Editor's Preface

No one can plan history. Every one of us—rich and poor, powerful and not so powerful, famous and infamous, important and unimportant—plans his or her actions in the hope of accomplishing some goal. History is the outcome of countless such purposive actions, intertwined, interconnected, interrelated. Although each action is planned by the individual actor in the hope of achieving some end, history itself is not only not planned, but unplannable. And so it is with the Pearl Harbor disaster which launched the United States into World War II. It was the unplanned, unintended consequence of countless separate pre-attack planned actions on the part of the principals concerned. And the post-attack coverup and revelations arose as the unintended consequences of the purposive actions of the principals concerned.

The goal of the historian of any historical event is to try to discover how it happened as an unintended consequence of the purposive actions of individuals. And that is the goal of this book, as it was also the goal of the post-attack investigations, to determine how and why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and how and why Washington officials responded as they did. My husband, Percy Greaves, became interested in the pros and cons of the December 7, 1941 attack from the moment he learned, as research director of the Republican National Committee during the 1944 Roosevelt-Dewey presidential election campaign, that the United States had decrypted the Japanese diplomatic code in August 1940 and since then had been reading many of Japan’s SECRET and SUPER-SECRET messages. That secret, of course, could not be divulged so long as the war continued and we were continuing to decipher Japanese messages and learn their secrets.

After the war ended in August 1945, Congress established a Joint Congressional Committee to investigate the attack. As Chief of the Minority Staff of that Joint Committee my husband researched the pre-attack background, the earlier investigations, and the available documents. He helped brief the Republican Committee members in questioning witnesses as to what was known in Washington about Japan’s plans before the attack, what intelligence and materiel had been furnished the Pearl Harbor commanders, and whether or not they had responded appropriately, given the available intelligence, materiel, ships, planes, and men. The hearings lasted almost a full year. The Majority Report continued to place considerable blame on the Hawaiian commanders, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter C. Short. A lengthy Minority Report held that the blame must be shared by higher-up Washington officials.

Upon the conclusion of the Congressional Committee hearings, my husband continued to research the Pearl Harbor attack. He interviewed surviving participants, wrote and lectured widely on the subject. My husband completed this manuscript and wrote the side heads. We proofed it together and checked all the quotations and footnotes against the original sources. But then he was stricken with cancer, a particularly virulent variety. He died on August 13, 1984, just over a month after the appearance of his first serious symptoms.

By the time my husband died, his efforts had yielded a massive manuscript. When I reread that manuscript after his death, I decided that, although the names, dates, and documentation were all there, it was difficult to follow the sequence of events. Events alternated with revelations gleaned from the investigations and revelations alternated with events. Also Percy had included many lengthy supporting quotations within the text itself, interrupting the flow of events. In the hope of making the story easier to understand, I have arranged everything in chronological order and paraphrased the quotes—from FDR’s inauguration and his early active intervention in international affairs through the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, the post attack investigations, the obstacles placed in the path of investigators, down to the final reports.

He and I often talked about this book. As usual I made suggestions; some he accepted; others he rejected. He would say, “If anything happens to me then you can do as you please.” Of course, he fully expected to finish it himself. But time was not given him to do so.

Although I have reworked my husband’s manuscript, it remains his book. The research and documentation are his. The decision to present events primarily as they were viewed from Washington was his. My contribution has been to reorganize, revise, and rewrite his manuscript so as to present the events chronologically. Throughout, however, I have tried to keep the book true to his research and faithful to his interpretation. My guiding principle has always been to present the results of Percy’s years of research as faithfully and accurately as possible and to describe the truth about Pearl Harbor as he saw it.

Although I am sure Percy would have had some criticism of the way I have finished his book, on the whole I believe he would have approved. I only wish he could have lived to see the research of his lifetime published in this form. Any errors or omissions in preparing his work for final publication are, of course, my responsibility alone.

Mrs. Percy L. (Bettina B.) Greaves, Jr.

May 2007