was an officer in the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor ...

. He is noted for being the only Eurasian (American-Japanese

Hāfu is a Japanese language term used to refer to a person ethnically half Japanese and half non-Japanese. A loanword from English, the term literally means "half," a reference to the individual's non-Japanese heritage. The word can also be used to ...

) person to be commemorated in Japan's

Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine located in Chiyoda, Tokyo. It was founded by Emperor Meiji in June 1869 and commemorates those who died in service of Japan, from the Boshin War of 1868–1869, to the two Sino-Japanese Wars, 1894–1895 and 1937–1945 re ...

Family

Kurusu was born on January 8, 1919, in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...

United States 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 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, to

Saburō Kurusu was a Japanese career diplomat. He is remembered now as an envoy who tried to negotiate peace and understanding with the United States while the Japanese government under Hirohito, Emperor Shōwa was secretly preparing the attack on Pearl Harbo ...

(a career diplomat) and Alice Jay Little (an American who adopted Japanese citizenship after their marriage in 1914). His sister Jaye was also born in the USA, while his second sister Teruko Pia was born in Italy in 1926. In 1927, the family moved to

Tokyo, Japan Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.4 ...

where Saburō continued to serve in high-ranking diplomatic positions. In fall/winter 1941, Saburō was the Special Envoy to the United States, during which time he negotiated for peace and understanding with the United States while allegedly aware of Japan's secret plan to attack Pearl Harbor.

Military career

IJA-Officer-Ryo-Kurusu-in-Ki-51-Aircraft

Kurusu studied mechanical engineering at the Yokohama Advanced Industrial College from 1937 to 1940. He also served as the captain of the rugby team. After graduation, he joined the

Kawanishi Aircraft Company was a Japanese aircraft manufacturer during World War II. History The company was founded as Kawanishi Engineering Works in 1920 in Hyōgo Prefecture as an outgrowth of the Kawanishi conglomerate, which had been funding the Nakajima Aircraft Co ...

. Throughout these years, Kurusu reportedly suffered much prejudice and discrimination on account of his predominantly Caucasian appearance. In January 1941, Kurusu joined the

Air Forces as a pilot trainee and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in July. For the next two years, he served as an engineer and test pilot at various military flight schools in the Tokyo area. In 1944, he was transferred to Tama Airfield (now

Yokota Air Base , is a Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) and United States Air Force (USAF) base in the Tama Area, or Western Tokyo. It occupies portions of Akishima, Fussa, Hamura, Mizuho, Musashimurayama, and Tachikawa. The base houses 14,000 p ...

) in

Fussa, Tokyo is a city located in the western portion of Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 56,786, and a population density of 5600 persons per km². The total area of the city is . About one third of the city area is occ ...

. In this posting, he translated captured American flight manuals from English to Japanese. In February 1945, as the situation grew increasingly dire, Kurusu himself participated in the air defense of Tokyo, intercepting and shooting down one American aircraft in a

Nakajima Ki-84 The is a single-seat fighter flown by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service in the last two years of World War II. The Allied reporting name was "Frank"; the Japanese Army designation was . The Ki-84 is generally considered the best Japanese f ...

on February 16. On February 17, while running to his aircraft to conduct another interception mission, Kurusu was struck in the head by a taxiing Ki-43 Hayabusa's spinning propeller. He was

decapitated Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the i ...

and died instantly in what was later determined to be a tragic accident. Because the incident took place during an

air raid Air raid may refer to: Attacks * Airstrike * Strategic bombing Other uses * ''Air Raid'' (album), by the improvisational collective Air * Air Raid ''(Transformers)'', the name of three characters in the Transformers universes * ''Air Raid'' ...

, Kurusu was officially declared as " killed in action", and is enshrined in

as such. A Japanese novelist later wrote a novel based on Kurusu's stories, leading to the erroneous belief that the real-life Kurusu was speared to death by Japanese civilians who mistook him for an American pilot after he was shot down during an interception mission. Kurusu's funeral was attended by a number of high-ranking diplomats and military officers. His father chose the following English inscription, by

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known for ...

, for Ryō's headstone: "In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons." His mother, Alice, was later quoted as saying "I am proud that my son was able to die for his Emperor and his country."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurusu, Ryo 1919 births 1945 deaths Military personnel from Chicago Japanese people of American descent Imperial Japanese Army personnel killed in World War II Deaths by decapitation Imperial Japanese Army officers Japanese expatriates in the United States