Subnuts
04-03-06, 03:51 PM
I wrote this review for epinions.com earlier today. As always, I write for a general audience so there's probably more than a few "well, duh!" moments to be found. As always, it's just my opinion.
There are certain books that are so exhaustively researched they can be called "labors of love." At Dawn We Slept is an example of a book so exhaustively researched it probably contributed to the death of it's author. Mr. Prange began work on At Dawn We Slept in 1943, missing his first publication date in 1951. He interviewed hundreds of participants, and examined thousands of books and unpublished papers. The "selected bibliography" alone is 12 pages long. ADWS was still 3,500 pages long upon his death in May 1980. Over the next year his two assistants, Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon, managed to whittle it down to a "mere" 735 pages.
As you probably already know, the Japanese surprise attack of December 7th, 1941 on Pearl Harbor was a "really mean thing" that "killed a lot of people" and "annoyed a whole lot more." What many fail to realize is that, at least on the American side, it represented a failure of coordination on the part of the government, military, and intelligence services on a embarrassing scale. However, it was not the result of an insidious conspiracy on the part of Franklin Roosevelt to drag America into the war. Prange went into ADWS with no ideological bias, but it still stands as the most thorough refutation of the "revisionist" viewpoint ever written.
Format
At Dawn We Slept was first published in 1981. Editions from 1991 and later have a new afterword and a short essay titled "Revisionists Revisited" written by Dillon and Goldstein. It is 889 pages long and has 81 chapters. The appendix includes a list of notes and citations, a list of major personnel, a bibliography, and a letter from Prange prior to his death discussing his source materials.
Random Babbling/Historical Background
Considering the nearly overwhelming complexity of this book, I figured it would be easier to combine theses two sections into one. Pearl Harbor is not a cut-and-dry case. It is not something easily reconciled with, not a totally black-and-white case, nor can it be easily parsed down into a nice little packet of "popular history." In reality, the Pearl Harbor story is a maddeningly complicated one, fraught with controversy, that will not die so long as people remember it. And remember Pearl Harbor we should, so we can reflect upon the arrogance of our ancestors and to remember that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. (Yes, I am capable of sounding smugly patriotic ever now and then!)
I might be more willing to accept the revisionist viewpoint if not for my nearly overwhelming disdain for conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers, an the like. Years of reading incoherent ramblings about fake moon landings, aliens killing JFK, cruise missiles hitting the twin towers, and black helicopters have left me incredulous of their viewpoints. They have also mastered the art of ad hominem to a degree previously unheard of:
"FDR was a traitor!"
"Why?"
"Because he let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor!"
"Why did he do that?"
"Because he was a traitor!"
"I still don't know why he would do that."
"You're a moron!"
Prange's thesis is simple enough: We got caught with our pants down. It wasn't the fault of Admiral Husband Kimmel (Commander of the Pacific Fleet) or Lt. Gen. Walter Short (Commanding General, Hawaiian Department) that this happened. It would be impossible to blame one single person for the attack, and the entire situation was a nightmare in the making. Granted, this isn't the most groundbreaking or muckraking hypothesis ever put forward, but it is the one that makes the most sense.
Pearl Harbor didn't bomb itself, which brings me to the Japanese side of the story. Prange interviewed virtually every single surviving officer who took part in the attack, and probably knew more about Pearl Harbor than anyone else in the world when he died. In 1941, Japan entered the forth year of it's brutal expansionist war in eastern China (let's not sugarcoat this, folks). This conflict gobbled up resources to such an extent that Japan began to look southward towards the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. Already, in September 1940, Vichy France had allowed them to occupy strategic points throughout French Indochina.
Some consider FDR's decision to put an embargo on oil and steel exports to Japan as a deliberate provocation. Prange views this as nonsense, as the Japanese were dead set on expansionism even before the embargo was in place. Why would Roosevelt, who loved the Navy, allow Japan to start a two-ocean war he desperately wanted to avoid? Furthermore, wouldn’t it be hypocritical for the US to oppose Germany while subsidizing Japan? The revisionist viewpoint simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. As Prange states, in Japan "the military called the tune, and the government danced to its piping." Once the plans were in place, there was little that could stop them from being carried out.
The Japanese consulate in Honolulu was a hotbed of espionage, the vast majority of which was carried out perfectly legally. Messages between Tokyo and Hawaii were decrypted daily. Why many these messages were never passed on is one of the great mysteries of Pearl Harbor, and doubtless played a part in the tragedy. In one stinging passage, Prange states that "whoever decided to withhold the Honolulu intercepts - or at least information based thereon - from Kimmel and Short must accept part of the blame for the Pearl Harbor tragedy."
I could write a laundry list summarizing the political, military, and intelligence failures that occurred leading up to December 7th. None of these reflect a dereliction of duty, rather they reveal gross errors in judgement. Short and Kimmel failed to properly coordinate defenses in the crucial days prior to the attack, failed to maintain effective reconnaissance, failed to use the facilities at their disposal, and failed to appreciate the intelligence available to them. This is not to personally "blame" them for the attack, as it was the Japanese who carried it out to its devastating conclusion. They were merely pieces in a huge puzzle, but I find it difficult to completely absolve them for their failures. As I said, Pearl Harbor was the "fault" of many.
Critque
Despite being a very strong refutation of the revisionist viewpoint, and a probing examination of an unpleasant piece of American history, At Dawn We Slept is far from being a perfect book. Prange's detail-consciousness threatens to overwhelm the narrative all too often. It would easy to shave off 50 pages of the finished book and not lose anything in the long run. The author may have unintentionally summed everyone up in one sentence: "the code was typically Teutonic in its overelaboration, superabundance of detail, organization refined to chaos, and disregard of the human element."
Not that ADWS is entirely "overelaborate, chaotic, and unhuman." When it's good, it's very, very good. Throughout the first 2/3rd Prange present a frequently gripping interplay between the Japanese and American sides, much like a stage play in which the participants can not see one another and rely solely on faint whispers. Unfortunately, this interplay abruptly disappears after the attack, and the reader must then slave through 150 pages discussing the post-attack investigations.
Obviously, this isn't the sort of book you read at the beach or during dull periods at work. It's relentless intricacy and enormous cast of characters will probably leave casual readers bewildered and bored. If you have a serious interest in the subject, give it a go, but be ready to dog-ear the hell out of it and consult the personnel list every three pages or so.
(Oh, and just as a word of warning. The first time I read this book was two weeks before 9/11. The second time was two weeks before the beginning of the Iraq War. Be prepared for a massive terrorist attack in the next two weeks, but don't blame me for it!)
There are certain books that are so exhaustively researched they can be called "labors of love." At Dawn We Slept is an example of a book so exhaustively researched it probably contributed to the death of it's author. Mr. Prange began work on At Dawn We Slept in 1943, missing his first publication date in 1951. He interviewed hundreds of participants, and examined thousands of books and unpublished papers. The "selected bibliography" alone is 12 pages long. ADWS was still 3,500 pages long upon his death in May 1980. Over the next year his two assistants, Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon, managed to whittle it down to a "mere" 735 pages.
As you probably already know, the Japanese surprise attack of December 7th, 1941 on Pearl Harbor was a "really mean thing" that "killed a lot of people" and "annoyed a whole lot more." What many fail to realize is that, at least on the American side, it represented a failure of coordination on the part of the government, military, and intelligence services on a embarrassing scale. However, it was not the result of an insidious conspiracy on the part of Franklin Roosevelt to drag America into the war. Prange went into ADWS with no ideological bias, but it still stands as the most thorough refutation of the "revisionist" viewpoint ever written.
Format
At Dawn We Slept was first published in 1981. Editions from 1991 and later have a new afterword and a short essay titled "Revisionists Revisited" written by Dillon and Goldstein. It is 889 pages long and has 81 chapters. The appendix includes a list of notes and citations, a list of major personnel, a bibliography, and a letter from Prange prior to his death discussing his source materials.
Random Babbling/Historical Background
Considering the nearly overwhelming complexity of this book, I figured it would be easier to combine theses two sections into one. Pearl Harbor is not a cut-and-dry case. It is not something easily reconciled with, not a totally black-and-white case, nor can it be easily parsed down into a nice little packet of "popular history." In reality, the Pearl Harbor story is a maddeningly complicated one, fraught with controversy, that will not die so long as people remember it. And remember Pearl Harbor we should, so we can reflect upon the arrogance of our ancestors and to remember that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. (Yes, I am capable of sounding smugly patriotic ever now and then!)
I might be more willing to accept the revisionist viewpoint if not for my nearly overwhelming disdain for conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers, an the like. Years of reading incoherent ramblings about fake moon landings, aliens killing JFK, cruise missiles hitting the twin towers, and black helicopters have left me incredulous of their viewpoints. They have also mastered the art of ad hominem to a degree previously unheard of:
"FDR was a traitor!"
"Why?"
"Because he let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor!"
"Why did he do that?"
"Because he was a traitor!"
"I still don't know why he would do that."
"You're a moron!"
Prange's thesis is simple enough: We got caught with our pants down. It wasn't the fault of Admiral Husband Kimmel (Commander of the Pacific Fleet) or Lt. Gen. Walter Short (Commanding General, Hawaiian Department) that this happened. It would be impossible to blame one single person for the attack, and the entire situation was a nightmare in the making. Granted, this isn't the most groundbreaking or muckraking hypothesis ever put forward, but it is the one that makes the most sense.
Pearl Harbor didn't bomb itself, which brings me to the Japanese side of the story. Prange interviewed virtually every single surviving officer who took part in the attack, and probably knew more about Pearl Harbor than anyone else in the world when he died. In 1941, Japan entered the forth year of it's brutal expansionist war in eastern China (let's not sugarcoat this, folks). This conflict gobbled up resources to such an extent that Japan began to look southward towards the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. Already, in September 1940, Vichy France had allowed them to occupy strategic points throughout French Indochina.
Some consider FDR's decision to put an embargo on oil and steel exports to Japan as a deliberate provocation. Prange views this as nonsense, as the Japanese were dead set on expansionism even before the embargo was in place. Why would Roosevelt, who loved the Navy, allow Japan to start a two-ocean war he desperately wanted to avoid? Furthermore, wouldn’t it be hypocritical for the US to oppose Germany while subsidizing Japan? The revisionist viewpoint simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. As Prange states, in Japan "the military called the tune, and the government danced to its piping." Once the plans were in place, there was little that could stop them from being carried out.
The Japanese consulate in Honolulu was a hotbed of espionage, the vast majority of which was carried out perfectly legally. Messages between Tokyo and Hawaii were decrypted daily. Why many these messages were never passed on is one of the great mysteries of Pearl Harbor, and doubtless played a part in the tragedy. In one stinging passage, Prange states that "whoever decided to withhold the Honolulu intercepts - or at least information based thereon - from Kimmel and Short must accept part of the blame for the Pearl Harbor tragedy."
I could write a laundry list summarizing the political, military, and intelligence failures that occurred leading up to December 7th. None of these reflect a dereliction of duty, rather they reveal gross errors in judgement. Short and Kimmel failed to properly coordinate defenses in the crucial days prior to the attack, failed to maintain effective reconnaissance, failed to use the facilities at their disposal, and failed to appreciate the intelligence available to them. This is not to personally "blame" them for the attack, as it was the Japanese who carried it out to its devastating conclusion. They were merely pieces in a huge puzzle, but I find it difficult to completely absolve them for their failures. As I said, Pearl Harbor was the "fault" of many.
Critque
Despite being a very strong refutation of the revisionist viewpoint, and a probing examination of an unpleasant piece of American history, At Dawn We Slept is far from being a perfect book. Prange's detail-consciousness threatens to overwhelm the narrative all too often. It would easy to shave off 50 pages of the finished book and not lose anything in the long run. The author may have unintentionally summed everyone up in one sentence: "the code was typically Teutonic in its overelaboration, superabundance of detail, organization refined to chaos, and disregard of the human element."
Not that ADWS is entirely "overelaborate, chaotic, and unhuman." When it's good, it's very, very good. Throughout the first 2/3rd Prange present a frequently gripping interplay between the Japanese and American sides, much like a stage play in which the participants can not see one another and rely solely on faint whispers. Unfortunately, this interplay abruptly disappears after the attack, and the reader must then slave through 150 pages discussing the post-attack investigations.
Obviously, this isn't the sort of book you read at the beach or during dull periods at work. It's relentless intricacy and enormous cast of characters will probably leave casual readers bewildered and bored. If you have a serious interest in the subject, give it a go, but be ready to dog-ear the hell out of it and consult the personnel list every three pages or so.
(Oh, and just as a word of warning. The first time I read this book was two weeks before 9/11. The second time was two weeks before the beginning of the Iraq War. Be prepared for a massive terrorist attack in the next two weeks, but don't blame me for it!)