Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy

by Percy Greaves Jr, Bettina B. Greaves, John Chamberlain

A president faced an economic depression that wouldn't go away, and a deeply disgruntled electorate. Not for the first or last time, the option of entering a war seemed politically appealing. How badly did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt want a war and to what lengths was he willing to go to get one? These questions have vexed historians for many decades. Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy by Percy Greaves Jr. (1906–1984), published for the first time in 2010, blows the top off a 70-year coverup, reporting for the first time on long-suppressed interviews, documents, and corroborated evidence.

The first section (the seeds) provides a detailed history of prewar US–Japan relations, thoroughly documenting the sources of rising tension. The second section (the fruits) shows that the attack on December 7, 1941, was neither unexpected nor unprovoked. Nor was it the reason that Roosevelt declared a war that resulted in massive human slaughter. Instead, in exhaustive detail, this book establishes that Pearl Harbor was permitted as a public relations measure to rally the public, shifting the blame from the White House, where it belonged, to the men on the ground who were unprepared for the attack.

For 70 years, Greaves's documents have been the primary source of revisionist scholarship on Pearl Harbor. These documents were prepared under his leadership as main counsel for the Republican minority on the Joint Congressional Committee that investigated Pearl Harbor from 1945 to 1946. More than any other person, he was qualified to speak on this subject. He possessed encyclopedic knowledge and had access to research available to no one else. He conducted in-person, detailed, comprehensive interviews with all the main players at Pearl Harbor and many people in the security apparatus. The contents of these interviews are further corroborated by military records. However, for many reasons, the documents were not published. He continued to work on this book for many years until his death in 1984. At that point, his wife Bettina Bien Greaves took up the project. The result is absolutely astonishing.
Much of Greaves's research has never appeared in print — effectively suppressed for 70 years. Even the censored minority report did not include it all. But, at long last, the fullness of this report is revealed.

The result is this monumental book, completed and edited by Bettina Greaves and published by the Mises Institute. Pearl Harbor is a detailed indictment of the Roosevelt administration, one that finally and devastatingly rips the lid off a case that has been shrouded in mystery for generations.
Because of the astonishing source material and thoroughness of the argument, Robert Stinnett, the leading authority on the topic and the author of Day of Deceit, calls Greaves's book "explosive!"

Indeed it is. The author writes in a guarded tone, carefully backing up every statement with massive evidence, provided in a level of depth never before seen. The prevailing consensus is that the fault for Pearl Harbor attack belongs to General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel, while the major political and military figures in Washington should be completely exonerated.

Greaves turns this conventional wisdom on its head. "It is now apparent also that the president himself, even before the attack, had intended to order the US armed forces to make a preemptive strike against the Japanese in the southwest Pacific in order to assist the British in southeast Asia. But the Japanese 'jumped the gun' on him by bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941."

Product Details