Chronicles the twelve days leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, examining the miscommunications, clues, missteps, and racist assumptions that may have been behind America's failure to safeguard against the tragedy.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a completely unpredictable attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Right? Well, that's not quite the real deal. Some military experts had suggested that Pearl Harbor was a likely target. There were other warning signs, too, but nobody paid much attention. From the first wave of the Japanese bombers to the United States' internment of thousands of Japanese Americans, acclaimed author Kate Messner...

Numerous riveting eyewitness accounts of the day that lives "in infamy", as told by both American and Japanese participants, are collected in an addition to a series that explores major events in world history.