The attack on Pearl Harbor was shocking and unexpected to the American public and government, but for Joseph C Grew, the American ambassador to Japan, it was the only logical outcome to a decade’s worth of missed opportunities for peace.
For all the many times we rehashed World War Two in school, I never learned much about what led Japan to side with the Axis, and why they seemingly so suddenly launched into war with the United States – Pearl Harbor always arrived as a sudden attack. I picked up this book because it promised to tell me more about that.
It was astonishing how convoluted and strange a story it was, as a decade of mounting jingoism led to an inevitable conclusion. The Japanese political system of that time was shadowy and indirect, but Kemper did an excellent job of explaining not only what happened but why the key players acted as they did. I came to admire Grew and his Japanese counterparts while still understanding where they misstepped, and was shocked and depressed by how thoroughly the State Department failed in paying attention to what was really happening in Japan, as opposed to their preconceived beliefs about it.
However, I did feel that the writing was somewhat dry, which combined with a more zoomed-out, impersonal overview of a decade’s worth of complex Japanese politics meant that . I also wished we had a little bit more at the end after Pearl Harbor hit discussing how the American government and public handled things – especially since the book stressed again and again how abruptly their illusions about Japan were shattered in December 1941.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.