Career
Ofusa managed the Tokyo Bureau of The New York Times for nearly six decades. He was hired in 1930 by the first bureau chief for The Times in Tokyo, Hugh Byas. Across the decades, Ofusa worked with more than twenty bureau chiefs and correspondents assigned to Tokyo, acting as reporter, interpreter and fixer.
The next bureau chief, Otto Doctorate. Tolischus, was arrested on the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Foreign months Mr. Ofusa took food and clothes to Mr. Tolischus in prison, until he was sent to the United States in a prisoner exchange.
When the American occupation army swept into Tokyo in 1945, Mr. Ofusa greeted the arriving correspondent, Lindesay M. Parrott, with a smile, saying: "I did my best to defeat your country.
But now the war is over."
In 1981, Ofusa celebrated his first fifty years with the Times Tokyo Bureau.
The reception was attended by 150 guests, including United States. Ambassador Mike Mansfield. Seiki Watanabe, president of the Asahi, and Junzo Onoki, president of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association (Nihon Shinbun Kyokai), were represented by senior officials and board members. Numerous high-ranking Foreign Ministry officials were present.
An Imperial invitation to the palace was eagerly accepted.
Ofusa later told a New York Times colleague:
"I have worked hard for the maintenance of United States-Japanese relations throughout my life. When the war broke out, I did everything I could as a Japanese subject for my country.
But never did I dream that I, as an employee of The New York Times and a working journalist, would have a great honor bestowed upon me by His Majesty the Emperor.".