Three Days to Pearl: Incredible Encounter on the Eve of War [Hardcover]

Peter J. Shepherd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2000

This compelling story of "what if" centers around the author learning of the Japanese task force heading for Hawaii three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Naval Inst Pr (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557508151
• ISBN-13: 978-1557508157
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,865,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A fantasy, November 9, 2006

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Three Days to Pearl: Incredible Encounter on the Eve of War (Hardcover)

In December 1941, Peter Shepherd was a teen-age mechanic in the Royal Air Force, stationed at a remote airfield in north Malaya.
"Three Days to Pearl" relates how a mysterious, dashing pilot in a civilian plane landed at his base, arranged for Shepherd to accompany him as flying mechanic and took off for Cambodia (then French but under Japanese military occupation) on Dec. 4.
While the pilot was off conducting some smuggling and/or espionage business, Shepherd encountered a drunken Japanese civilian engineer. Although neither spoke a word of the other's language, by signs and sketches the engineer revealed to Shepherd the size, route, intentions and schedule of the Japanese fleet then approaching Pearl Harbor.
When Shepherd returned and told his tale to two British intelligence officers, the authorities in Singapore did nothing. As one consequence among many, Shepherd was blown up in a Japanese air raid on Dec. 8 (Malaya time, which was Dec. 7 on the other side of the International Date Line in Honolulu).
Shepherd dresses up this story with a deal of circumstantial but uncheckable detail, including an impossible romantic encounter with a beautiful Malay girl named Wan. These details do not authenticate the story; they prove it to be bogus.
To believe the key events of this tale, you would have to accept that by gestures and sketches, the engineer could have imparted such information as "that he was a civilian engineer and employed by a big company engaged in metal fabrication for the aircraft industry" or that he had been sent to an aircraft carrier "to lengthen the standard racks to accommodate new armor-piercing bombs."
You wouldn't want to play Charades against that team.
Shepherd proves himself a hoaxer when he tells how he tried to prove to the intelligence officers that the Japanese target would be Pearl Harbor, a place Shepherd claims never to have heard of up to that time.
According to him, the Japanese engineer kept stabbing a pencil at a map of Hawaii and repeating excitedly, "Purhabba!"
Shepherd says he told the British, "Perhaps the Jap was pronouncing the words 'Pearl Harbor' in his way -- the way the Japanese pronounce it -- or, rather, that may be the way it sounds to us when they say it."
But the way an English speaker would hear a Japanese-speaker trying to deal with Pearl Harbor would be something like Pu-ru Ha-bu, very different from "Purhabba," which Shepherd clearly got from "Me Tarzan, you Jane" stereotypes in movies or in "Boy's Own Paper," a popular magazine among English lads of his generation.
The plot of "Three Days to Pearl" sounds very much like a "Boy's Own Paper" story.
It would not be worth noticing this paltry effort except for two things: this book undoubtedly will be placed more or less reverently on the long shelf of books designed to prove that the U.S. government really was not surprised at Pearl Harbor; and it has been endorsed by several historians of World War II who ought to know better.
Shepherd, the old soldier, does have one good point to make.
He is rightly bitter against his military commanders who let down the common soldiers (not to mention the civilians) in Malaya, and against the government of Japan, which has ignored his repeated demands for a personal apology for its "barbarous acts . . . before its government made any formal declaration of war against either the United States of America or Great Britain."
The book gets two stars instead of one, because the framework of his experiences in Malaya -- I accept that he was, indeed, there with the RAF -- is probably as authentic as the memoirs of any other vet.

1.0 out of 5 stars Pure and simple: a hoax, not a history, May 1, 2008

By 

Cato Sapiens (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Days to Pearl: Incredible Encounter on the Eve of War (Hardcover)

There have been far grander literary hoaxes in the field of history--the spectacular disaster of the phony "Hitler Diaries" in the early 1980's nearly sunk the career of one of England's preeminent historians...as well as the editors of the Times of London and Germany's Stern.

British engineer Peter J. Shepherd probably did serve his country valiantly as a young lad amidst thee horrors of Britain's abandoned war zone of Southeast Asia where stubborn and idiotic strategic decisions by both British and US senior military leaders lead to gross over-commitment in the Southeast Asia Theatre from Singapore to Hong Kong to the Phillipines resulting in many tens of thousands of deaths by starvation, torture, and general inhumanity after the inevitable Japanese conquest/occupation.

No doubt he has long resented the senseless suffering he saw all around him--a feeling he captures quite well in colorful prose of daily life in a distant, forlorn encampment at the far ends of the British Empire.

But in this book more than six decades after the events it claims to describe may work for him as a kind of payback, but it does a disservice to all those in the South Pacific fronts who fought and died with valor, even when certain pipe-smoking and cigar-smoking strategists were playing the Great Game often without regard to the devastating impact on young soldiers like Shepherd.

Having been an editor, writer, and researcher in magazines, books, and newspapers for thirty years, I feel confident in saying that what he has written is one very good yarn. It is far, far too good to be true and at all the key points, the story just breaks down of its own heavily weighted logic. (As in his very solemn reasons for not having come forth earlier for reasons of state--precisely the kind of stuffy, archaic thinking he detests. Good heavens, American admirals were writing devastating critiques of military strategy in the same broad theatre of war by the mid-1950's and continued to do so through Rear Admiral Layton's meticulous but scathing "And I Was There": Pearl Harbor And Midway -- Breaking the Secrets (Bluejacket Books)

A critical editor should have pulled himself away from the thumping good read aspect of the book and said to himself, "Wait a minute...everything is just too conveniently perfect. Even the main source of the story dies of methanol poisoning shortly after revealing the biggest secret in Japanese military history. What are the odds?" And the odds just keep jumping higher and higher with every question one raises. It is just too much like a thriller movie...and then one reads that Mr. Shepherd is now engaged in "screenplay writing" right there on the bookjacket bio.

Yes, it is quite well-written, a page-turner, in fact. But it is not history and anyone who has had to research facts, assemble complicated investigative projects, or thoroughly vet stories from freelancers develops a second sense for tales that have a convenient trap-door escape at every junction where the writer might otherwise have to provide documentation or substantiation.

This is very surprising given the high standards of the Naval Institute Press...a bit dismaying. Even the top-line gimmick, three days, "72 hours to Pearl Harbor" is precisely the kind of simplistic silliness one finds in spy novels. When there is no documentation and the plot of the book involves essentially "knocking off" everyone else who could verify, even a junior editor should have raised the distress flag or fired a flare.

4.0 out of 5 stars Buildup to Japanese attacks ... from an RAF perspective, April 3, 2004

By 

G. Stephen Johnson (Fishers, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Days to Pearl: Incredible Encounter on the Eve of War (Hardcover)

A fascinating first-person tale by an RAF aircraft mechanic stationed in Malaya (now Malaysia).

After a slow start, the author provides an entertaining story of the days leading up to the simultaneous attacks by Japan on Pearl Harbor, Singapore and his base in northern Malaya. The story continues through his evacuation and recovery in the months following the attack.

The primary story line involves the author's flight to Vichy French Indo China, where he learns details of the impending attack. While somewhat difficult to accept as described, the tale is well-told and provides a plausible background to the "surprise" attacks.

The book is an easy-to-read and worthwhile investment for the WWII aficionado.