PEARL HARBOR: The Verdict of History

by Gordon W; Donald M. Goldstein & Katherine V. Dillon Prange ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 9, 1985

Yet another WW II rehash, this one concentrating on exactly where to assign the blame for the debacle at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The late Gordon Prange has previously given us At Dawn We Slept, Miracle at Midway, and Target Tokyo. At Dawn We Slept told the story of that fateful Hawaiian morning. The current volume, though, is more about responsibility than about combat. There have been plenty of theories over the past 45 years, ready to attribute blame to everybody and anybody--to a vague universal responsibility, to a Congress with its cumulative head in the sand, to the most recent revisionists, such as John Toland, who in Infamy presents an FDR rubbing his hands in glee over his strategic coup in getting Japan to attack the US and thus bringing America into the European war through the ""back door."" Prange's research has led him to demolish the various revisionist arguments, such as that Churchill tried to get Roosevelt to get into a war with Japan early on. Prange claims that Churchill wanted no part of Asian hostilities, rightly fearing a devastating Burma campaign. Where revisionists show George Marshall kowtowing to Roosevelt's supposed desire to keep secret from the US military information on Japanese fleet movements long enough to allow the surprise attack to get through to the harbor, Prange tries to show that, psychologically, Marshall could not be anybody's yes man. And, countering the revisionist image of a scheming FDR, Prange offers us a Roosevelt incapable of the kind of deep strategic thinking that could hatch such a successful military scheme as inciting the Japanese to attack. If anyone takes the rap, it is the Army and Navy staffs and intelligence people at Pearl Harbor, whose failure to communicate and whose ignoring of obvious danger signals contributed overwhelmingly to the attack being a surprise. None of the arguments offered here, though, are definitive enough to bury the revisionists.' Prange's weakness is that he uses the same sort of suppositions about participants' integrity and inner thoughts as do the historians that he chastises. It results, all in all, in a less than satisfying work.

Pub Date: Dec. 9, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1985

Categories: NONFICTION