Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

This “....account is a warning to any country that would talk itself into a foolish war” it says on the back of my copy of this fascinating and frustrating read on the folly of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. That comment by The Seattle Times has a point. I am still always surprised at how easy the powers that be, no matter their political persuasion, make astonishingly poor calls on going to war.

Author Eri Hotta fleetingly covers the Meiji Reformation with more depth added to the latter years of the 1930s and into 1941, up to the last meeting of the Japanese ambassador with the US secretary just after the surprise attack.

So why did Japan make this decision to attack Pearl Harbour when everything pointed to it being an unmitigated disaster? The author states it was a gamble as they knew they could not win, the Japanese people had had enough of perceived cultural torment by the west she adds further and also covers several other events such as the war in China and the invasion of French Indochina. It was all an inexplicable mix that sent the Japanese nation into a destructive war based on..............all of those things and others!

Prince Konoe Fumimaro, many times Prime Minister in his career, came in for much criticism but really just about all the players could have been lumped into the same box of foolishness and that includes the emperor who at a crucial meeting of the Imperial Council reads a poem that fooled both the pro and antiwar factions into thinking he was with them all the way! Add the lack of ability by the top echelon to articulate their thoughts profoundly, this all had a ruinous effect as the pro war party gained an upper hand even though they themselves knew there was no hope of winning a long term war against the US. I have read WW2 history all my life but have to admit that the reasoning of Japan diving into an abyss of its own making has always left me bemused. Even with a 300-page in-depth history such as this, I can hardly put a finger on the reasons this all happened, and feel none the wiser as to why they took the course they did. Knowing their own logistical deficiencies and the industrial might of the USA they lived a slight dream that the US might, just might want negotiated peace. This is not a gamble, it is idiocy.


The author to all intents and purposes has researched her subject very well, but there is no bibliography and what seem to me at least to be at best perfunctory end notes. There is a Major Character list and a Selected Events in Japanese History Prior to April 1941 that are useful, but it was very easy to get lost in the huge amount of players in the narrative. Nonetheless, anyone wishing to read up on the many possibilities that lead to maybe one of the stupidest military actions in modern history will learn something.

Recommended to those interested in an in depth study of the (so called) Japanese elites gambling the very future and lives of their peoples on a venture that was no chance of succeeding.