Author's Preface

When the attack on Pearl Harbor was announced on the radio, my sister phoned. I was outdoors playing touch football with my nine-year-old boy and some of his friends. I went inside immediately and turned on the radio. From that moment on I have followed Pearl Harbor developments closely.

At dawn on December 7, 1941, the Japanese had attacked the United States U.S. Fleet stationed in Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii was then a territory of the United States, not yet a state. Nevertheless, that blow brought the United States into the war that had been started in Europe by Hitler’s attack on Poland in September 1939. The war then exploded worldwide, with fronts not only in Europe and in the Atlantic but also in Asia and the Pacific.

The generally accepted explanation for our entry into the war was simply Japan’s “unprovoked and dastardly attack” on Pearl Harbor. However, the responsibility for the extent of the disaster was attributed to a considerable extent to failures on the part of the two commanders at Pearl Harbor—Navy Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Army General Walter C. Short. To many, this settled the matter; the two commanders were to blame, held up to public shame, relieved of their commands, and forced into early retirement.

The first hint I had that there was more to the Pearl Harbor story came in 1944. The then Republican candidate for President, Thomas E. Dewey, was trying to unseat President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Several service personnel came to the Republican National Committee—of which I was then Research Director —with reports that U.S. cryptographers had deciphered some of the Japanese codes and that Washington officials had been reading, even before the attack, many of the Japanese government’s confidential communications.

Dewey proposed to make a speech on the subject, but was requested in great secrecy by Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, not to do so. Our ability to decipher and read Japanese messages, he said, was still playing an important role in helping us to win the war in the Pacific and thus to save the lives of U.S. soldiers and sailors. Dewey honored that request. When Republican Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, unaware of the reason for Dewey’s silence, also scheduled a speech on the subject, Dewey asked him not to. Thus the public was prevented from learning any of the true Pearl Harbor story at that time. And the voters gave Roosevelt a comfortable victory over his Republican rival.

After the election, I resigned from the Party and turned to freelancing as researcher and economic columnist.

1945 was an eventful year. On January 20, Roosevelt was inaugurated for an unprecedented fourth term. He died a few months later, on April 12. The war was not yet over. Vice President Harry Truman took office. The fighting finally ended in Europe when Germany surrendered on May 7. And the war in the Pacific came to an end with the surrender of Japan on August 14.

Rumors had surfaced from time to time, in spite of efforts to maintain secrecy, to the effect that the attack on Pearl Harbor might not have been such a complete surprise to the officials in Washington as the public had been led to believe. Several fact-finding inquiries were set up during the war in the attempt to learn more. A great deal of information was unearthed, although it was not then made public. Pressure continued to mount for a full-fledged investigation of the responsibility for the Pearl Harbor disaster. Finally when the war was over, Congress responded.

A Joint Congressional Committee for the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack (JCC) was set up in the fall of 1945. The Democratic majority named six of the Committee’s ten members, the Republican minority four. The Democratic majority controlled the appointment of the Committee’s Counsel and staff. The Republican minority was not given funds for an adequate research staff. As I had earned some respect as a researcher when working with the Republican National Committee during the 1944 presidential campaign, a few persons interested in having the Joint Congressional Committee conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation arranged for me to head a small staff to assist the minority members. The JCC’s reports issued in July 1946 answered some questions but raised others.

My serious interest in Pearl Harbor stemmed from my work with that Committee. For almost a full year (1945–1946) I had spent day and night studying Pearl Harbor documents and exploring Pearl Harbor leads. From that time on, I read everything I could find that bore some relevance to “Pearl” and I tried to keep current on the subject. Then, thanks to a small grant arranged by Harry Elmer Barnes I was able to travel back and forth across the country to meet and interview surviving principals. When further funds were not forthcoming, my serious study of Pearl Harbor was sidetracked for the more urgent demands of earning a living. Only in semi-retirement have I had time to concentrate on the subject again.

History is a record of step-by-step progression from the past. Any event is always the end result of a long sequence of events stretching back endlessly into the past. The historian investigating a particular incident must always decide where to start, how far back to go. And so it is with Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack in 1941 was the final outcome of complex, interconnected occurrences that had their origins many years before. For the purpose of this book, I have chosen to trace the conflicting forces that led the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, back to the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War.

Events happen; once they are over and done with, they are irrevocable. Learning after the fact what actually occurred is not always easy. History needs to be written and rewritten constantly in the light of newly revealed evidence and newly acquired knowledge in other fields. As previously classified and secret World War II documents have been released in recent years, considerable additional information has become available. To reconcile the conflicting testimony of the many witnesses before the several Pearl Harbor investigations, to keep abreast of new material as it becomes available, to integrate new data into the previous body of knowledge, and to separate the wheat from the chaff so as to make it all intelligible and meaningful, calls for painstaking research and analysis. The task of the historian is to try to reconstruct and report the facts as accurately as possible. As historian, I have acted as sleuth or detective trying to determine the truth. The Pearl Harbor story is like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, the parts coming from many different sources, each part alone being of little value until fitted into the mosaic. Hopefully this book will supply a few more pieces to the gigantic Pearl Harbor jigsaw puzzle and thus make a small contribution to this period in history.

Percy L. Greaves, Jr.

Summer 1984