◆ SpookStack

Here was evidence of espionage. The message sent by Kita to Tokyo on December 3 proved that Kita had arranged for someone to signal Japanese submarines and give them information on the American feet. And the finger of suspicion pointed to Bemard Julius Otto Kuehn as Kita's confederate because Kuehn had a house 'at Lanikai, a bouse at Kalama with a dormer window and a boat with a star on the sail. Otto Kuehn, a German national, had first come to the FBI's attention income for a man with no profession or known business connection. Such talk gets around in a community the size of Honolulu. And it was no secret to the FBI that Kuehn had deposited more than $70,000 in a Honolulu bank from 1936 to 1939. He had once been a member Of the Nazi Party. Kuehn cxplained to friends that his income came from family in- heritances, but in tracing the money the FBI began to suspect it had come to Kuehn from Japancse sources in Berlin, These suspicions in- creased when the Army advised the FBI that the Japanese Consul General was known to have asked his Foreign Office for an opinion on the reliability of a couple in Hawaii named "Friedell.". The FBI could find no one named "Friedell." But agents noted that Mrs. Kuehn's first name was Friedel, spelled with one "I." This simj- larity in names seemed more than coincidence in view of the fact that the Army's tip cafne a short time after Mrs. Kuehn's return from a trip to Tokyo. Still, there was no tangible evidence of espionage by Kuehn until the Consulate messages had becn translated. Then Kuehn confessed. He admitted he was the source of the code for signaling to the sub- marines, but he claimed it was never used so far as he knew.. Kuehn told agents: .It was also arranged [with Kita] that this same set of signals could be given by short wave radio and arrangements were made that if the Consulate desired to contact me they could do so by sending me a post- card signed "Jimmic," to my Box No. 1476 at Honolulu ... On the same occasion that I transmitted this simplified system of aignalling I had also advised the Consulate that there were seven battleships, six cruisen, two aircraft carriers, forty destroyers, and twenty-seven submarines, or I some similar figure, in Hawaiian waters .. .' Kuchn also told of rectiving some $30,000 in 1940-1941 from : sources in Tokyo, money which he clair.cd represented transfers from property income in Germany. He said the last $14,000 payment was oqn ne p!y aam g!y aeg pue 'nsuedey aSuens e Aq nny o popaey money. "I don't know where she has it hidden," Kuehn said. But there was Page 192 of nThe FBI Story, A Report to the People" by Don Thirehead