142 Ë The Caucasus Group and Japan
The attaché in question, Masao Ueda, a Soviet specialist stationed in Persia in
1933–35,⁵⁷also emphasized the importance of the Caucasus in Japan’s strategy against
Moscow. In his May 1935 report to Tokyo, Ueda wrote:
The main groups in Transcaucasia are Georgians, Turkish people in Azerbaijan, and Armenians.
They all have their own cultures, and, compared with other ethnic minorities, possess far stronger
identities, occupy a core group of the population among the constituent republics of the Soviet
Union, and play a very important role in the political and economic life of Transcaucasia.
Most of the leaders of these groups live outside their states, that is Iran, Turkey, and other coun-
tries, causing political trouble of various kinds. Therefore all countries are deeply interested in
subduing them politically. The importance of this situation has to be acknowledged from the
point of view of planning subversion...
It appears that now, instead of Muslim groups, there exist secret fascist groups of Azerbaijani
Turks.
In view of the distribution of the Azerbaijani Turks, their associations, and their tribal relations as
well as their national characters, they present to us the best value for the purpose of subversion.
The treasure of the Soviet Union, the Baku oil elds, is located in the area where they live. The
outlook of these Turks is very similar to that of the Japanese. In view of all the points discussed
above, they are the ttest for our work...
In the western regions of Transcaucasia live also a small number of Greeks, Germans, and Per-
sians. Of course, they don’t like the Soviet regime, and probably are engaged in intelligence, sub-
version, and other activities [for foreign countries?].
If we could identify able leaders from among the Caucasian peoples, they could become active
forces at any moment of necessity.⁵⁸Ueda’s report, like Kanda’s, also became known to Moscow (almost certainly inter-
cepted by the Soviet intelligence network). In any event, Ueda’s grasp of Transcauca-
sia seems to have been somewhat shaky, and undoubtedly his plan did not go very
far.
In his memoirs written after World War II, Ueda stated that he traveled to Tehran
by way of the Soviet Union (by rail from Tokyo to Baku via Moscow, then by boat to a
Caspian Sea port near Rasht, Persia, thence by car to Tehran). His assignment was to
gather intelligence about the Soviet Union from south of the border. During his tenure
in Tehran he traveled to the Soviet Caucasus, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and in July 1934,
when attending a conference of Japanese military attachés in Berlin, he again traveled
through the Soviet Caucasus. But he never discussed his clandestine operations in the
Caucasus, perhaps because he achieved very little.⁵⁹
Along with Japan’s rise, Germany’s transformation (from coexistence with the So-
viet Union symbolized by the Rapallo Treaty in 1922 to Hitler’s ascension to power in
57 Before Persia, Ueda had worked as the head of Japan’s intelligence station in Manzhouli, on the
Manchu-Soviet border, in 1930–31. From 1938 to 1939 (until forced to return to Tokyo when Poland was
destroyed by Germany and the Soviet Union), he was Japan’s military attaché in Warsaw.
58 Quoted in Kirichenko, “Kominterun to Nihon,” 107–8.
59 “Ueda Masao ik ̄o,” 3 vols. available at Yasukuni kaiko bunko shitsu (Tokyo). ̄