Ralph the Spy

My paternal grandfather Ralph Mohney was born in 1897. I never met him, as he passed away in 1953—reportedly collapsing in the middle of a speech to a local civics organization in Loveland, Ohio. He served in World War I in a quartermaster unit stationed out of Paris, finishing the war as a sergeant. Tall, handsome, successful, and given to impish jokes as much as patriarchal command, he looms as a semi-legendary figure in the family to this day.

A lot of this legend comes from his time in Japan. Ralph moved his family (including my 1-year old father) to Tokyo in 1934 for a job as the “Far East Representative” for Singer Sewing Machine Company. They stayed for five years, until 1939, when the outbreak of global hostilities that would become World War II made it inadvisable for most Americans to remain. But during this time, Ralph traveled all over Japan and into China, Mongolia, and Siberia on business and occasional fishing trips.

We have many photos, documents, and mementos of this time. There are also many family stories of Ralph’s business prowess and personal bravado, from axing a hole in a factory floor so machinery could be raised up a level, to calmly enduring a robbery from a gang of bandits who stopped his train in Manchuria. We still have artwork, artifacts, and souvenirs he gathered too, from a number of prints to sculpture and woodworking, as well as a pair of geisha dolls with now-ancient human hair.

But one of the most tenuous family stories has Ralph gathering intelligence about Japan for the American government. He supposedly had his military records expunged before moving, as they would have been a red flag for Japanese authorities. This never made much sense, as who cares if he was a sergeant in a war half a world away, decades ago? From what we can tell, officially, in 1934 Ralph was a 1st lieutenant in the Pennsylvania National Guard. But one of my aunts claimed that, by then, he had been given the rank of lieutenant colonel for … reasons?

My father relates a story that Ralph was under orders to wander Tokyo’s harbor and waterfront to note details about the number and size of military vessels passing through or under construction, and somehow get this information back to the States. This seemed far-fetched until my cousin Sue found a letter from Ralph to his own father about forwarding his mail to Japan, where Ralph tells his father specifically not to forward his checks from the State Department.

Cousin Sue searched through government records trying to figure this out, but the only thing she got was a pretty thin response from the National Archives:

Not just purged, but heavily purged! Mysterious indeed. Why was he getting those checks? And who was asking the State Department about his whereabouts and welfare? We’ll likely never know if granddad was spying-as-a-service to create an extra revenue stream, or if his alleged spying made any difference in the war effort. He apparently made a little government dough off something while he was over there, so respect the grind regardless.