Japanese-Finnish Cooperation in WW II
 
Posted By: Elephtheriou George <arawasi_g@hotmail.com>
Date: Thursday, 9 August 2001, at 8:55 a.m.
 
Konnichi wa minasama,
I must tell you that tonight we hade a very enjoyable evening with our good friend Higuchi san. Among Asahi Super Drys and Tori no karaage, Ika no fry, eda mame etc at an Ueno's isakaya he said that Japanese visited Finland and wanted to know how they could start their planes at such low temperatures. Finish first warmed the oil, then poured it inside the engine. 
This method the Japanese copied. Our friend mentioned his source but as it usually happens to people of my age, I forgot it.
So, does anyone know more about this trip of Japanese to Finland?
 
Domo,
George
 
Posted By: Hiroyuki Takeuchi
Date: Sunday, 12 August 2001, at 12:04 a.m.
In Response To: Japanese in Finland (?!?!) (Elephtheriou George)
 
The IJA was highly interested in cold weather operation since it's main opponent was thought to be the Soviets. All IJA fighters except for Ki100 underwent ski undercarriage tests, and cold weather cowlings were developed for such types as Ki48.
I don't know when this "visit" took place, but it won't be surprising if the Japanese and the Fins whom both fought the Soviets in 1939 sought to exchange information.
The Fins imported the Type 38 Infantry Rifle, Type 31 75mm gun, Type 38 150mm howitzer, 12cm naval gun, and bamboo poles for ski stocks (used by Finnish ski units) from
 
Posted By: Andrew Obluski <aoba41@yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, 14 August 2001, at 8:52 a.m.
 
The Imperial Japanese Army cooperated with the Finnish Armed Forces during World War II. They focused of course on the exchange of intelligence data concerning the Soviet Union. Shortly before the withdrawal of Finland from the Axis side, the Finnish [working together with some Estonian officers] sigint intelligence unit [very successful team] was shifted to neutral Sweden. This relocation was arranged and financed by Japanese Military Attaché in Stockholm Gen. Makoto ONODERA and Japanese Military Attaché in Helsinki Gen. Hiroshi 
 
ONOUCHI.
Andrew
 
Posted By: Sigint <juha.saarikko@yle.fi>
Date: Monday, 20 August 2001, at 5:37 a.m.
 
In fact the Sigint personnel transfer was called as the operation Stella Polaris. Some books have been written of that (in fact some documents may be still classified)--- but as to my knowledge they are written in Finnish. What comes to the FAF - Finnish Air force coop with Japanese it might be better to ask some pros at the http://network54.com/Hide/Forum/46825
 
Best regards Juha
 
Posted By: David_Aiken <David_Aiken@hotmail.com>
Date: Monday, 20 August 2001, at 7:39 p.m.
 
Aloha All,
Carl-Fredrik Geust posted the following at the Finnish Aviation site recommended by "Sigint" message:
In one of the two volumes of "Luftwaffe in Finland" there is at least one photo of a Ju-52 transporting a Japanese military delegation in Finland. (I have not got the book at hands right now, so I cannot give the exact reference).
The mentioned Finnish-Japanese sigint coop is mentioned in some detail in the memoirs of the wife of the Japanese military attaché to Stockholm, Mrs. Onodera. This book was translated some years ago to German (and extensively referred to in the history of the Finnish sigint "Suomen radiotiedustelu"). This book has however also been translated into Swedish: Yuiriko Onodera: Mina år vid Östersjön, Probus Förlag, Stockholm 1993 (ISBN 91-87184-22-2) and is highly recommended,
Carl"
HTH,
David
 
Posted By: Andrew Obluski <aoba41@yahoo.com>
Date: Monday, 20 August 2001, at 11:54 a.m.
 
The beginnings of Finnish-Japanese military cooperation date to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The Japanese military attaché in Stockholm Gen Motojiro Akashi initiated then contacts with Finnish independence movement leaders. Akashi, very clever officer wrote later his memoirs ‘Rakka Ryusui’ which were translated into English.
As the Soviet threat was rising dangerously Tokyo named in 1938 Gen Toshio Nishimura [adopted son of former Prime Minister Gen Giichi Tanaka] its military attaché in Helsinki for Finland and Sweden. After Russian aggression on Finland in 1939-1940 Nishimura moved to Stockholm and organized attache bureau there. He was soon replaced by Gen Makoto Onodera in Sweden and Gen Hiroshi Onouchi in Finland. Onouchi worked there until the end of 1944 and enjoyed very good relations with the Finns.
J.W.M. Chapman – Japan in Poland’s Secret Neighbourhood War [Japan Forum No 2/1995] writes [p. 260]
Until the Soviet-Finnish peace in the autumn of 1944, Onodera had been heavily involved in collaborating with the Finnish General Staff in the penetration of the USSR by agents. The Japanese mission was forced out of Finland, but Onodera pulled off a remarkable coup by obtaining several million yen from Tokyo to induce the whole of the deception section of the Finnish General Staff to move to Sweden to continue its work, which was generally regarded as highly effective in reading Soviet coded signals. [note 131] The opportunity appears to have arisen as a result of the fact that the Russians were intent on ensuring that the apparatus elaborately created with German funds and support to monitor the USSR since the 1930s in conjunction with the Finns, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians and, to a much lesser extent, the Swedes would be smashed. However, because Onodera had the funds and a long-established set of contacts since his years in Riga and because the Swedes quietly indicated their support for maintenance of these networks, the proposal went ahead and contributed significantly to Onodera's standing in Tokyo's eyes. [note 132].
[note 103] The covert elements among the members of the bureau of the Japanese military attaché in Berlin had been heavily involved since 1920 in support of sabotage and subversion operations directed against the USSR. This had been Oshima’s main employment as assistant military attaché in Berlin and Vienna in the early 1910s, but according to Professor Miyagi, who interviewed Oshima in old age, he deliberately avoided talking about these aspects of his career because of the damage it might do as a defendant at the Tokyo Tribunal. Colonel Usui Shigeki [JAAF officer; CO of 98 Sentai (Ki-21 bombers); KIA 23 Dec 1941 during the first Rangoon major air strike] undertook these tasks under Oshima in the mid--1930s and was credited by Schellenberg as collaborating with the Security Service to plant information about an anti-Stalinist conspiracy among the Soviet military which had a direct impact on the subsequent purges that seriously weakened Soviet defences from 1937 to 1941.
In 1942, the Japanese Army provided secure bases for Abwehr-funded sabotage operations against Siberia and there was collaboration between Colonel Lahousen (Abwehr II) and Colonel Yamamoto Bin over the infiltration of agents into the Caucasus. See Abwehr II L/A Nr. 990/42 Gkdos of 1 May -1942 about discussions on cooperation involving the Caucasus, India, Iran, Iraq and the USA. Colonel Onouchi, the Japanese military attaché in Helsinki, was collaborating with the Finnish General Staff in mounting agent penetration in Carelia and employing Finnish and Estonian agents inside the USSR Soviet code material collected in Manchuria by the Japanese and Poles ware exchanged by Onouchi’s assistant, Hirose Eiichi, with the Estonian organisation, originally supplied with funds and intercept equipment by the Germans, under Erkki Pale, working for Colonel Hallamaa and the Finnish General Staff. Much of this information was already being routed to Onodera, but he paid Pale 300,000 kroner in September 1944 to take his group to Stockholm when Finland sued for peace.
An example of Finnish radio monitoring of Soviet forces’ activity may be seen in Onouchi (Helsinki) Tel. No. 217 of 9 June 1943 and it is also interesting to note Helsinki Tel. No. 229 of 17 June 1943 in which it was noted that ‘it is very hard to read American and British diplomatic systems’ so that it would make sense to derive information about Anglo-American policy by monitoring the codes of small countries with less difficult systems.’ See NAW/RG 457/SRA 331-S & 163 and J. Cederberg & G. Elgemyr, ‘Operation Stella Polaris’, in W. Agrell & B. Huldt [eds.] Clio Goes Spying; Lunds Studies in International History, Vol. 17, 1983, pp. 120–149.
[note 131] Author’s interview with General Onodera. The transfer, codenamed Operation Pole Star, was facilitated by the good relations that had existed until November 1944 with Colonel Onouchi, who returned home. Onodera had had long-term contacts also with Colonel Hallamaa, the head of the decrypt section of the Finnish General Staff, as well as with General Paasonen, the head of intelligence and the Estonian volunteers, headed by Colonel Richard Maasing, who had collaborated with the Finns and the Germans. The move was also known to the Swedes and the transfer was conducted with their tacit support. Paasonen had been at the St. Cyr Military Academy in France with General de Gaulle and both he and Hallamaa moved to France at the end of the war. Cf. n. 103 above.
There appears to have been an intelligence connection between the Finns and the French for some time past and there were also connections between the Swedes and the Comte de Fleurieu, named as head of Anglo-American intelligence in Sweden by Himmler at the end of 1942. The Germans and their friends in Stockholm seem always to have been wary of the French military and were quite frequently seeking to check up both on Swedish diplomats in France and on French diplomats on leave from Sweden. It is perhaps significant that General Onodera was interrogated only by the French in 1946 before he left Naples for Japan.
Stella Polaris Sources
Chapman J.W.M., Japanese Intelligence 1918–1945. A Suitable Case for Treatment in Christopher Andrew and Jeremy Noakes [eds.] Intelligence and International Relations 1900–1945; Exeter University of Exeter 1987 [145 – 190 p.]
Chapman J.W.M., Japan in Poland’s Secret Neighbourhood War; Japan Forum No 2/1995 [225 – 283 p.]
Maekela Jukka, Im Rucken des Feindes. Der finnische Nachrichtendienst im Krieg [In the Rear of the Enemy. The Finnish Intelligence in the War], Frauenfeld Huber Verlag 1967
Cederburg Joergen & Goeran Elgemyr, Operation Stella Polaris–Nordic Intelligence Cooperation in the Closing Stages of the Second World War in Wilhelm Agrell & Bo Huldt [eds.] Clio Goes Spying. Eight Essays on the History of Intelligence; Malmoe, Sweden Scandinavian University Books 1983 [120 – 149 p.]
Kahn David, Finland’s Codebreaking in World War II in Hayden Peake and Samuel Halpern [eds.] In the Name of Intelligence. Essays in Honor of Walter Pforzheimer; Washington, DC NIBC 1994 [329 – 347 p.]
C.G. McKay, Debris from Stella Polaris. A Footnote to the CIA–NSA Account of Venona; Intelligence and National Security Summer 1999 [198 – 201 p.]
C.G. McKay, From Information to Intrigue. Studies in Secret Service based on Swedish Experience 1939–1945; London Frank Cass 1993
I can just add that all these Japanese officers [Akashi, Nishimura, Onodera and Onouchi] also cooperated with Polish Intelligence with excellent results.
 
Regards
Andrew
 
Posted By: Hannu Mononen <hannu.mononen@ntlworld.com>
Date: Sunday, 26 August 2001, at 8:24 a.m.
 
For a string of discussion about the operation Stella Polaris, see the website
http://network54.com/Hide/Forum/message?forumid=46825&messageid=984469956
 
With best greetings,
Hannu Mononen

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