Countdown to Pearl Harbor

Countdown to Pearl Harbor:  The Twelve Days to the Attack, by Steve Twomey, Winner of the Pulitzer Price, Simon & Schuster 2016

By late November 1941, intelligence reports indicated that Japan was planning aggressive moves in the Pacific, but no one - not the Navy, not the Executive Office, not our intelligence operations, could agree on where they would strike.  But in a small office at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, overlooking the battleships making up the force of America's seafaring power, recently moved to Honolulu, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet tried to determine how much danger he really faced.  His intelligence unit had lost track - lost track - of Japan's biggest aircraft carriers, but he assumed that they were resting in a port far away.  The admiral thought Pearl was too shallow for torpedoes.  And as he fretted, a Japanese spy counted the warships in the harbor and reported his tally into Tokyo.

We always knew that there were hints and rumors about a Japanese attempt at a Pacific takeover, but we never heard all the truth and suspicions behind the story.  In Countdown to Pearl Harbor Steve Twomey presents more than enough researched facts to show what we might call today a failure of intelligence, or government coordination, or preparedness.  What he gives us - a look at pre-WWII society, the outlines of spy craft and code-breaking, is exciting.  America and Japan were at such very different states - one not eager to move, and another barely held back.

"On the evening of December 8 (the evening after the attack), having hunted fruitlessly for the Japanese and needing replenishment, the Enterprise came home.  As the carrier glided down the channel and into Pearl, Admiral Bill Halsey absorbed the vista in steeled silence until he was heard to mutter a vow.  "Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell."  ...The battered and scorched Nevada lay aground to one side... the Arizona still burned wildly.  All day, workmen had swarmed the exposed keel of the turned-turtle Oklahoma, trying to cut holes.  Hundreds of sailors, living and dead, remained encased in her, the living tapping for help, running out of air.    The harbor reeked of smoke and fuel, and defeat."

On Monday, the day after the attack my 16 year old uncle went down to the Town Clerk's office in Pepperell, a central Massachusetts mill town,  to get a birth certificate.  He wanted to sign up for the Navy, like his older brother, but he was one year too young.  The woman behind the desk took a good look at him - skinny, red-haired, unapologetic but shy.  His three older brothers had already signed up - she asked him what town he was born in, and started typing.  She changed his birthday - he was suddenly 17 - and that week he shipped out, bound for destroyers and a seaman's duty from first the Caribbean, then on to the Mediterranean, where his ship was sunk by German torpedo planes.  And all at the age of 16!