"The last of the Prange manuscripts about Pearl Harbor"--Page ix. A detailed chronological account of the day. Includes reminiscences of officers, both American and Japanese.

“Simultaneously sweeping and intimate . . . an eminently readable and engrossing account of the actions that pulled America into the Second World War.” —Parks Stephenson, producer, The Fight for Owens Pearl: December 7, 1941 is the story of how America and Japan, two nations with seemingly little over which to quarrel, let peace slip away, so that on that “day which will live in infamy,” more than 350 dive bombers, high-level bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters of the Imperial Japanese Navy did their best to cripple the United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet, killing 2,403 American servicemen and civilians, and wounding another 1,178. It’s a story of emperors and presidents, diplomats and politicians, admirals and generals—and it’s also the tale of ordinary sailors, soldiers, and airmen, all of whom were overtaken by a rush of events that ultimately overwhelmed them. Pearl shows the real reasons why America’s political and military leaders underestimated Japan’s threat against America’s security, and why their Japanese counterparts ultimately felt compelled to launch the Pearl Harbor attack. Pearl offers more than superficial answers, showing how both sides blundered their way through arrogance, over-confidence, racism, bigotry, and old-fashioned human error to arrive at the moment when the Japanese were convinced that there was no alternative to war. Once the battle is joined, Pearl then takes the reader into the heart of the attack, where the fighting men of both nations showed that neither side had a monopoly on heroism, courage, cowardice, or luck, as they fought to protect their nations. “An engrossing read on a well-tread but important subject. Pearl will interest readers new to this history and satiate military historians.” —Air & Space Power Journal

Japan and the United States became close political allies so quickly after the end of World War II, that it seemed as though the two countries had easily forgotten the war they had fought. Here Yoshikuni Igarashi offers a provocative look at how Japanese postwar society struggled to understand its war loss and the resulting national trauma, even as forces within the society sought to suppress these memories. Igarashi argues that Japan's nationhood survived the war's destruction in part through a popular culture that expressed memories of loss and devastation more readily than political discourse ever could. He shows how the desire to represent the past motivated Japan's cultural productions in the first twenty-five years of the postwar period. Japanese war experiences were often described through narrative devices that downplayed the war's disruptive effects on Japan's history. Rather than treat these narratives as obstacles to historical inquiry, Igarashi reads them along with counter-narratives that attempted to register the original impact of the war. He traces the tensions between remembering and forgetting by focusing on the body as the central site for Japan's production of the past. This approach leads to fascinating discussions of such diverse topics as the use of the atomic bomb, hygiene policies under the U.S. occupation, the monstrous body of Godzilla, the first Western professional wrestling matches in Japan, the transformation of Tokyo and the athletic body for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and the writer Yukio Mishima's dramatic suicide, while providing a fresh critical perspective on the war legacy of Japan.

This eye-popping, large-size, and image-packed book about the infamous sneak attack that changed the course of history will keep readers fascinated. Through bold images previously unseen outside of Japan, and an authoritative, up-to-date text, the shocking event that was Pearl Harbor unfolds.