Customer Reviews

Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This work is the definitive analysis of the intelligence failures leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It is not an historical account of the attack, but is rather a concise analysis of the mistakes made by naval intelligence authorities in Hawaii and the U.S. during the months leading up to the attack.

The book offers a unique analysis of the attack, and doesn't pull any punches. Human failures are analyzed, as well as bureaucratic failures, which were many. The reader comes away with a better understanding of the attitudes prevelant among intelligence authorities of the time, as well as an insight into their workings.

This is not a book for those just beginning their studies of the attack. It is more appropriate for someone who already has a good understanding of the historical timelines of the attack, the Japanese perspective of U.S. military policy at the time, and the military and civilian authorities involved in the attack and their roles.

The only negative comment regarding the book is that it offers rather tedious reading at times. But to serious researchers this is more than offset by the volumes of information gleaned from it.

This is a "must-have" book for serious Pearl Harbor researchers.

The first two (petulant) reviews here rather miss the point. Wohlstetter's "Pearl Harbor" is a venerable classic which is still read and quoted from more than 40 years after publication. (It is, for example, referred to by historian and strategist John Lewis Gaddis in the lead article of the Jan/Feb 2005 issue of "Foreign Affairs.")

If you haven't read "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision," then you really aren't prepared for serious discussions with well-informed people about such things as "pre-emptive" and "preventive" wars.

The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 succeeded in putting a large portion of the U.S. Pacific Fleet out of action for months. The attack succeeded because of what today would be called a failure of Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence, and Reconnaissance (C3IR). In this definitive history, Roberta Wohlstetter provides an extensive documentation that catalogues the C3IR failures that explain the success of the Japanese attack. From her account it is clear that these failures were caused by a pervasive mindset among the U.S. Army and Navy high commands that Japan would not and could not attack the fortified island of Oahu in then territory of Hawaii.

Wohlstetter demonstrates that this mindset was coupled with an almost complete lack of inter-service cooperation between the Army and the Navy. Not even George C. Marshall, the brilliant Army Chief of Staff, understood that to defend an island like Oahu the Army would need to cooperate closely with Navy. In fact Marshall and his naval counterpart Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Stark hardly communicated at all. This distant relationship was duplicated by the lack of cooperation between General Short, commander of the army's Department of Hawaii and Admiral Kimmel, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Thus the defense of Oahu and Pearl Harbor was not based on joint, integrated planning nor on a mutual understanding of the two services' capabilities and weaknesses.

The much discussed failure of the then U.S. intelligence system to provide warning of the Japanese attack was exacerbated by the failure of the newly established Air Warning System (AWS) to operate as it was designed. Neither Short nor Kimmel demonstrated any interest in the AWS and made no effort to ensure it was properly staffed and trained. Further the Navy chose not to provide the long range air reconnaissance patrols that were to be a part of the AWS. Finally the command and control as exercised by the Army General Staff and the CNO in Washington in the period prior to the attack was weak and badly executed. This was mirrored by the staffs of Short and Kimmel in Hawaii. In short the Japanese surprise attack on December 1941 succeeded because the U.S. C3IR systems in place failed. As Wohlsetter clearly shows Pearl Harbor was caused by multiple U.S. Military failures of concept and execution.

This book wisely does not speculate on the pre-Pearl Harbor actions of the U.S. civil government under President Franklin Roosevelt. The evidence here is much more complex and subject to interpretation.

1962's "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision" is Roberta Wohlstetter's meticulous reconstruction of the indications and warning process preceding the successful Japanese surprise attack of 7 December 1941. Wohlstetter's research included the results of the various Pearl Harbor Congressional investigations, interviews with key U.S. participants, and access to major portions of the archival record. Her results are intended primarily for intelligence practitioners and their operationally-minded customers, and only secondarily for historians.

Wohlstetter examines the various signals about Japanese actions and intentions received at Pearl Harbor and in Washington D.C. in the months leading up to the attack, and how those signals were processed by key players against a background of competing information. At book's end, she provides the Japanese side of the equation. She closes with an absolutely priceless perspective on the continuing challenge of the intelligence warning problem.

As Wohlstetter documents, U.S. intelligence in 1941 was fragmentary, inexperienced, and disconnected from the decision-makers it was supposed to support. No single agency had the opportunity or authority to conduct meaningful all-source fusion and analysis of the limited available information. Principals in the Executive Branch shared information poorly with each other and with Pearl Harbor. Key decision-makers were distracted by an undeclared war in the North Atlantic, a politically sensitive mobilization, and wishful thinking about Japanese intentions. At the end, key leaders in D.C. and Pearl Harbor were looking in the wrong places for the start of conflict.

Wohlstetter clearly explains how the best efforts of dedicated personnel can be defeated by bureaucracy, human nature, and a failure to communicate. Her final thought, "We have to accept the fact of uncertainty and learn to live with it", could grace any number of post-mortems of intelligence failures. Her book is very highly recommended to the intelligence professional as a cautionary work on the inescapable difficulties of warning and decision.

This is the quinteissential book about the Intelligence failure of Pearl Harbor. SecDef Rumsfeld is said to have required all of his aides to read it (prior to 9/11). It is not reading for the uneducated or those unfamiliar with the attack. It is, however the best source of how the Intelligence community failed America in 1941. Unfortunately, many of the critiques from Roberta Wohlstetter are as applicable in 2001 as they were in 1941.

The latest news is that a midget submarine did in fact penetrate Pearl Harbor and launch its two torpedoes into a battleshipm and the midget supposedly sunk by the destroyer WARD was found with a shell hole exactl where the ship's gun crews said it would be. The waters in the harbor and just outside yield new clues to the Infamy every year. As more sealed documents are opened and become available to scholars,[more will be added to the most spectacular offensive against America, excluding 9/11.

Try reading "A String of Pearls" [ASIN:0971365938 A String of Pearls]] While a work of historical fiction, it provides yet another "what if" to the story of Pearl Harbor that seems all to plausible in today's context. The book moves along very well. It's a "can't put down" work.

The simple fact about US intelligence before Pearl Harbor in the Pacific is that we had cracked their diplomatic (Purple)code, but that was of little use in understanding what their military was up to. Practically no one in Japan except those involved at a high level, was in on Operation Hawaii, certainly
not Japan's diplomats, with the exception of what the Hawaiian
consul could figure out from requests for ship info. Only late in the game was the request made of that office asking about barrage balloons and torpedo nets,etc., which, had it been sent earlier, would have given the game away. You can look at the
Japanese message traffic all you want during the period preceding Pearl harbor, and you'll find nothing to indicate an attack on Pearl Harbor, even with the benefit of hindsight. At Dawn We Slept and The Verdict of History provide all of this info
and a whole lot more, and should be read first and probably only
for info about what was known or was thought was known before the attack from message traffic and other means of intelligence.