![]() ![]() Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor was the only way to implement that aggressive thrust and that the Japanese had learned the effectiveness of surprise attack 36 years before at Port Arthur in destroying the Russian navy in the Russo-Japanese War without formally declaring war-was the sheer fact of Western racism. turned off the spigot due to the empire’s unwillingness to withdraw from Manchuria that knocking out the U.S. ![]() However, undermining the overt motivation-that the Japanese desperately needed oil after the U.S. ![]() Indeed, as the author authoritatively shows in a narrative that is fluid and only occasionally overwrought, there were numerous indications early on that Japan was planning an aggressive thrust into the South Pacific to seize crucial natural resources from the Dutch East Indies, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. Moving chronologically and rendering the Japanese side of the story as well, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Twomey has mined the “nine official inquiries, big and small, in five years” that occurred after the attack, providing a sense of how the participants (now mostly gone) met or failed to meet the challenge of Japan’s relentless bellicosity. A highly detailed look at the tense buildup to Japan’s “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor becomes a study of how very unsurprising it really was. ![]()
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