Remembering Sam Hunt

(Letter)

“Sam Hunt 1946–2006” (WV No. 873, 7 July) detailed the political contributions of our longtime cadre, who died on June 2. Below is an excerpt from a reminiscence of Sam by a comrade who worked with him in Japan.

2 July 2006

Dear comrades:

Sam, a coworker of his who became a good sympathizer and I went to Tama Cemetery, to see Sorge and Ozaki’s graves. [Soviet spies Richard Sorge and Ozaki Hotsumi were executed by the Japanese government in 1944.] We found Sorge’s gravesite first, cleaned it, placed our flowers and then started pouring the vodka. After a while we went to find Ozaki’s grave, and when we arrived we were surprised to see a whole entourage of people. This is when we first met Ozaki Hotsuki, Hotsumi’s younger brother. Sam, his coworker and myself were not proficient in Japanese, but Sam immediately understood the import of this intersection: how would we communicate our message on why we were there? So he grabbed a man and said, “Please translate for me.” The man turned out to be a professor of Japanese at the University of Hawaii, and that is how we were able to say in Japanese, “The ICL and Spartacist Group Japan came here to honor Richard Sorge and Ozaki Hotsumi as heroic defenders of the October Revolution and the Soviet Union.” Thereafter, each November, we would join Ozaki Hotsuki, his daughter and others to honor their memory until 1998. Hotsuki died in 1999 and his circle disbanded.

Communist Greetings,
D.R.