JAPANESE MASTER SPY IN QUEENSLAND
PROFESSOR RYONOSUKE SEITA

visits since 15 April 2002

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.

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 please 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 hose. A visiting card of Mitsuru Toyama was found in his residence. 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". Marcelle was later interned on New Caledonia after he was suspected of leading the group of Japanese secret agents on New Caledonia.

 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.

REFERENCES

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

Heaps of WW2 books available at Amazon.com

"Australia @ War"

This page first produced 15 April 2002

This page last updated 26 March 2005