As the sixtieth anniversary of what President Franklin Roosevelt called "a date which will live in infamy" (and who would know that better than he?) passes, the controversy over Pearl Harbor is as lively as ever. In no other area of the history of the Second World War have revisionists had quite as much success... Read More

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor half a century ago is usually called a disaster or catastrophe for the United States. In a strict military sense, such words are excessive. However, the attack may have been a disaster in a broader sense because it propelled the United States heedlessly into a long, ghastly war in... Read More

Throughout history there are spectacular and singular happenings of such dramatic circumstances that they seem to hang suspended in time, all other actions and proceedings halted at those moments as though frozen. In our recent past, two such events in particular seem to qualify for inclusion in such a category: the attack on Pearl Harbor... Read More

Scapegoats: A Defense of Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor, by Edward L. Beach. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995. Hardcover. 225 pages. Eleven photographs. Bibliographical references essay. Index. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, inflicted one of the worst blows ever endured by American military forces. During the two-hour raid,... Read More

In the popular view, the origin of America's war with Japan is clear: without provocation, the dastardly Japanese launched a sneak attack against us at Pearl Harbor. Japan's militaristic warlords, together with their totalitarian Axis partners, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, were bent on savage world conquest and global domination. America, militarily weak but morally... Read More

Each year near the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, I get angry at the lie perpetrated upon the U.S. people that it was a surprise attack. It may have been a surprise to the U.S. people, but it certainly was not a surprise to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and... Read More

At 7:49 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, 183 Japanese dive- and torpedo-bombers, accompanied by Zero escorts, launched the first of two attacks against the American base at Pearl Harbor. A second wave of 168 Japanese aircraft arrived at 9 a.m. Eighteen operational warships, including four battleships, were sunk or heavily damaged; 188 aircraft were... Read More

Pearl Harbor will be Franklin Roosevelt's Watergate. That portentous idea was expressed fourteen years ago in an article by Percy Greaves, a leading historian of the world-wrenching 1941 catastrophe (and member of this journal's Editorial Advisory Committee until his death in 1984). Ironically, the suspicion-shrouded American naval disaster itself now may prove the opening wedge... Read More

When Percy Greaves died of cancer on 13 August 1984 -- eleven days short of his 78th birthday- little did he know of the seeds he had planted. No man, to this writer's knowledge, has done more to inspire others to continue along the trail he blazed; a trail beginning with his service as Chief,... Read More

On the Treadmill to Pearl Harbor: The Memoirs of Admiral James O. Richardson (USN Retired), As Told to Vice Admiral George C. Dyer (USN Retired), with an introduction by Vice Admiral Edwin B. Hooper, (USN Retired), Director of Naval History, is a fundamental book for anyone interested in ascertaining the truth concerning the Japanese attack... Read More

Prior to the Pearl Harbor Congressional investigation this writer had twice met Homer Ferguson. During the 78th Congress when Ferguson was a freshman Senator, I was Associate Research Director of the Republican National Committee. That sounds like a political position but essentially it was a fact-finding one -- finding facts the Democrats didn't want known.... Read More

Remember Pearl Harbor? Of course you do. No American will ever forget December 7, 1941. Our casualties came to 3,435 -- Japan's were fewer than 100. We lost 188 planes outright -- Japan 29. Our proud Pacific fleet was smashed. Eight battleships were useless. Japan lost five midget submarines. It was the greatest military and... Read More

After the Pearl Harbor attack, Americans were told that it had come without any warning. The official story has been that it was a surprise attack that forced us into war against our wishes. For years the charges that Roosevelt lied and cajoled us into war were vehemently denied. In 1948 the great historian Charles... Read More

The latest furious round of publication and ensuing controversy about Pearl Harbor erupted at the end of 1981, and has not simmered down yet. The opening shot was the release in November that year of Gordon W. Prange's massive At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. Prange had been working on the... Read More

The Pearl Harbor disaster marks much more than the worst naval, military and diplomatic defeats in American history. It represents the culmination of a half century movement to discard the philosophy of our Founding Fathers-a philosophy that had attracted millions of immigrants to our shores in their pursuit of personal prosperity in the land of... Read More