The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War

by Marcia Mitchell

  All of Katharine’s classes had been taught in Chinese. With her transfer to Morrison Academy, a nearby Christian school originally intended for the children of American missionaries serving in Taiwan, she would be taught in English. Scholastic competition was not nearly so severe at Morrison, but there were certain drawbacks. Among them, the fact that, for the most part, Katharine’s classmates were not Chinese. She was not the only child with blonde hair, light skin, and eyes that were not almond-shaped.

  A more troubling drawback, at least for Katharine’s parents, was the academy’s ultra-conservative Christian environment. At Morrison, there was no school prom, as dancing was not allowed; instead there was a graduation banquet. The school’s library was strictly limited to books that fitted its evangelical mission. Harry Potter, with his witches and magic, would never have made it over the threshold.

  There were positive aspects about the Morrison experience. The academy was small, with a student enrolment of approximately four hundred, and offered a strong programme of extracurricular activities. Katharine was involved in both sports and drama, and she sang in the Morrison choir. She studied piano but not very seriously, although her parents bought a piano for her.

  ‘Katharine got a pretty strong indoctrination in the Christian ethic at Morrison,’ her father says. But the extreme nature of the school’s theological philosophy led to the Harwoods finding it necessary to ‘counter somewhat’ its narrow teachings. They were not alone in this regard. Other parents, even some who were missionaries, were concerned about achieving a philosophical balance in their children’s education.

  There is no question that the family’s spiritual experience was decidedly mixed. Katharine attended Sunday school ‘when she was seven, eight, nine’, according to her father, and ‘there was a young people’s Christian fellowship’ to which she belonged as a teenager. ‘The children would meet on Saturday evenings and go up the hill and eat ice cream.’ Katharine, amused, recalls her relationship to the church and its activities as having been somewhat more substantial than ice cream on a hilltop.

  ‘Taiwan is a twenty-four-hour society, and what my dad remembers about ice cream on the hillside were the midnight trips my church friends and I sometimes took up to the student village above the campus to eat slush ices with red bean paste and tapioca-type balls. It was great fun, all part of a lovely childhood.

  ‘I remember being confirmed in Taiwan. I can’t remember if I was baptized at the same time, or whether that was done as a child. But when I was about thirteen, I decided to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church where my mum was a lay reader. It has a Chinese-speaking, and an English-speaking, congregation. My mum gave me a gold cross that her mum had given her at confirmation. When I was really little, I used to go up the hill to Sunday School with my friends, and, when I was a bit older, to the teens’ gatherings. It was more of a social thing, really, but we did discuss moral issues and Christian behaviour.

  ‘Every year I was involved in some kind of play or production at Christmas. One year, for the teenage Sunday School performance, we did The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was the wicked witch because of my pale skin and blonde hair. Mum had a traditional Chinese qi pao dress with the high mandarin collar, white, with a black pattern through it. I wore that as a witch.

  ‘My best friend from childhood, a girl who lived just down the road from us at the Tunghai campus, is now considering being ordained. And on the campus of the university, a Christian institution, there is a famous chapel designed to look like praying hands. I guess you could say I was surrounded by people of faith; but my parents, typical liberal intellectuals, always would challenge certain assumptions.

  ‘In a way, I did as well. Morrison’s theology didn’t really sit well with me, though, and after a couple of years there, I became more cynical toward their form of indoctrination.’

  For a time, Paul Harwood attempted to return to his Christian roots, but when it came to the point of complying with the vicar’s wishes that he be confirmed, Paul baulked.

  Katharine speaks from a rather remarkable objectivity:

  ‘He’s a very thoughtful person, my dad. He was brought up in a Church of England background, but he doesn’t really believe in institutionalized religion. He used to spend quite a lot of time meditating and claims he is a Taoist, although he can be quite a depressive Taoist. He talks about how the world is getting worse and everything is going down the tubes, how people must get their act together or civilization as we know it won’t survive. A typical kind of gloomy academic.

  ‘My mum would bring my dad down to earth again. She is more of a realist in some respects. I don’t know if I’m more like my dad or my mum. I think I’ve got a bit of both. I would class my mum as a lazy intellectual. She’s not nearly so obsessed by some of the things my dad is. But she would hold her own in discussions with him and I think they counterbalanced each other very well.’

  While Katharine thinks of her early childhood and teenage years as ‘ordinary’ and ‘conventional’, it is reasonable to assume that few would agree with her description of what is clearly a rather exotic youth. Living on a small Asian island, becoming bilingual at an age when most children are enchanted with discovering the alphabet, moving alone to a school continents away, and having parents who continually challenge their children’s intellectual and moral development, is not all that usual. Neither is the deeply appreciated and fondly remembered relationship she had with Jan and Paul Harwood.

  ‘Looking back at that period, I think our family was quite conventional in a sort of old-fashioned sense, where we would always sit down together for dinner every evening. We would have good, serious conversations, even when we were young teenagers sitting around the table with our parents. Mike and I were never allowed just to state an opinion; we had to provide reasons for our thinking. Moral considerations were important. We were challenged. But still it was very ordinary, very conventional, yet quite privileged in a sense.

  ‘We were so fortunate. My parents’ working hours averaged about fifteen to twenty hours a week in class, plus whatever preparation time was required at home. That meant they spent a lot of time with us when we were growing up. We were never latchkey kids. There always was somebody at home with us, someone willing to listen, someone who cared.

  ‘My mum and I were close. But there were times when I was a teenager when we would bicker, and I would talk back and be generally rude. And I have this really clear memory of when it began, when I was about thirteen and being a really moody so-and-so, snapping and saying, “I hate you,” and that sort of thing. I felt really bad about what I had done, and so that night I sat in bed and wrote a letter to my mum saying, “I’m really sorry I’ve been so awful. I don’t know what’s going on, but I just can’t seem to control myself.”

  ‘I slipped the note under the door, and when I woke up the next morning there was a letter from my mum slipped under my bedroom door. It said, “It’s perfectly normal, you have hormones racing through your body and of course you’re going to be all uptight and confused and wondering what’s happening to you. But you know we can always talk about these things. Let’s be diplomatic and no more of this nonsense.” I still have the letter, stored away in a box of my belongings.

  ‘I have always confided in my mum in every stage of my growing-up process. I think our relationship, from the beginning, has made me strong.’

  By the time Katharine was a teenager finishing her schooling at Morrison, the Harwood family had lived in Taiwan for many years beyond the intended two when they moved from England. An only child, Paul felt guilty about not returning home. Jan had lost her parents years earlier but still had strong ties to England. Each summer the family returned to England for a holiday, and each year leaving Durham behind became more difficult for Katharine’s mother. Still, life was good in Taiwan, and both Paul and Jan were delighted with their teaching assignments and living arrangements.

  ‘I tried to justify our staying in Taiwan to my
mother-in-law,’ Jan says. ‘I recall saying, “Where in England could we be living where we didn’t need a car, where we could walk ten minutes to our classrooms, where the kids can go to school on safe, private roads?”’ Salaries were far from generous but provided for a comfortable lifestyle. ‘We had help four hours a day six days a week. There’s no way we could have domestic help like that in England on a teacher’s salary!’

  When she was sixteen, it was time for Katharine to leave Morrison and Taiwan for England and boarding school at Moira House in Eastbourne. Although Katharine was well into her teens, she was still nervous about leaving home. Filled with apprehension, she approached her new school life cautiously.

  ‘I was sixteen. It was very traumatic. My mum came back with me to England and we found a boarding school fairly close to my grandmother’s younger sister, who lives on the south coast. My mum bought me a duvet, teacup and saucer, and all the things that were necessary for my little room at school. And left me there! It was a huge shock, so different from Morrison, where nobody smoked cigarettes, or drank alcohol, and where dancing – and nearly everything – was forbidden.

  ‘So, I went from that, from an American missionary school, to a typical girls’ boarding school in the United Kingdom. Loads of girls were sneakily smoking in the toilets, and sneaking out drinking after lights-out at night. They were just obsessed with boys and having these conversations – I couldn’t believe it – about having sex! I was so shocked! Life there was a real eye-opener.

  ‘I kind of naturally migrated toward all the girls in the school who weren’t British, girls I felt more comfortable with. One was also from Taiwan, and there was a Japanese girl, two Korean girls, and a couple of girls from Hong Kong – just a mixed bag of Asian girls who became my closest friends. It took about a year for me to really feel settled in the school. I did, you know, have conversations with the English girls, but I felt much more comfortable and at home with my more conservative Asian friends.’

  Teachers at Katharine’s boarding school remember her as a good student, curious, responsive, and, one of them noted, willing to take a stand for something in which she believed. To complete her A levels, Katharine was required to take three subjects. She chose English literature and history. Her third choice was Chinese. Unfortunately, the school did not offer a Chinese course, but the examining board was willing to arrange tests for her if she would study for them privately. Her parents found a Chinese woman in the community who agreed to teach Katharine for a fee.

  When she left boarding school for university, the study of Oriental languages was an obvious choice. So was selecting the same university her mother had attended, St Mary’s College at Durham, where she completed a BA with honours in Chinese and Japanese.

  Donald Starr, her university department head, has said of Katharine, ‘She was very capable in Chinese and had an excellent cultural background because of her upbringing.’[1]

  Life on a university campus was much more comfortable from the outset for Katharine, having been indoctrinated into Western ways at boarding school. Her studies went well for her, and her extreme naïveté was replaced by a more worldly outlook on life. A university contemporary has been quoted as noting, ‘One felt that she had enjoyed a fairly cosseted existence on Taiwan, and Durham allowed her to spread her wings.’[2]

  ‘Even though I was so far away, my relationship with my mum stayed strong while I was at university. Like the first time I slept with my boyfriend. I phoned her and said, “Mum, I’ve done it.” She said, “I thought you were going to say something like that.”

  ‘Mum knew it was coming. I had called her midweek, and I usually called her on weekends from the university. I remember the conversation. I think it was a Wednesday. I said, “Is Daddy in the room?” and she said yes. So I said, “Just answer yes or no to my question. Should I go on the pill?” And she said, “Yes.”

  ‘I’ve never been afraid to go to her with anything, even if it was pretty embarrassing, like once I smoked a joint at a friend’s house and got completely paranoid. It did really horrible things to me; I thought the TV was plotting against me. Mum was here, so I phoned her and said, “Mum, can you come and get me? I just smoked a joint and it really messed me up.” She came straight away and said, “Oh, my God! You look green!”

  ‘A lot of my friends, when I would tell them this sort of thing, would say, “Oh, I would never have told my mum something like that! I would never have told her when I had sex the first time or smoked a joint or whatever.” And I would tell them, “But she’s really cool about everything!” Of course, their answer was, “We want your mum!”’

  When Katharine left university after graduating with an upper second-class degree, she applied for a teaching position in Japan through the Jet Programme, one popular with English-speaking university graduates from around the world. Katharine was accepted and thrilled at the prospect of returning to the Far East. Her teaching assignment was with middle-school children – quiet, shy teens eager to learn. The lifestyle and the work suited her.

  Katharine’s school was in a picturesque, remote mountainous village in the Hiroshima prefecture, miles away from the city essentially cremated by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on an enemy. Life in her village was a dramatic change from anything she had experienced previously, and she found it as distant in feeling as the miles that separated it from Hiroshima.

  Katharine’s first visit to the restored city was emotionally disturbing.

  ‘It’s so moving. I don’t know what I expected of Hiroshima. It is a bustling modern city now, no different from any other, until you go to the Peace Memorial Park. One building was left intact, standing near ground zero. They haven’t done a thing to it, and it’s just an empty shell of a building. It has an arched dome, held up by metal rods. The steel is still standing, and a few bits of the brick, then the uprights. And, of course, there’s the museum. The images, picturing what had happened there – you just can’t get them out of your mind. Not ever. Being there has to have an impact on you. I thought of the children, like those I was teaching every day. Like those who died here.

  ‘There aren’t many people left alive in Japan now who are old enough to remember, but there are some. I met elders in our village who talked about how people would trek for miles into the mountains to try to escape from the radiation. Some were moved out of the city to recuperate in the countryside, where there was very little damage. Their memories are still vivid.’

  One is compelled to wonder whether Katharine’s experience at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park had a bearing on the decision she made the weekend following receipt of the Koza message, to ask her if those disturbing images influenced her attempt to stop a war.

  ‘I suppose they must have, although I never really thought about it in that way when I made my decision. I was thinking the build-up to the war was very hasty, and it was worrying – and wrong. And I was, in fact, concerned about bombs falling on innocent civilians, thinking there had to be a better way.’

  In the summer of 1999, Katharine left the village in Japan’s mountains to return to England. Her two-year teaching commitment had been a grand experience, but it was time now to explore new and, perhaps, more exciting career options. Ideally, she would find something that would utilize her excellent language skills.

  That something appeared unexpectedly in the form of a discreet advertisement for translators at GCHQ. Katharine knew next to nothing about the agency, the mysterious Government Communication Headquarters, which made the advertisement that much more enticing. The employment application process was lengthy, thorough, and involved proficiency testing in her area of linguistic concentration. While she plodded through the inevitable bureaucratic maze and seemingly endless red tape, Katharine worked at a variety of temporary assignments. Eventually, finally, she was notified of her acceptance.

  On 22 January 2001, Katharine Harwood became a British intelligence officer, her assignment translating Mandarin at GCHQ in Cheltenham. She wa
s twenty-six.

  By the time Katharine signed her employment agreement, with its Official Secrets Act provisions, her cultural being was a colourful, simmering synthesis of a somewhat tranquil West and a vibrant East. Its elements were a British heritage and schooling, Chinese life experience, American education at Morrison Academy, and later a Japanese experience that included the Peace Memorial Park. It made her the epitome of a ‘third-culture kid,’ a child who, in a sense, created her own culture, an admixture of that which she inherited and that to which she was exposed.

  Katharine’s way of speaking reflects this unique synthesis. The toddler who first went to Taiwan had a distinct British accent, even at three years. Her fluent Chinese, confidently spoken a remarkably short time after moving to Taiwan, was almost without foreign inflection. Later, her British accent vanished in the American environment at Morrison, only to return full strength soon after she began her studies at boarding school.

  With language goes thought, and it seems clear that coalescing and separating linguistic experiences have influenced her thinking over the years. They have helped create a personal code of life that is paradoxically diverse and focused.

  Within the psyche of the grown-up Katharine is an inviolable personal ethic, perhaps initially codified at Morrison, or perhaps earlier around the Harwood dinner table. Listed specifically in her mental book of rules are fairness and justice and truth – whether it’s telling Mum about illegal smoking or confessing high crime to Inspector Tintin. The self-protecting ‘white lie’ concerning her status at GCHQ following her arrest bothers her still. Overseeing the rule book is the conscience Katharine has called ‘a nuisance’.” As a result, she is ferociously honest.