Background
Kurusu was born on March 6, 1886 in Yokohama, Japan.
ambassador Diplomat politician statesman
Kurusu was born on March 6, 1886 in Yokohama, Japan.
Kurusu graduated from Tokyo Commercial College in 1909.
In 1910 Kurusu entered the Foreign Service. After serving as consul in Manila, he was appointed first secretary to the Chilean Legation and, in 1925, to the Italian Embassy. His posts as consul-general included Chicago, New York, and Hamburg, Germany. He was minister to Peru from 1928 to 1932, and director of the Commercial Bureau of the Foreign Office from 1932 to 1937. He also served as ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg, Italy, and Germany. While in the latter post, he acted as the Japanese signatory to the tripartite pact of September 1940 with Germany and Italy. Kurusu was sent to Washington, D. C. , in November 1941 as special envoy to assist the Japanese ambassador, Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, in the "conversations" between the United States and Japan that were designed to avert a conflict in the Pacific. It has never been definitely established whether Kurusu and Nomura had been informed of their government's intention to attack the United States and were playing for time by diverting attention, or whether they were themselves unaware of Japanese war plans. Kurusu retired from the diplomatic service in 1945 and later served as a witness for the prosecution in the Japanese war crimes trials. He died at Karuizawa April 7, 1954.
Kurusu is remembered now as an envoy who tried to negotiate peace and understanding with the United States while the Japanese government under Hideki Tojo was secretly preparing the attack on Pearl Harbor. As Imperial Japan's ambassador to Germany from 1939 to November 1941, he signed the Tripartite Pact along with the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany.
During his six-year service in Chicago, Kurusu married Alice Jay Little. He had three children, a son Ryō, and a daughter Jaye were both born in the United States; another daughter, Teruko Pia, was born in Italy in 1926. Both daughters married Americans and moved back to the United States. The only son, Captain Ryo Kurusu was killed in a freak accident in 1945. After Saburo's death, Alice Kurusu adopted a girl.
