James Kestrel's "Five Decembers"

Formerly a bar owner, a criminal defense investigator, and an English teacher, James Kestrel is now an attorney practicing throughout the Pacific. His writing has won advance praise from Stephen King, James Patterson, Dennis Lehane, Lee Child, Meg Gardiner, James Fallows, Pico Iyer, and numerous other authors. A sailor and world traveler, Kestrel has lived in Taiwan, New Orleans, and a West Texas ghost town. He lives in Volcano, Hawaii.

Here Kestrel dreamcasts an adaptation of his new novel, Five Decembers:

When I set out to write Five Decembers, I wanted to write a murder mystery set in Honolulu during World War II, but early on my vision for the book grew to something on a much larger scale. Yes, it’s a murder mystery, but it stretches across the entire war and its aftermath, and there is a turn of events about midway through that may place it in another genre altogether. It’s a big book, and couldn’t be shot on the cheap, so if I had my choice of any director it would have to be Steven Spielberg. He’s tackled the period from many angles, but much of Five Decembers would be new to him, so perhaps he’d have some fun with it.

But, in thinking about the book, perhaps there is an opportunity to do something fairly novel in filming it. The most significant elements take place in either Honolulu or Tokyo. A hefty portion of the Tokyo scenes would need to be shot in Japanese. The producers of the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! (about the lead-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor) faced the same problem of a film split evenly between Japan and Hawaii, and they had a great solution: the Hawaii scenes were directed by Richard Fleischer, and the Japanese scenes were directed by Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku. (Originally, the Japanese side was to be directed by Akira Kurosawa, which would have been fantastic). I would love to see that approach to Five Decembers.

As for casting—the main character, Joe McGrady, is a Honolulu Police Department detective, but is an outsider to Hawaii, having stayed in the Territory after his stint in the Army. We meet him a few weeks before the war breaks out, while Honolulu is simmering with tensions. He’s cool headed and logical, is tender to his friends, but can be vicious when it’s called for. So I think Tom Hardy would be ideal for the role. He’s an actor who can carry an entire film without ever speaking more than a handful of words (think Mad Max: Fury Road, and Dunkirk). He’d be a great Joe McGrady, so he should start studying Japanese now.

Ken Watanabe, who acted so well in Letters from Iwo Jima, would be great as Kansei Takahashi, a high official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who plays a key role in saving McGrady’s life and helping his investigation. Mr. Takahashi’s daughter, Sachi, also plays a pivotal role in McGrady’s life. She would need to be played by an actress who was thoroughly fluent in both Japanese and English. That is well outside my area of expertise, but Sally Amaki comes to mind, and she certainly looks the part.

And finally, as there appears to be an unwritten law that any successful WWII film must have Tom Hanks connected to it in some way, he’d be ideal in the role of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, who was the commander of Pearl Harbor when the bombs began to fall.

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--Marshal Zeringue