Monthly Archives: January 2025

From Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. (Harper Select, 2023), Kindle pp. 31-33:

FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Shivers arrives in Honolulu with a full plate and a small staff. His job is enormous: to stand up the first Honolulu FBI office and use it to assess the loyalty of 160,000 people: 125,000 American citizens of Japanese origin and 35,000 Japanese citizens. Yet his office at the Dillingham is staffed with just two agents and a stenographer.

SAC Shivers is a serious man with a solid pedigree. He served as an Army sergeant in the ordnance supply of artillery during the Great War. He only graduated high school, but the FBI accepted him in 1923, after which he rose through the ranks. During the 1930s, Shivers served as a special agent in charge of various stations around the country, gaining the ear of director J. Edgar Hoover along the way by targeting bootlegger gangs and the Ku Klux Klan.

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The G-man’s mission starts with cleaning up the “pickup lists” of those to be arrested in the event of war. The idea of mass detentions inside the United States has been part of military planning for decades; establishing “concentration camps” for those arrested has been specifically mentioned in Roosevelt administration documents since at least 1937.

The FBI has a list of 125 suspects on their list. The Army has given the names of more than two hundred, and there’s nearly as many on the list generated by the Office of Naval Intelligence, curated by naval reservists Lieutenant William Stephenson and Lieutenant Commander Cecil Coggins, an obstetrician with a budding talent for spycraft.

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Finding sedition in Honolulu isn’t easy. Japanese ultranationalists are even more rare in Hawaii than the mainland, favored only by a slender percentage of Issei immigrants. But it doesn’t take actual disloyal behavior to land on the official Navy suspect list.

The FBI has developed a tool for its agents to classify local intelligence threats. They call it an “evaluative matrix,” and it ranks suspect organizations into three categories: A, B and “Semi–Official and Subversive Japanese firms in the United States.” According to the Navy, A-designated organizations “constitute an actual threat to the internal security of the United States. All officers and members, whether full or associate, of these organizations should be given serious consideration before employment in any position of confidence or trust in this country.” Class A threats are to be detained immediately upon the outbreak of war. Class B threats are judged by their potential to do harm. They haven’t crossed any lines, but if they did, their community influence could cause major havoc. The final C designation is reserved for Japanese commercial interests with possible ties to the Japanese government, like steamship companies, banks and newspapers.

From Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr. (Harper Select, 2023), Kindle pp. 37-39:

In 1938, Douglas Wada became the first American of Japanese ancestry (or “AJA,” as they came to be known in Hawaii) to serve as an ONI agent. He was commissioned by the Navy at the same time, commissioned (to his happy surprise) as a lieutenant. That also makes him the first AJA to be commissioned as a US naval officer. His achievements are known by nearly no one, but the pressure of it is a daily reality.

The 14th DIO is changing, getting more serious as diplomatic relations with Japan steadily deteriorate. Some of the faces are different too: Walter Kilpatrick left the 14th District Intelligence Office in 1938, replaced by Capt. W. H. Hart Jr. But Ringle is still here, and that means Wada has a steadfast champion.

Wada hoped that the small-time work would ease when he became an agent, but he’s quickly tasked with working with the military policemen of the Shore Patrol. The pressing need is for someone, anyone, in the Navy to help collect statements from Japanese-speaking storeowners who have run afoul of drunken sailors.

However, he’s also afforded an opportunity to conduct fieldwork. He has a cover established as a customs inspector, tasked with scouring passenger luggage for incriminating documents about the US Navy. He’s happy to see a fellow Nisei in the office, Noboru “Hunchy” Murakami. The pair board passenger ships from the Nippon Yusen Kaisha and comb through the suitcases and parcels when the passengers can’t watch. They use passenger lists to target some luggage for special scrutiny, including those who have lived in Japan for extended periods of time. People like Douglas Wada. Murakami and Wada quickly become friends and confidants. Besides Murakami, the other inspectors think Wada reports to the local police, not the Navy.

In September 1939, news comes to the Shore Patrol of an impending visit to Honolulu by the Japanese Navy, a stopover on the way to California and the first one in two years. It’s to be stocked with top-tier officials, part of a diplomatic effort to ease tensions between the nations even as war rages in Europe and China. The city’s United Japanese Society is taking the lead on demonstrating some local hospitable goodwill, holding planning meetings months in advance at the city’s chamber of commerce.

This trip also seems to be a good way for the Imperial Navy to look at the most westward parts of America, including its military facilities in Hawaii. Feeling that turnabout is fair play, Wada has been tasked with taking a look at the Japanese fleet on the quiet behalf of Naval Intelligence, using his established Shore Patrol cover.

“Wada!” calls Shore Patrol Capt. George Dickey. Wada’s here to serve as translator when he speaks with the officers in command of the Japanese ships, who even now are approaching like walking statues. This is the Shore Patrol’s first courtesy call with the head of this flotilla, Vice Admiral Yurio Samamoto, who arrives with the Yakumo’s captain, Shigeaki Yamasaki.

Wada fixes his face with respectful seriousness before he turns away from the railing. The Japanese officers and Shore Patrol exchange polite bows before Dickey delivers his greeting, which Wada dutifully translates. “Welcome to Honolulu, sir. I understand you have a full itinerary, but should anything unexpected come up, please do not hesitate to contact us. In the meantime, we can help orient you to the island’s landmarks, several of which we can see from here . . .”

The Japanese ships stay in Oahu for six days, filling Wada’s schedule with receptions, tours, speeches and meetings. At least once, Wada comes back to the Shore Patrol office drunk enough for officers there to notice.

“I just had a few,” he explains lamely.

After the six days are over and the ships are headed for Hilo, Wada reads a positive editorial about the Japanese military visit in Nippu Jiji. “Training cruises are important in many ways. They afford an opportunity for the Japanese navy men to extend consolation to Japanese abroad. They enable the cadets to gain knowledge of the places they visit and make friends, all of which gives them better understanding of the countries visited when they become officers of the navy.

“Such fleet diplomacy will go a long way toward promoting better relations between Japan the United States.”