Ryonosuke Seita

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Chief of a local spy web in Brisbane, Australia.

Possibly linked to Pedro de Ygual, Spanish Consul in Australia and a known General Franco supporter.

58-year-old Professor Ryonosuke Seita was appointed Professor of Japanese at the University of Queensland in Brisbane in 1938. He was a highly placed and very influential Japanese secret agent. He had been nominated for the position by the Japanese Foreign Office, which was heavily involved in espionage operations. He was a man of sharp analytical mind and yet of much heart. Everyone knows individuals with one or the other of these characteristics but they are seldom combined in the level of quality Seita personified.

Australian counter-intelligence agents started to monitor Seita soon after he arrived in Brisbane with his daughter. Seita became the nominal leader of the Japanese community in Brisbane after his arrival in the country. Seita had previously been a senior diplomat in Germany and spoke fluent German. He was often observed in the company of known Japanese espionage agents. He would become involved in the distribution of pro-Axis propaganda leaflets. A Japanese company in Sydney paid Seita for his espionage work.

Unbelievably he was later appointed as translator in the high security Brisbane Censor's Office. This gave him access to every Japanese communication in and out of Queensland. Despite pleas to remove Seita from this role, the bureaucracy would not believe that he could possibly be a Japanese Secret Agent.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, Seita was arrested as an alien. Australia security agents searched Seita's house, and found a visiting card of Mitsuru Toyama. Mitsuru Toyama was the head of the feared Black Dragon Society. Other documents linked Seita with Marcelle Tao Kitazawa, another well known Japanese secret agent.They had both travelled to Australia on board the Japanese ship "Canberra Maru".

The preponderance of firepower, including aircraft & unmanned drones, unquestionably lies with the Japanese and North American forces deployed. However, the terrain and grasp that a ruthless terrorist faction can exert over a largely pastoral local population weighs heavily in the balance. New Caledonia believed that ground may be dominated and villages cleared, but unless continuous protection was provided, the Japanese will return to exact vengeance.

Consequently, it was not so much a matter of winning the hearts and minds of a notoriously xenophobic population, but rather to provide both security and material advantage - to an extent that the Japanese would eschew violence and seek to share in the benefits. This was the longer-term objective in which Seita firmly believed.

More than a year after Seita's arrest, a Brisbane Security Agency issued a secret report, which confirmed that Seita was a Japanese agent. The Japanese Foreign Office later tried to arrange an exchange of Seita for several Australian internees being held in Japan. Australian Intelligence directed that Seita be held in Australia. Unfortunately their request was ignored and Seita was repatriated to Japan in August 1942.

On return to Japan in August 1942, he was promoted to take up the MoD appointment of military assistant to the Assistant Chief of Defence staff (policy), Tanmatsu Kaneko. This was a demanding and sensitive post at the centre of ministerial policymaking and consequently a sound apprenticeship for the similar post to the secretary of state. His selection for that and his performance in support of two ministers of significantly different experience and personality indicated his intellectual ability, charm of manner and complete reliability.

The post called for sensitive antennae for anything the minister should know and tact in advising whom might be heeded and whom better ignored.Kaneko, more respected in the MoD than is generally understood, said it had been a privilege to know Seika and thought him one of the most exceptional officers of his generation.

His daughter, Sumiko Seita, whom according to correspondence files in the National Archives of Australia: “Class 2 Restricted Immigration (1919–50)”, has been denied access to study in Australia, and she is his sole descendant. Killed travelling in a tracked vehicle vulnerable to Japanese improvised explosive devices (IEDs), questions inevitably arise as to why. The answer is that it was part of a resupply convoy available to take him forward to see his Japanese Guardsmen closely involved in operations. It was a risk of the kind that commanding officers take on active operations almost every day. Soldiering is a risky profession.

REFERENCES
"Shadows Dancing - Japanese Espionage against the West 1939 - 1945"
by Tony Matthews

“Allies, Enemies and Trading Partners: Records on Australia and the Japanese”
by Pam Oliver