was a Japanese engineer and an assistant of

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

. He worked at Menlo Park from 1904 to 1914. After returning to Japan, Okabe made the short

sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...

''Katyusha'' (leading actress:

Sumako Matsui was a Japanese actress and singer. Born as Masako Kobayashi in Matsushiro, Nagano, Nagano Prefecture as the fifth daughter and last of nine children of Tohta Kobayashi, she was adopted by the Hasegawa family in Ueda at the age of six and in 1900 g ...

) using Edison's

kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...

. He died in 1945 in Kobe in a

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

air strike.

Life

Okabe was appointed reserve second sublieutenant of the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrend ...

and became the first mate on an English ship. He caught

typhoid fever Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...

while the ship was at anchor in New York. After recovering, he remained in the US and got a job at the Edison Institute in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Okabe was not only an engineer for Edison, but also protected him with his Jujitsu. Edison liked him very much, and brought him camping with

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that ...

and Harvey Samuel Firestone. Okabe had connections with business, political and noble society in Japan. Viscount

Shibusawa Eiichi was a Japanese industrialist widely known today as the "father of Japanese capitalism". He spearheaded the introduction of Western capitalism to Japan after the Meiji Restoration. He introduced many economic reforms including use of double- ...

met Okabe in Menlo Park, in 1909. Baron

Okura Kihachiro Okura may refer to: * Okura Hotels, an international chain headquartered in Japan * Okura River in New Zealand * Okura, New Zealand, a village * Ōkura school of traditional Japanese comic theater * Okura, Yamagata, a village in Japan * the Ja ...

also supported Okabe in inviting Edison to Japan around 1926. Okabe negotiated with Okura's support, but this attempt was a failure because Edison was busy developing synthetic rubber. Viscount

Kaneko Kentarō was a statesman, diplomat, and legal scholar in Meiji period Japan. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he drew on his connections in the American legal community over the course of his long career in Japanese government, particularly in his ro ...

was a close friend of Okabe. At ceremony held in memory of Edison on January 22, 1931, Kaneko presented Okabe as "Edison introduced me to one Japanese who worked in his secret laboratory, when I visited America to procure war expenditure. He was Honorable Yoshiro Okabe!" In 1934, Okabe was invited to the unveiling ceremony of a monument of Edison in Otokoyama, Kyoto, because Edison used a filament of

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...

for his first successful light bulb. He was the guest of honor with the Viscount Kaneko as one of Edison's closest Japanese friends. He established the

steel industry Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant t ...

in Kobe and made a fortune repairing ships for northern Europe. His business steadily declined before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. The

Kenpeitai The , also known as Kempeitai, was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945 that also served as a secret police force. In addition, in Japanese-occupied territories, the Kenpeitai arrested or killed those suspecte ...

investigated Okabe for

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

because he lived in the US, but it was a false charge.Chugoku Shimbun,January 1st, 2004
/ref> Near the end of the war, Okabe was killed in Kobe during a US air raid.

References

1884 births 1945 deaths 20th-century Japanese engineers Japanese civilians killed in World War II Deaths by American airstrikes during World War II Imperial Japanese Navy officers Japanese expatriates in the United States {{Japan-engineer-stub