Bernard Kuhn, A Spy of Many Faces

Susie Ruth Uses Charms for Spying

Nov 26, 2006 Mary Trotter Kion

Bernard Kuhn presents many different identities to his friends. Susie Kuhn uses her charms on military men to get information.

For some unexplained reason Bernard Kuhn, while spying on Pearl Harbor military activities for Japan, set about presenting a different face to various groups of acquaintances. To some he was a retired doctor who had a large inheritance. Yet, to others he was a student of Hawaiian history. To some he posed as an inventor.

None of these friends, who visited the Kuhn home and observed its fine appointments, ever suspected Mr. Kuhn's true profession. As well, no one seemed to question their situation when Mrs. Kuhn twice visited Japan. Upon returning from the second visit she had in her possession $16,000 which the Kuhns promptly deposited into their growing bank account. Still, no one considered the Kuhns anything other than what they said they were.

Gathering U.S. Ship Information

All this while all four of the Kuhn family, including six-year-old Hans, was quietly and efficiently collecting, and transmitting, secret military information. Still spying in 1939, they were asked to gather all possible intelligence about United States ships in the Pacific, especially those in and about Hawaii.

Susie Ruth's Feminine Wiles Works Wonders

Beautiful Susie Ruth Kuhn had several means of gathering information. At first she began dating military men. She was talented and outgoing and found this means of information gathering quite easy. When she went so far as to become engaged to a young naval officer her task was further simplified.

Then Susie Ruth opened a beauty salon and the talkative military wives presented a virtual gold mine of information. So much information was being leaked at the salon that it was necessary for Susie's mother to "assist" her in its operation. In actuality, Mrs. Kuhn was needed just to keep up with recording all of this information.

Spying From Mountain Top and Ocean Below

Mrs. Kuhn also greatly assisted her husband when he made his "historical expeditions" into the mountains to further his "Hawaiian studies." These "studies" were usually conducted with the use of an 18-power binocular. The focal point of the binocular was far from historical, at the time, as the couple focused on the ships in the harbor and the military installations below them.

New War Industry, Rent a Spy: Before the Pearl Harbor Attack continues with The Boy Spy: Pearl Harbor is Attack by Japanese.

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New War Industry: Rent a Spy: Before the Pearl Harbor Attack.

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