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

by Mark Harmon

This true story covers the city’s clandestine history before, during and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, seen mostly through the eyes of a naval intelligence special agent named Douglas Wada.

FDR directed that the ONI handle the investigation of Navy cases relating to sabotage, espionage and subversive activities in ’39,

civilians would be at the heart of the effort—in 1940 reservists started to be called up for duty with the Naval Intelligence Service.

They proved their worth: in 1943 alone, NIS personnel investigated 97,000 cases.

That places the World War II experiences of naval counterintelligence agents firmly at the very foundations of the modern NCIS.

Douglas Wada, the son of a Honolulu Shinto shrine builder, a naval reservist and the only Asian American who worked inside the ONI in Hawaii or anywhere else during the war.

“What war?” he asks the lightkeeper. “No one told me about it.” The man points northwest. “The base is under attack,” he says. “You better get back, right away.” That’s how Douglas Wada, America’s only Japanese American naval intelligence agent, found out that Japan launched a surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor Naval Base.

Douglas Wada grows up in Honolulu,

Japan’s new Emperor may be Shōwa, but English speakers more often refer to him by his personal name: Hirohito.

Kyoto is a massive medieval Japanese city, preserved in time, except for one modern fascination: baseball.

But one threat clouds that future: the fear of being conscripted into the Japanese Army. Since 1927, all Japanese men were required to report for examination at age twenty. Those selected for military duty were obliged to serve for two years and remained eligible for active duty until age forty. Being drafted these days likely means going overseas.

Shinto is often lumped in with Buddhism, but the basic tenants are very different. Buddhists don’t worship kami and aspire to transcend the suffering cosmos, while Shintoists more pragmatically adapt to the world around them.

In 1936, officials in the Imperial Army murdered the Imperial advisor Makoto Saito, Army General Jotaro Watanabe and Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi and attempted to assassinate many others who opposed their expansionist plans. Tensions with China flared again, and Japan was squaring off against great global powers.

Yoshikawa’s job will begin on the intelligence staff of the Imperial Navy’s Third Division, and his areas of study include the US Pacific Fleet and its bases in Guam, Manila, and Hawaii.

The 14th DIO’s job in Hawaii is to monitor the local population and gauge the threat they could pose to the Navy in the event of a war. The agents here are expected to sniff out sympathizers, spies and saboteurs.

The Japanese Empire wants to turn Nisei against their homeland, and the idea angers him.

“Our purpose is to discover, step by step, the identity, location, purpose, and activities of entire espionage, sabotage, and propaganda groups—not with a view to routine arrest, but with the purpose of maintaining a close and constant surveillance of the members and their activities. In this way we shall be able, upon the outbreak of open or declared hostilities, to seize the entire organization and thus to paralyze the enemy.”

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.”

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.

Javorina is the first place to fall in what will soon blossom into World War II.

The remaining obstacle to Japan’s future is the United States, backed by the power of its Navy.

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.3 That also makes him the first AJA to be commissioned as a US naval officer.

when he’s summoned to the Black Room. This is where he can translate materials that come from sensitive sources. This can include radio intercepts, personal correspondences and purloined documents.

“You are going to Honolulu as vice-consul,” he says. “Shortwave transmitters can be too easily spotted by radio direction finders. So you will go as a diplomat and report on the daily readiness of the American Fleet and bases using our encoded diplomatic dispatches. This is the only truly secure channel of communication.”

The real espionage threat doesn’t come from the Japanese population but the Japanese Consulate.

The intercept heads to Washington, DC, as per protocol, but none of this information is communicated to Pearl Harbor. The Army, Navy and FBI investigators in Hawaii are never told the message was sent.14 Toyoda’s request to the consulate in Honolulu isn’t routine nor innocuous. He’s asking for a grid to plot the location of ships in the harbor, a plea to help plan an aerial attack.

The day before, a Japanese strike fleet moved out of Hitokappu Bay, lights blackened and in total radio silence, now heading into heavy weather. It’s a massive array of ships: six aircraft carriers, two heavy cruisers, thirty-five submarines, two light cruisers, nine oilers, two battleships and eleven destroyers. The carriers’ target is Oahu.

ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

The spies who the US government knows facilitated the attack on Pearl Harbor—Kokichi Seki, Nagao Kita, Otojiro Okuda and “Tadashi Morimura”—have all been released.