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

“Shinto is an ancient religion that can be traced back to the Yayoi culture from the third or second century BCE. The earliest writings about Shinto appear from the eighth century. It’s a polytheistic religion that revolves around the worship of spirits called kami, which inhabit all things and are worshiped within households and public shrines called insha.”

Douglas Wada’s father, Hisakichi, is a miyadaiku carpenter responsible for building Shinto shrines. It is an occupation of great honor and privilege, and he has standing in the community in Hawaii, where he and his wife Chiyo settled after leaving Japan. At the heart of his skillset is a firm belief in Shinto, which includes the worship of spirits at home and in public. His work as an artist and carpenter tied to Shinto shrines is paramount to his identity. While other shrine workers were arrested in Hawaii, exiled back to Japan, or were incarcerated in the mainland, as Wada’s father, Hisakichi’s position saves him from a similar fate.

“Douglas Wada is now steeped in Japanese traditions and Shinto religion. He also now speaks fluent Japanese, something that eludes even those Hawaiian Nisei who study at local language schools.”

After spending five years in Japan, graduating from high school and attending some university, Douglas Wada becomes a man of two cultures. He is a kibei, one who is educated in Japan but returns to his place of birth in America. He is fluent in both English and Japanese and understands the cultures of each nation. As an American citizen respected in his community, he becomes the perfect target for the intelligence community eager to find trusted people who inhabit both worlds but hold loyalty only to the United States.

“There he’s been instructed that the navy stood for southwards advance and war against the United States, the army stood for northward expansion and war with Russia.”

Japanese naval training and instruction included long-term expansionist rhetoric in 1934, after their illegal and unwarranted invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Desperate for resources, including oil and rubber, the Japanese began teaching military enlisted and officers that war with Russia and the United States was all but inevitable as their expansion would eventually meet with Russia’s border to the north and the US holdings and territories in Asia.

“On the cusp of such historic events, Yoshikawa was forced to just watch. In 1936, the Imperial military finally retired him, leaving the youth ‘in great shock, since all my plans and hopes were bound up with the Navy.’ He even contemplated suicide.”

After being forcibly retired from the navy after suffering stomach pains that labelled him unfit for military service, Yoshikawa is depressed and isolated. When he is approached by military intelligence, they see a desperate man without other prospects who they can train to follow commands without question in exchange for reinstatement and a bright future in the military.

“‘If you want to deceive your enemy,’ he says, ‘you must first dupe yourself.’”

Takeo Toshikawa is 28 when his military intelligence superiors assign him to the Japanese consulate in Hawaii as a spy under diplomatic cover. He has already earned accolades, including a letter of praise from Adolf Hitler, and is a rising star in the intel community. His superiors advise him to blend into his surroundings and community to avoid detection on his first undercover assignment behind enemy lines at the consulate. Once in Hawaii, he fails to befriend many at the consulate, and once arrests begin in earnest after the attacks, it is staff from the consulate who ultimately betray his role as a spy hiding under diplomatic cover.

“‘If war comes,’ he adds, ‘we will do everything we possibly can, giving our lives if necessary, in defense of those democratic principals for which other America have lived and fought and died.’”

Led by University of Hawaii instructor Dr. Shunzo Sakamaki, the Oahu Citizens Committee for Home Defense aimed to rally Japanese community support for American patriotism. Sakamaki is one of several who meet regularly with FBI Shivers and who work to convince the intelligence community that the Japanese American community in Hawaii is not a threat, but an untapped asset. Work like this, through various committees and organizations across Hawaii, helped to inoculate the population from Japanese nationalism and encourage them to cleave to America and American ideals of democracy and freedom in the face of a brutal militaristic Japan.

“Socially, the Issei are being sacrificed to stave off something worse.”

The various community groups advocating for American patriotism among the Nisei and Issei actively use the Nisei to police the elder generation of Japanese who were ineligible for citizenship outright. The elders’ culture and society are sacrificed in exchange for the acceptance and security of the Nisei who have made their lives in Hawaii as American citizens. Of the community members not associated with the consulate, the majority of the incarcerated and detained hailed from the Issei, rather than the Americanized Nisei.

“The head of the FBI, military authorities, lawyers, judges and others confirmed that the great mass of the Japanese would not go back to Japan if they would; are fearful of Japanese intervention; and that only a small minority of them, are being watched and are allegedly detectable would be Japanese with columnists.”

This is excerpted from a report by Assistant Attorney General Norman Little. Upon visiting Hawaii personally, he returned a report to DC with this quote at the heart of his assessment of “the Japanese Problem” as it had become known. In response to this report, President Roosevelt orders a coordinated effort between the agencies, led by the FBI, to ensure that all agencies had reached the same conclusions. Nevertheless, Roosevelt would ultimately pursue a harsh policy of involuntary incarceration on the mainland and martial law in Hawaii.

“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.”

A message from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Consul General in Hawaii is decoded and sent to Washington. The message reveals a focus on Hawaii as a possible target for aerial and sea attack. If the message had been sent to Hawaii’s intelligence officers, the book asserts that they would have recognized that the message directed the collection of intelligence on Pearl Harbor’s naval holdings, signaling an imminent attack in their area of influence. This failure resulted in a naval base in Hawaii that was not prepared for an attack, despite the Roosevelt administration’s awareness that such an attack was imminent.

“However, like most commanders, he’s grown numb to warnings from DC that never seem to prove true. Vice Admiral William Halsey calls them ‘wolf messages,’ cried too often to mean anything. As a result, in Hawaii the PBY seaplanes don’t search the coastlines, the radar operators aren’t briefed on the presence of a roaming Japanese expeditionary force, and the military intelligence units aren’t informed of the dispatch.”

After receiving a war warning from the Chief of Naval Operations, which was dispatched to all outposts in the Pacific, Admiral Husband Kimmel fails to connect the warning to Pearl Harbor’s naval holdings, having heard so many warnings from DC that he became numb to them. Between this largely neglected war warning and the prior decoded message that went directly to DC and was not transmitted to Hawaii, the loss of life and catastrophe that resulted from the failed dissemination of information was vast. America’s intelligence communities, although staffed with hard-working capable people, were too disjointed to effectively combat the Japanese advance.

“To the dismay of Genda—and Admiral Yamamoto—Nagumo seems uninterested in hitting the infrastructure that would cause long-term damage to the naval base. His priority targets are the battleships, which have status as the dominant weapons of naval warfare.”

Nagumo’s focus on battleships ultimately leads to the speedy recovery of the navy in Pearl Harbor. Left intact were the hangers, machine shops, dry docks, ports, and refueling centers. Although the losses in Pearl Harbor are great, the infrastructure left intact allows for the port to continue to function and the navy to quickly return to functionality, ultimately dooming the Japanese fleet to speedy and severe counterattack and eventual loss at Midway.

“Across Oahu, the fires burn. At Pearl Harbor Naval Base, eighteen warships are sunk or grounded, including five battleships. Frantic rescue efforts are underway—there are dying men trapped in the air pockets of overturned ships. Responders can hear them drowning as they cut through the decks to rescue them.”

The devastation in Oahu is vast. Smoke fills the sky as ships sink, trapping people inside. While the infrastructure is left intact, the battleships are the primary target, and the Japanese surprise attack is successful in its pursuit of these vessels of war. Nevertheless, because the infrastructure was not bombed in unison with the ships and planes, Pearl Harbor was able to recover quickly enough to decode an intercepted message on the Japanese fleet at Midway and win a decisive victory there.

“Over an hour and fifteen minutes, 2,403 Americans are killed and 1,143 wounded.”

The loss of life was the single greatest unprovoked attack on American soil and would hold that title until the terror attack on September 11, 2001, when 2,996 Americans would die. The shocking devastation of Pearl Harbor and the staggering loss of life rallied the American public to speedy acceptance of President Roosevelt’s request to congress for a declaration of war against Japan. Many Americans already believed the nation would have to enter the war in Europe and were prepared for such an inevitability, with some all but certain that direct conflict with Japan was inevitable, given their encroachment on European allies’ colonial holdings in Asia.

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forced of the Empire of Japan.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers an address to Congress shortly after noon on December 8, 1941, requesting a formal declaration of war against Japan. This action brings the United States into the fray of World War II, in both the Pacific and European fronts, ultimately dooming the Axis powers to defeat.

“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.”

Lt. Col. Thomas Green, the Hawaiian Territory’s Judge Advocate, will now take control of everything in Hawaii under martial law. He understands the difficulty of his task, as well as the importance of restricting the movements of Japanese Americans in his area as per the Roosevelt administration’s command. Quickly and without fanfare, the rights of US citizens are stripped away, without a pathway to protesting against the injustice or regaining their rights before the war’s end.

“His coffee tastes especially bitter this morning. His office had the leads needed to crack this espionage ring three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

Captain Irving Mayfield reads the decoded and translated intel gleaned from his hacked cable. He waited months to get access to the cable data, only for the data to be stalled in deciphering and translation when needed most. These delays, if mitigated, would have resulted in Mayfield’s awareness of the Japanese attack target ahead of December 7. Of the many intelligence failures early in the contest with Japan, this one is most glaring, given that the information was already in US hands when the attack was launched.

“Secretary of Navy Frank Knox brought back word from Hawaii that the fifth column had played a large part in the attack on Pearl Harbor by giving the Japanese information regarding the hours of American air patrol the territory and local of military and naval centers.”

Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox reported on the consulate spy ring in Oahu that made the attack on Pearl Harbor possible, failing to point out that it was one group of spies operating from one location, the Japanese consulate, and not the Japanese American population as a whole. He never retracts this assertion, and it helps fuel a turning tide in American sentiment that the Japanese community is awash with spies, fifth columnists, Black Dragon Society members, and saboteurs.

“At the root of fifth-column fears, Kita’s men in Hawaii have managed to besmirch the entire Japanese population in America. The impact of their actions will be arguably more damaging to the United States in the long term than the information supplied to Nagumo’s attack force.”

Consul General Kita and the Japanese spies at the Japanese consulate in Oahu provided intel on the US Naval assets in Pearl Harbor, ultimately paving the way for the December 7 attack. Worse, according to the authors, was the damage they inflicted unwittingly on the Japanese American population in Hawaii and the West Coast, who would soon be incarcerated in camps without rights because of rampant fears of fifth columnists and spies. The shame of operating the concentration camps on US soil and the damage these actions do to American democracy are lasting.

“Either it’s the hotbed of possible sedition that needs to be secured for the good of an existential fight, or it’s a potential wellspring of patriots who prove the American experiment is strong enough to withstand the stresses of war.”

Upon arriving in Hawaii after the attack, Army Commander in Hawaii Lt. Gen Delos Emmons must decide if Hawaii is, as Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox asserted, a hotbed of fifth columnists or, as his local assets like the FBI, Naval investigators, and Army investigators affirm, a place rife with American patriotism. He concludes after thorough investigation that aside from the spies at the consulate, no other Japanese residents or Japanese American citizens were involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“‘The entire “Japanese Problem” has been magnified out of its true proportion, largely because of the physical characteristics of the people,’ it reads. ‘It is no more serious than the problems of the Germans, Italians and Communistic portions of the United States population and it should be handled on the basis of the individual, regardless of citizenship, and not on a racial bias.’”

A report by Kenneth Ringle, now based in California, is persuasive as it argues that the singling out of the Japanese population in America is based on racism. At the time, this was not a popular or accepted interpretation of events, though later historians would agree that racism is precisely what separated the Japanese American population from the larger population while ignoring the masses of German, Russian, and Italian Americans.

“Despite the low percentage of internment—about one percent of the Japanese population—the social damage to Hawaii is incalculable. Under military rule, expressions of Japanese culture are all but forbidden. Teaching the Japanese language leads to internment, and the shrine are closed. Kendo is also banned, most of the founders jailed or deported. Members of the Army arrive at gyms, gather the tatami mats and kendo swords and burn them in piles.”

While the Japanese resident and Japanese American population in the mainland are incarcerated wholesale, the situation in Hawaii is vastly different. Only 1% are incarcerated, but under martial law, social and cultural society halts, and residents live in fear of incarceration as their culture is shuttered, their leaders exiled and their religious practices banned. For years, the population in Hawaii lived under military rule, the Issei watching their culture slowly be erased from Hawaii as they witness their children, the Nisei, struggle to exist between two worlds.

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

In a large prisoner swap for US citizens from Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Singapore, the Japanese spies from the Japanese consulate in Hawaii are traded, unbeknownst to the American public. They are granted their freedom without persecution or punishment for their pivotal roles in the attack on Pearl Harbor that left over 2,000 Americans dead. Indeed, their fate would not be known until after the war.

“The prosecutors narrowed down the list of Class A defendants to a group of twenty-eight. The strategy here is not to convict every Japanese leader who participated in war crimes. The prosecution is trying to establish a pattern of similar abuses in various places, the core of any argument that the top leaders knowingly used war crimes as part of their expansionist strategy.”

Douglas Wada’s work helping to translate and interpret for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East gives him a first-person perspective on the effort. He witnesses the narrowing of the prosecution, which does not include Minoru Genda, the man who launched the attack on Pearl Harbor after receiving intel from the Japanese consulate spy ring that Douglas Wada helped to hunt. For Wada, who could not locate the spy Yoshikawa while in Tokyo nor prosecute Genda based on the war crimes parameters, and who later files a report on Richard Kotoshirodo only to watch him live out his life without punishment for his role, justice feels distant.