Shimura Trouble (2 page)

M
Y PARENTS HAD
no idea that I had spy training, which at this moment seemed advantageous. I intended to start simply, but would go to whatever lengths were needed to trace the backgrounds of Yoshitsune and Edwin Shimura, to make sure this letter that had fallen into our house came from true relatives, and not hucksters.

That evening, after delivering a steaming cup of chamomile tea to my father’s bedside, I made a second cup for myself and went online.

Yoshitsune Shimura’s name didn’t surface anywhere in my preliminary search, although it didn’t surprise me that a man of eighty-eight wasn’t a blogger or MySpace member. But Edwin Shimura, the cousin who’d written the letter, was a quick and plentiful hit on Google. Once I’d screened out a seven-year-old chess whiz at the Mid-Pacific Institute and a twenty-five-year-old Nickelback fan, I located our very own Edwin Shimura, a fifty-five-year-old man with a residence on Laaloa Street.

So this is my second cousin, I thought, studying a picture of a man holding a sign over his head that read RETURN OUR LAND! He looked a little like my father around the eyes; but the face was longer, no doubt the influence of whatever other genes had entered our family during the course of almost one hundred years in Hawaii.

I marveled at another picture of Edwin Shimura marching with Polynesian-looking men, holding a sign declaring MY LAND STOLEN TOO.

So Edwin was an activist for Hawaiian land rights. I’d taken a history elective during my long-ago botany program, and I’d learned that foreign missionaries and their descendents living in Hawaii had pressured King Kamehameha III into dividing up land that had previously been held by the crown. The Great Mahele allegedly led to the American overturn of the Hawaiian monarchy and the establishment of Hawaii as a US territory.

As I read on, however, I discovered that Edwin’s interest in gaining land was not an issue of righting past wrongs. I followed a trail of articles in the two Honolulu papers, the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser, describing how Edwin Shimura was going to court over rights to a prime parcel of waterfront property on the Leeward Side of Oahu. The land was owned by Pierce Holdings, a company founded by early sugar planters who came to Hawaii from New England in the mid-nineteenth century. Edwin argued that his grandmother, who had once worked on a sugar plantation owned by Pierce Holdings, had been given the property by the Pierce Estate’s patriarch, Josiah Pierce, shortly before World War II. But no legal record of such a sale existed, and in the end, Judge David Namioka had ordered Edwin to pay court costs of $20,000 to Pierce Holdings.

In the late 1990s, Edwin was in the news again. He had declared his travel agency bankrupt, which he blamed on decreased Japanese tourism. Eighty-five Hawaii and mainland clients who had bought air and hotel packages had lost their money.

By 2005, Edwin had reinvented himself. He was running a telesales company offering green-tea-based cleaning products. No news stories covered this venture, but he had various sales pages sprinkled throughout the Internet that led to the same, zero-security payment page.

As bad as this all looked, I craved more. And I’d stayed up long enough for it to be early morning in Northern Virginia, prime time for reaching Michael Hendricks, my good friend-boss-whatever, at home.

“Sis,” Michael said, picking up after the second ring. He didn’t need to use my telephone code name at this point, but old habits died hard. “So, how’s your father doing?”

As Michael spoke, I could picture him rubbing his ice-blue eyes to clear the remnants of sleep. Then I imagined the rest of him: the square jaw and prematurely silvering dark brown hair cut short with a razor, even though he’d been out of the Navy for years. He had a lean body that was more like that of a man in his early twenties than thirty-nine, something I knew from a few platonic—and frustrating—evenings we’d spent together.

“My father’s OK, but itching to travel,” I said.

“So am I. The streets of San Francisco beckon, but travel doesn’t seem to be in my cards right now.”

Michael and I had become attached during our time working on our last Tokyo assignment—so closely attached, in fact, that Michael had felt duty-bound to report his feelings to our superiors at Langley. The result had been private conversations with a CIA psychiatrist for both of us. According to the psychiatrist, Michael and I shared an almost telepathic bond that had sprung out of our work. Relationships like these were common among soldiers and police;—people who worked closely with a partner in dangerous situations. He thought we were no danger to anyone, especially not to each other.

“Well, what’s the problem?” Michael asked. “You don’t usually call this early.”

“I know. I’ve been up all night. My dad’s been out of the hospital a few days and suddenly he wants to fly to Hawaii.”

“That doesn’t sound like a problem to me.” Michael snorted. “I’d go to Hawaii with him in a flash. Did I ever tell you that I lived there when my father was stationed at Pearl?”

“No, you didn’t. And let me finish, please.” I elaborated about the letter and the newfound family, the eighty-eighth birthday, and Edwin’s legal and financial history.

“I could run his name through a few databases for you—but Rei, I don’t think having a bad businessman for an uncle should be a deal-breaker. Hawaii’s gorgeous in July. As well as every other month in the year…”

“I like Hawaii too. But I’m not willing to go there if it means getting mixed up with a bad character.”

“It’s an old man’s birthday party.” Michael sounded reasonable. “Go to the party, get together a few times, and spend the rest of the time relaxing. You deserve the trip to Hawaii as much as your father.”

“All I’ve been doing here is relaxing. I’m bored out of my mind.”

“You told me that your father said the letter raised his spirits! You know, there’s supposed to be a link between mood and recovery from illnesses. I can email you a study proving it.”

“Hmm,” I said. “I’m more interested in proof that Edwin Shimura’s ancestor, this picture bride called Harue Shimura, was in fact the girl who left my family. That’s the gist of it, Michael. We don’t even know if we’re related.”

“Well, that’s research you can do yourself, if you’re so bored.” Now Michael sounded amused.

“Well, I’ve already emailed a historical society in Honolulu that might have records for Japanese immigrants. And I’ll phone my Uncle Hiroshi in Japan, just in case he remembers more about the so-called whisperings.”

“Don’t forget to check birth records with the state of Hawaii.”

“But she was born in Japan.” I interrupted myself. “You probably mean I should check the birth certificate of Yoshitsune Shimura in order to reference the names of his parents?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. You do your thing, and I’ll do my part for you—when I can. I’m afraid that for the most part of this week I’m swamped.”

“What’s going on?”

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

“Very original. I do miss you, Brooks.” I used his code name, holding on to the last bit of intimacy, before the call ended.

“Don’t change that feeling.”

“What?” I was momentarily confused, especially when Michael made the sound of a kiss and hung up. I had a feeling that the CIA would not approve.

MY UNCLE HIROSHI
had never heard anything about a missing great-aunt. He’d also received a letter from Edwin Shimura, though, and as a result he and his son, my cousin Tom, were already condo-hunting for the visit.

“If you and your father meet us there, it will be wonderful. When’s the last time we’ve all been together?” Uncle Hiroshi asked over the phone.

Frankly, I would have been reassured if my beloved Aunt Norie was coming along, but apparently she was teaching a month of ikebana classes at the Kayama School right at the time of the beiju. And Chika, my younger cousin, was involved in her first job. She was as busy as my mother, who couldn’t come because the grand opening of the boutique hotel she was decorating was in mid-June. Tearfully, we spent many late nights together, talking about the past, her fears for my father, and how she felt duty-bound to work harder than she ever had in the event my father couldn’t resume his medical school professorship.

I had work to do, too. I exchanged several emails with researchers at the Japanese Cultural Center in Honolulu, who confirmed the existence of a Harue Shimura who’d emigrated from Yokohama in 1924, at the age of twenty-two. She was married at the dock by a judge who also recorded the changing of name by her husband from Keijin Watanabe to Ken Shimura. The Territory of Hawaii had a birth record for a child born to her and Ken: Yoshitsune Shimura, eighty-nine years previously.

So my father’s guess was right, that Harue’s husband had taken her name. But according to the record, Yoshitsune was older than eighty-eight. I showed the birth certificate copy to my father, but he assured me that in old Japan, in utero time was counted in a person’s age. Thus, my father was really sixty-four, not sixty-three. He went on to tell me I was actually thirty-one and not thirty, which really made me crazy.

“It’s still wrong,” I said to my father. “If you count in an extra year according to Japanese custom, Yoshitsune Shimura should have celebrated his beiju two years ago.”

“I’m sure we’ll learn their family customs when we arrive.” My father’s voice was placid.

“I’VE LOST THE
battle,” I reported to Michael the next time we talked on the phone. “We’re definitely going.”

“Well, don’t worry too much about it. I ran the FBI check and neither your Uncle Edwin nor his wife Margaret nor the great-uncle have robbed banks or murdered anyone.”

“Great.” But I didn’t mean it. I’d been hoping for a last-minute reprieve.

“And I have something even better for you. A surprise.”

“What?” I asked dubiously.

“I’ll see you in Hawaii a week and a half after you get in. If the winds are with me.”

I was surprised—and elated. “If the winds are with you? Is that something for me to decode?”

Michael laughed. “I’m talking about the Transpac.”

“What the hell is that? It sounds like a military exercise.”

“It’s the longest sailing race in the world: over two and a half thousand miles. One of my old Naval Academy classmates has been trying to rustle up an extra crew member, and after squaring things here at Langley, I can actually sail with them.”

“Super. So are you leaving from Annapolis?”

“No, there’s a staggered start for the various classes of yachts in Southern California. My buddy Parker Drummond, who’s based in LA, splurged a few years ago on a forty-foot schooner. It should be able to make the trip in under two weeks if the winds are with us and we push ourselves.”

“Where in Hawaii does the race end?”

“The finish line is when you pass that huge old volcano, Diamond Head. We’ll dock at the Waikiki Yacht Club, and another guy on the crew, my friend Kurt, has booked our group into the Hale Koa, which is the military hotel right in the heart of Waikiki.”

“So you’re staying in Hawaii just a week,” I thought aloud. “That means you’ll be at sea longer than on land.”

“Yes, that’s the way it works. I wish I had more time to spend on land with you, Rei, but getting these three weeks together is kind of a miracle. I gave Len the full sob story, how Kurt survived three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was a dream for us all—Eric, Parker, Kurt and me—to sail together once again just like we did in Annapolis.”

“It’ll be a great bonding experience,” I said, trying not to be too jealous that most of Michael’s vacation would be with three men, and not me. “I hope you have a wonderful time out in the Pacific.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s going to be a two-week party,” Michael said. “It’s doubtful we’ll get more than four hours’ sleep per twenty-four period.”

Trying to sound casual, I said, “If you get a chance, call me from your cell when you’re pulling into port. I’d like to greet you.”

“I hope to be able to reach you using the boat’s satellite phone even earlier than that. I’d love you to meet my boat—it’s been a long time since anyone’s done that.” Michael’s voice was wistful, and I knew without asking who this must have been—Jennifer, Michael’s young wife who’d been killed in an airplane bombing in the late 1990s. Jennifer was the chief reason he still didn’t have a girlfriend—and also the reason I’d been sitting on my hands whenever we’d been together. Who could compete with a ghost?