Chapter 15: Operation Shepherd

Sam Nwosu called on Thursday morning with news that made Maya's knees buckle.

"I talked to Dr. Hayashi at the Minidoka site," he said, his voice tight with excitement. "She pulled the Takahashi family records. Maya, I need to come over. This can't be done on the phone."

He arrived thirty minutes later, carrying a laptop and a folder thick with printouts. Eli was already there—he'd come to fix the roof tiles and had stayed for coffee, which was becoming a pattern neither of them acknowledged.

They gathered at the kitchen table. Sam opened his laptop.

"The Takahashi family. Father: Kenji Takahashi, born 1898 in Portland, second generation. Mother: Haruko Takahashi, née Watanabe, born 1900 in Portland. Children: Rose, born 1924, and Akira, born 1929."

"Akira," Maya said. "The boy in the photograph."

"Rose's younger brother. The family ran a plant nursery on Northeast Flanders Street—one of the most successful in the Japanese community. When Executive Order 9066 was issued, the Takahashis were given seventy-two hours to dispose of their property and report for evacuation."

Sam turned his laptop to show a photograph: a line of Japanese-American families, carrying suitcases and bundles, walking toward a row of buses. Armed soldiers flanked the line. In the background, a building with a sign Maya could just make out: "Takahashi Nursery—Closed By Order."

"They were sent to the Portland Assembly Center first—the Pacific International Livestock Exposition building. Essentially, they put Japanese-American families in animal stalls. Then they were transferred to Minidoka in September 1942."

"And at Minidoka?" Maya asked.

Sam's expression darkened. "Kenji—Rose's father—developed tuberculosis. The camp medical facilities were inadequate. He died in March 1943."

Maya closed her eyes. Rose's father had died in the camp. In an American camp, from a disease that could have been treated in any hospital.

"Haruko and Akira remained at Minidoka until late 1943. Haruko was released to a sponsor family in Chicago. She took Akira with her. They never returned to Portland."

"And Rose?"

"Rose was released separately, to a sponsor family in Portland—the Henderson family, as the records confirm. She and her mother and brother were sent to different cities." Sam paused. "This was common. The government deliberately separated families during the resettlement period. It made it harder for the community to reorganize."

"Deliberately," Maya repeated.

"Deliberately."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

"What happened to Haruko and Akira?" Maya asked.

"Haruko died in 1958 in Chicago. Natural causes. Akira—" Sam scrolled through his files. "Akira Takahashi is the interesting one. He attended the University of Chicago, graduated in 1951, and then—his records go quiet. There's a brief mention in a 1952 news article about Japanese-American veterans' rights, and then nothing."

"He disappeared?"

"He moved. Possibly changed his name. After the internment, many Japanese-Americans changed their names to avoid discrimination. Akira might have become Alex, or Andrew, or any number of anglicized names." Sam looked up. "But he'd be ninety-six if he's alive. It's possible."

Maya absorbed this. She had an uncle—or had had an uncle—named Akira. A branch of the family tree she'd never known existed.

"Now," Sam said, his tone shifting. "The other thing. Operation Shepherd."

Eli leaned forward.

"Dr. Hayashi didn't have information about Operation Shepherd directly—it's not related to the internment. But she connected me with a colleague at the National Archives, a historian named Dr. Martin Engel who specializes in declassified World War II intelligence operations." Sam produced a printout from his folder. "Engel sent me this."

The printout was a partially declassified document—more black bars than text, but the visible portions were revelatory.

"Operation Shepherd was a joint American-British intelligence operation conducted in France between October and November 1944. Its objective was the extraction of a German nuclear physicist named—" Sam squinted at the redacted text. "The name is blacked out, but Engel says it was likely Dr. Werner Hartmann, a physicist who'd been secretly cooperating with Allied intelligence."

"A nuclear scientist," Maya said.

"This was during the period when both sides were racing toward the atomic bomb. Hartmann had information about the German nuclear program—specifically, how far behind the Allies they actually were. Getting him out was a top priority."

"And James Sullivan was part of the extraction team."

"Based on the document, the team consisted of six operatives working behind German lines in Normandy. The extraction went wrong—the team was ambushed at the rendezvous point. Two operatives were killed immediately. Two others managed to escape with Hartmann. The remaining two—" Sam pointed to a redacted section. "The remaining two were captured."

"James was one of the captured."

"The document doesn't name the captured operatives—those sections are still classified. But based on the timeline and the information from Margaret and Briggs's letter, it's consistent."

Maya stared at the document. Black bars obscured everything that mattered, but what remained was enough to construct a narrative: James Sullivan had been part of a team extracting a nuclear scientist. The mission had half-succeeded. The scientist had been rescued, but James had been captured by the Germans.

"What happened to captured intelligence operatives?" Maya asked, though she suspected she knew.

Sam's silence was its own answer.

"Some were executed," he said finally. "Some were sent to POW camps. Some were interrogated—the methods were not gentle. And some—a very few—were kept alive because they had information the Germans wanted." He paused. "An operative who'd been involved in extracting a nuclear scientist would have been very valuable. The Germans would have wanted to know what he knew, what the Allies knew, how far along the nuclear program was."

"They tortured him," Maya said flatly.

"It's likely. But here's the thing—Briggs wrote to Rose in 1948 saying he believed James was alive when the war ended. That means James survived the interrogation. He survived captivity. And when the Allies liberated the camps and prisons in 1945, something happened that the records don't explain."

"He vanished," Eli said.

"He vanished. No record of liberation, no record of repatriation, no death certificate. James Sullivan simply ceases to exist in any official record after November 1944."

The kitchen was silent except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway and the distant sound of Hemingway chasing something in the yard.

"There's one more thing," Sam said. "Engel told me that Operation Shepherd's full file is scheduled for declassification review in eighteen months. Under the current FOIA regulations, files older than seventy-five years are automatically reviewed for release. The seventy-fifth anniversary of Operation Shepherd was last year."

"So the file is being reviewed right now."

"It's in the queue. Engel said the process can take years, or it can be expedited if there's a compelling case—living relatives, historical significance, academic research." Sam looked at Maya. "You're a living relative. Margaret is a living relative. And the story of a Japanese-American woman married to an intelligence operative during the internment era—that's historically significant by any measure."

"Can Engel help expedite the review?"

"He's already working on it. He said he'd need formal requests from the family—that means you and Margaret. And he recommended engaging a FOIA specialist attorney." Sam smiled. "This is going to be a fight. The intelligence community doesn't like releasing files, even eighty-year-old ones. But it's a fight worth having."

Maya looked at the partially declassified document, at the black bars that concealed a man's fate, and felt something firm up inside her. This was her family. Her history. Her grandfather—because James was her grandfather, she was certain of it now—had been swallowed by a bureaucratic machine and declared not-existent. She was going to drag the truth into the light if it took her the rest of the sixty days.

"I need a lawyer," she said.

"I know one," Eli said quietly. "Catherine Sullivan-Reed—the head of the Sullivan Foundation. She's a lawyer by training. And she's family."

Maya turned to him. "You've been researching."

"I've been thinking. There's a difference." He met her eyes. "You're not doing this alone, Maya. None of us are going to let you."

Sam nodded. Hemingway barked from the yard, endorsing the sentiment.

Maya looked at the two men sitting at her grandmother's kitchen table—a historian and a veterinarian who'd decided this was their problem too—and felt, beneath the fear and the fury and the overwhelming complexity of the investigation, something she hadn't felt in a very long time.

Something like hope.

"Okay," she said. "Let's make this happen."