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(More customer reviews)This hefty volume is not a compendium of conspiracy theories regarding the unhappy event which formally marks America's entry into World War II. Rather, it is a chronological account of the Pearl Harbor attack as reconstructed from the personal testimonies, diaries and interviews of key military and civilian leaders who were on duty the morning of Sunday, December 7th. The late author was the senior researcher for the Republican minority group, a subset of a larger congressional committee tasked with investigating the attack following the defeat of Japan in 1945. After the formal close of this investigation in the summer of the following year, Greaves went on to review the final reports in light of earlier, wartime military and civilian inquiries. Thus, he is a credible authority and there are probably few if any historians who have such a complete grasp on the Pearl Harbor attack from a documentary level. Not all information salient to the attack was available in the 1940s and as the decades passed, Greaves remained committed to broadening his understanding of this pivotal moment in world history as additional data became available. Readers are the beneficiaries of an incredible amount of meticulous work on the part of the author and his wife, who edited the volume. Any summary here will do an injustice to the couple's heroic effort, but the following points will hopefully inspire people to add this work to their collection. Let me also add that while the size of the book is intimidating, it reads smoothly and is a true page-turner, especially for armchair historians who appreciate great detective work. Not every question can be answered and Greaves does not elaborate any grand theory of What Really Happened. He does however provide a short summary that places the blame on the responsible persons. Those who have followed the details leading up to the author's conclusions will find themselves in agreement.
In essence, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a natural response to U.S. foreign policy in the Pacific. FDR and Secretary Hull effectively goaded the Japanese by making harsh demands for Japan's withdrawal from China while cutting off the country's access to oil. Matters were made worse by FDR's decision to freeze all Japanese assets held in the U.S. in the summer of 1941. American leaders admitted that such political decisions merely served to harden the resolve of Japan's militarist wing while setting up the two countries for an inevitable war.
A point of perplexity is that Japan's war against the communist Chinese under the auspices of fighting against the Soviet-created ComIntern would seem like a natural fit for Western interests in the Pacific. In many ways, the Japanese were fighting as proxies on behalf of the West to keep the Chinese from turning red, a policy approach favored in particular by the U.S. throughout the last half of the twentieth century. Yet time and time again, Japanese peace overtures on the part of the civilian Prime Minister Prince Konoye were rebuffed by FDR. Prior to the attack, moderate Japanese civilian leaders were eventually forced out of power by the militarist dictator General Tojo. (One can only wonder how history would've shaped up had FDR agreed to Prince Konoye's request for a summit in Hawaii.) The militarist wing used the intransigence and arrogance of FDR and Hull to argue that a diplomatic resolution to tensions was no longer an option. Konoye had failed.
As to the attack itself, what becomes clear from the documentary evidence is that U.S. military commanders at Pearl Harbor were effectively ignored. Admiral Richardson had gone toe to toe with FDR over the Pacific Fleet's vulnerable position in Hawaii. The harbor offered a single channel of transit while the base short on materiel and manpower. Any preemptive strike would have done incalculable damage to immobilized capital vessels. FDR fired Richardson over his recommendations and replaced him with the future scapegoat, Husband Kimmel. Like Richardson, Kimmel, along with his Army counterpart Walter Short, saw that the fleet was incredibly exposed and short on all the essentials needed for its defense while in port. Any offensive operations against Japan in the event of a hot war were out of the question. FDR had opted to transfer 25% of the personnel and materiel in the Pacific to the Atlantic in order to bolster the British in their struggle against the Nazis.
The president and his advisors ignored the pleas of the Pacific Fleet commander and his Army counterpart, narrowly assuming that any Japanese strike would occur in the Philippines, Wake Island or some other location in the southwest Pacific. The Japanese saw the base at Pearl Harbor as low hanging fruit, easily plucked.
The American focus on the southwest was unusual in light of the MAGIC intercepts which had been processed in the weeks leading up to the attack. A number indicated that Japanese civilians were actively plotting the exact positions of ships at Pearl Harbor and relaying the information back to the home country. Neither Kimmel nor Short were advised of this important detail. Had they been alerted to the clandestine activities of the Japanese Hawaiian consulate, the fleet would have deployed to open waters where it was much safer and thus, would have been removed as a viable target. (This incidentally had been the reason that both Adms. Richardson and Kimmel had pushed for moving the fleet to the West Coast - to keep it better protected and within easy reach of dry docks and other facilities missing from Pearl Harbor).
The commanders had focused on anti-sabotage activities because this is what the War Department had led them to believe was the likely scenario for the future. Carrier air wings were bunched up together in their hangars at Pearl in order to make it harder for saboteurs to destroy them. Washington had signed off on this plan when it was submitted by Kimmel, never letting the commander know that a preemptive sneak attack was definitely within the realm of possible Japanese action. Military officials in later testimony admitted to being aware of Japan's history for sneak attacks. Whereas Kimmel and Short were communicative regarding their military preparations, the same cannot be said for Washington, which held back information that would've drastically changed how Hawaii handled its defenses.
In the aftermath of the attack, Kimmel and Short were hung out to dry by the Roberts Commission. It took several more investigations to establish that they were not solely at fault for the heavy casualties suffered during the attack, but Marshall, Hull and most significantly, FDR, were never rightly blamed for their gross negligence and incompetent handling of America's diplomatic relations with Japan. The many decades of service of both Kimmel and Short were honorable and it's quite chilling to read how quickly and easily the politicians sacrificed their names and careers to cover their own negligence. It's important to remember that the Roberts Commission did not even bother to investigate the role of the civilian leadership in the Pearl Harbor attack.
Greaves provides a fascinating record of how civilian leadership was effectively exempted from criticism for its incredible incompetence in both diplomatic and military matters. Then as now, the public at large had no inkling as to the bind their government had placed upon Japan. Japanese are portrayed as ruthless, sneaky and without any honor, yet modern historical research shows that it was a nation struggling with economic problems and reluctant to enter into a war with America. The war with Japan was completely avoidable. More disturbing, Washington at all the relevant levels had a strong indication of how and when Japan would break diplomatic ties, down literally to the hour, and yet, nothing was done to prepare Hawaii for the terrible events that followed.
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