930. Kuehn also studied to become a physician after World War I. When the Nazi party took control in Germany, Dr. Kuehn became a minor official in the Nazi secret police, or Gestapo, and formed close ties with the head of the organization, Heinrich Himmler. Kuehn was married to Friedel Kuehn and had two children, Hans Joachim, six years old, and Suzie Ruth, seventeen years old (Jamison, 2014). At the age of 17, Ruth was a very beautiful, which caught the attention of the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Soon after, Ruth became a mistress to the

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