The Discovery of the True Story of Pearl Harbor

Gordon W. Prange’s “At Dawn We Slept” is the first and for a time the be most serious study of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A product of thirty-seven years of research and by a historian who spent several years, from 1945 to 1951, with the US General Headquarters, Far East Command General Command, in Tokyo, and from October 1946 to June 1951 chief of General Macarther’s G-2 Historical Section, and from June through July 1951 he was acting director of the Military History Section. Said to know more “about the attack on Pearl Harbor than any other person. He interviewed virtually every surviving Japanese officer who took part in the Pearl Harbor operation, as well as every U.S. source. The scope of his research is without equal.” The original over 3,500-page manuscript was edited for publication by two of Prange’s students, Dr. Donald M. Goldstein and CWO Katherine V. Dillon, USAF (Ret.) With the claim, in their words, that “Gordon Prange approached this study with as nearly an open mind as any American could bring to the subject of Peal Harbor…  he began this project with ‘no ax to grind, no preconceived thesis to prove, no one to defend.’ He tried at all times to be as objective as humanly possible.’ ” And adds, “the primary source of the American side of the problem was and probably always will remain the forty volumes comprising the report and testimony of the joint congressional committee which investigated the disaster. These volumes include the committee’s own record plus those of the preceding investigations, as well as a host of supporting documents.” There are, however, “some limitations and idiosyncrasies… We list not necessarily in order of importance. 1. Space did not allow treatment of the revisionist thesis that President Roosevelt wanted and either permitted the attack or deliberately engineered it to bring the United States into WWII by ‘the back door.’ For the record, Prange dealt with this exhaustively in his original manuscript and reached the conclusion that neither the evidence nor common sense justified this view of the matter.’

The Appendix, “Revisionists Revisited”, the Editors Goldstein and Dillon add ex-post-facto comments on the ‘Revisionist School’ of the Pearl Harbor history. Comments identified by “would have”, “could not be certain that”. As for “Would have”, “Could have”, who cares. It is what actually happened that is important. Anything else is either specious reasoning, false, or irrelevant, meant to mislead.