This book was published 25 years ago in 1991 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. It proved to be an excellent companion, in an odd sort of way, to Walter Lord's 'Day of Infamy'. This book let me understand how the failure of the armed forces to protect Hawaii could happen. It covers more than that, and I sense the book ended up going in ways the author didn't really expect. He touches on a great number of things and the overall impression I couldn't shake was how the armed forces were so poorly managed so as to allow the attack to happen. The overconfidence of the United States and believing and reinforcing its own propanganda on how powerful the US was led to this dark day in history.

Many of the minor events that are covered in Lord's book are picked up here, but sometimes with interviews with the people 50 years later, as well as photographs of some of the people. Like Lord's book, Clarke finds that the survivors memories and histories showed a complete disbelief that the attack was happening. Honolulu 1941 was a very different world than Honolulu 1991 and we get a good sense here just how different society and perceptions were and how they are now.

The big takeaway here is how much racism played a huge part in allowing the Pearl Harbor attack to succeed.

Excellent book that I'd recommend to history buffs. ( )

This turns into an ingenious study of American racism from the Haiwaiian perspective. Originally published in 1981. ( )