cover image Pearl Harbor Story

Pearl Harbor Story

Henry Dozier Russell. Mercer University Press, $25 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-86554-769-8

A reluctant appointee to the Roberts Commission that investigated Pearl Harbor, Maj. Gen. Henry Dozier Russell hoped, when he started out, to disprove suspicions that ""the entire truth about Pearl Harbor had never been told."" By the end of the investigation in 1944, he'd been disillusioned by the commission's findings and sworn to secrecy by the War Department. In 1946, he dictated his memoir, Pearl Harbor Story, never made public and only recently discovered by WWII veteran David L. Mincey. ""Contrary to the general impression, the Japanese were not... attempting to lull us into a sense of security. They were telling us in the very plainest of language that they would fight before they would permit us to dominate the Orient,"" writes Russell. With compelling firsthand evidence, Russell further dispels the accepted wisdom that the U.S. was surprised by the attack on December 7, 1941. ( May)