Landsiedel explained. "Dugan's father was an Irishman from Minneapolis. He went up in the Yukon gold rush and didn't find any gold. He went to the Andreanof group in the Aleutians when he got the idea of starting a fox farm—"
"Fox farm?"
Sarah interrupted. "People do raise foxes, for their skins. They bring terrific prices in the fur market."
"That's right, Captain," said Landsiedel. "Only Dugan's father met this native girl and married her. When the baby was still tiny, the parents died in a typhus epidemic. They were both buried two inches above the frost line. The baby was taken back to Minneapolis and brought up there."
Coppersmith looked out of the window. "Minneapolis doesn't seem to be a very good place to become an Imperial Japanese Army officer. How did he learn to pass for a Japanese?"
"He never really told me, but I met a man who knew him in high school and at the University of Minnesota. Dugan looked even more Oriental when he was a boy than he does now. Other children nicknamed him 'Jap' Dugan. That got him so thin-skinned that he took up the study of Japanese in college. You can't ever get through explaining that you're half-Irish and half-Aleut."
"I'm not, Colonel," said Coppersmith glumly. "Hudson Valley Dutch."
"That was a figure of speech, sir. What I meant was that—" Landsiedel looked puzzled and sympathetic. "If a man really is Irish and Aleut, what can he do? He can't just settle down to being the hometown preacher or lawyer. And neither Ireland nor the Aleutians meant a damned thing to Dugan, personally. He looked like a Japanese and he felt like an American. So he joined the Army, figuring we could use him. He got a direct commission long before the war, on the strength of his Japanese studies."
"You have his Army record in black and white?"
"We can account for it, General. All except the war, when he was here. And Dugan doesn't know it, but two of the locked-up Japanese lieutenant generals have given him a very good character. They didn't even know that he was an American."