In 1944, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, knowing that high-ranking members of the military had falsely testified before the various bodies investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor, selected a then-unknown major by the name of Henry C. Clausen to undertake a new investigation. From November 1944 to September 1945, Clausen traveled more than 55,000 miles and interviewed over a hundred U.S. and British Army, Navy, and civilian personnel. He was given the authority to go anywhere and question anyone under oath, from enlisted personnel right up to George C. Marshall, the chief of staff. He ultimately presented an 800 page report to Stimson—a report that revealed a massive operational failure by the United States to use the priceless intelligence signals that it had obtained months before Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor is the "final judgement"-the story behind Clausen's investigation and a blistering account of his conclusions.
Henry C. Clausen was selected by the Secretary of War in 1944 to find out the truth about Pearl Harbour, knowing that high-ranking members of the military had testified falsely before various bodies. This book, written by Clausen, reveals the truth about Pearl Harbour.
Clausen was appointed as independent investigator of the events at Pearl Harbor by Secretary of War Stimson in 1944, and the present volume, co-authored with the late military historian Bruce Lee, is Clausen's riveting conclusion to his investigation, which he could not write when he presented his 800-page report to Stimson in 1945, for reasons of national security. Clausen definitively disproves the conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor, explains why the Japanese attack was successful, and identifies those who were responsible for the American failure to protect itself. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This account of the top secret investigation is “essential history . . . the authoritative appraisal of why American armed forces met the Japanese attack asleep” (The Christian Science Monitor). On December 6, 1941, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, assured his staff that the Japanese would not attack Pearl Harbor. The next morning, Japanese carriers steamed toward Hawaii to launch one of the most devastating surprise attacks in the history of war, proving the admiral disastrously wrong. Immediately, an investigation began into how the American military could have been caught so unaware. The results of the initial investigation failed to implicate who was responsible for this intelligence debacle. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, realizing that high-ranking members of the military had provided false testimony, decided to reopen the investigation by bringing in an unknown major by the name of Henry C. Clausen. Over the course of ten months, from November 1944 to September 1945, Clausen led an exhaustive investigation. He logged more than fifty-five thousand miles and interviewed over one hundred military and civilian personnel, ultimately producing an eight-hundred-page report that brought new evidence to light. Clausen left no stone unturned in his dogged effort to determine who was truly responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement reveals all of the eye-opening details of Clausen’s investigation and is a damning account of massive intelligence failure. To this day, the story surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor stokes controversy and conspiracy theories. This book provides conclusive evidence that shows how the US military missed so many signals and how it could have avoided the events of that fateful day.
2004 Washington State Book Award Finalist Judgment without Trial reveals that long before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began making plans for the eventual internment and later incarceration of the Japanese American population. Tetsuden Kashima uses newly obtained records to trace this process back to the 1920s, when a nascent imprisonment organization was developed to prepare for a possible war with Japan, and follows it in detail through the war years. Along with coverage of the well-known incarceration camps, the author discusses the less familiar and very different experiences of people of Japanese descent in the Justice and War Departments� internment camps that held internees from the continental U.S. and from Alaska, Hawaii, and Latin America. Utilizing extracts from diaries, contemporary sources, official communications, and interviews, Kashima brings an array of personalities to life on the pages of his book � those whose unbiased assessments of America�s Japanese ancestry population were discounted or ignored, those whose works and actions were based on misinformed fears and racial animosities, those who tried to remedy the inequities of the system, and, by no means least, the prisoners themselves. Kashima�s interest in this episode began with his own unanswered questions about his father�s wartime experiences. From this very personal motivation, he has produced a panoramic and detailed picture � without rhetoric and emotionalism and supported at every step by documented fact � of a government that failed to protect a group of people for whom it had forcibly assumed total responsibility.
A groundbreaking history that considers the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective and is certain to revolutionize how we think of the war in the Pacific. When Japan launched hostilities against the United States in 1941, argues Eri Hotta, its leaders, in large part, understood they were entering a war they were almost certain to lose. Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these men—military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor—put their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harm’s way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsed—eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gambler’s dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable. In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japan’s leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washington’s hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japan’s place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italy—unaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nation’s bona fides with the West. We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japan’s army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japan’s elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it. Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizing—both Japanese and Western—to expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.
This highly regarded war memoir was a best seller in both Japan and the United States during the 1960s and has long been treasured by historians for its insights into the Japanese side of the surface war in the Pacific. The author was a survivor of more than one hundred sorties against the Allies and was known throughout Japan as the "Unsinkable Captain." A hero to his countrymen, Capt. Hara exemplified the best in Japanese surface commanders: highly skilled (he wrote the manual on torpedo warfare), hard driving, and aggressive. Moreover, he maintained a code of honor worthy of his samurai grandfather, and, as readers of this book have come to appreciate, he was as free with praise for American courage and resourcefulness as he was critical of himself and his senior commanders.
The Secret History of How America's "Neo-Conservative" Trotskyites came to power and Orchestrated the war against Iraq as the First Step in their drive for Global Empire. Written by the author of the #1 Banned Book in America: "Final Judgement".
