Category Archives: U.S.

by Joel | 12 January 2025 · 4:10 am

Returning Shinto Shrines in Hawaii

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. 209-211:

In December 1947, Hawaii’s Kotohira Shrine was finally allowed to reopen its doors, along with the other closed Buddhist and Shinto shrines. Rev. Isobe was still deported, so the religious services were nonexistent. As the shrine struggled to find its footing, the Justice Department swept in. In April 1948, citing the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, the government seized Kotohira’s assets. The Act cited was passed into law to confiscate German American property during World War I. Other shrines across Hawaii also had their assets seized, including the Izumo Taishakyo Mission, Hawaii Daijingu Temple and Wahiawa Daijingu.

Upon hearing of the move to liquidate the land, the Kotohira Jinsha solicits the services of the law firm Robertson, Castle & Anthony, which files suit on March 31, 1949, against the United States attorney general, the State of Hawaii and the Federal Alien Land Office. They’re challenging the apparent misuse of the Trading with the Enemy Act.

It’s the first such lawsuit initiated by a Japanese organization, and many eyes across Hawaii and the mainland are eagerly watching to see who wins.

…

Judge Joseph McLaughlin knows the value of a good legal fight. That’s why he refuses both the plaintiff and the defendant requests for a summary judgment in Kotohira Jinsha v. McGrath.

It would have been easier to just rule from the bench and save months of judicial headache. The shrine wants its property back, and the government just wants the whole matter ended. But some scraps are worth having in the open forum.

Several trial dates were set and changed, delayed by both sides’ trips to Japan to gather evidence. The trial began on March 27, paused as attorneys travelled to Japan and resumed on May 3. The trial ended May 17, after a “two-day argument upon the facts and the law,” as the court puts it.

Today, McLaughlin dismantles the government’s case one blow at a time. His ruling finds the government presented no justification for Kotohira Jinsha’s closure. “The evidence does not establish any Japanese governmental control, direct or indirect, of this plaintiff, nor any direct or indirect doctrinal or financial control by any state shrine in Japan,” he states in his decision. “Nor is there any evidence upon which I could possibly find or hold that the national interests of the United States required that this little insignificant shrine in Hawaii, with not more than five hundred members, should be deemed to be an economic, military, or even ideological threat to the United States.”

The judge includes a pocket history of how the imperial government used religion to foster war. “To accomplish the ends desired by the militarists of Japan, Shinto was distorted and state Shrine loyalty became a test of patriotism and the false doctrine of Japanese supremacy and eventual world domination was fostered, which led to its ultimate defeat in World War II.”

He reserves some editorial commentary to the shrine’s form of Shinto, finding an umbrella approach to spirituality confusing. “Plaintiff and its members did not even understand what it was they believed or why,” he writes in the court’s ruling. “I am not even prepared to find on this evidence that this plaintiff, operating in the United States of America, held beliefs which could be agreed to constitute a religion . . . Its members practiced by way of prayers and ceremonies a primitive mythology known as Shinto or Way of the Gods, with special attention to three gods, but whether the plaintiff’s tenets were the same as state Shintoism in Japan, or even Sect Shintoism in Japan, has not been established by either party.”

Aside from these sharp elbows under the robe, the ruling is an unambiguous victory, not just for the shrine but for the democratic system tested by governmental overreach. “We have not yet come to the point nor will we ever while ‘this Court sits’ where the government can take away a person’s property because it does not approve of what that person believes in or teaches by way of religion or philosophy of life,” Judge McLaughlin writes. “The First Amendment forbids.”

The property is returned to the shrine. Getting legal permission for its leader, Rev. Isobe, to return from Japan will take longer. But the legal victory paves the way for more lawsuits and more overturned seizures.

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Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, religion, U.S., war

by Joel | 11 January 2025 · 12:28 am

Extent of Martial Law, 1941

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. 126-129:

Lt. Col. Thomas Green, now the Hawaiian Department’s judge advocate, moves into Iolani Palace the day after Pearl Harbor. The man who wrote the rules governing the military administration is on hand to direct martial law operations.

At 12:30 P.M., Green switches on the radio to hear President Roosevelt address a joint session of Congress….

Green switches the radio off. The reality of his position washes over him like a wave—with the war official, the martial law over Hawaii is good as permanent. Now the Army must run everything. All civilians need to be registered and fingerprinted. Manpower is needed to censor the press, long-distance telephone calls and all civilian mail. The Army must police the ban on liquor sales. The list seems endless.

Emergency medical facilities fall under direct Army control. That includes the Japanese Charity Hospital—the military took control of over half of the hospital’s facilities in the aftermath of the attack. The day before, eight hundred volunteers from the United Japanese Society in Honolulu, freshly trained to respond to medical emergencies, went straight from their graduation ceremony to tend to the wounded.

Of all the challenges Green faces, creating a functioning justice system is the thorniest. It’s not easy to replace the civil system with military courts overnight. Easing his job is the lack of impediments: the writ of habeas corpus remains suspended, search warrants are unneeded and even written charges are optional. Being tried before a military court will be a shadow of the former process—presided over by a sole officer, who’ll be encouraged to sentence offenders the same day of their arrest.

Japanese Hawaiians are subject to special restrictions. For them, meeting in groups of more than ten is forbidden. Being outside during the nightly blackouts is cause for detention. The entire community is ordered to turn in all firearms, flashlights, portable radios and cameras.

At his home on Kalama Beach, Otto Kuehn hears the rap on his front door, blood frozen. The military police hustle him, Friedel, Hans Joachim and Susie into a truck. All are held in cells at the US Immigration Service’s detention center in Honolulu, held for the crime of being German in Hawaii.

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Filed under democracy, Germany, Hawai'i, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, U.S., war

by Joel | 10 January 2025 · 6:01 am

Honolulu Roundup Begins, 1941

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. 121-123:

Gero Iwai tries not to feel the other men’s eyes on him as they gather in a conference room on the second floor. Most know him, but some do not. They’re taking second looks at the only Japanese American in the room of Army intelligence agents and G-men.

SAC Shivers is in charge. Army officials order their four commanding generals (and nine corps commanders) to work with the FBI to round up all persons on their detention lists. Shivers, Bicknell and Honolulu police acting captain John Burns sit down with a card file and make the final determinations on who’s to be arrested. Personal friends and acquaintances are spared at the last moment, but the number still hovers at more than four hundred people.

The wheels to sanction these arrests have been spinning for hours. Just after the second wave, Lieutenant General Short stood in Iolani Palace to ask Hawaii territorial governor Joseph Poindexter to declare martial law. The governor called President Roosevelt, who advised him to follow the recommendation, which he did. By the rules drafted beforehand by Lt. Col. Thomas Green, this enables local military authorities to apprehend US citizens without cause.

Hoover telegrams his field offices: “Urgent. Immediately take into custody all Japanese who have been classified in the A, B, and C categories.”

At just before 2:00 P.M., Shivers is handed a letter from Short authorizing execution of the arrests. By then, President Roosevelt has signed Proclamation 2525, classifying all Japanese aliens living in the United States or any of its territories as “alien enemies” subject to apprehension. Some arrests had already begun, but under martial law, the final official authorization had to be given by the Army.

Across Honolulu, FBI men, military intelligence agents and local cops gather the detainees and deliver them to the Honolulu Immigration Station. There are almost five hundred residents in Hawaii, citizen and alien alike, placed under armed guard that day: 345 Japanese aliens, twenty-two Japanese American citizens, seventy-four German nationals, nineteen citizens of German ancestry, eleven Italian nationals and two citizens of Italian descent.

Nearly every consulate support worker is seized, including Richard Kotoshirodo and John Mikami. (Of more than two hundred seized, only these two are actually guilty of abetting espionage.) Also detained are the Japanese language school teachers and religious leaders from Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Members of mainstream Japanese civic societies are hustled into cars and ferried away from their families.

Those detained are brought under armed escort to an immigration building next to the territorial government officers near Honolulu Harbor. The prevailing feelings inside the cramped quarters are disbelief and shame. These are the leading merchants, priests, teachers and social organizers in Honolulu, now rounded up with fewer rights than those afforded criminals.

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Filed under democracy, Germany, Hawai'i, Italy, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, U.S., war

by Joel | 9 January 2025 · 4:26 am

Assessing AJA Loyalties, 1941

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. 75-76:

At his new post with the 11th District Intelligence Office in California, Cmdr. Kenneth Ringle sees a larger lesson being lost among the hysteria. The real espionage threat doesn’t come from the Japanese population but the Japanese Consulate.

Ringle comes to this conclusion after intense study. He spends his time away from the ONI’s 11th District headquarters, instead working by himself out of a small office in the San Pedro YMCA. His self-separation is telling. Instead of chasing spies, he’s spent his time in California gauging the actual threat posed by the Japanese population.

He’s focused his loyalty study among the vegetable farmers and tuna fishermen before moving on to businessmen. Over the course of his investigation, Ringle’s built a network of informants within the targeted community, particularly among members of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). He finds that Japanese militarists had tried to send over visitors and fake immigrants to rile the Japanese American community. He knows this because those loyal to the JACL report them.

Ringle’s time in California has validated what he found in Hawaii. He reports officially in 1941 that “better than 90 percent of the Nisei and 75 percent of the original immigrants are completely loyal to the United States.”

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Filed under Japan, labor, migration, military, nationalism, U.S., war

by Joel | 8 January 2025 · 6:06 am

Planning for Martial Law, 1940

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. 48-50:

US Army Colonel Thomas Green takes in the view from his new post at Fort Shafter, gazing at the Kalihi and Moanalua valleys. The Army base is still in Honolulu, but it’s located away from downtown, perched on a ridgeline rising from the coastal plain. … The landscape here is nearly alien—and so are many of the people.

Green freely admits to having no knowledge of, or experience with, Japanese culture, not to mention the subtleties of the Nisei and Issei. Yet he’s a key architect of their futures in Hawaii if there is war in the Pacific. He now works among the senior Army leaders in Hawaii; the headquarters of the Hawaiian Department moved here from the Alexander Young Hotel in June 1921.

Green is a freshly arrived lawyer, serving as a judge advocate. He graduated from Boston University in 1915; the next year he joined a cavalry unit of the Massachusetts National Guard and deployed to the Mexican border. Military life suited him, and he joined the regular Army….

In 1921, Green … was assigned to Washington, DC, where he worked in the office of the assistant secretary of war while earning a master’s degree from George Washington University Law School. After duties in New York City, he transferred to the judge advocate general’s department in 1925 and helped adjudicate claims from German detainees during the Great War.

Green arrived in Hawaii on a lawyer’s mission: the search for a definition of “martial law.” It’s a hazy term that’s barely protected by US Supreme Court precedent. In 1849, the Court upheld the legality of a military seizure of control in Luther v. Borden, but that case centered on a state’s declaration (Rhode Island) and managed to never explicitly enshrine “martial law” as a legal term. After the Civil War, the federal government used martial law quite a bit less than individual states. Military generals also invoke it more than presidents to handle imminent crises; for example, in 1920, General Francis Marshall imposed martial law in Lexington, Kentucky, to protect a courthouse from a riotous lynch mob.

Green is finding that the precedential gray area can be exploited. “Martial law is not a law nor are the limitations or the responsibilities well defined anywhere,” he writes. He’ll pass this understanding to General Charles Herron, one of four district Army commanders. The idea that martial law is whatever the Army wants it to be informs the service’s wartime plans for the Hawaiian population.

That includes Green’s other assignment: drafting a set of General Orders to be implemented if shooting starts with Japan. The framework Green envisions will consolidate all the functions of government under the sole authority of the commander of the Army in Honolulu. When fully written, they’ll become the plan for a military governor to usurp the civilian government in Hawaii.

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Filed under democracy, Hawai'i, Japan, migration, military, U.S., war

by Joel | 7 January 2025 · 6:00 am

Wiretapping the Japanese Consulate, 1941

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. 59-60:

Warrant Officer Theodore “Ted” Emanuel didn’t join the Navy to be an undercover operative. His job as chief ships clerk is dedicated to keeping internal records, reports and correspondence. But now that he’s assigned to the 14th Naval District Intelligence Office, Emanuel is capturing another nation’s communications in yet another undercover assignment.

Today he’s on the streets of Honolulu dressed as a telephone repairman, unhurriedly working on the junction box near 1742 Nuuanu Avenue—the Japanese Consulate. As SAC Shivers is working on getting clearance from his FBI bosses to bug the consulate phones, Captain Hart goes ahead and just does it.

The hardest part of setting up a wiretap is knowing the right circuits to target, but in this case that’s easy. After that, it’s as simple as scraping the insulation from a segment of the two wires required to make a telephone circuit. A receiver is attached to the exposed portions with metal clips and extension wires. This is known as “cutting in” on a telephone circuit and can be done at a streetside phone junction box.

Emanuel finishes up and casually drives away. The taps he’s placed cover half a dozen of the consulate’s telephone lines. It’s a tightly compartmentalized operation. The calls, about fifty a day, will be translated and summarized at the Young Hotel by Denzel Carr, the master linguist. When he doesn’t have the time, he’ll rely on Douglas Wada to handle the workload.

The US Navy has some ears inside the consulate. Now it’s up to the staff inside to make an indiscreet phone call.

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by Joel | 6 January 2025 · 5:40 am

U.S. Patriots at “Tokyo High”

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. 79-81:

People in Honolulu have called McKinley “Tokyo High” since the 1920s. The majority of Nisei in Hawaii attend the public school here; it’s more responsible for the Americanization of Japanese Hawaiians than any other institution besides the city’s movie theaters.

Today’s rally is the work of the Oahu Citizens Committee for Home Defense, a new group formed to promote patriotism on the island. The committee is led by Dr. Shunzo Sakamaki, a University of Hawaii teacher. He’s been at the forefront of the Japanese loyalty movement in Oahu, forming aid groups to assist dual citizens to renounce their Japanese citizenship and promoting student military service.

Behind the scenes, Sakamaki is one of six Nisei leaders who meets Shivers to advise the FBI on domestic security. He endorses incarceration of Shinto and Buddhist priests in the event of war, citing elements of emperor worship in their rituals. He himself is Christian, rare even among the Nisei in Hawaii.

“This meeting is not an end in itself,” Sakamaki tells the crowd. “It’s a step toward the goal of complete national unity, preparedness and security.” If war comes, he adds, “we will do everything we possibly can, giving our lives if necessary, in defense of those democratic principles for which other Americans have lived and fought and died.”

The outreach that produced this display at McKinley would not have been possible if not for Masaji Marumoto, whose relationship with Shivers has developed into a close personal one. Their families vacation together, and Shivers makes sure to invite other government officials to meet the charming attorney. Marumoto makes connections with the military intelligence apparatus amid dinners in Hawaii and bouts of bridge. One of the people he meets through Shivers is Col. Morrill Marston, the new assistant chief of staff for military intelligence for the Hawaiian Department.

The FBI man also gains connections. Marumoto has introduced him to a wide swath of his community, and it’s borne fruit in the form of patriotic citizen groups like the Oahu Citizens Committee for Home Defense, formed earlier this year. The committee’s seventy-five directors, men and women, meet with Shivers or other FBI agents once a week. One goal of the group, Shivers says, is “to prepare the Japanese community psychologically for their responsibilities toward this country in the event of war, and for the difficult position in which the war would place them.” The group’s publicly stated purpose is to “promote racial cooperation, unity and unswerving loyalty to the United States.” That message is certainly on display at the McKinley rally, with each speech and song.

…

News of the rally is carried across the islands and the nation. It’s a high point of Nisei patriotism in Hawaii, and those in the crowd act on the emotion it inspires. As a direct offshoot of the rally at McKinley, multiple small community advisory groups form to promote unity. A “Speak English” campaign begins, aimed at replacing Japanese characters on public signs and businesses.

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Filed under education, Hawai'i, migration, military, nationalism, religion, U.S., war

by Joel | 5 January 2025 · 5:44 am

Honolulu’s Police Contact Group, 1940

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. 81-82:

Most interestingly, more than a hundred Nisei youth volunteer to serve in the reserve force of the Honolulu Police Department. Shivers and his brain trust, Sakamaki and Marumoto among them, huddle to decide what to do with this opportunity.

Their best point of contact within the Honolulu Police Department is John Burns. He was a patrol and vice veteran when Chief William Gabrielson picked him to establish the department’s first Espionage Bureau in December 1940. He found the rumors of sabotage and subversion blown out of proportion, a vantage he shares with anyone who’ll listen. Now he can help demonstrate the loyalty of the population in an undeniable way.

Behind closed doors, the group of Nisei and lawmen decide to organize the volunteers under the umbrella of something called the Police Contact Group. The reserves can be trained and readied for wartime duties, like traffic control and disaster response. Burns even has the perfect go-between to help run the program: Yoshio Hasegawa. One of the few police officers of Japanese ancestry on the entire force, he’s worked his way up to lieutenant.

The committee is also a surveillance apparatus. By the time of the rally, the Honolulu Field Office has developed 172 confidential informers, seventy-three of whom are reporting on the activities of fellow Japanese residents. The Contact Group is to expand that network by reporting information on “Japan and her agents” via established contacts with beat cops in Japanese neighborhoods.

The third aspect of the Contact Group is a way to disseminate propaganda, or as Shivers puts it, information for “the protection of persons of their race from those who would prey on them due to their ignorance.” Having Nisei self-police their own community is effective for the FBI, but it also subjects the earlier generation of traditional Japanese Hawaiians to extreme pressure to conform. Socially, the Issei are being sacrificed to stave off something worse.

For the Contact Group and its supporters, there is a greater good being served. With each informant, public rally, closed-door meeting and newspaper article, Shivers is doing more than inoculating the populace from foreign influence. He’s building a case for Japanese loyalty to argue before the authorities in Washington, DC, including his boss and confidant, J. Edgar Hoover.

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by Joel | 4 January 2025 · 6:15 am

FBI Threat Assessments, Oahu, 1939

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.

…

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.

…

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.

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by Joel | 3 January 2025 · 6:52 am

First AJA as ONI Agent, 1938

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.”