Masahide Kanayama

Kanayama worked under Ambassador Ken Harada at the Vatican in 1942-1945.

In his position at the Vatican, he tried to obtain an early Japanese surrender in World War II in the spring of 1945 (which would have avoided the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) by requesting Papal mediation between the US and Japanese governments.,[1][2] After World War II, he succeeded Harada as Minister Chargé d'Affairs at the Vatican, remaining there until 1952.

Afterwards, he was appointed for four years as Director general of the European Oceanic Bureau at the Foreign Office.

[4] In the years from 1963 to 1972, he was successively Japanese Ambassador to Chile, Poland and South Korea.,[5][6] He retired in 1972, but remained active in several international research and cultural organizations.

Nine months after his death in 1997, he was buried in a Catholic cemetery near Seoul.