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The Untold Story of Onodera Makoto's February 1945 Warning of the Coming Soviet Attack

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Bert Edström
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Abstract

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Onodera Makoto (1897–1987) served as the Japanese military attaché in Stockholm 1941–45. His accomplishments during WWII made him instantly famous when they became known to the public in 1985 with a documentary about him on NHK based on a memoir by his wife, Yuriko. One of his famous deeds took place in mid-February 1945 when he allegedly sent a telegram to the Japanese General Staff shortly after the Yalta Conference in February 1945 warning that Stalin during the conference had promised that the USSR would attack Japan three months after the German surrender. After the German capitulation on 7 May, the Soviet Union joined the war against Japan on 9 August, precisely as Onodera had predicted. The problem is that no one has been able to trace this telegram. However, wartime documents, most of them traced in Swedish archives, show that the famous story of ‘the lost Yalta telegram’ is invented.

Keywords

World War IIintelligenceYalta ConferenceOnodera MakotoKarl-Heinz Krämer
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 8 , April 2022 , e1
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2022

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