Masao Tanaka was the father of Terry Tanaka and DJ Tanaka, the father-in-law of Jonas Taylor, and the grandfather of David Taylor and Dani Taylor.
Biography[]
Background[]
Masao Tanaka was born to a humble fisherman in Japan, where he would spend his early childhood. A rough life awaited him as soon as he entered the world, with his mother passing away when he was young, leaving his father to raise him alone, who instilled a love for the sea. As a boy, Masao joined his father on fishing excursions every morning before school.
When he was six years old, he and his father left their village for America to live with relatives in San Francisco. However, war broke out between the United States and Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, triggering the Pacific campaign of the Second World War. In order to curb wartime espionage on the mainland, all Japanese Americans living on the west coast were driven out of their homes and forced into the confine of an internment camp. In the camps, Masao's father struggled to find purpose, his spirit crushed by the loss of freedom and the sea, with the once vibrant ocean now distant and unreachable. As the days blended together, he slowly faded, leaving his son alone and lost in a foreign land.
From the camp gates, Masao watched pods of humpback whales leap into the air, their grace and freedom giving him a glimmer of hope and etching a lifelong impression on him. In the depths of hardship, he found solace in the whales, fueling his resilience and determination to survive. When the war finally subsided, he was transferred to the Minidoka Relocation Camp, where he began to learn English and rediscovered his voice. Adopted by an American family, Masao started anew, pursuing his passion for the ocean through the advancement of marine science, earning multiple degrees in scientific fields of study and establishing a pioneering deep-sea exploration company.
He married an unnamed woman and sired two children with her, Terry and DJ Tanaka, who would eventually join him in his pursuit of unlocking the secrets of the ocean's depths and work for his research institute. At some point, Masao's wife would pass away due to unknown causes, leaving Terry to raise her brother DJ mostly by herself.
MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror[]
In 1979, the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute develops an array of deep-sea drones known as the Unmanned Nautical Informational Submersible (UNIS) to monitor whale populations in the wild, able to withstand pressures of nineteen-thousand pounds per square inch. Each unit boasts a three-inch thick titanium outer shell and retractable legs, weighing a massive two-thousand pounds. The drones communicated information with a surface ship through fiber-optic cable, providing a wealth of data to researchers.
Driven by his childhood passion, Masao Tanaka initiates the construction of a whale reserve. He secures a five-square-mile plot on the Monterey coast and excavates millions of dollars' worth of soil to build a vast lagoon. When complete, the lagoon would measure three quarters of a mile long and a quarter mile wide, with a concrete canal connecting it to the ocean. Whales could enter and exit on their own free will, allowing researchers to study them in a natural setting. Masao's passion for whales stemmed from his troubled childhood, where he found strength in their presence during his time in the internment camps. However, Masao struggles to acquire enough funding for the project, as none of the banks he had contacted were willing to support his venture. In 1997, the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC) proceeds to offer him a deal, agreeing to finance his whale lagoon on the condition that he modify the UNIS array to track seismic disturbances along deep-sea fissures. Masao reluctantly accepts their deal, deploying twenty-five UNIS drones into the Mariana Trench.
The array would begin transmitting valuable seismic data, but it would also attract a fearsome predator, the Megalodon. The massive shark detected electrical impulses from the array and attacks one of the UNIS robots, rendering it inoperable. It later returns to destroy two core units, disabling the earthquake detection system entirely. JAMSTEC promptly cuts off the funding, threatening the Tanaka Institute with bankruptcy if the array is not repaired. To investigate, Masao's son DJ Tanaka pilots a manned submersible into the trench, photographic a damaged unit and retrieving a loose scrap of metal for examination. After analyzing the footage, Masao seeks the advice of former deep-sea submersible pilot Jonas Taylor to help restore the array and rescue the whale project from collapse. He sends his daughter, Terry Tanaka, to recruit Jonas, hoping that his expertise would determine the cause of the incident and help revitalize his dream of building the whale lagoon.
The Trench[]
MEG: Primal Waters[]
Appearances[]
Trivia[]
- Masao Tanaka is the book version of Minway Zhang.