Customer Reviews

The Broken Seal: The Story of Operation Magic and the Pearl Harbor Disaster.

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If the words Purple, Magic, or Arlington Hall do not hold a beguiling fascination for you then please see the other reviews. This is not a book about Pearl Harbor per se. It is a wonderful, concise history of the post WWI American intelligence and its early victories with Japanese code breaking. Fargo offers an engrossing tale of how we intercepted, broke, and disseminated intelligence from the Red, Purple, naval, and commercial Japanese codes prior to December 7th. This is a story about the birth pangs of modern intelligence, culminating in the failure to forecast the attack on Pearl. Fargo details the insights we had into Japanese foreign policy and the vagaries of 1930's espionage/counter espionage quite well. His first hand experience (he worked for ONI under Zacharias), access to sources, and first rate research still make this a great read, even though it is a bit dated. But it is not for just anybody.

This reads like the driest of text books but what it lacks in compelling storytelling, it makes up for with extensive research and thorough accounting. Only recommended for those with a penchant for adding to their Pearl Harbor libraries.