Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays (The Bedford Series in History and Culture) - Softcover

Iriye, Akira

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312147880 ISBN 13: 9780312147884

Publisher: St Martin's Press, 1999

Synopsis

Could more have been done during those frantic months of negotiating between Washington and Tokyo to prevent the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941? Assembling over 30 primary documents - including proposals, memorandums, decrypted messages, and imperial conferences - Iriye invites students to view the diplomatic exchanges from both American and Japanese perspectives to determine how and why the US and Japan went to war. A substantial introduction provides background on Japanese aggression in China and Southeast Asia during the 1930s and economic unrest and isolationism in the US to frame the ensuing crisis. Adding an interpretative dimension, Part Two of the volume places Pearl Harbor in global context with essays - two published in English for the first time - from American, Japanese , Chinese, Soviet, German, British and Indonesian perspectives that explain how various countries applied pressure, offered assistance, exacerbated rifts, and significantly affected negotiations and Japan's ultimate decision for war. Also included are pictures, maps, a chronology and an index.

About this title

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0312147880
• ISBN 13: 9780312147884
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272