Christine Kuehn and her husband, Mark, kept what they were learning hidden in a basement closet until she finally decided to write a book about her "Family of Spies." "I stopped and started so many times because, you know, I was having trouble accepting what I was learning," she said. "My grandfather was the only person tried and convicted for the bombing of Pearl Harbor."

Kuehn's father tried to shield her from this not-to-be-believed family saga. "He wouldn't talk about his past," Christine said. "He always really skirted the issue."

And her Aunt Ruth warned her to stay away from it: "She said, 'You have a good life. Don't ruin it with the past.'"

But the past landed on her doorstep in 1994, when a letter came out of the blue. "Kind of turns your life upside-down," she said, "when y

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