Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Jasper Holmes could have chosen as his title the phrase his colleague Edwin T. Layton used for his memoirs: And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway - Breaking the Secrets. As a USN reservist returned to active duty at Pearl Harbor just months before the attack, Holmes was there at the start of the war. And he remained near the center of naval intelligence activities in the Pacific until the end.
My bigggest criticism of this book has nothing to do (directly) with Holmes himself. Like many memoirs written in the decades immediately after the war, this book is limited by the fact that much of the information Holmes would otherwise have been able to share was still officially secret. It would be for later researchers to say what Holmes couldn't.
The other complaint I have is that, based on what I've read elsewhere, Holmes modestly understates the important role he played in the events he describes. It's to his credit that he's eager to praise talented and dedicated cryptologists and analysts. But Holmes frequently makes himself sound like someone standing on the sidelines watching the varsity team play. In fact, he was one of the team's key players.
What could be a highly technical memoir is leavened by a light tone and entertaining asides, like his tales of trying to drive through Honolulu with darkened headlights (a feat he describes as probably a greater danger to the citizens of Honolulu than the Japanese attack was).
Any student of the war in the Pacific, and particularly of Naval Intelligence operations or the attack on Pearl Harbor, will find this an interesting and entertaining memoir.
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