Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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78 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The definitive work on Pearl Harbor? Perhaps it is..., July 6, 2000
While science is my area of expertise, I have a continuing interest in history. That interest lead me to pick up Prange's book. Gordon Prange has devoted years to accumulating information about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That information includes interviews and military and government information from the USA and Japan. That accumulated information was then boiled down into this final work -- completed after Prange's death.While there have been many books and theories proposed about why and how the debacle at Pearl Harbor took place, Prange's approach is well documented, and includes details of the pre-attack politics of the USA and of Japan. His book also includes detailed information about the attack itself, gleaned from interviews with those on both sides who actually participated in the event. But, even with that level of detail, I must admit that the most compelling part of the book for me is the section that follows the actual attack -- when the US government and the military were trying to figure out what actually happened, and who was to blame. The final series of chapters of the book provide insight into the thoughts and tactics of Adm. Kimmell (CincPAC) and Gen Short (Commanding General of army at Hawaii), the two primary "interested parties" in the event. Before reading the book, I had a tendency to believe that there may have been something of a conspiracy by the Roosevelt administration to get us into WWII, but after reading this account of Pearl Harbor, I am more likely to believe that the great success, including complete surprise by Japanese naval aviation was the result of a series of ill-advised decisions by the commanders at Hawaii rather than by any entity in Wash DC. The sticky point in the whole affair was "magic" the US's code-breaking machine that allowed us to monitor coded diplomatic messages sent between Tokyo and some of its embassies. While "magic" was the source of a great deal of information that may have resulted in a different outcome at Pearl Harbor if the commanders there had access to it, we will never really know. If you are interested in looking in repurcussions from the attack at Pearl Harbor, or if you have an interest in thinking about the whys and hows of the US entry into WWII, I urge you to read this book. The writing is passable, though sometimes quite dry. The information is well documented, and is believable. This is not, however, a quick read -- there is a lot of meat in this book to be digested as you go along. All in all an outstanding contribution to the telling of a sensitive piece of American history. 5 stars for content and believability. Alan Holyoak
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Parts are thorough but book lacks essential information, November 30, 2007
Gordon Prange was a military historian on MacArthur's staff who researched and interviewed key people involving Pearl Harbor for nearly 40 years prior to his death. He never finished this book and a couple of graduate students of his compiled, edited, and finished his work, so this is a composite production.
The books(yes, books - the edition I own is 2 volumes) themselves are arranged in sections called "Prelude", "Action" and "Aftermath". Prange and his students are not writers and this is a long, detailed book that is not for the idle reader looking for a popular account.
But the main reason for the low ranking of this book is that it lacks so much essential information. Some has only become available in the last few years but a fair amount was simply not included by Prange or his students. Some material is still locked up. A fair amount was destroyed or disappeared at the orders of the accusers of General Short and Admiral Kimmel, the scapegoats. And if that isn't circumstantial evidence, I don't know what is. In fairness, Prange never completed this hobby of his.
Prange's students overall decide that the Pearl Harbor debacle was the fault of the 2 primary commanders, General Short of the Army and Kimmel of the Navy. The majority of the book is actually a defense of this thesis and defense of President Roosevelt and his staff.
The basic problem is that the Japanese destroyed our Pacific Fleet with almost no losses. And someone must have been at fault. Of course, it is quite possible for no one or everyone to be at fault, but the Pearl Harbor blame game has continued for 60 years and shows no signs of stopping. This book is the best and most complete defense of Roosevelt, General George C. Marshall and other top Washington Insiders. For the missing parts of the puzzle I recommend Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath and Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Contribution to the Japanese Attack.
The greatest strength of this book is the extensive Japanese information and interviews. The main Japanese commanders who had the greatest knowledge were, however, almost all killed during the war or in the war crimes trials shortly thereafter.
The key factor in believing that Pearl Harbor could have been prevented was that the US had broken the Japanese code and intercepted and translated messages regularly. Yet for some reason, the code-breaking machines, called "Magic", were never sent to the Pacific, the area which most needed this information. As a matter of fact, the listening stations in the Pacific relayed the intercepts to Washington. Why? Roosevelt wanted control as he tried his best to get America in WWII. And the best way to do that was to get Japan to attack the US. This information, readily available is not included in this book and is one of its most glaring problems.
There were multiple intercepts of war messages, none of which ever got to Pearl Harbor. The code for launching attack was "Execute Winds". This message was intercepted and decoded December 4, 1941, 3 days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. This information was never transmitted to the Pacific under orders from at least 20 Washington Insiders including President Roosevelt and General Marshall.
The meat of the book are the investigations after Pearl Harbor. The first was the Roberts Commission. Roberts was a Supreme Court Justice and the rest of the group were cronies of General George C. Marshall or Roosevelt, the 2 figures who covered up the information that would have saved thousands of lives at Pearl Harbor. There was one exception, a retired Admiral Standley who came late to the hearings and found that the witnesses weren't being sworn in, no one had asked hard questions of the Washington Insiders and the testimony wasn't even being recorded. Roberts even forbade Kimmel and Short from calling any witnesses. Finally, the court assigned 2 stenographers, one a mere teen-ager and neither of whom had any court experience. These incompetents missed or garbled much of the testimony and Justice Roberts refused to even let Kimmel and Short correct the errors. The fix was in. Commenting on this kangaroo court Admiral Bull Halsey noted, ""I have always considered Admiral Kimmel and General Short to be splendid officers who were thrown to the wolves as scapegoats for something over which they had no control." Other admirals called this panel "as crooked as a snake" and said the report was "the most unfair, unjust, and deceptively dishonest document ever printed by the Government Printing Office". Strong words from those most likely to know what really happened. And this book has none of this, to its shame.
Kimmel and Short then pushed for a courts-martial so they could tell their side. Eventually the Navy and Army tried these officers in 1944. Kimmel had heard by then of all the intercepted messages that had been withheld from him. 43 of these were delivered to the court and "The admirals on the Court listened to them being read with looks of horror and disbelief. Two of the admirals flung their pencils down. More than 2,000 died at Pearl Harbor because those messages had been withheld." The Roberts Commission findings were reversed; Kimmel and then Short were exonerated. General George C. Marshall and other Washington Insiders were censured. But George C. Marshall was the highest General in the land and this was 1944 - the war was still on. So the innocent verdict was suppressed as a state secret by Secretary of Navy Knox on Roosevelt's orders. Clearly, Roosevelt was behind all of this, but the investigation had purposely not examined the President's role.
Roosevelt died shortly thereafter and the war ended. And then Secretary Knox convened other hearings - this time with his hand-picked cronies. Officers were demoted and transferred who had previously testified. One was thrown in a mental hospital. The Chief Warrant Officer Ralph T. Briggs, the man who had originally intercepted the "winds" message at a United States monitoring station was summoned before his commanding officer, who forbade him to testify. "Perhaps someday you'll understand the reason for this," he was told. Briggs had a blind wife to support. He did not come forward as a witness.
But the father of Naval Cryptography, Captain Laurance Safford, refused to be cowed. He continued to testify of the truth. Gradually others began to again confirm that the Roosevelt Administration had prevented the transmission of the intercepted Japanese information. It was found that just four days after Pearl Harbor, Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, director of naval communications, told his subordinates: "Destroy all notes or anything in writing." This was an illegal order -- naval memoranda belong to the American people and cannot be destroyed except by congressional authority. And this book, again, has none of this.
Then Congress convened its own investigative body. With 6 democrats and 4 republicans, it broke along party lines so that the new President Truman, wouldn't lose any votes. And that was that. General Short died and then Admiral Kimmel.
We know now that Kimmel and Short were right. Dozens of sources of the information that Japan was attacking have since turned up - all suppressed by a Roosevelt administration determined to get us into WWII. As historian John Toland reports, both Japanese assistant naval attachés posted at the Washington embassy in 1941 have verified that the message to attack was transmitted on December 4th, exactly as Safford said.
As a final footnote, on May 25, 1999, the U.S. Senate approved a resolution that Kimmel and Short had performed their duties "competently and professionally" and that our losses at Pearl Harbor were "not the result of dereliction of duty." "They were denied vital intelligence that was available in Washington," said Senator William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.). Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) called Kimmel and Short "the two final victims of Pearl Harbor."
And so Kimmel and Short have been finally vindicated. Roosevelt, Marshall and others purposely withheld information that would have prevented the disaster at Pearl Harbor to get us more committed and unified. And that this book has none of this information means that it is not worth reading.
In the end, this is just one more, decades old, sordid government cover-up of treasonous activities by Insiders bent on their own agenda. Korea, Vietnam, assassinations of key figures, Waco, Oklahoma City,Iraq and 9-11 are just the continued fruits of a government over which we long ago lost control. Now why would I bother to even review this flawed book on an event that is being forgotten? "Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it." Vincet Veritas! And Long Live the Republic!
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29 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The most definitive book on the subject of Pearl Harbor, December 15, 1997
By A Customer
How to Transcend the Present and Record the Past for the Future Or,
Prange's Present toPosterity
Seth Hieronymus
History of PearlHarbor Abroad November 22, 1997
Principia College, Elsah, IL, 62028
At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, by Gordon W. Prange, manages to break new ground in history writing. Although the manuscript in this form was authored primarily by two of Prange's ex-students Dr. Donald Goldstein and CWO (USAF Ret.) Katherine V. Dillon, due to Prange's enormous contribution, At Dawn We Slept is truly his tale. Prange endeavored to write the most complete work on the subject extant, an inside look from both the Japanese and American points of view. In his own words, "I [Prange's italics] am the only individual who has come to grips with the entire Pearl Harbor problem and conducted extensive research and interviews on both sides of the Pacific." Prange, through his research and his use of both the Japanese and American perspectives, has succeeded brilliantly in writing this unbiased look at Japanese / American relations leading up to, and immediately following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Prange's story starts in Japan, New Year's Day, 1941, with its 2601st birthday, and ends in 1946, with the conclusion of the Joint Congressional Committee Investigation into the attack at Pearl Harbor. , , Even though At Dawn We Slept contains several historical references outside this timeframe; for instance, Commodore Mathew Perry's expedition in 1895 that normalized Japanese-American relations, they serve mainly as background information that support the main story. Similarly, although the book briefly mentions the Atlantic theatre and events in Washington, it does not try to expand its focus beyond its original purpose, the Pacific, from Japan to Pearl Harbor. What makes this book great are not the dry facts about who was involved, and where or when it happened, but rather how it tells the events. It is arranged much like two trains, one Japanese and one American, that stop every so often to trade passengers, but inexorably race on to a truculent collision on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor. The language of the book lets the reader look through the eyes of the characters, lets him feel their emotions, and gives him a first-hand look at the events. For instance, speaking of Japanese ships, "[Abukuma] led nine of the newest and best destroyers under the Rising Sun flag... Nagumo's trouble-shooters... could spring to battle at a moment's notice," and later:
On Nagumo's shoulders rested a responsibility and a burden such as few commanders had ever borne in the history of naval warfare. The venture ripped out all the pages of Japanese naval tradition, violated their basic rules of strategy, and tossed into the classified waste the plans which Japan had long formulated to fight the U. S. Navy. ,
The word pictures that At Dawn We Slept paint personalize the history, and make it more accessible and enjoyable. Furthermore, the pictures, although rather sparse, give a visual perspective that speaks out from the past, for instance Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's stately demeanor and Lt. Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki's smug confidence. As with any historical work, research forms its backbone and determines its credibility. The contribution of Prange's own history should not be forgotten, because his background determines the skills and opportunities that he brought to the investigation. Born in Iowa, on July 16, 1910, Prange taught history at the University of Maryland from 1937 to 1980, when he died. Beyond that, he was Douglas MacArthur's chief historian from 1946 to 1951, and had a chance to talk to the participants first-hand. How often are people in the right places at the right times that they are able to record the events of history for posterity? Prange was. Because he spent 37 years of his life gathering first- hand, eye-witness accounts for this book, Prange forces us not only to trust him, but to actually relive the events, as they happened. His hundreds of interviews consisted of individuals who actually participated in the history, from the lowest ranks of the military to the highest, and many of the civilians. The sheer magnitude of his work is an essential element in this book's appeal. For example, Prange met with Commander Minoru Genda -- the main author of the Japanese attack -- a total of 72 times, and Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, the flight leader, 50 times. , Prange's original plan was to write a book solely from the Japanese perspective. Consequently, a bias could have been introduced as Prange did not interview many of the American participants until much later. In one case, the commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lt. General Walter C. Short, whom the Inquiry Board found partially responsible for the attack, died on September 3, 1949, before Prange even had a chance to interrogate him. However, the magnitude of Prange's research and interviews enabled him to find the germane facts in people's otherwise embellished tellings. In this way, Prange minimized distortion of the actual events, and thereby minimized any bias introduced. This is not to say the book falls short of placing both blame and praise for the attack. Of Short, and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, "Both Kimmel and Short exercised poor judgment in this crisis." And about Genda, and Commander Mitsuo Fuchida: From the moment Genda explained his assignment, Fuchida brought a new dimension to the Pearl Harbor picture. Henceforth he and Genda formed a unique team - Genda the creative genius supplying the original ideas, Fuchida the aggressive activist hammering them into reality.
At Dawn We Slept essentially becomes Prange's thesis about the how historical events leading up to Pearl Harbor occurred - on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the book does more: It goes beyond dates and places, and instead brings the history alive. This book, in doing so, becomes a model for its contemporaries and a benchmark for the future.
End Notes
Gaddis Smith, "Remembering Pearl Harbor," The New York Times Book Review 29 November 1981: 3. Donald Goldstein, Telephone Interview, November 20, 1997. Goldstein Interview. Gordon W. Prange, Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon, ed. At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: Penguin, 1991) 814. Prange 3.
Prange 722.
Prange 842.
Prange 392. Prange 395.
Prange 1st Picture Set.
Prange Cover.
Goldstein Interview. Prange 821-825.
Prange 827.
Prange 829.
Prange 728-729. Prange 410. END
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