Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor

Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese-American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor is a 2023 narrative nonfiction work by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll Jr. The book was a New York Times Bestseller and was lauded for its fast pace and extensive research. The story follows several lesser-known intelligence officers in the years before the Pearl Harbor attack, including a Japanese spy sent to Hawaii to monitor the US Naval Fleet and a Japanese American interpreter in the US Office of Naval Intelligence. The book explores what it meant to be an American of Japanese descent during the war with Japan, and how vast numbers in the Japanese American community rallied in support of the nation. Themes of identity, injustice, and the unstoppable tides of war dominate the book. Harmon and Carroll both worked on the TV show NCIS and trace the origins of the real-world NCIS to the Naval officers conducting counterespionage work ahead of and after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Their mission is to shed light on real heroes in NCIS history, beginning with WWII.

This guide refers to the 2023 Harper Select edition.

Content Warning: When appropriate in historical context and in support of the book’s larger themes, outdated derogatory language for Japanese Americans is used. The book covers a violent military attack on Pearl Harbor, and subsequent counterattacks in Japan, which contain some graphic details of war. Mentions of suicide, especially the ritualistic suicide of Japanese soldiers facing defeat, are frequent.

Summary

Part 1 explores how Douglas Wada, an American of Japanese ancestry who has spent time in Japan, comes to work in the Office of Naval Intelligence as a trusted interpreter and translator, and sometimes an undercover spy. Wada was born to traditional Issei parents, one of four siblings born in Hawaii after his parents’ immigration to the island of Oahu. He attended McKinley High, which was known as Tokyo High due to its mostly Japanese population. There, he becomes enamored with American culture, especially baseball and cars. Fearful that he is losing his roots, his parents send him to Japan, where he stays for five years until the drums of war force him to flee back to his native Hawaii, fearing military conscription despite having renounced his Japanese citizenship. Back in the US, he befriends an older classmate at the University of Hawaii named Ken Ringle. Ringle turns out to be a Navy commander on the hunt for trustworthy Americans of Japanese descent who can help the Navy’s intelligence service with translation work. After an extensive background check, Wada is offered a job. Meanwhile, in Japan, Takeo Yoshikawa, a disgruntled former ensign in the Imperial Army is recruited as a spy. He will be sent to the US to study the pacific fleet.

Part 2 follows Douglas Wada and those above him in the intelligence hierarchy in Hawaii as they tackle both the “Japanese Problem” (what to do with Japanese residents in the event of war with Japan) and a growing concern over spies working out of the Japanese consulate. FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Shivers sets up a field office to monitor the Japanese population and create detention lists, ultimately asking the Roosevelt administration for permission to arrest the entire Japanese consulate staff, which is denied. Lt. Cmdr. Ringle works to explain to the military that the majority of Hawaii’s locally born Japanese are loyal to America. Ringle is reassigned to California as Wada marries and starts a family. By this time, everyone in US intelligence knows that the Japanese consulate is harboring spies.

Part 3 explores how the intelligence services gleaned information on the Japanese spy efforts in Hawaii, including phone taps and monitoring consulate staff, and the various US players. These include Gero Iwai—an intelligence officer in the Army Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP) and the only other Japanese American in the arena with Douglas Wada—and Ted Emanuel, an ONI phone tapper. Captain Mayfield arrives to monitor the “Japanese Problem” and soon trusts Wada’s opinions of the population.

Meanwhile, Takeo Yoshikawa has spent the last three years learning fluent English, studying US Navy ships, and preparing for his assignment to Hawaii. His handler is the new consul general, Nagar Kita. They both arrive in 1941, and under the assumed name Tadashi Morimura, Yoshikawa begins to photograph and monitor the US fleet.

Part 4 begins with a dramatic and sensationalized account of a spy network in Los Angeles, which is brought down by Ringle and others. News of the network’s collapse turns public opinion against Japanese Americans, who are viewed increasingly as fifth columnists. Back in Hawaii, a respected attorney named Masai Marumoto helps rally Nisei (American-born Japanese) support for the US, but the list of people to detain grows and the military explores the idea of martial law in Hawaii in the event of war. Shivers and Mayfield get word that the Japanese are burning documents, a sure sign that war is coming. An intercepted report on an imminent attack goes to DC, but not to Pearl Harbor, and thus they are unprepared on the eve of December 7, 1941.

Meanwhile, Takeo Yoshikawa, with the help of two Japanese American drivers, is exploring Oahu, photographing the fleet and reporting on fleet movements. He helps recruit a Nazi spy named Otto Kuehn to assist in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Part 5 covers the Japanese surprise attack on Peal Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. The text begins with the captain onboard the Japanese aircraft carrier, then flashes to a submarine pilot and a bomber pilot. The attack is also depicted from the perspective of a US Naval battleship commander who counterattacks from outside the harbor. Within the day, the Japanese consulate staff are arrested, and their safe breached, revealing the Nazi spy. Douglas Wada was out fishing and only gets to the office in the afternoon. After this, Roosevelt officially declared war on Japan and over 400 Issei were detained. A submariner whose sub failed is washed ashore and Wada and Iwai interrogate him, learning key details about the attack plans.

Takeo Yoshikawa is arrested along with the rest of the spy network in the Japanese consulate, though he believes his cover is holding.

Part 6 reveals a shift in public sentiment as Americans sour on Japanese Americans in their midst. In Hawaii, this is less extreme than in California, where many in power push for full detention of the Japanese population. President Roosevelt issues an executive order allowing for the detention of any citizen, paving the way for full Japanese incarceration, and General John DeWitt orders the detention of all Japanese on the West Coast within 48 hours. In Hawaii, an all-Nisei unit is being formed, and it quickly swells with capable men willing to fight in Europe for their country.

Takeo Yoshikawa is deported to the mainland, where he is traded along with the other spies in a prisoner exchange. He is not charged or punished for his role in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Part 7 begins three years later, with Wada’s father depressed by the state of affairs in Hawaii’s Issei community. Meanwhile, Yoshikawa has married and produced a daughter in Tokyo, and they wait out the firebombing by the US. Yoshikawa resigned when he saw the folly of staying in the war, and then goes into hiding when the war looks lost. After returning to Japan, he worked with a unit that interrogated American prisoners of war, oftentimes violently. The Japanese officially surrender in August of 1945, and MacArthur subsequently begins the hunt for those responsible for war crimes, Yoshikawa believing he is among them. Meanwhile, Wada is tasked with deploying to Japan to help set up a unit of interrogators and translators to assist MacArthur’s International Military Tribunal effort.

Part 8 follows the war tribunal efforts in Japan, including Wada being forced to give up the search for Yoshikawa due to lack of evidence, and his work on various other interrogations. Back in Hawaii, Wada gets word that Yoshikawa’s driver, Kotoshirodo, has returned to the island. Like the spy network that made the attack on Pearl Harbor possible, Kotoshirodo is never punished, and although Wada files a report, nothing comes of it.

When the Prime Minister of Japan visits Pearl Harbor’s cemetery for the war dead, Wada acts as his interpreter. Seeing the Prime Minister’s visit in the news, Yoshikawa believes he can come out of hiding and immediately publishes his history with MacArthur’s historian. Like others in the spy ring, there are no repercussions for his wartime actions, either in the attack on Peal Harbor or his torture of US prisoners of war in Japan.

The book ends with an Epilogue featuring Wada’s father, who has created a traditional work of wooden art for the Shinto temple. He believes his family has a future in Hawaii.