The theme of my 2014 A-to-Z Blog Challenge is BLUES, PUPUS, and REVIEWS.
Tuesday & Friday - BLUES: Art, Movies, Music,
& Police
In Search of Truth and Honor by Joanne Takasato (a
look behind “the blue line”)
In
the early 1980s, a young Japanese woman by the name of Joanne Takasato became
Honolulu’s first undercover (UC) female police officer. As a UC, she bought the
recreational drugs of choice for the time, cocaine, marijuana, and Quaaludes,
from dealers in Chinatown and around the Island. She spent solitaire nights in
bars pretending to be someone she wasn’t, and she frequented street corners
with no badge, no gun, and no identification. Through shear will and belief in
Truth and Honor, Officer Takasato paved the way for women in what had always
been an all-male field of undercover police work.
Over
a period of years, Takasato severed family ties, created a false identity, and
developed friendships only to betray them with arrests and prosecution. It
sounds like a remake of a Donnie Brasco movie. But Takasato lived this life and
kept a journal, refused to make the movie but wrote the book instead.
IN SEARCH OF TRUTH AND
HONOR by Joanne Takasato is not a light beach read for a
sunny Honolulu afternoon in Waikiki. I could only read the chapters in short spurts,
taking breaks to let my nerves settle. It is impossible for me to imagine
actually living through those years.
Wow, Joanne sounds like quite a hard, sharp, and determined woman. A life few of us could ever lead.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a really hard life. One must have a fierce devotion to her job, and know she's saving people and lives, or I don't see how someone can stand even a week like this.
ReplyDeleteCathrina and Jazz, I can't imagine how she lived through the experience, other than through the determination and devotion you both mention.
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