Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays (Bedford Series in History & Culture) [Paperback]

Akira Iriye (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0312147880 | ISBN-13: 978-0312147884 | Edition: First Edition

Assembling more than 30 primary documents — including proposals, memoranda, decrypted messages, and imperial conferences — Iriye presents diplomatic exchanges from both American and Japanese perspectives to determine how and why the United States and Japan went to war in 1941. A detailed introduction provides background on Japanese aggression in China and Southeast Asia during the 1930s and economic unrest and isolationism in the United States. Readings add an interpretive dimension, placing Pearl Harbor in global context; essays from American, Japanese, Chinese, Soviet, German, British, and Indonesian perspectives explain how various countries applied pressure, offered assistance, exacerbated rifts, and significantly affected negotiations and Japan’s ultimate decision for war.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'The author urges students not to read the documents passively but to consider how they might have acted or responded in the context of the time. Students are thus urged to view the documents both from the outside as historians and from the inside as imagined participants. This is an interesting and stimulating pedagogical device.' - Peter Duus, Stanford University

About the Author

Akira Iriye is professor of history at Harvard University, where he was appointed the Charles Warren Professor of American History in 1991. He has also taught at the University of Chicago and served as president of the American Historical Association in 1988. He has published widely on American diplomatic history and American-Asian relations, inlcuding Cultural Internationalism adn World Order (1997) and Japan and the Wider World (1997).

Product Details

• Paperback: 258 pages
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's; First Edition edition (February 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312147880
• ISBN-13: 978-0312147884
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #71,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #71 in Books > History > Asia > Japan

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great book, March 10, 2007

By 

arch stanton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays (Bedford Series in History & Culture) (Paperback)

very insightful as to the acts that would be come upon the attack on pearl harbor. very well written essays that explain different views on how other countries perceived the attack.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Source-based textbook, December 23, 2011

By 

reader 451 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays (Bedford Series in History & Culture) (Paperback)

Akira Iriye's Pearl Harbour and the Coming of the Pacific War is divided into two parts, with the first a collection of primary texts from the diplomatic run-up to Japan's attack on the United States, and the second a selection of commentaries from historians. The source extracts include letters and memoranda from the Japanese and American sides, plus transcripts of a few key Tokyo government conferences. Framing these are short introductions by Iriye, but this is a textbook and the aim is to prime the student with questions more than to provide interpretations. Likewise, the secondary material is designed to illustrate a divergence of views on Pearl Harbour: whether it was the result of an intelligence failure on the American side, what were the actual chances of peace, whether Japanese motives had primarily to do with the oil supply, with China, or with grabbing British colonies, how much the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy mattered, etc..

This is an interesting and well-conceived little volume. It is focused and clear, and should be of great value to the history student who seems to be its target public. And if it has a message, it is that diplomatic history is not a straightforward matter of drawing facts from government and consular missives. The primary sources show subtle and not-so-subtle differences of interpretation between both sides. The protocols contain blatant, hard-to-interpret ambiguities. And the secondary literature also illustrates to what extent angles of vision affect diplomatic choices. My only criticism, albeit minor, is that I would have welcomed more engagement from Iriye himself and more scrutiny of Japanese sources in domestic context, and perhaps even a full cultural decoding of the differing Japanese and American approaches to the negotiations of 1941.

Akira Iriye is a historian of American diplomacy and American-East Asian relations. He was born in Tokyo but studied in the US and obtained his Ph.D. at Harvard, where he returned to teach after holding various Japanese and American posts. A prominent writer in his field, he was appointed President of the American Historical Association and served as president for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In a landmark 1979 journal article on culture, power, and international relations (published in Diplomatic History, unfortunately not available online), he called for integrating domestic culture into the history of international affairs. This book is an interesting example of such an attempt, though it falls short as a full realisation of that call.