Book Chronicles ‘Day Of Infamy’ Hour By Hour

April 24, 2001

University Park, Pa. --- Despite the great destruction of battleships and casualties at Pearl Harbor on the "day that will live in infamy," Japan had lost the war in the first hour of the attack, says a Penn State cultural biographer in a new paperback edition of his book "Long Day’s Journey into War: Pearl Harbor and a World at War — December 7, 1941."

"Japan had hoped for a short decisive war, intimidating isolationist American politicians at the very start into surrendering their interests in the far Pacific for the sake of peace," says author Stanley Weintraub, professor emeritus of arts and humanities at Penn State. "The U.S. military was underequipped and unprepared.

"But that surrender myth evaporated with the first bombs from the Japanese airplane Kido Butai," Weintraub notes. "The attack missed crucial aircraft carriers which were away on other missions, and the Americans’ massive revulsion against getting involved exploded against the Japanese. Suddenly it was a non-negotiable war to the finish."

The Pearl Harbor attack will be remembered this year in 60th anniversary activities and a blockbuster movie in late May. The paperback edition with a new afterword is published by Lyons Press of New York City.

Drawing on letters, eyewitness accounts and other documents, Weintraub’s book of "verbal cinema" chronicles hour-by-hour not only the Pearl Harbor attack, but also activities of world leaders and ordinary citizens in Tokyo, Washington, D.C., London, Africa, Singapore and the Russian Front. He details the breaking out of war in Hong Kong, the invasion of Malaya, the destruction of MacArthur’s air force in the Philippines, the halting of the German juggernaut on the frozen outskirts of Moscow and Leningrad, and the start of the "Final Solution" in a bleak Polish forest with the first mass gassings of Jews.

"Perhaps no date in world history contained more human drama. What had been essentially a European war exploded into World War II," the Penn State biographer notes.

One of the saddest episodes mostly unknown to the public had been the downing of American airplanes by American gunners near the end of the day, according to the book.

"Although we were unprepared for the first wave of Japanese planes and somewhat more ready for the second wave, we really blasted that third wave--which turned out to be our own aircraft from the carrier Enterprise," Weintraub says. "Because of radio silence, the pilots did not know that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, nor did the unhurt ships and their gunners realize in the darkness of early evening that the planes were our own. By then the Japanese strike force was far off, heading home."

"When we ‘remember Pearl Harbor,’ this price of panic -- not uncommon in war --is one thing we have preferred to forget for 60 years," he notes.

In his new afterword, the Penn State biographer notes that newly declassified Japanese diplomatic documents in 1999 merely confirms "what we knew earlier" about the deliberate communications delays in Tokyo and the transmittal and translation blunders in Washington. He discounts continuing but unproved conspiracy allegations that U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt knew of the planned attack, but withheld information in hopes that the Pearl Harbor attack would bring the United States into the war.

Weintraub has written several significant books on World War I, World War II and the Korean War, including "A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War," "The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II," and "MacArthur’s War."

**vf***

Contact:

Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 (o)/ (814) 238-1221 (h) vfong@psu.edu

EDITORS: Dr. Weintraub is available at 814-865-0495 weekday mornings; 814-466- 6057 home; email: sqw4@psu.edu For media review copies, contact Don Myers, Lyons Press, 212-620-9580 ext. 27; or Dontalp@aol.com by email.