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Solid account of war in Pacific
By Michael Beschloss |
November 25, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
AT times during the months after the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, a tall, patrician-looking, Japanese-speaking American could be seen puffing on his pipe and pacing the concrete floor behind an unmarked basement door at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard in Hawaii. This was Joseph Rochefort, leader of "Station Hypo" – the rapidly expanding group of analysts who were working 22-hour days in the race to crack JN-25-B, Japan's all-important wartime code.
Deciphering 50,000 five-digit numeral groups and feeding punch cards into a hulking, primitive IBM machine, they fueled themselves on patriotism, coffee and Benzedrine pills, these last dispensed from a bucket lying next to a cache of highly classified intercepts. One of Rochefort's most trusted colleagues, Lieutenant Commander Thomas Dyer, joked that Secretary of War Henry Stimson had not erred in saying that gentlemen don't read each other's mail, because "no one could accuse us of being gentlemen." Dyer also observed that the sensation of breaking a Japanese code was "pretty much the same" as a sexual orgasm. As for Rochefort, he professed to disdain cryptanalysis on grounds that it restricted his personal life and caused him ulcers, but which of his colleagues would have believed him?
The little-known Rocheforts and Dyers arguably did as much to win World War II in the Pacific as many far more recognizable admirals and generals. "Pacific Crucible," Ian W. Toll's useful and diligently constructed history of the first seven months of the Pacific War, calls our attention to many such pivotal figures, who, as we move further and further away from the period, have shrunk almost to a pinpoint in our rearview mirrors.
Toll has an affinity for the detailed narrative of military conflict and for capsule portraiture of key personalities both high-ranking and low. Here, his effort to provide historical recognition where it is due extends to the subject of the Pacific War itself, which has too often been eclipsed by the struggle against Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and North Africa.
The book's most regrettable deficiency, however, is in its use of primary sources. Although 66 years have passed since the defeated Japanese surrendered, new collections are still being opened. These could change our understanding of the Pacific War. Toll's acknowledgments refer to archives he visited in Japan and to several American depositories, but for reasons unstated, he has clearly decided against what should have been the irresistible opportunity to make serious use of original Japanese manuscripts or to zealously explore Western treasure houses like the British Public Record Office. Toll's 47 pages of endnotes cite no more than a small number of unpublished materials. As a result, his book lacks the energy and excitement of ambitious original research.
Deciphering 50,000 five-digit numeral groups and feeding punch cards into a hulking, primitive IBM machine, they fueled themselves on patriotism, coffee and Benzedrine pills, these last dispensed from a bucket lying next to a cache of highly classified intercepts. One of Rochefort's most trusted colleagues, Lieutenant Commander Thomas Dyer, joked that Secretary of War Henry Stimson had not erred in saying that gentlemen don't read each other's mail, because "no one could accuse us of being gentlemen." Dyer also observed that the sensation of breaking a Japanese code was "pretty much the same" as a sexual orgasm. As for Rochefort, he professed to disdain cryptanalysis on grounds that it restricted his personal life and caused him ulcers, but which of his colleagues would have believed him?
The little-known Rocheforts and Dyers arguably did as much to win World War II in the Pacific as many far more recognizable admirals and generals. "Pacific Crucible," Ian W. Toll's useful and diligently constructed history of the first seven months of the Pacific War, calls our attention to many such pivotal figures, who, as we move further and further away from the period, have shrunk almost to a pinpoint in our rearview mirrors.
Toll has an affinity for the detailed narrative of military conflict and for capsule portraiture of key personalities both high-ranking and low. Here, his effort to provide historical recognition where it is due extends to the subject of the Pacific War itself, which has too often been eclipsed by the struggle against Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and North Africa.
The book's most regrettable deficiency, however, is in its use of primary sources. Although 66 years have passed since the defeated Japanese surrendered, new collections are still being opened. These could change our understanding of the Pacific War. Toll's acknowledgments refer to archives he visited in Japan and to several American depositories, but for reasons unstated, he has clearly decided against what should have been the irresistible opportunity to make serious use of original Japanese manuscripts or to zealously explore Western treasure houses like the British Public Record Office. Toll's 47 pages of endnotes cite no more than a small number of unpublished materials. As a result, his book lacks the energy and excitement of ambitious original research.
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