Saburō Kurusu

Saburō Kurusu
Kurusu in November 1941
Born	March 6, 1886 Yokohama, Japan
Died	7 April 1954(1954-04-07) (aged 68) Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation	Diplomat

Saburō Kurusu (来栖 三郎, Kurusu Saburō^?, March 6, 1886- April 7, 1954) was a Japanese career diplomat. He 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 and Fascist Italy on September 27, 1940.

Kurusu was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1883. He graduated from Tokyo Commercial College (now Hitotsubashi University) in 1909. The following year, he entered diplomatic service and, in 1914, first came to the United States as the Japanese Consul in Chicago. 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. Kurusu did not have any other son, although an American newspaper erroneously reported "his son, Captain Makoto "Norman" Kurusu, was killed in a dogfight over Chiba." After Saburo's death, Alice Kurusu adopted a girl.

Early foreign service experience included posts in Chile, Italy, Germany and Peru. As Japanese Consul in Lima, Peru in 1930, he sought to defuse anti-Japanese violence by promoting Japanese immigrant settlements in the rural highlands rather than in urban Lima. Kurusu was promoted to director of the Foreign Office Commerce Bureau to negotiate trade agreements. In 1937, he was made ambassador to Belgium, and two years later the ambassador to Germany. On September 27, 1940, Kurusu signed the Tripartite Pact in Berlin on behalf of the Japanese Empire, entering into a 10-year military and economic treaty between Germany, Italy and Japan.