American History Hit - The German Spies at Pearl Harbor

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

What would you do if you discovered that members of your family had spied for the Japanese at Pearl Harbor? When this happened to Christine Kuehn, she wanted to find out more.Alongside her husband, former journalist Mark Schiponi, Christine has been researching her father's family's movements from Nazi Germany, to Hawaii, and into the hands of the FBI. They join Don for this episode to untangle this story.Their book, 'Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor' is out now.Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. In 1941, Kailua Bay, on the windward side of the Hawaiian Island, Oahu, is open coastline, white sands, blue waters, a handful of fishing boats. Onshore, family farms ring a rural community linked by dirt roads.

In geography and temperament, it is the direct opposite of Naval Station Pearl Harbor on the southern shore, beyond the forested mountain ridge. Here it is quiet, idyllic. There, it is metal, gray and militaristic, a world bracing for war. The U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet hasn't fired a shot, but its looming presence sends a message to rival Japan. Be warned, we are here. But as we drift at sunset in our boat back in Kailu, a bright blue sky turning indigo, then star-flecked black, there are no signs of danger. Except, wait a second, what was that? From three dormer windows, in a house just off the beach, a bright beam shines, pulsing.

To the casual eye, it's probably a forgotten lamp left burning in the window. But to the submerged Japanese submarines observing in the bay, it is something else entirely. It's a signal, a coded report on the American operations at Pearl Harbor. Hello, history hit listeners. This is American History Hit. I'm Don Wilden. Welcome. The story of Pearl Harbor comes around. every year this time. Every year, we consider again the tragic events of Sunday December 7, 1941, when Japanese fighter planes descended on the island of Oahu, attacking the American undefended naval fleet there, resulting in massive destruction and loss of life, and triggering the entrance

of the United States into World War II. It is a day, in the legendary words of Franklin Roosevelt, that will live in infamy. It is a story now essential to understanding so much of the world as we know it today, and it is a story 84 years later in 2022 still revealing itself. Just this month, on November 25th, a new book will be released entitled Family of Spies. It is written by our guests today. It involves a story that reads like a movie script. But it is real life, the real and remarkable history of the author's own family, that of her grandparents, who acted as Nazi spies in Hawaii,

working on behalf of the Japanese in the days leading up the attack. Christine Kuhn is the author, along with Mark Sheponi, and both join us today. Hello and welcome. Thanks for having us. Hi, how are you? Thank you for having us. Can I explain your partnership right away here as authors of the book? Sure.

So in 2020, I decided that I wanted to tell my family story for a variety of reasons. And I looked at my husband, Mark, and I said, hey, if anyone's going to tell this story, it's going to be me. And so we went into it together because it was a ton of research. It had been a 30-year journey. So we decided to go in. It's been a great project for us to work on together as husband and wife, which is kind of crazy. But it's been a remarkable journey and what I'm glad we were able to take together. What a moment in your family's history of the imminent release of this book.

It must be so exciting for you. Yeah, it is. It's very exciting. I'm a little nervous. This is my debut. So to be able to put this out into the world comes with some trepidation. But with that, I'm excited to move forward and I'm excited to tell this part of history. The book has received remarkable reviews as a page turner of a story.

And it sheds light, as I've mentioned, on how the attack on Pearl Harbor may have been planned. How so much was known. Your book tells an incredible story of your own family member's involvement. Who was in your family at this time? Give me the cast of characters there. So there was my grandfather Otto. He was a high-ranking Nazi and interviewed for head of the Gestapo before going to Hawaii to spy for the Japanese. There was my grandmother, Friedel. She was also looked at as like kind of the matriarch of the family. The FBI thought she may have even been the mastermind

behind the operation. My dad thought she was probably the smarter of the two and the more driven of the two of them. Then there's my Uncle Leopold, who was my dad's half-brother. He was from a different father, too. Friedel had two relationships. So one was with the Jewish architect, and the other was with another gentleman. So you have my Uncle Leopold, who joined as a stormtrooper, and then eventually went to work for Joseph Goebbels in the Office of Propaganda. and then there's my Aunt Ruth who had an affair at 19 with Joseph Goebbels. And because she was half Jewish and the Nuremberg laws were going into effect, the family was tapped on the shoulder and asked to move to Hawaii and work for the Japanese.

And then their sons, Eberhard and Hans, your father and his brother, were they twins? No, Eberhardt is six years older than Hans. So Eberhardt went over when he was nine and Hans went over. when he was three. Gotcha. Okay. So their formative years were growing up in Hawaii. All right.

It is so much the story of your father's experience as a young boy. Can you lead us into the story and get us started here? The mystery really started back in 1987 when Chrissy got a call from her father and said, hey, your Aunt Ruth has moved a couple hours away from New York. She'd love to meet you. Now, her dad had never really talked much about his family at all. And Chrissy was thrilled to have a chance to actually meet his older sister. for the first time. So we drove two hours of Charleston where she lived with her husband Hans

in a retirement community and she answered the door. She's this sweet little old lady, you know, frail, but very, again, very sweet. So we walked in and sat down and had a conversation for probably an hour and most of the conversation was Ruth asking Chrissy about her life and how her little brother, Chrissy's dad, Everhardt, was doing. But toward the end of the conversation, and Chrissy looked at a picture next to Aunt Ruth on the table. And it was an old wedding picture. And Chrissy said, are those my grandparents? And Ruth didn't say a word.

She just nodded her head, yes. She said, well, can you tell me anything about them? And Ruth just didn't say a word. She just nodded her head and no. So Chrissy pushed a little further and was like, well, can't you tell me anything? I really love to know. My dad is so cryptic about your side of the family. And Ruth just cut her off and kind of stiffened and pointed her finger at her and said,

don't ask any more questions. you have good life in a thick German accent. Don't ask any more about your family, your grandparents, or Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor? Pearl Harbor. Where did that come from? After that, when I got home, I reached out to my dad and was telling him about the visit and said, you know, asked him about why my aunt wouldn't talk about the family. And once again, he dodged the question, changed the subject because he just wouldn't talk about it.

But in 1994, the whole process resurfaced. Mark and I were married now and had two young boys, and we received a letter from a Hollywood screenwriter, talking about my grandfather being involved in Pearl Harbor, working for the Nazis, and I was floored. And so I called my dad. And I said, hey, dad, you know, I got this letter. We talked about it. And he was, he assured me that had to be a mistake. No way. My dad didn't do that. You know, everything he just kind of stumbled through. And I said, okay, well, I'm going to do some research. And I'm going to call you back. And I'll let you. know what I find out. About 10 minutes later, he called me back and he was sobbing uncontrollably. I've never seen him cry like that. And he told me basically that, you know, the story of his dad and how he had come from Germany to go to Hawaii and spied for the Nazis and how his Aunt Ruth had gotten caught up in it. And so it kind of started that 30-year journey for us trying to uncover the truth of what really happened and how they were involved. So to this point, there was never that family conversation that raised eyebrows and made you wonder.

It was a complete family secret. It was a, for me, it was a complete family secret. My mom didn't know. I didn't know. It's crazy. You know, even my cousins in Germany didn't know. You know, it was a secret. I think it was a pack the whole family had gone into that they would keep it a secret from the next generation.

Well, it is pretty extreme stuff. So let's talk about how this worked. How did the Kuhn family become embroiled with Nazis? You know, it was back in the late 20s when Hitler was taken his rise to power, right? And so he started going around and he was giving speeches around Germany. And my grandfather and my uncle Leopold, who was my father's half-brother, went to speech in Kiel. And they were just mesmerized by what Hitler was saying. So they came back. and, you know, Otto joined the Nazi party, actually became very high within the Nazi party. Leopold joined as a stormtrooper. My grandmother joined the NFS, which was a women's group with the Nazi party. And my Aunt Ruth joined the League of German girls. So they all got involved in it. My father being only like three or four around that time, he was oblivious. He was not involved. But the whole family just jumped in hook line and sinker, honestly. Wow. And your Aunt Ruth obviously had much to do with this. Yes. In what way? What happened with her? Leopold ended up working for the Office of Propaganda.

And so he had a connection to Gerbils. So when Ruth was 19, she had gone to a party with Leopold and had met Gerbils. And they started an affair. Wow. And but Ruth had a bit of a secret. So with the Nuremberg's laws going into effect, Ruth was actually half Jewish because She was from a different, she was adopted by Otto. Otto was not her father.

Friedel had had an affair with the Jewish architect. So when the Nuremberg laws went in saying Germans and people from German descent could not have relationships, Gerbils had to get rid of his misdeed. So he tapped Otto on the shoulder to go to Hawaii as a spy for the Japanese because they were looking for Caucasians to put on the island. and Ruth went with them. And the entire family was shipped over to Hawaii from Germany. Except for Leopold. Leopold stayed in... In the Army.

In Berlin, yeah, and got married and had kids and actually fought in the final battle of Berlin. Amazing. Okay, so let's put a pin in this for a moment and just back up a little bit because one of the issues of this is so fascinating to me is that which often bothers people when they hear about the Nazi, you know, the rise of Nazis, is that conditions in that, country were so difficult coming out of World War I and into the Great Depression and all of that,

that had so much to do with normal people, respectable families deciding to take this path because you say you would attend these rallies and see this revival of the Germany people, and it was so inspiring to them. This is really at the heart of the matter as far as your family goes, isn't it? It was interesting because you nailed it on the head. They were this very just regular, you know, upper middle class family. And they were swept up in the Nazi mania because when the stock market crashed in 1929, you know, it affected the world's economy. And Germany was in just as bad of a depression as everyone else. So when Hitler was making all these promises about, you know, everybody's going to be better. There's going to be jobs. We're going to get off the shackles

of the Treaty of Versailles, people were excited about that. Sure. So that's kind of the rapture now behind them. It's just this irony, I guess, is the right word for it, where we know in retrospect what happens. And we try to project back to that moment, knowing everything that we now know, and it's just so imbalanced. And yet, in real time, what was happening from moment to moment made so much sense to people at that moment.

So your family is caught up in the midst of what the entire country is going through in this gigantic phenomenon, and suddenly this other twist happens, which is your aunt Ruth's genealogical identity. And for that reason, the entire family history has to change. So off they go to Hawaii, and what year are we talking about? That was 1935. Okay. So we're long before Pearl Harbor, of course. The Japanese are, there's a lot going on politically in the Pacific, You know, as we've talked about many times on this show, what is leading up to the World War II and the war in the Pacific is very complex stuff about the Japanese politics and so forth. I wasn't aware that at this point they were actually planting spies or looking for information about Hawaii and American naval operations there. That's very interesting.

That's part of why it was so hard to pin down because, A, there was no FBI office in Hawaii at the time. They didn't open that up until 1939. Yeah. And they were playing a long game. So why is not even a state yet? That doesn't happen until 1950. Right. Right.

This is just a little place out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and remains so even until Pearl Harbor. That's the first time people even know what's going on here. Describe their arrival there and their lifestyle and how your family becomes established. Yeah. So when they arrived, they kind of went in as sleeper spies, right? They were supposed to go in, build trust within the community, make full. friends, like, so that they would be there throughout the time and throughout, even maybe after the bombing and gather intel. And so, you know, they, they were involved in, and spying from the very

beginning, I guess from the very beginning. I think it probably took a little bit for them to get full-fledged into it. But they were living a very lavish lifestyle. They had two homes. They drove fancy cars. They hosted parties. You know, Ruth, you know, fratinate. You know, ratinized with young sailors, you know, all is a means to try and glean information from, you know, the military. And on top of it, they had no visible means of income. So I think that was what really kind of triggered, you know, triggered the Hoover to kind of look into it a little bit differently. Mark, do you want to add anything? Well, just that they were getting paid the equivalent over the first three years they were there of a million to a million and a half dollars. Wow. To,

lay low, ingratiate themselves, give some information when they could find it, but really they were supposed to be subversive and not stick out and just blend in with the crowd so that when they were needed, nobody would point a finger at them. Interesting. And they would not have known that they were part of a war planning effort at all, right? This is, they're going because they were told to go by the German government, or did they know what was going on? I think they knew. Yeah, they had an idea, certainly, that they weren't going over there to talk about flowers. Right. So they knew that there was something. They didn't know what it was exactly. But when you're told to, you know, keep an eye on naval bases that are over there at Hickham and Kenyoe and certainly Pearl Harbor, they had a feeling something was afoot. But I don't think anybody contemplated that it was going to be as big and bad and quick and awful as it was. Yeah, they even went to Japan as well and met with them. Yeah. I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

Were they good at what they did? Were they, because they didn't have experience doing this sort of thing. Well, I think they did. Otto did have a little bit of experience because of his history working in Germany. Otto was tapped on the shoulder, not because Ghebel saw him walking down the street. He was up for the role of head of the Gestapo. Oh, I see. And he interviewed with Himmler, and he lost a job out to Reinhardt, Hydrick, who was the architect. of the Holocaust and just the monster among monsters. So he was, you know, Otto was well thought of and pretty high up the ranks of the Nazi party. So they trusted him to go over there and do a good

job. They knew that Japan was, you know, going to be their future ally and they were certainly working together in concert. So this family is now living in this lavish house, you say, and basically their job, a sort of combined effort is to observe the movements of American naval operations in different ways. Ultimately, they are passing secrets to the Japanese. That's their job. Who was their contact there? Who was their Japanese handler?

So they worked through the Japanese consulate. So the consul general and the vice consul were basically his handlers at that point. A spy came over later, Takao Yoshikawa, who became more of a contact to him. But he would filter all the information through the Japanese consulate, who would then send it to Tokyo. and the crazy thing about how that information got transmitted was the Japanese consulate could receive information from Tokyo, coded messages, but they couldn't send them. So when they wanted to send a message to Tokyo, based on information that they'd uncovered, they walked down to the RCA wire office just like everybody else, stood in line, paid their

feed. The wire office sent this coded, top secret messages to Tokyo, and everybody went about their day. Nobody blinked an eye. Who was the Japanese master spy in charge of this? His name was Takeo Yoshikawa. He came over under the guise of being a consulate official, but he spent a lot of time as Japan's man on the ground along with Otto. And auto spying is a little cryptic, but Takeo's was not.

He wrote an autobiography, and he would tell how he was a great swimmer. He would hop in the ocean, a mile or two away from Pearl Harbor. swim breathing through a reed and check if there were submarine nets. And he would do the island from a little Japanese tea house called the Sancho Roe and just watch the ships come and go, pick up hitchhikers who were mostly military naval guys, you know, after a long Saturday night and hey, I'll bring you back to the base and chat them up and they would divulge information. So he knew an awful lot about ship movements, et cetera.

And I assume Otto was doing the same thing, but we don't know. Otto never confessed exactly what he was doing other than some of the bits and pieces. Right. And as you mentioned, Ruth was dating American military men. She also opened a beauty partner, right? Yeah, she opened a beauty parlor with her mother, Friedel, and it was thought to be a front to gather information from all the Navy wives who came in to get their hair done. Perfect place to be eliciting information. I mean, probably a traditionally understood place for spies to work in. That in nail salons, right? Yeah, because you sit and talk the whole time, right?

And you just, your guards down, you're getting your hair done. Yeah. I think that was pretty ingenious. The sons were very young. Were they involved at all in any way? No, they were not. My father, we've talked about this quite a bit, and he didn't know what his parents were doing. Obviously, Hans did not.

They were growing up in an idealic, you know, environment. They went to the beach. They rode bikes with their friends. friends, you know, and I think a big part of it is when my dad, I mean, he was arrested along with the family in the middle of the night the day after Pearl Harbor. Wow. And, you know, he was only 15 at the time. He spent his 16th birthday on the internment camp on Sand Island. Wow. And so he was, he was thought to be as dangerous as his parents, but after multiple interrogations, Robert Shivers actually released him. And he finished high school. He denounced

his German citizenship. And he actually joined the army and fought in Okinawa. So he was devastated by what his parents did and his Aunt Ruth. Yeah. Robert Shivers was the special agent in charge of the FBI. So he ran the department over here, over that. Gotcha. The information that they gathered, Was it ever proven to be utilized in any way? Was it particularly valuable to the Japanese? Yeah, the FBI files, you know, they were passing information to the consulate. The FBI had them under surveillance, and they would watch them come and go from the consulate with satchels full of information that they said was information that, you know, shouldn't have been passed to our enemies, but they never detailed what it was. They just knew something bad was happening.

And then as far as what his real job was supposed to be was about six weeks before Pearl Harbor before the attack, he was called to the consulate and they said, listen, we need you to design a signaling system, basically in case everything else that they've got going on and fails as far as communication. And so the signaling system, their house was on the windward side, which is the eastern side, the other side of the island from Pearl Harbor and Waikiki and Honolulu. So he designed a signaling system that would tell Japanese subs off the, the easternian, coast, what was going on with ship movements. So, you know, a sheet hanging on the clothesline meant something to do with battleships when they had sailed and lights from his dormer window

at their house that could be seen from subs off the shore meant that battleships had cruised or carriers were coming in or so detailed different ship movements. The first run was so complicated that they told them, no, go back and make this simpler. It's too much. So he did. And they transmitted that the consulate to Tokyo on December 3rd. And then when Pearl Harbor happened and the Japanese consulate was stolen by the FBI and police, they found them burning papers. And one of the papers in there was this signaling system that Otto had designed that had been sent to Tokyo. So the signaling system detailed ship movements before December 7th. We don't think he actually used them. I think that was a plan B in case.

something happened where they could not communicate with the Japanese coming in. But he was also a test run so that, well, now the Japanese of Bomb Pearl Harbor, they're going to need communication. They're hoping that Otto as a Caucasian face was not going to stick out and be arrested, and he would now be able to get them information via this signaling system that he had designed early on. Right. I mean, it involved, like, flashing coded messages from the attic, didn't it?

How did that work? Yeah, it was just lights. The dormer window was at the top. So if the light was on from eight to nine, it meant a certain number of ships had sailed. From nine to ten, another bunch of ships to sail. Chrissy, there were other things like the boat in the harbor and stuff, right? Wow. Yeah, there was also like sheets on the line, on the clothes line. If a sheet on the clothes line, it meant ships were coming in or battle cruisers were harbored. And there was also flags on, he had a sailboat. And if the flag was sailing a certain color or a certain day, that that communicated something else different about military movement. Over what period of time are we talking about? Years of this happening? Well, he actually was Yoshikawa, which was another kind of telltale, visited the home about six or seven weeks prior to December 7th.

And that's when they asked him to create the signaling system. So the signaling system, as Mark mentioned, was meant to be, you know, after the bombing because I don't think they thought they were going to be so successful on that first run from everything that I can take. So Otto was supposed to remain on the island, incognito, and then be able to communicate further information after the initial bombing. You know, it's such a big fact of Pearl Harbor that the American aircraft carriers weren't so many of them weren't in that harbor. And that plays out faithfully, of course, to the Battle of Midway and so forth. I can't help but wonder what was, you know, if this signaling system played any role in that

missing, you know, that misguided situation for the Japanese. I don't think so. I think that they were ready to respond to it, but one of the last wires to Tokyo from the conflict had said that the carriers had sailed and here's what ships are left in at Pearl. And then they made the decision that, well, that's enough, we'll go ahead and attack. Right. Well, they would have been underway for sure by that time. So after Pearl Harbor takes place, the tragic day happens, explain what happens. The FBI has been watching them. They know what they're doing. They move right in and arrest them the day after the attack, right? They did. Both Friedel, Otto, and Ruth were all on the Nazi A list that in the event that we went to war, they were to be picked up. So they

went and picked them up. My dad, because he was 15, went with them. And they took them to Sand Island where they spent several months, four to five months on Sand Island. Everyone was going through interrogation. Ruth, Friedel, Otto, everyone was being interrogated, including my dad. And then, you know, over time, they got Otto and he actually signed a confession, which was a big part of why he was the only person tried and convicted for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, is because he went in and he signed the confession, whereas Ruth and Friedel remained silent and never said anything about what they had done. And then, like I said, my dad spent his 16th birthday on the island, on Sand Island, and then he was eventually released to foster care when they realized he had not been involved.

Wow. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. The FBI writes from November 20th, 1941 to January 27th, 1942, when charges were filed, that Otto was conspiring with the Japanese, sharing information about battlefields, aircraft carriers, cruisers, etc., etc. February 21st in front of a military commission, he is sentenced to be shot by musketry as a spy. Did that happen? No, it didn't. Really what happened is he was convicted, but the attorney, General had some questions right off the bat because Otto was tried, he was tried in military

tribunal, but his spying had taken place during the time of peace. So he was actually waiting for another trial to come, to get the final verdict from another trial that was in the Supreme Court. And that was the submarine saboteurs who had, they were German spies who had landed in both Pontevira and New York to come into the United States. Well, when they were captured, they had been spined during a time of war. So they were convicted and sentenced to death. And that kind of put a problem on auto sentencing because he had been spying during the time of peace. And the most you can get for spine during a time of peace is 50 years hard labor. Interesting. So they commuted his sentence to 50 years hard labor. You know, we did an episode on the

Rosenberg's, nothing to do with this story. But the Rosenberg case has a similar problem. was that they were spying during peacetime. So the treason never doesn't apply. But that was what was so controversial about that. How interesting. So he volunteers information about the Japanese and German spy right. And he's a useful person for the Americans. His sentence, as you say, was commuted to 50 years in prison with hard labor.

June 6, 1946, Cune's sentence was further committed so that he could be deported. Where is he deported to? Well, that's interesting because so when my grandfather, after, the war, he wrote a letter trying to get his sentence turned over. And so after looking at it, they actually sent him to be deported, but he went to Ellis Island. He actually spent two years there. And we don't know why, but he was on Ellis Island for two years. And after that, some of the government officials looked at it and were like, this is astonishing. He hasn't been deported yet. So they just releasing. Wow. And they release him into New York. And he has to

to work for several months in order to get the fair to take a, to go back to Germany. But instead of going back to Germany, his wife Friedel said, don't come back here. This is not going to be a good place for you. So he actually spent several years in Buenos Aires before he had cancer and he went home to Germany. All right. To die. And he arrives there in 1955, dies of cancer in 1956, the age of 61 young man. Eberhardt, your father, right? Mm-hmm. Is kept in an internment camp for a few months.

Was considered a danger of some sort? Yeah, the FBI considered him as dangerous to national security as his parents. He told me this story once. He was on a boat coming back from an interrogation and sitting next to him was prisoner number one. It was a submarine captain whose sub had run ashore and he had been captured. And, you know, I think that that really hit him hard, that the Americans would think that he was just as dangerous as this Japanese man who came to kill Americans and blow up, you know, Pearl Harbor. And, you know, I think that stuck with him for a really long time and was really, really hard for him. It kind of made him angry.

But after multiple interviews with Robert Shivers and the FBI, they realized he didn't have anything to do with the spy. and they released him, and he went and lived in foster care. I see. Okay. The entire family, except for your dad, eventually, arrives back in Germany. When did this all become more clear to him, I guess, in the aftermath with the trial and so forth, right? Yeah, I think so. I think, well, obviously when he got picked up in the middle of the night, I think that probably was a hint that they had done something that they weren't supposed to.

And in the trial, I mean, that's probably one of the most most, emotional moments for me when I realized that both my dad and his younger brother Hans, who was only nine at the time, had to testify for the prosecution. And so I think at that point, you know, between being picked up and going to trial, he realized that his parents had been, they had been involved with the Japanese and with the plot to bomb America. But what a turnaround to end up fighting in the war for the Americans. It's an extraordinary 180, isn't it? It is. I think it was hard for my father. I couldn't have done that at 16. I couldn't have walked away from my family, I don't think. Exactly. That's what we're talking about. Yeah, but for him to walk away, he knew once he walked away, he would never see them again. I mean, Friedel, Hans, and Ruth were part of the last prisoner exchange of the war. And my aunt, my grandmother, really, like, tried to convince my dad to go back with them. And he just wouldn't do it. I mean, he said, I'm an American. I want to stay here. I know you.

you are still German, but I am not. Wow. And so he didn't go. And, you know, when he denounced the citizenship, I don't think he ever went back to Germany again, not in my lifetime, that he ever went back. He just said it was not his home. America was his home. And so that was pretty emotional for him. I have to ask you a personal question, because I'm fascinated by this.

So your father became an entirely different person in this story for you, didn't he? because you would have known a man who wasn't telling this story and therefore divulging a lot of his experience in life and feelings about his family, just to a man who was completely honest with you about all this. That's an incredible journey to take as his daughter. Yeah, I mean, growing up, my dad, he loved to tell stories. I mean, he told the most outlandish stories, you know, about alligators and lost children.

I think telling those stories were easier than telling his real ones. And so, you know, to know this man that coached my softball team and was so involved in my life and then to turn around and in one day, you know, he's a completely different person. But he's not a different person. He's still my father. He's still the same man that raised me. But to understand his history and what he went through took years to come to terms with. And I think, you know, it was a secret that my family kept. my dad kept, and I think in the end, it really released him when he could finally bear his soul and tell me in our family everything that had happened when he was growing up, because I think that's a hard, that's hard to carry for years and years. Did he encourage you to tell the story? Not at first, you know, 30 years ago, I didn't want to tell the story. I mean, I didn't want to be associated with this family that had done something so incredibly

terrible and evil. I did not want to be involved with that family. So over the years, we talked about it and I learned about it, but it was never a book. It was never something I was going to put out there. But, you know, as we started putting the information together, we really didn't decide to totally write the book until 2020. But he had said, he had actually, we had talked to historians about it. And I think he was comfortable with the story coming out. We talked about it. And he said, he thought it was an important story and that it should come out, but we didn't really decide to write the book and release all those secrets until after he had passed. Did you ever meet Ruth later on? No. I mean, we talked on the phone. I met her in 87. We talked on the phone often.

You know, we would reach out. You know, I would see her. But she, if you asked about anything, if you asked her any questions about her family or Pearl Harbor, she would ghost me. She'd shut down and she wouldn't talk to me for months. So I just learned to stay away from that subject. She passed away in 2010. Had her brother, your dad and her, been in touch a lot in those years? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I think he, you know, he would, in the beginning, he would travel to New York. I do think they spoke on the phone quite often. It was, it was interesting when she passed away, I connected with a family friend that she had known growing up in Germany, Peter. And he was holding a box of information. for me. And so he actually was a professor at the University of South Carolina, where Mark and I went to school and where my son was a freshman at the time. So we made plans to meet. And I was looking

through the box and it had her German ration card. It had pictures and letters and all this information that she had never told me. And I found her address book. And I was like, oh, wow. Grab the address book, immediately went to the case and they were gone. And I looked over at Peter, he goes, they're in there. She had torn out the case and had them taped on the under drawer of her bedside table because she was still trying to keep anyone from knowing who the future generation of Cunes were. And so it was pretty, that was a pretty impactful moment. It actually gave me the names of some of my cousins. The phone numbers were gone. There were no emails there, but I was able to get their names. And that's what kind of triggered a whole new resurgence, started using Facebook

and reaching out trying to find these cousins that lived in Germany. Ruth eventually marries an American officer in Germany and ends up moving back to the United States, right? It's funny you say that because there was so much misinformation out there. And that was one of the tidbits in some books written earlier that she'd married this American military. She did marry when they lived in Hawaii, 1941, she got married to a man who was as old as her father. He was a former military officer, but he'd been retired. He'd been working in the stock market for years. So that was the man that she married and was married to when Pearl Harbor hit and she was arrested from their home. Okay. But later in life, what happens to Ruth? So she goes back to Germany. She was a nurse.

She worked in Germany for a number of years. And she met her husband, Hans Kippenberg. And she moved back to the United States with him. I see. We're mixing up our facts there. Interesting. That happens a lot in this story. It's crazy. Well, this is what's so remarkable about this effort of yours and this accomplishment. You know, my dad was in World War II as well, and nothing nearly as dramatic happened for him, but it's a detective story to put these records together and try to patch these lives that you kind of vaguely understand, but so many of these folks that went through this in whatever regard, keep it to themselves or kept it to themselves all these years, very famously. So that's a whole generation of secret keepers because they just didn't want to go back there in their minds for whatever reason, or they were actively trying to conceal something.

Who knows what? But it's a real, we're all playing this role as telling these stories of those we are descended from who went through this extraordinary moment in time. Right. And we're always trying to find the truth, right? And some of those stories, if we don't find them now, they're going to be lost. We have to find these lost stories. Yeah. Well, you've done an amazing service to put this story together. It's an incredible piece of information for anyone interested in the story of Pearl Harbor, for sure, World War II in general, but also the family dynamics, which are still very emotional for you. I can tell as you're telling this story. It's a very personal one for you. You know, you're mentioning about confusion, and I think there was a lot, and Mark can probably talk about this as well, but there was a lot of misinformation. You know, the books out there had Ruth and my grandfather leading the attack on Pearl Harbor. That was an outrageous story that didn't happen, but it was sensationalized. I mean, they actually didn't overlook Pearl Harbor. They lived on the other side of the island. There were also tons of conflicting

information in the National Archives and the FBI files that we looked through. So you talked about putting the story together. It was like trying to put a puzzle together and we were missing pieces. You'd have to read the National Archives, compare it to the books, compare it to a story that my father said or a letter that was written to really kind of come to the actual truth because it was it was not an easy process. I mean, the National Archives. are what, 800 pages, Mark? Yeah, it's a big file. Yeah, they were watching them for years, and it was crazy to look at the files, though,

and see the actual memo from J. Edgar Hoover to his agents talking about her grandfather or President Roosevelt talking about her grandfather in a memo. So that was kind of crazy, actually holding the piece of paper there and pretty eye-opening. Makes it all too real, doesn't it? Incredible. Well, the book is called Family of Spies. It is written by Christine Kuhn and her husband, Mark Shapone. Thank you so much for joining us.

I know you're talking to a lot of people these days about this book, and congratulations on doing so. I look forward to folks listening, grabbing their copy. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks, Don. Appreciate you, John. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes,

two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman.

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