Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Attack and America’s Entry into World War II. Takuma Melber. trans. by Nick Somers. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020.

Given the profusion of books, articles, websites, and documentaries about Japan’s surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, even someone with a passing interest in this historic event may wonder what another scholarly title could possibly add to the discussion. Japanese-German historian Takuma Melber’s answer in Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Attack and America’s Entry into World War II is two-fold: his book eloquently synthesizes both Japanese and American secondary and primary sources on the attack, and the narrative is told primarily from the perspective of the Japanese. The result is an evenly balanced account that provides a “big picture” view of events—especially regarding Japan’s military planning, as well as the execution of its carrier strike force, Kidō Butai or “mobile force,” on that fateful December morning. 

Using Japanese memoirs and biographies as well as standard primary sources, and both Japanese and American secondary sources, a familiar story is made fresh through the focus on the Japanese war planners who staged “Operation Hawaii,” and various commanders, pilots, and submariners who participated in the attack.

The book proves less edifying, however, in its analysis of “the road to Pearl Harbor.” The study fails to properly contextualize the important underlying causes of the conflict because it confines its focus to the diplomatic negotiations in 1941. It also adheres to the popular depiction of “hawks” and “doves” within Japan’s government, a perspective that tends to obscure those very negotiations between the two Pacific powers between March and December 1941.

Laid out in four succinct chapters, it is Melber’s military history in chapters two, “The Japanese War Plan,” and three, “The Attack,” that drive the narrative and provide the greatest insights. Using Japanese memoirs and biographies as well as standard primary sources, and both Japanese and American secondary sources, a familiar story is made fresh through the focus on the Japanese war planners who staged “Operation Hawaii,” and various commanders, pilots, and submariners who participated in the attack. In addition to portraits of operation mastermind Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku and fleet commander Vice Admiral Nagumo Chūichi, readers are also introduced to individuals like staff officer Genda Minoru, who conceived of attack scenarios for Yamamoto, and the Oahu-based Japanese spy, navy lieutenant Yoshikawa Takeo. The attack itself, meanwhile, is partially seen through the eyes of aviators like Fuchida Mitsuo, the well-known leader of the first wave, and Akamatsu Yuji, and submariner Sakamaki Kazuo, who became the U.S.’s first prisoner-of-war.

Melber’s discussion of Japan’s top naval brass debating the merits and risks of a pre-emptive naval strike is particularly insightful.The general staff was initially opposed to Yamamoto’s proposal. As Melber makes clear, disagreement centered not only on logistical concerns, but also on the requisite number of carriers deemed necessary to successfully carry out the attack: Yamamoto insisted on six carriers; the general staff preferred four because of the possibility of detection and the need to have them elsewhere. When Yamamoto threatened to resign his post unless his plan was approved, the staff relented, but placed all responsibility for the operation on Yamamoto. Melber’s study also succeeds in detailing the specific plan of attack, including fleet route and attack launch point, the reasoning for two attack waves, and the selection of respective attack zones. The chapter also addresses training in Kyushu and the important technological breakthrough of wooden torpedo fins.

Melber’s discussion of the attack itself is similarly thorough. To be sure, the basic facts of the Japan’s two-wave assault at Oahu are well-known: from the main types of Japanese aircraft, Nakashima B5N torpedo and horizontal bombers, Aichi D3A dive bombers, and Mitsubishi A6M2 “zero” fighters, to the launch sites and targets; and, of course the horrific death and destruction caused by the attack. Melber’s narrative, however—with its focus on the Japanese attackers—provides for a well-balanced analysis. As a result, the subsequent coverage of the strike force’s execution and the unfolding of events becomes more readily understandable. And for readers who tend to associate the carrier-based strike principally with the American battleships anchored at Ford Island, Melber’s book effectively analyzes the breadth of targets, especially the various navy, army, and marine air fields that came under attack. A final chapter, meanwhile, explores the significance of the attack, which includes admirably debunking the conspiracy theories that have grown up over the years about President’s Franklin D. Roosevelt’s alleged inside knowledge of the attack. In a word: nonsense.

By focusing almost exclusively on the period from early 1941, when Nomura Kichisaburō was appointed ambassador to the U.S. until the attack in December, the book glosses over important historical context and the deeper issues dividing the two nations.

The book’s greatest weakness, despite the 70 pages afforded it, is its first chapter on the “road to Pearl Harbor” and U.S.-Japan diplomacy. By focusing almost exclusively on the period from early 1941, when Nomura Kichisaburō was appointed ambassador to the U.S. until the attack in December, the book glosses over important historical context and the deeper issues dividing the two nations. In particular, very little is said about the diplomatic revolution that followed the Great War. Fleeting references are made to the Washington conference (1921-22), but the new principles proclaimed at the Paris Peace Conference (1919), and embedded in the Nine-Power Treaty (1922), Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), and London naval conference (1930) are mostly ignored. The same is true for the Sino-Japanese War, which gets scant treatment in the opening chapter. As a result, for example, it becomes far more difficult for a reader to grasp the significance of Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s Four Principles and his insistence on Japan’s acceptance of them for more substantive talks. A close examination of the Four Principles shows them to be a compressed version of the principles enunciated in the 1920s treaties, which Japan’s aggression in Asia patently violated. Although Melber, to his credit, frequently cites the Four Principles, a historical connection between Hull’s demands and the 1920s treaties is made only in passing for a reader to make meaningful sense of it all.[1] 

Moreover, the book perpetuates a historiographical confusion by labelling Japanese leaders as either hawks/militarists or doves/moderates. The basis of this delineation tends to be one by which Japan’s leaders either supported going to war against America or not. The problem with such a historical perspective is that it ignores underlying ideological proclivities. Divisions emerged among Japan’s leaders on whether it was strategically pragmatic to attack America, but a broad coalition of Japanese leaders in the 1930s nonetheless believed in the righteousness of Japan’s “cause”—its expansionism and primacy in Manchuria and eventually China proper and Southeast Asia. The case of Premier Konoe Fumimaro illuminates this semantic confusion. Konoe aggressively sought Japanese hegemony in Asia; and between July 1937 and July 1941, made numerous decisions toward achieving it. By the fall of 1941, however, he opposed going to war with the United States on strategic grounds. In Konoe’s case, do the sudden strategic fears of an aggressive imperialist warrant the label moderate? The shortcomings of such an interpretation become clear when Melber asserts “that a meeting between Konoe and Roosevelt…would have offered a good opportunity to reach a bilateral agreement without interference by the anti-American hardliners in Japan”[2]

In the main, however, especially for readers unfamiliar with Japanese planning for and execution of the attack of December 7, 1941—or whose knowledge of the Japanese side is limited to an abstract reference to “Tora Tora, Tora”—Melber’s study is a lucid synthesis of events and a solid contribution to the Pearl Harbor historiography.

John Gripentrog, Ph.D., is Professor of History at Mars Hill University and author of Prelude to Pearl Harbor: Ideology and Culture in U.S.-Japan Relations, 1919-1941 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

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Header Image: The explosion of the USS Shaw, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii 1941 (U.S. National Archives).

Notes:

[1] Takuma Melber, Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Attack and America’s Entry into World War II, trans. Nick Somers (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), 65.

[2] Ibid., 36.