Amleto Vespa

Amleto Vespa (1888-c.1941) was a mercenary and secret agent of Italian origin, who worked in Manchuria from 1922 to 1940, first for a local warlord, and then for the Empire of Japan. A self-proclaimed fascist and an admirer of Benito Mussolini, Vespa had no admiration for the Japanese administration of Manchukuo, which he described with considerable venom in a book published in 1938.

Biography

Vespa was born in the town of L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy into a poor farming family. Little is known of his early life, aside from what he subsequently wrote in his autobiography, in which he claims to have left the Italian countryside to fight in the Mexican Revolution against Emiliano Zapata, been involved in various political intrigues in Eastern Europe and to have married a Polish Countess. He also claimed to have traveled extensively in the United States, Australia, French Indochina and in Mongolia. He had two children, Italo a boy and Ginevra, a girl. After his disappearance they moved to the United States, but their whereabouts are unknown.