William Morrow and Company, NY, 1985. VG/VG. First Edition. Dust jacket in mylar protector, price-clipped. Photographs, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 596 pages. "Pearl Harbor. 7 December 1941. Japanes bombs and torpedoes slam into the battleships of tghe Pacific Fleet as Commander Edwin T. Layton leaps up the stairs to his second-floor office. 'Ah,' says Captain Willard Kitts, the staff gunnery officer, 'here's the man we should have been listening to all along.' Feeling numb and sick, Layton looked out his window. He could see the Oklahoma upside down and the Arizona ablaze. Why did the Japanese attack? How had they inflicted the greatest military defeat in American history? What had gone wrong? AND I WAS THERE is the first book by a top-ranking American navy officer toa answer these questions. Admiral Layton scupulously kept these secrets to himself ~ for forthy-three years ~ until recently, when the government released half a million classified documents from its intelligence archives. Only then did Layton believe he was free to ttell his sstory. His revelations are incredible. He names those who knew about tghe japanese intentions, how they acquired their knowledge, and how they misused it. Layton gives a blow-by-blow account of a war within a war, of admirals fighting admirals. It is a tale of men in Washington vying for power and for turf while disregarding the national interest. It is an account of a secret deal between Roosevelt and Chirchill, a new strategy that projected the B-17 bombers in MacArthur's air force making preemptive raids on the Japanese homeland. It is the documented narrative of how this deterrent strategy failed, and how our leaders in Washington ~ both civilian and military ~ forgot about Pearl Harbor, until it was too late. Layton speaks witha unique authority. He was the Pacific Fleet's intelligence officer prior to Pearl Harbor, and he continued to serve in the same role for Admiral Nimitz throughout the war. As Layton says, He was there. His account is more than just the story of Pearl Harbor, however, His is the first book to detail the background of the secret radio intelligence war against Japan that began in the early 1920s. He also breaks the story of the how Washington repeated its blunders of Pearl Harbor and almost lost the crucial Battle of Midway. He reveals the intelligence coups of other battles: the Coral Sea, the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, Tarawa, Guadalcanal, Kwajalein, and the Aleutians. Layton speaks in salty, unvarnished prose; he calls the shots as he saw them. "

$35.00

~ Return to ~ P E A R L ~ H A R B O R Books & Mementos