He was the first American to be convicted of espionage after World War I. Thompson had been a Maryland farm boy who served one cruise with the Navy; however in the summer of 1934 he was jobless, making him a good target for recruiting.
Through this and other methods, he was able to sell engineering, gunnery, and tactical information about the Pacific Fleet that was mainly based in nearby San Diego at that time.
In reviewing one intercepted message, the cryptanalyst Agnes Meyer Driscoll had marked a section containing the word To-mi-mu-ra (とみむら).
He told his story while drunk to Willard James Turrentine, an unemployed native of St. Louis who shared his Long Beach apartment because he wanted to expand his spy business.
[5] Author Alan Hynd wrote about the Miyazaki-Harry Thomas Thompson case in his 1943 book, Betrayal From the East: The Inside Story of Japanese Spies in America.
Captain Ellis M. Zacharias also wrote a slightly different version of the Thompson spy case in his book Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer.