Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor

*Hybrid Event

The Japan Society is hosting author Ronald Drabkin, whose debut book Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor (William Morrow/HarperCollins) reveals the unbelievable and untold story of Frederick Rutland—a debonair British WWI hero, flying ace, fixture of Los Angeles society, and friend of Golden Age Hollywood stars—who flipped to become a spy for Japan in the lead-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Frederick Rutland was an accomplished aviator, British WWI war hero, and real-life James Bond. He was the first pilot to take off and land a plane on a ship, a decorated warrior for his feats of bravery and rescue, was trusted by the admirals of the Royal Navy, had a succession of aeronautical inventions, and designed the first modern aircraft carrier. He was perhaps the most famous early twentieth-century naval aviator.

Despite all of this, and due mostly to class politics, Rutland was not promoted in the new Royal Air Force in the wake of WWI. This ignominy led the disgruntled Rutland to become a spy for the Japanese navy. Plied with riches and given a salary ten times the highest-paid admiral, shuttled between Los Angeles and Tokyo where he lived in large mansions in both Beverly Hills and Yokohama, and insinuating himself into both LA high society and Japan’s high command, Rutland would go on to contribute to the Japanese navy with both strategic and technical intelligence. This included scouting trips to Pearl Harbor, investigations of military preparedness, and aircraft technology. All this while living a double life, frequenting private California clubs and hosting lavish affairs for Hollywood stars and military dignitaries in his mansion on the Los Angeles Bird Streets.

Beverly Hills Spy contains groundbreaking new information from recently declassified FBI and MI5 files. It also contains newly discovered stories found in Japanese archives by the author’s friends in the Japanese Naval Self Defense Forces. Ronald Drabkin pieces together to completion, for the first time, this stranger-than-fiction story of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters of espionage history.

▼Event Details

Date & Time:
Friday, February 9, 2024 at 6:00 PM PST
Saturday, February 10, 2024 at 11:00 AM JST
*For in-person participants, registration begins at 5:30 PM PST. The main entrance of Werqwise closes at 6:00 PM, so please make sure to arrive before then.

Our Amazing Speakers: 

Ronald Drabkin | Author

Ronald Drabkin is the author of Beverly Hills Spy and peer-reviewed articles on Japanese espionage. His obsession with espionage history started when he was as a child in Los Angeles, where he vaguely understood that his father had been working for the US military in counterintelligence. Later he discovered that his grandfather had also been in “the business,” and it drove a voyage of discovery into previously classified documents on three continents. His career prior to writing was at early stage startups in the US, where he was an early adopter of Google and Facebook advertising. He currently lives in Tokyo.

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