How an ‘NCIS’ Team-Up Helped Mark Harmon Write ‘Ghosts of Honolulu’ With Leon Caroll Jr.
Wondering what NCIS star Mark Harmon has been up to since his character, team leader Leroy Jethro Gibbs, retired on the beloved military crime procedural in 2021? No, the actor hasn’t built a boat — at least, not yet. But he has written this fast-paced real-life espionage tale set in Honolulu during the early days of naval intelligence operations, before it became the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
(Credit: HARPER COLLINS FOCUS; THEO CAMACHO/HARPER COLLINS FOCUS)
Harmon co-wrote Ghosts of Honolulu the colorful account with the show’s technical adviser, former NCIS special agent Leon Carroll Jr. The book centers on Douglas Wada, the only Japanese-American agent in naval intelligence at the time. As war with Japan looms, the onetime baseball prodigy and son of an immigrant carpenter is employed as a journalist while working undercover. He also translates Japanese consulate wiretaps.
“Doug Wada himself is a Gibbs kind of guy. A man of few words, very meticulous, very insightful of people and how they operated,” Carroll says. Working against Wada is Takeo Yoshikawa. He’s posing as a Japanese consulate worker but is really a spy sent to gather information on the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor for top brass like the notorious Admiral Yamamoto.
When the duo began planning out the book, a big question was how to appeal to their NCIS audience. “Mark and I decided it would be a good idea to tell a real story,” Carroll says. They dug into historical documents with a team of researchers to paint vibrant pictures of the two men, whose stories play out against a backdrop of U.S. military intelligence agencies vying for turf, a family of Nazi spies, and growing anti-Japanese sentiment.
One of many moments where you can practically feel Wada’s pulse quicken comes after the surprise Pearl Harbor attack. He is called in to question America’s first World War II POW, a Japanese mini-sub skipper who has washed up on a beach, and Carroll writes the scene with brilliant tension. If you miss Gibbs in the interview room, this book is for you.
