Ghosts of Honolulu by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. (Historical Biography, 2023).
This non-fiction book details as much as is known about two men working secretly on opposing sides, leading up the attack on Pearl Harbor, during the attack itself and afterward.
Douglas Wada, a US citizen born in Hawaii to Japanese immigrants, became a counterintelligence agent–sometimes as a translator, other times actively hunting spies and/or potential traitors during World War II. He was the first (and for a long time the only) Japanese-American serving in that branch of the US navy. He and others soon assured themselves that the vast majority of Japanese and Japanese-Americans were no threat to US security, but the Japanese diplomats there were actively gathering info on the military bases, ships and other outposts in the future state.
Meanwhile, Takeo Yoshikawa was an ambitious young officer in the Japanese navy. Frustrated by a seemingly dead-ending career, he jumped at the chance to join his country’s consulate in Honolulu under an assumed name and become the most effective spy Japan had in those strategic islands.
The two never met, and Yoshikawa’s true name and identity came to light only years after the war. Yet the cat and mouse games these two and others played before, during and after Pearl Harbor had fateful consequences for both nations and for world history.
Told in straightforward and workmanlike prose, this well-researched volume is a true-life and honest effort that allows the natural drama inherent in these two’s personal histories to shine through with none of the James Bond style nonsense less careful writers might have imposed on the narrative.
The authors convey each man’s motives, personalities and actions with no frills, yet make the parallel stories fascinating reading. The reader will learn a great deal that isn’t shown (or at least isn’t emphasized) in typical histories of the war. The authors don’t gloss over the racist panic that gripped most of America, leading to the shameful mass-imprisonment of thousands of men, women and children of Japanese heritage on the West Coast. It’s doubly interesting to see how Hawaii-based officials (including the many loyal Japanese-Americans there) managed to at least somewhat mitigate the worst of these wartime abuses in the islands.
Wada’s family life and the broader cultural/political and social tensions between the older immigrants and their American-born children are thoroughly explored.
Likewise, the very different circumstances Yoshikawa faced post-war–on the run from a possible war crimes trial and unable to see his wife or child for years at a time–are noted.
Wada’s post-war assignments included much time in the ruins of post-surrender Japan and provide still more in the way of a unique perspective on that uncertain and dangerous period.
Finally, the authors detail how the counter-intelligence unit Wada was part of came to slowly evolve into the modern Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Yes, this is also an origin story for the NCIS of television fame.
Which brings us to the co-authors of this very volume.
Leon Carroll, Jr. is a retired Marine Corps officer who later put in 20 years as a Special Agent of the NCIS. Then he became the technical advisor for the popular and long-running TV drama of the same name. He met and became friends with one of the lead actors of NCIS. Yes, his co-author is THAT Mark Harmon.
Sharing an interest in the historical background of the organization they both contributed so much time to serving or dramatizing, they’ve teamed up for a book that is at once controlled, thoughtful and profoundly interesting.
jimleeauthor 