Hawaii’s Cloak-and-Dagger Lore

by J.P. Atwell, Island Intelligencer

Who knew that studying espionage history is a thing? One can even make a career of it, as have a number of former spies, authors, and PhDs. Believe it or not, there is even a Society for Intelligence History (www.intelligencehistory.org); I am a member.

This may be nothing new to watchers of the popular Revolutionary War series TURN! (AMC, 2014), about our nationʻs first spooks and covert action operators, based on historian Alexander Rose's book Washington's Spies (2007), or those who’ve seen Amazon ads for historian Rose Mary Sheldonʻs work on espionage in the Bible and the Roman Empire. What about cloak-and-dagger lore in Hawaii, though? Frankly, from the WWII era alone, there’s enough to fill an Aston Martin DB5.

For instance, you may be surprised to learn that, in 1939, Hilo-born UH professor Shigeo Yoshida was an FBI contact as part of the counterespionage efforts of Robert Shivers, the first Honolulu Field Office Special Agent in Charge. When you next visit Oahu, you can sip genmaicha at the teahouse in Alewa Heights where famous undercover Japanese naval intelligence officer Takeo Yoshikawa sat for hours observing Pearl Harbor prior to the 07 December 1941 attack to fine tune Imperial Japan's pilots’ bombing runs. You can stroll down Kama Lane and see the childhood home of spycatcher and McKinley High School graduate Douglas Wada, the first Japanese American to serve in U.S. naval intelligence. Over on Nuuanu Avenue, you can peek into the Japanese consulate where Hirohito’s spies worked under diplomatic cover. (Did you know that Tokyo even relied on a North-Shore-home-owning Nazi spy to launder money and send signals, or that the Honolulu Police Department had an espionage bureau in those days?) Crazy, right?

The latest retelling of these stories, the New York Times Best Seller Ghosts of Honolulu (November 2023, Harper’s Select), was written by Mark Harmon, better known as “Gibbs” on the television show NCIS, and Leon Carroll, Jr., a real former NCIS Special Agent who consulted for the show. The foreign and domestic locations where the book’s story unfolds, and two of the federal entities featured in the work, played a role in my 23-year Pacific-focused intelligence career, so how’s about a quick review?

Ghosts is a short, easy, entertaining read, a perfect way to pass the time while swinging in your backyard hammock, during a short getaway, or out on the beach. A good layman’s level introduction to WWII-era intelligence activity in the U.S, it would make a good gift for war, history, and spy buffs. Residents of Hawaii will appreciate the work’s frequent references to familiars—papio fishing, prominence of baseball and kendo, Diamond Head, Iolani Palace, Shinto shrines, etc.

Spycraft permeates the story (elicitation, aliases, cover, signaling, covert finance), as does human visual surveillance of ship movements from fixed observation posts—a Japanese consular officer’s home overlooking Lahaina roads in Maui and an observant Pearl City shoreline shave ice vendor are two examples.

The decryption of intercepted Japanese military and diplomatic traffic also plays a prominent role as we learn about Station HYPO at Pearl Harbor and the work of U.S. cryptanalysts and cryptographers. Included are accounts of Office of Naval Intelligence and FBI taps on the Japanese consulate’s phones and compromise of its diplomatic cable system. The consulate’s emergency document destruction procedures will resonate with readers who recall the news of smoke plumes over more recently shuttered spy-ridden consulates—Russia (2017, San Francisco) and China (2020, Houston).

The work frequently cites Military Intelligence Service Veterans Club of Hawaii interviews, but also draws from congressional hearings, biographies, and declassified FBI and military holdings, as well as decrypted Japanese communications.

The narrative is divided into small, easy-to-digest blocks. It admits, on occasion, to dramatizing events for literary effect. It jumps from scenario to scenario, a story-telling technique common to television.

The handsomely jacketed, slim volume (some 250 pages of story text) has a generous font size, spacing, and margins and is written at a level that even a high-school student can enjoy. It is carried by the Hawaii State Public Library System in hardcopy, eBook, and eAudiobook forms and is available through online booksellers for less than $17 (hardcover) or $15 (paperback and eBook).

In short, if you enjoy reading this column, you will probably like Ghosts; I recommend it. Enjoy the book with a Mai Tai (shaken, not stirred).

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