My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife Hardcover - 2000

From the publisher

Our story spans fifty years, four continents, three wars, a revolution, five children, two races and one faith. It is the story of an often stormy, sometimes blissful, but never dull marriage. It lasted thirty years - and then death did the parting.

So begins the love story of Joe Kiyonaga, the striking Japanese-American war hero from Hawaii, and Bina Cady, the irreverent Irish-Catholic redhead from Baltimore. Similar in their convictions, different in most every other respect, the two leaped into a marriage in 1947 that defied the anti-Japanese sentiments of the day. Their unlikely union would come to include a powerful, top-secret cohort: the CIA.

During the darkest days of the Cold War, Bina, as a CIA wife, was initiated into a world of silence. She would learn not to ask who had called at 2:00 A.M., where Joe had disappeared to for days at a time, or why a notorious dictator had shown up at their door unannounced. Joe's "cover' had to be maintained, and no one could be trusted with the truth. Bina would learn to live a lie and lie bravely.

From the surreal intrigue of post-war Japan to the raucous mariachi-band parties of 1960s El Salvador and the "Yankee Go Home" Panama of the 1970s to the planning of a coup d'etat in Brazil, Bina would become Joe's unwitting partner, playing the traditional role of wife and mother for the most untraditional of ends: helping Joe recruit agents. Everything from cocktail parties to the children's swim meets would become possible venues for agent recruitment, every casual acquaintance-even the parish priest-a potential intelligence source. Through Joe's work, Bina was introduced to foreign leaders, military strongmen and influential journalists secretly working with Washington-a cast of like-minded souls who believed, as did Joe and Bina, that the CIA's cause was noble and that its methods served a greater good.

In the end, Bina's story is the story of the spy she loved. Born out in the cold, on an island where being too tall and too western-looking made him a rumor incarnate, Joe Kiyonaga was all the more remarkable for what he became, and overcame. A man with a foothold in many worlds, but at home in none, he was ready to kick over the traces and re-invent himself as the consummate spy.

Only after thirty years, as Joe lay dying, did Bina finally meet the husband she never knew, and hear the full details of the secret life and global cause of which she and their five children had been a part.

This is the story that Joe entrusted to Bina, a story she promised him she would tell. A story of a time to remember, and of a marriage forged by trust and faith in a world full of lies.

So begins the love story of Joe Kiyonaga, the striking Japanese-American war hero from Hawaii, and Bina Cady, the irreverent Irish-Catholic redhead from Baltimore. Similar in their convictions, different in most every other respect, the two leaped into a marriage in 1947 that defied the anti-Japanese sentiments of the day. Their unlikely union would come to include a powerful, top-secret cohort: the CIA.

From the surreal intrigue of post-war Japan to the raucous mariachi-band parties of 1960s El Salvador and the "Yankee Go Home" Panama of the 1970s to the planning of a coup d'etat in Brazil, Bina would become Joe's unwitting partner, playing the traditional role of wife and mother for the most untraditional of ends: helping Joe recruit agents. Everything from cocktail parties to the children's swim meets would become possible venues for agent recruitment; every casual acquaintance---even the parish priest---a potential intelligence source. Through Joe's work, Bina was introduced to foreign leaders, military strongmen and influential journalists secretly working with Washington---a cast of like-minded souls who believed, as did Joe and Bina, that the CIA's cause was noble and that its methods served a greater good.