Yotoku Miyagi

Yotoku Miyagi (宮城 与徳, Miyagi Yotoku, 1903–1943) was an Okinawan Marxist artist,[1] Communist Party USA member, and a member of Richard Sorge's spy ring.

Early life

Miyagi was born in Okinawa in 1903. When he was sixteen, he went to California after contracting tuberculosis. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1926, where he worked as an artist and ran the Owl Restaurant. Miyagi was aware of the exploitation of Okinawan farmers by the Japanese, and witnessed similar treatment of Japanese by Americans.[2]

In 1931 Miyagi became a member of the Japanese Section of the CPUSA, but was never an active party member. In 1927, he married a Japanese girl, and in 1932 he and his wife rented a flat in West Los Angeles.

Career

In 1932, he was asked to return to Japan on a mission for the Comintern. On October 24, 1933, he left San Pedro on the Buenos Aires Maru, bound for Yokohama. He expected to return to the United States.[3]

While in Japan, Miyagi established a network of informants, which included a secretary to an Imperial Army general. Miyagi translated Japanese reports and newspaper articles into English for Richard Sorge.[4]

Capture and death

By 1941, all the members of Sorge's spy ring had been rounded up, and they had all made confessions. Miyagi died in Sugamo Prison in Tokyo in the middle of his trial in 1943. He was 40 years old.

The Order of the Patriotic War (Second Class) was posthumously awarded to Yotoku Miyagi in 1964.[4]

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See also

References
  1. Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present edited by Brian Niiya, Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, Calif.) Page 204
  2. Kashima, Tetsuden. Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment During World War II. University of Washington Press. p. 231.
  3. Johnson, Chalmers A. An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring. Stanford University Press. p. 94.
  4. "Sorge's Spy is Brought in From the Cold. A Soviet-Okinawan Connection". The Asia-Pacific Journal. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
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