DIPLOMATS & ADMIRALS

Jenkins offers a meticulous analysis of the diplomatic and strategic blunders that led to hostilities between the United States and Japan at the beginning of World War II.

Most readers familiar with American history are at least broadly aware of the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and President Roosevelt’s subsequent declaration of war on Japan. Without a closer scrutiny of the political details (an assessment scrupulously provided by the author), that outbreak of war can seem as sudden as it was inexorable. Jenkins argues that there was ample opportunity to defuse the antagonism between the two nations, but a series of diplomatic mistakes and strategic errors, combined with grotesque miscommunications, led to catastrophe. The author looks at both sides and painstakingly (though concisely) unpacks each nation’s internecine conflicts. Roosevelt was often stymied by disagreements between the civilian leaders serving on his War Council and his military commanders. Secretary of State Cordell Hull had drawn up a plan for detente between the United States and Japan, an agreement that likely would have avoided war, but failed to advocate for it due to opposition from China and England. Likewise, Japanese prime minister Konoe worked hard for peace, but he was constantly opposed by his own foreign minister, Matsuoka Yosuke, and his aggressive military generals. Jenkins paints a detailed picture of the squandered opportunities for peace on both sides, and of the deadly aftermath of Japan’s attack, culminating in the naval battles at Coral Sea and Midway. For all of the book’s rigor and precision, the author appropriately acknowledges the limitations of historical analysis and the intractability of “imponderables of history.” This text is an astonishingly thorough treatment of the subject, despite its admirable brevity—Jenkins wastes no words, and leaves nothing essential out.

An impressive one-volume history of the events leading up to the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan.