Bookcases continue to be filled with new accounts of the beginning of World War II and/or the myths and truths behind Pearl Harbor and related Japanese espionage. Ronald Drabkin’s first book, “Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor” (William Morrow, 272 pgs., $29.
99) follows his personal interest in espionage after finding that his father and grandfather were involved in counterintelligence. Hoping to write a family history, he began research, but never found what his relatives did in “the service.” However, Drabkin discovered that Englishman Frederick Rutland was an associate of his grandfather.
He sought the FBI files for Rutland still hoping to find some family connection. There were, however, no details. Recently, unclassified files of Rutland revealed that the British World War I pilot and war hero became a spy for the then-developing Japanese navy.
And Drabkin then realized he had his book, not about his family, but about a man who helped Japan in the months and years leading up to Pearl Harbor. “I am one degree of separation from most of the characters in the story,” Drabkin writes. Much of the background for this book came not from academia, but firsthand, in stories I heard as a child from my father, his family, his tight-knit group of friends who had worked in U.
S. intelligence, and friends.” Rutland’s claim to history was participation in the vast Battle of Jutland in the North Sea in May 31-June 1, 1916.
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