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This is Volume One of The Army Air Forces in World War II, titled Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate. The University of Chicago Press first published it in 1948, and the Office of Air Force History reprinted it in 1983. The front matter explains how the AAF historical program was set up during the war. The index covers Pacific, Atlantic and European operations, and nothing in the text concerns unidentified aerial phenomena.
“Pacific Ocean”16 pages
C H A P T E R 6 * * * * * * * * * * * PEARL HARBOR AND CLARK FIELD 1405 on 7 December the Japanese emissaries Nomura and Kurusu arrived a t the State Department in Washington. By orders from Tokyo they had originally arranged the appoint- ment for I 300 but had subsequently requested the postponement. Fifteen minutes later they presented to Secretary of State Cordell Hull a memorandum which concluded with the regret that the Japa- nese government considered it “impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.” The hour’s delay in the meeting- explained by the Japanese as having been consumed in decoding the Tokyo message-rendered that conclusion a masterpiece of under- statement. Half an hour earlier Japanese aircraft had attacked naval and military installations in Oahu. The attack achieved perfect tactical surprise: neither the exact day nor the location of the initial Japanese blow had been correctly estimated. But that Japan would strike soon and probably without a previous declaration of war had for some time been appreciated both in Washington and in the Pacific. After the diplomatic impasse of 2 0 2 2 6 November, war had seemed inevitable; Mr. Hull had told the President’s War Council that the matter of safeguarding our national security was in the hands of the Army and the Navy.’ It was this estimate of the situation which had caused the Army, and the Navy, to send to commanders in Hawaii and the Philippines the warning messages of 2 7 November described in the previous chapter.” Because of the overwhelming success of the Japanese attacks of 7 December and of the handicap imposed thereby upon American defense forces, the events of that day and of the preceding weeks * See above, p. 190. ’94
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