A non-fiction book that Mark Harmon co-wrote describes the world of NCIS’ precursor decades before the CBS police drama. An impending nonfiction book about the Second World War operation run by the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence), the forerunner of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, is written by NCIS veteran Mark Harmon.
The 71-year-old collaborated on the book alongside former Special Agent and tech advisor Leon Carroll Jr., who will provide extensive insight into how NCIS was established.
In an homage to the CBS show, Harmon lauded NCIS for shedding light on the illustrious organization.
Harmon said in a statement: “I feel compelled to take part in opening up the history and real story of what became NCIS.
“When I first started this show, there was not much information to be found by research.
“NCIS agents are public servants at the highest level and many have come and gone through this life with no one knowing anything about who they are or what they do. And now that story gets told. All because of a TV show.”
Harmon and Carroll Jr’s narrative non-fiction, after studying “long-buried historical documents”, tells the story of two men.
The first is Douglas Wada, the only Japanese American agent in naval intelligence, and the second is Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese spy who was sent to Pearl Harbor to get information on the US fleet.
Wada posed as an undercover newspaper reporter, translating wiretaps on the Japanese Consulate and interrogated America’s first captured POW of the Second World War.
Yoshikawa, on the other hand, served as a junior diplomat with the embassy and gathered data to deliver to Admiral Yamamoto of the Japanese Navy.
The novel, Ghosts of Honolulu, tells the story of “the world-changing cat-and-mouse games played between Japanese and U.S. military intelligence agents.”
“I hope this book will give readers a different look at NCIS as an agency and that we are much more than the homicide-of-the-week,” Carroll Jr. said in reference to their endeavor.
“Their name NCIS was given to the organization when it was created in 1992, 90 years after ONI was founded, to emphasize its criminal role…
“This book is intended to be the first of a series that will give an inside look into the inner workings of accomplishing that mission.”
Harmon made his exit as Agent Leroy Gibbs in the middle of season 19 and sadly hasn’t been seen since as he went to start a new life in Alaska.
Despite his exit, Harmon remains an executive producer of NCIS which will return for season 21 later this year.