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Sunday Rainstorm. While Yoshikawa did not know the date of "X-Day," he did know that it was rapidly approaching. Near the end of November, a Lieut. Commander Suguru Suzuki arrived in Honolulu disguised as a ship's steward. He called on Consul General Nagao Kita, and, "in the course of their conversation, slipped a tiny ball of crumpled rice paper into Kita's hand." The list contained 97 questions. The key question, promptly referred to Yoshikawa: "On what day of the week would the most ships be in Pearl Harbor on normal occasions?" Yoshikawa's reply: "Sunday." The final indication that the time was approaching came when Yoshikawa received orders to send his reports daily instead of thrice weekly.
Still he did not know of the attack un til he heard the first bombs fall at 0755 hours on the morning of the 7th. "I thought it probably a maneuver, but rose and switched on the shortwave" to get the 8 o'clock news from Radio Tokyo. Twice during the weather forecast, the announcer reported "East wind, rain." That was the code signal indicating an attack against U.S. territory.* Yoshikawa immediately began burning his code books and other intelligence materials. When Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived that day to pick him up for eventual repatriation, the only incriminating sign of his activities that they found was a sketch of Pearl Harbor.
"Well," concludes Yoshikawa, "I am older now, and dwelling more in the past as the years go by. Some things certainly are ordained. And so it was that I, who was reared as a naval officer, never came to serve in action, but look back on my single top-secret assignment as the raison d'être of the long years of training in my youth and early manhood. In truth, if only for a moment in time, I held history in the palm of my hand."
*"North wind, cloudy" would have meant war with Russia; "West wind, clear," with Britain.