Pearl Harbor was more than one of the most daring and brilliant naval operations of all time; it was one of the turning points in history. The event provides a milestone at which to pause and take historical inventory. But in so doing, one should not credit to the event an entire generation of the world’s developments. The temptation to do this is very real because those who lived through that period tend to divide their lives into two periods—before Pearl Harbor and after Pearl Harbor. It is also one of the greatest of all war stories. It combined so much, so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so spectacularly, in such brief and tragic compass. It embraced so much which in the perspective of the years still seems inexplicable and mysterious.
But Pearl Harbor did not unfold with all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. The operation was not an “act of God.” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet and the initiator of the plan, might well have abandoned it if training in shallow-water torpedo bombing had failed, if high-level bombing had proved unsuccessful, or if the United States had closed the Japanese consulate in Honolulu, thus cutting off his primary source of intelligence on the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Then, too, the Naval General Staff strongly opposed his dangerous enterprise and could have refused to sanction it. What is more, the Japanese government could have decided against war with the United States. The options on both sides of the Pacific were in human hands, not in the laps of the gods.
Pearl Harbor resulted from a vast combination of interrelated, complicated, and strange historical factors: on the one hand, bountiful human errors of great variety, false assumptions, fallacious views, a vast store of intelligence badly handled; on the other, precise planning, tireless training, fanatical dedication, iron determination, technical know-how, tactical excellence, clever deception measures, intelligence well gathered and effectively disseminated, plain guts—and uncommon luck.
One cannot point a finger at any one of these factors and say, “Ah, that did it!” any more than one can look at a building and say, “See that brick; it is the whole structure.” The story of Pearl Harbor has suffered altogether too long from oversimplification, from interpretation in terms of black and white, from failure to understand that it embodies all the colors of the spectrum in a wide variety of mixtures and gradations.
The question of why Japan caught the United States napping on Oahu is exceedingly complicated and controversial. One must constantly keep in mind that nothing takes place in a vacuum. Events flow out of one another in an unending stream. History often hinges upon such elements as that fickle and cruel dictator the weather; the quirks of personality; an upset stomach; a prejudice; an accident or other unforeseen whim of fate. Therefore, it cannot be reduced to a scientific formula or factored like a mathematical problem.
Countless silent, unseen forces are incessantly at work in history’s “majestic sweep,” “innumerable waves,” “slow rhythms,” “surging forces”—call them what you will—those small yet numerous incidents which are often little more than scratches on history’s slate, those elusive intangibles that alter men’s thinking and actions; all in their way so illogical, yet so relative and relevant, and virtually impossible to deal with adequately. How does one accurately separate cause from effect, fact from fiction, moment from momentum, or determine the influence of time, place, and circumstance on any given event? It is impossible for the historian to read the whole record of the past, which invariably is incomplete. And to write that record? Ah, that is where, to paraphrase Voltaire, history plays tricks on the dead. By his nature the historian must be selective, choosing this or that fact, event, circumstance, example, or quotation which he considers relevant to his subject.
Thus, Gordon Prange laid no claim to omniscience. Nor did he wish to create the impression of finality. Indeed, it is extremely doubtful whether a completely satisfactory answer ever will be forthcoming. Anyone who claims to know and to present to his readers “The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor” is either a charlatan or a self-deluder.
If Gordon Prange were alive, he would want to dedicate this book to his wife, Anne, his son, Winfred, his daughters, Polly and Nancy, and his grandson Robbie, all of whom bore long and patiently with his “magnificent obsession”; to all those Americans and Japanese who helped and encouraged him in so many ways and without whom this work would have been impossible; to all his students over the years, to whom he devoted so much of himself and who in return gave him their affectionate admiration; and to the dead and the survivors of Pearl Harbor in the hope that they did not suffer and die in vain.