Pearl Harbor

From Barnes & Noble

A reprint of one of the original investigations of the Pearl Harbor debacle. The debate has not yet slackened.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This book goes a long way toward ending the 50-year-old debate as to how the Japanese managed to surprise U.S. forces when they bombed Hawaii on December 7, 1941. In 1944, Secretary of War Henry Stimson selected co-author Clausen, then a lawyer in the U.S. Judge Advocate's office, to conduct an independent investigation into the Pearl Harbor attack; Clausen submitted a top-secret report on the matter, the substance of which is published here for the first time. Assisted by New York-based editor Lee, Clausen details his discovery of egregious errors of omission and commission, as well as criminal neglect of duty by the Army and Navy high command in Washington and Honolulu. He concludes that the top officers in Hawaii, General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel, were simply asleep at the switch and ignored repeated warnings. Probably the most telling factor in this failure of communication, he argues, was the Navy's arrogant hoarding of secret intelligence that should have been shared with its Army counterparts. This thoroughly engrossing narrative, as compelling as a detective novel, answers two major questions: What did Washington and Honolulu know about Japanese actions before the attack and what did they do about it? A significant historical breakthrough that should attract a wide readership. Photos. 60,000 first printing; BOMC, QPB and History Book Club alternate. ( Sept. )

Library Journal

By now everyone is aware that the worst of the Pearl Harbor tragedy might have been avoided if the United States had heeded the warnings more carefully and had had a little luck. Clausen adds to the picture by describing his high-level wartime mission to find the truth about the raid. Although he makes dramatic charges of laxness and organizational bungling, his overheated claims of outright malfeasance are neither new nor surprising. If the book adds little to the controversy, however, the wartime documents it reproduces make a useful addition to the Pearl Harbor literature. It is written in a fastidious, lawyerly fashion but is a nice supplement to Gordon Prange's classic At Dawn We Slept . Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/92; for other Pearl Harbor books, see ``The Day of Infamy in Print,'' LJ 9/1/91, p. 206-07.--Ed.-- Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History Prog., Los Angeles

Booknews

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 c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Brad Hooper

"America still does not understand the facts behind the disaster of Pearl Harbor," insists Clausen, who indeed possesses the right to make such an assertion. He was appointed independent prosecutor by Secretary of War Henry Stimson in 1944 and charged with investigating the "root causes" of Pearl Harbor because, so the secretary believed, the official investigations had not discerned the truth. For seven months Clausen interviewed everyone involved in the U.S. armed forces and intelligence who might have been able to have some impact, large or small, on preventing the Japanese attack or at least lessening its result. But Stimson, when he received Clausen's report on his desk, deep-sixed it out of regard for national security; and only now, with his report having finally been declared declassified, can Clausen, with the help of coauthor Bruce Lee, relate the story of his investigation and what he found. Assigning various shades of blame to various quarters, including FDR's White House, Clausen sees the problem ultimately as being a failure of American intelligence at the time--not so much in the gathering of information as in its dissemination into appropriate hands. A bold book, sure to be snatched up by historian and general reader alike.