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Major Hashida’s Notebook by C Collie

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Major Hashida’s Notebook is the gripping true story of a high-ranking Japanese intelligence officer who come to Australia on a spy mission, 11 months before the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack. He stated he was visiting as a tourist.

But the true purpose of Major Sei Hashida’s mission in early 1941 was pre-war intelligence gathering and reconnaissance on behalf of the Imperial Japanese General Staff. At the time, Japan still claimed neutrality, his objective was to assess Australia’s strategic readiness and industrial capacity for the upcoming Pacific War. He visited coastal fortifications surveying Australia’s defense strongholds and military infrastructure from Brisbane down around the coast to Darwin. Evaluating the domestic car industry and manufacturing sectors to gauge how quickly Australia could pivot to wartime production.

After his Australian visit, he travelled through Netherlands East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) to further probe allied vulnerabilities in the region. A task that was cut short when Dutch authorities arrested him in Batavia, seizing his sketch maps and notebooks.