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

Douglas Wada and his friends head out to fish Diamond Head Bay, abandoning their normal fishing spot in Pearl Harbor after finding their bait cache gone.

On deck the USS Helm at 8:00 am, Lieutenant Commander Chester Carroll and his 13-year-old son hear the buzz of approaching aircraft. One bombs a nearby airfield, and Carroll orders a counterattack. The USS Helm, after a brief delay, returns fire on Japanese planes. His gunners take out a plane, but he quickly realizes the planes are not attacking his ship, but the harbor itself. Carroll escapes the harbor and takes aim at a small sub stuck in the reef.

Their gyrocompass broken, the two Japanese seamen in the sub know they are doomed. They are not destroyed, but are cut off from the harbor and on the hunt for another target.

Shivers is at home when he gets the call informing him that Japan has attacked the harbor. He orders his wife to keep their Japanese exchange student Sue with her at all times, and leaves.

Takeo Yoshikawa watches the smoke rise from the harbor and knows the attack has finally come. On the radio, the announcer delivers a coded message: “Eat wind, rain,” meaning Japan has initiated war with the US (116). Consul General Kita and Takeo Yoshikawa burn code books and vital secrets as police sirens approach the consulate, the sounds of mortars and aircraft nearby. Before they are all arrested, they are unable to burn documents in the safe relating to Otto Kuehn.

Douglas Wada rushes from the beach and is stopped by a police car; the officer informs him that someone is looking for Wada.

Lieutenant Commander Takashige Egusa’s dive-bomber unit is headed for the USS New Orleans. He misses, as do most. They are not devastating the fleet, as they had hoped. Admiral Nagumo has not attacked the infrastructure around the Harbor, only the planes and battleships, and the US Navy will be able to recover quickly. In total, 18 American ships have sunk. Two thousand four hundred and three Americans die in the attack, with another 1,143 wounded. Admiral Nagumo dispatches word that the attack was a success.

At home Wada learns that people are searching for him, and he dons his uniform before rushing to the office, where Mayfield says they will soon have plenty to keep him busy.

Gero Iwai, Army intelligence, is present as SAC Shivers finalizes a 400+ list of Japanese in Hawaii to detain. Martial law has been declared, and General Short has the authority to begin arresting people. In DC, Roosevelt signs Proclamation 2525, allowing for the arrest of any and all Japanese living in the US. The detainees are held in an immigration building.

Hawaii is on edge, and Wada is worried his heritage will make him a target as citizens and soldiers act more out of fear than reason. Ted Emanuel asks if Wada wants to survey the damage, and Wada agrees. At the wharf, soldiers open fire on them and they flee, returning to the offices at the Alexander Young Hotel.

Soldiers respond to reports of a strange item in the surf on the beach. They find a naked and freezing mini submarine commander who becomes the first American-held prisoner of WWII.

Lt. Col. Thomas Green moves into Iolani Palace after martial law is declared in Hawaii, and he listens to Roosevelt’s address. Japan attacked Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands, Midway Island, and the Wake Islands on December 7 and 8, and Roosevelt asks Congress to declare war with Japan. In the palace, Green thinks of how martial law will play out in Hawaii, including press censorship, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the seizure of medical and first-response facilities. Amid the arrestees are Otto Kuehn and his family of spies.

The prisoner from the beach is brought to the hotel, where Wada and Iwai feel little pity for him. They are asked to interrogate the prisoner and are ordered to do it correctly because it is the first American interrogation of the war. They learn that the man’s gyrocompass broke, and he is bathed in shame. They further learn that the attack was meant to do much more than it achieved and that the mini sub was not scuttled properly. They find the sub and, with it, maps and updated charts that reveal how accurate and extensive the spy network in the Japanese consulate was.

Wada and Iwai are tasked with taping together the ripped and partially burnt papers from the Japanese consulate, which prove mostly fruitless.

Although Wada’s father was not arrested, the Shinto reverend who married Wada was. Wada sits in a parked car outside his father’s shrine.

The deciphers cables finally arrive on Mayfield’s desk and reveal Consul General Kita’s pre-attack messages to the Japanese fleet. They had the intel three days before the attack, but not the means to get it deciphered or translated quickly enough. There is also evidence of the Nazi spy ring, which they quickly realize is Kuehn’s family.

Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, visits Hawaii and reports that fifth-column work made the attack possible. The general attitude toward Japanese in the area sours. While more Issei are arrested, the Nisei respond with acts of America loyalty.

Lt. General Delos Emmons replaces General Short; Emmons now has complete control of Hawaii under martial law. He assesses the situation and concludes that the islands are not awash in seditious actors; he promises not to act against the Japanese American population.

Takeo Yoshikawa believes his cover is holding until he, Seki, Okuda, and consul-general Kita are taken by ship toward the American mainland.

Investigators grill Kimie Doue, a Nisei working as a secretary in the Japanese consulate. She is a wealth of intel, especially on Takeo Yoshikawa and Kuehn. She also tells them about a driver who ferries Yoshikawa around Oahu.

Agents interrogate Kotoshirodo, Yoshikawa’s driver, and conclude that it is Yoshikawa who, under the name Tadashi Morimura, mapped the Naval defenses for the Japanese attack. With the spies and their network now documented and understood, Hoover asks Roosevelt what to do with the perpetrators.

The US military will no longer allows Japanese Americans (Nisei) to participate in the military. Wada and Iwai believe they will be fired. Wada confronts Mayfield, who has him meet with Lt. Cecil Coggins, a talented obstetrician who has been recruiting his own network of Nisei informants for the Navy. Coggins helps draft a report on Nisei loyalty, which reaches Emmons’s and Nimitz’s desks.

In California, Ken Ringle can see the tides of popular opinion turning against the Japanese in America and hopes his work on Nisei loyalty will help change that. His report suggests there are less than 300 Japanese Americans who actually wish the US harm and that they represent no greater risk than German Americans. The Ringle report, in tandem with Shivers’s reports from Hawaii convince J. Edgar Hoover that the “Japanese Problem” has been overblown. In February, Roosevelt sides against Hoover, Shivers, and Ringle, issuing Executive Order 9066, allowing for detention without a hearing for any citizen. By March, Japanese Americans near military zones in California are rounded up.

Two Japanese sea planes refuel mid-ocean before continuing on to Oahu to bomb what’s left of Pearl Harbor on a morale-destroying mission. The seaplanes drop their payloads in the wrong place, and there is no impact except that Admiral Nimitz mines the shoals where the planes refueled. Station Hypo reveals that their intel on the shoals was correct, and they soon realize the next attack will come at Midway.

Yoshikawa is being housed at Triangle T Guest House in remote Arizona. He reveals little in interrogations and enjoys kind treatment from the Americans, who play tennis and baseball with their captives. Consul general Kita asks Yoshikawa to take the blame for everything himself, but Yoshikawa will not.

Milton Eisenhower, brother to Dwight Eisenhower, is tasked with heading the War Relocation Authority (WRA) in California. His mandate is to detain all Japanese and hold them until the conclusion of the war. Eisenhower asks Ringle for help, and he drafts a report on how to incarcerate the population with the intent of reintegrating them and possibly enlisting many. He then leaks his report to the press.

General John DeWitt orders the detention of every Japanese American and resident on the West Coast within 48 hours. One arrest revealed several members of the Black Dragon Society, an organized crime group largely seen as anti-American. The media devours this detail, sensationalizing it. Of the 120,000, some 70,000 are American citizens.

In Hawaii, the response is tempered and Emmons does not undertake mass arrests. Ringle, Shivers, and others are respected, and their reports have sway. Many are arrested and sent to camps in the mainland, but Nisei volunteerism soars regardless. Less than 1% of the Japanese population of Hawaii is detained. Japanese bank assets are taken, including Douglas Wada’s father’s savings.

Wada learns that an all-Nisei unit is being created in the form of the 100th Infantry. They are shipped to California, then on to training in Wisconsin in high morale.

On June 4, the US Navy took revenge for Pearl Harbor on the Japanese fleet as it positioned to attack Midway. Communications that were captured, deciphered and translated revealed the Japanese attack. The Japanese prisoners from the consulate in Hawaii are being returned in a prisoner exchange aboard a mercy ship, and Yoshikawa is eager to get home. In exchange, the Allies get 1,554 civilians from Asia. The spies who made possible the attack on Pearl Harbor have been set free.