soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"Matt Wiser" wrote:

> Anyone know how much (if any) the Japanese kept the Germans >informed on things in the PTO, and not just their victories, but their >defeats, too?

A Merchant Marine Officer I know whose ship was sunk by a German
raider in the Indian Ocean was taken aboard the raider as a POW and
later turned over to the Japanese by the Germans when the raider
reached the Dutch East Indies. While a captive he learned of a rather
sizable German military presence in Japan during the war which he
later described to me in the message excerpted below:

".... there were many Germans in Japan. In 1947 about 700 were
repatriated to their homeland..... these Germans were in Japan because
of a variety of situations. (The German) Naval complex was manned by a
large contingent headed by an Admiral. Most of the enlisted men were
radio operators and code experts. Also in the group was a civilian
shipping agent who probably worked in that capacity handling the
various German blockade runners that were operating into 1944."

It is problematic how much information about Japan's military defeats
and victories were known to the Germans, but it is my guess that with
such a large Naval contingent under the command of a German Admiral in
communication with Berlin, that the Germans were certainly not
completely in the dark about what was going on in the PTO.