World War Two - Pearl Harbor
- from Amazon:
 "The Navy's own story of the events that led up to Pearl Harbor now can be drawn from top-secret documents placed before the Pearl Harbor Committee. These documents show that misunderstanding, inadequate co-ordination and other factors helped the Japanese surprise attack, even though the Navy was almost certain a Pacific war was coming." "Out of the Pearl Harbor investigation last week came a decoded telephone conversation made on November 27, 1941, two weeks before the Japanese attacked, that had all the elements of a penny-dreadful spy thriller... On the Washington end of the trans-pacific phone call was Saburo Kurusu, Japanese special envoy to the United States; on the Tokyo end, Admiral Yeisuke Yamamoto, Chief of the American Division of the Japanese Foreign Office."
The conversation guaranteed Yamamoto that the negotiations between the two sides were proceeding smoothly and that the attack on Pearl Harbor would be a surprise. Recognizing that responsible commanders must always assume the blame for the failings within their respective domains, former U.S. General George C. Marshall and General Leonard T. Gerow stood up and claimed responsibility for leaving Pearl Harbor vulnerable to Japanese attack. Marshall had been FDR's Army Chief-of-Staff since the Autumn of 1939 and Gerow had been serving as executive officer of the War Plans Division at the time of the sneak attack - however, To read this article is to understand that these men were responsible for Pearl Harbor's lack of preparedness...
"Cordell Hull, aging ex-Secretary of State, snapped back in reply to the section of the report which had implied that he was partly at fault for the disaster because his actions had precipitated a crisis. In a hitherto unpublished letter, Hull pointed out
(1.) that he had personally advised the general staff on 25 November, 1941 that war was imminent, and (2.) that his final negotiations had not included any ultimatum that was a spark to set off the Asiatic conflagration."
"Into the records of the Pearl Harbor investigating committee last week went a little-noticed document that added new mystery to the disaster of December 7, 1941:"
"Four months before the enemy struck, the Army and Navy air command at Pearl Harbor drew up a joint defense plan which correctly forecast the hour, the direction, the size of the force and the strategy by which the Japs actually attacked."
A year after the Pearl harbor attack, one of the PM journalists recalled for their readers how many Americans in the lower 48 had heard the news on the radio that evening. |
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