Gannon Mmichael (1 results)

Octavo, black & gold boards (hardcover), gilt letters, 339 pp. Fine in a Fine dust jacket. From dust jacket: At last, the full story of the Pearl Harbor attack -- a groundbreaking and authoritative reappraisal of the pivotal event that thrust an isolationist nation into war. For sixty years, myths about Pearl Harbor have proliferated. One oft-repeated tale has President Roosevelt so intent on drawing the nation into World War II that he was willing to sacrifice the Pacific Fleet. Another equally untrue but even more tenacious explanation -- the "at dawn they slept" scenario -- identifies military incompetence at Pearl Harbor as the reason behind the Japanese tactical victory. After six years of intense research, naval historian Michael Gannon has finally separated fact from fiction to re-create the dramatic events surrounding that fateful December morning when more than 2,400 Americans were killed, eighteen U.S. warships sunk or heavily damaged, and 150 aircraft destroyed. Drawing on largely untapped U.S. and Japanese primary sources -- including overlooked or unknown military orders, code intercepts, aide-memoire, eyewitness interviews, and private correspondence -- the author builds a stunning narrative that penetrates a smoke screen of cover-ups, top-level military misdirections, and faulty diplomatic decisions going back to Japan's invasion of China in 1937. We come to understand the paradox that Admiral Yamamoto faced once the architect of this bold strike recognized that a tactical victory at Pearl Harbor would lead inevitably to Japan's defeat. Gannon reveals why the shifting positions of the State Department placed the Pacific Fleet -- then no match for the Japanese carriers and aircraft -- in harm's way. We learn who was responsible for the ambiguous and misleading warnings delivered to Pearl Harbor months earlier, and why Washington was willing to risk thousands of lives rather than the security of code intercepts when it learned that a Pacific strike was coming. We watch in heartbreaking despair as the "warning alert" reaches Oahu after the last attacking plane has departed. Even so, Kimmel's ill-equipped and surprised forces were combat ready, his men heroic. Beyond Washington's inattention and derelictions, there is Navy Secretary Franklin Knox's bland assessment of the attack: "Pearl was not in a state of readiness." Within ten days a kangaroo court, the Roberts Commission, was convened. Instructed in secret by Washington's top brass, the verdict was inevitable -- the Pacific commander in chief, who was denied reconnaissance aircraft and intelligence available to Washington, would take the fall for an unprepared nation. In Pearl Harbor Betrayed, Michael Gannon has accomplished what heretofore seemed impossible: He has set the record straight about the most exhaustively examined and debated event in our entire history. Military History, Pearl Harbor, World War II, Second World War, WWII, Military Strategy, Political Science. yslic.