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The Past That Isn’t Past: Pearl Harbor

This will be my most controversial post—perhaps my only controversial post. [1] December 7 has come and gone again, and there was little discussion of the details surrounding Pearl Harbor, except for appropriate remembrances of those who died.

A decade ago I began to research the history of the Pearl Harbor attack. I  had happened upon the book Infamy by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, John Toland, which raised disturbing questions about foreknowledge of the attack. [2] This was Toland’s third book about World War II. His prize-winning Rising Sun had treated the attack as a dastardly Japanese act; the second revealed poor communication between Washington, D.C., and Hawaii; and Infamy blamed the U.S. president and his high-level advisors for allowing the attack to go forward.  

In Liberty magazine in 2010 (you can read the article on p. 39 of the October issue in  Liberty Unbound ) I reviewed The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable, a 2007 book by George Victor. [3] And I took the opportunity to discuss the long-standing controversy over the question, Did President Roosevelt and/or his advisors know about the potential attack and could they have taken action to prevent it?

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A Nod to the French

Ah, France. The country most visited by tourists. The home of wine, perfumes, and fashion. The only major European country the United States has never fought against. The country that played a critical role in our war of independence and whose sacrifices here helped bankrupt it and thus ushered in the French Revolution.

France is our friend, yet Americans sometimes ridicule or disdain the French—they are a safe target since relatively few French people chose to immigrate here. In 1995 an episode of “The Simpsons” called the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” and in 2009, only 62 percent of Americans had a favorable view of France, compared with 77 percent for Britain.

For historians, especially economic historians, France doesn’t fare too well, either. The Industrial Revolution, which occurred roughly between 1750 and 1850, started in England, not in France. Answering the question “why” sometimes means arguing that there was something “wrong” with France.

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Word Problems

Let me begin by saying that word errors (typos, grammar mistakes, misspellings) can happen to anyone. As an editor, I am still embarrassed by some of mine, including a few on this blog. I once thought I would lose my job at Business Week when I wrote an inaccurate caption (I didn’t). And then there was, “The mountain peaked through the clouds.”

That said,  ever since I began studying history, I have noticed proofreading errors, more than in my past reading. I’m not talking about esoteric archival footnotes, just normal words.

After being bothered by this for awhile, I started making a list. For example, I read “shielings,” not “shirelings,” “Homan’s” not “Homans,’” “few woman,” not “few women,” “countries,” not “counties,” “sixty” not “sixth,” “Repreinted,” not “Reprinted,” “pampleteer,” not “pamphleteer,” Athansian, not Athanasian, Michael Berklin, not Michael Berlin, and “within and outwith” (unless that is a British expression  I’m unfamiliar with).

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A Lesson from World War I

Sunday, November 11, is the hundredth anniversary of Armistice Day, which ended the war that was “to end all wars.” Less than a year later, however, the Treaty of Versailles sowed the seeds of the next world war, with its humiliation of Germany, its heavy reparations, and its signatories’ horror of taking early military action.

I have not formally studied the war, but my interest in its causes helped motivate me to study history in more depth. The war was pivotal in European history, so I have read several books about it. Probably the most helpful is The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark.[1]

Clark is a British historian who tries to look at big topics without letting the known outcome influence his description (in a similar vein, he also wrote The Iron Kingdom about the history of Prussia). He begins his 698-page book by saying that others’ explanations for the war include “remote and categorical causes: imperialism, nationalism, armaments, alliances, high finance, ideas of national honour, the mechanics of mobilization.”[2] He takes a somewhat different tack, holding back on the “why” in favor of the “how it came about,” especially once the crisis—the assassination of the heir to the Hapsburg throne—took place on June 28, 1914.

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