First 24 Hours of War in the Pacific [Hardcover]

Donald J. Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1997

The first the world knew of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was at 8:00a.m., Hawaiian time, when the stunning message "AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NO DRILL" was hurriedly flashed from Admiral Kimmel's headquarters at Pearl Harbor. Twenty-four hours and two minutes later, at 1:32p.m., Washington time, the Congress of the United States officially declared war on the Empire of Japan.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This hour-by-hour reconstruction of events in the Pacific on December 7, 1941, is a stripped-down version of Stanley Weintraub's 1991 Long Day's Journey into War. The concentration on a single theater diminishes reader confusion as Young shifts focus among Malaya, Wake Island, Hong Kong and the Philippines in a narrative that successfully walks the edge of entropy, while the limited focus also offers case studies in the fog and friction of modern conflict. After months of Far East crisis, the allies were handicapped by an inability to shift effectively into the mindset of actual war. But the stunning early Japanese successes were not merely reflections of allied unpreparedness: 1941 was a watershed year, when the movement of large numbers of ships could still be concealed with relative ease and when air strikes could come from what seemed like nowhere?particularly given the long range of the Japanese navy's land-based bombers. Young convincingly asserts that the disasters of the first 24 hours set the stage for the heroic, futile stand of isolated outposts like Wake and Hong Kong and for Japan's conquest of the numerically and materially superior British garrison of Malaya. The core of Young's book, however, is his account of the destruction of American air forces in the Philippines?hours after receiving confirmed word of Pearl Harbor. Without denying the responsibility of rank, Young does not seek scapegoats among senior officers like Douglas MacArthur or Lewis Brereton. He presents instead a general climate in which decisions were made on the basis of guess rather than calculation, and windows of opportunity were left open for an enterprising enemy. Here, he provides a corresponding lesson in the human behavior under crisis situations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Young covers the first day of the Pacific theater of World War II as it occurred everywhere, from Malaya to Washington, D.C., except at Pearl Harbor. Oh, there are some glitches; for example, the Japanese submarine I-26 sank the carrier Wasp, not Hornet. But Young furnishes detail about episodes--the Japanese invasion of Guam, the successful air strike against Wake, the bombardment by destroyers of Midway Island, etc.--that rate only cursory mention in larger works, and he remedies the oversimplification of other accounts of the chain of errors that led to the destruction of most of the U.S. air power in the Philippines. What ultimately emerges from his work is the impression that the Japanese were very good but also very lucky and that their early complete air supremacy over Malaya and the Philippines was decisive during the first day's fighting. Definitely valuable for serious military collections. Roland Green

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 178 pages
• Publisher: Burd Street Pr (November 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572490799
• ISBN-13: 978-1572490796
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,468,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars nd informative, April 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: First 24 Hours of War in the Pacific (Hardcover)

Military historian Donald J. Young takes the reader to eleven Pacific sites where war is about to change everything. He puts us on doomed Wake Island where Major Devereaux is ordering his Marine bugler to sound "Call to Arms" as an invasion force looms offshore and bombs devestate. We are with more marines in North China, embassy guards, who must surrender or die on the spot. The bugler sounds "Retreat" for one last time and then breaks his bugle across his knee and hurls it away. We are aboard the PanAm flying boat "China Clipper" as it desperately tries to flee Wake Island already under attack. We are on indefensible Guam when an ill-equipped handful of American Marines, mindful that no U.S. Marine unit has ever gone down without a fight, march off to make a stand agasinst an invasion force of 5000. The Marines are armed with 1903 Springfield rifles, two .30 caliber machine guns, and a few.45 sidearms. They are assisted by Insular Guards, native Chamorros who also carry ought three Springfields but theirs are stamped ""Do not shoot. For training purposes only." We are at Clark Field in the Phillipines where B-17s are caught on the ground by aerial raiders. We are abandoning the ill-fated 2100 ton lumber schooner "Cynthia Olsen" torpedoed and sinking off Hawaii, the first U.S. merchantman to be sunk in World War Two but not the last. Reading this book will remind you how lucky we are there can never be another be another Pearl Harbor. Oh, sure! (review taken from my review in"Vapor Trails", news letter of the Mass. Chapter of the 8th Air Force Historical Society of which I am editor and publisher.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The rest of the Day That Lives in Infamy, August 17, 2000

By 

Chris Schaefer (Houston, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: First 24 Hours of War in the Pacific (Hardcover)

Most of us associate the beginning of World War II with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Actually, Pearl Harbor was only one of numerous attacks carried out by the Japanese that day. Their true objectives were the mines of Malaya and the oil fields of Borneo--Pearl Harbor was a side-show which was necessary to keep the United States from interfering.

In this book Donald J. Young vividly describes the other events of December 7, 1941, giving minute by minute details seldom found elsewhere. He describes the inept responses of our (U.S. and British) military forces to attacks which should not have come as any surprise, but did. In the last chapter, he fills us in on the reaction in Washington, where the Japanese attacks may actually have solved a problem for President Roosevelt.

For the serious WW II historian this is a valuable book. For the casual reader this is an interesting and entertaining book, particularly if you are already aware of some of the controversy surrounding the events of the day.