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The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans
These are the original Japanese documents on Pearl Harbor, collected and annotated by the best-selling coauthors of At Dawn We Slept and Miracle at Midway.
- GenresHistoryJapanWorld War II
256 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1993
About the author
Donald M. Goldstein
34 books13 followersA former officer in the United States Air Force, Donald M. Goldstein was Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 18, 2014
The intent of this book was a 4-star project or better, but the execution is only 3-star. I feel rather uncomfortable giving such a low rank to a Goldstein/Dillon project, since they produced several 5-star books in their career, but this honestly has serious weaknesses. It strikes me as a thrown-together effort.
The book is a collection of documents recording the Japanese naval officers' views of the preparation for, execution of, and aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. There are several contributions by Genda, including his memory of the invention of the idea, and his part in the planning. There are some war diaries, other memories of the planning, copies of orders, and so on. For some reason a couple of private letters of Yamamoto to his mistress are tossed in, along with other brief letters. Finally there is a long assessment of the mistakes and weaknesses of the Japanese Navy, especially in planning and training, by Masataka Chihaya, who was a staff officer who graduated in pretty much the last class before the Big War.
These materials were collected by Gordon W. Prange, MacArthur's official historian, in the immediate post-war period. One problem Prange faced was that many original documents had actually been destroyed, so he asked Japanese officers to attempt to reconstruct some things that were missing. The result is that it's not clear how accurate the documents really are. This problem is compounded by the book being put together from Prange's archive, and apparently some of the notes and even pages went missing. In several cases we don't know who did the translations; we don't know which bits are original; we don't even know when things were composed.
Worse, the anthologists did not update bad translation work. The reader is often aware of what the English should have been, but isn't. Many times one simply can't tell what was meant by a fractured or ambiguous sentence. It was not clear whether the Japanese document still existed, or whether the anthologists only had the translation, and therefore couldn't really correct it. In either case, it makes for rough going. The English is amateur, sometimes pidgin.
Another weakness is that the documents are presented with very little apparatus. There are brief introductions of the author, or the ship involved, but almost no footnoting. I frequently had to resort to my reference works on the Pacific War to figure out what was being discussed. There are several instances where a clarifying or commenting footnote would have been Really Useful. For instance, there are numerous comments about the Allied submarine that the task force bombed and sank on the 17th of December, with the possible killing of a second later that same day. There is no footnote letting the reader know whether any Allied submarines were attacked, or even in the vicinity, on that day. My sources certainly list none being sunk at that time. Some poor whales were probably the victims of the War.
I did learn some interesting details, and the staff officer's complaints were interesting (though at times so shrill that one wondered...). His view was that the Navy had only conceived of fighting the US Navy as an issue of winning a single Grand Battle; and that they had never bothered to consider how a war would actually go. They did not actually assess necessary productivity. They did not assess the needed fuel reserves. They did not ever calculate the logistics. They grounded all strategy on a battle in the Marianas, but didn't realize that should include a plan to concede the Marshals, first. He is withering about the Japanese failure to EVER fight a battle to its conclusion, especially when it would involve destruction of American transport vessels. Not glorious enough, and never done. The same with submarines, he insists the real problem was that officers simply would not follow the German and American examples of raiding commerce. Even when they were being crushed by that strategy, they couldn't bring themselves to follow the lesson.
So, if you're a Pacific War completist, this should be on your shelf. But it won't be your favorite.
The book is a collection of documents recording the Japanese naval officers' views of the preparation for, execution of, and aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. There are several contributions by Genda, including his memory of the invention of the idea, and his part in the planning. There are some war diaries, other memories of the planning, copies of orders, and so on. For some reason a couple of private letters of Yamamoto to his mistress are tossed in, along with other brief letters. Finally there is a long assessment of the mistakes and weaknesses of the Japanese Navy, especially in planning and training, by Masataka Chihaya, who was a staff officer who graduated in pretty much the last class before the Big War.
These materials were collected by Gordon W. Prange, MacArthur's official historian, in the immediate post-war period. One problem Prange faced was that many original documents had actually been destroyed, so he asked Japanese officers to attempt to reconstruct some things that were missing. The result is that it's not clear how accurate the documents really are. This problem is compounded by the book being put together from Prange's archive, and apparently some of the notes and even pages went missing. In several cases we don't know who did the translations; we don't know which bits are original; we don't even know when things were composed.
Worse, the anthologists did not update bad translation work. The reader is often aware of what the English should have been, but isn't. Many times one simply can't tell what was meant by a fractured or ambiguous sentence. It was not clear whether the Japanese document still existed, or whether the anthologists only had the translation, and therefore couldn't really correct it. In either case, it makes for rough going. The English is amateur, sometimes pidgin.
Another weakness is that the documents are presented with very little apparatus. There are brief introductions of the author, or the ship involved, but almost no footnoting. I frequently had to resort to my reference works on the Pacific War to figure out what was being discussed. There are several instances where a clarifying or commenting footnote would have been Really Useful. For instance, there are numerous comments about the Allied submarine that the task force bombed and sank on the 17th of December, with the possible killing of a second later that same day. There is no footnote letting the reader know whether any Allied submarines were attacked, or even in the vicinity, on that day. My sources certainly list none being sunk at that time. Some poor whales were probably the victims of the War.
I did learn some interesting details, and the staff officer's complaints were interesting (though at times so shrill that one wondered...). His view was that the Navy had only conceived of fighting the US Navy as an issue of winning a single Grand Battle; and that they had never bothered to consider how a war would actually go. They did not actually assess necessary productivity. They did not assess the needed fuel reserves. They did not ever calculate the logistics. They grounded all strategy on a battle in the Marianas, but didn't realize that should include a plan to concede the Marshals, first. He is withering about the Japanese failure to EVER fight a battle to its conclusion, especially when it would involve destruction of American transport vessels. Not glorious enough, and never done. The same with submarines, he insists the real problem was that officers simply would not follow the German and American examples of raiding commerce. Even when they were being crushed by that strategy, they couldn't bring themselves to follow the lesson.
So, if you're a Pacific War completist, this should be on your shelf. But it won't be your favorite.
October 2, 2021
Tora! Tora! Tora! The code word the Japanese used to signify that the surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was a success.
This is quite academic drawing from Japanese sources showing the attack from the perspective of the Japanese from the planning stages through to the aftermath.
This is quite academic drawing from Japanese sources showing the attack from the perspective of the Japanese from the planning stages through to the aftermath.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews