Roberta Wohlstetter Sparknotes

The first book that is being reviewed is by Wohlstetter, Roberta. Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. Stanford University Press: Stanford, California, 1962. Roberta Wohlstetter was a military policy analyst born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1912 whose father taught law at Harvard University. She obtained two masters degrees in psychology and comparative literature from Columbia University and Radcliffe, respectively. Her interest in criminal psychology and how the decision making process of characters in fictional books is what led to her writing this book, she eventually died in 2007 at the age of 94 (New York Times: Obituaries, Hevesi). Some other works by Roberta Wohlstetter which includes her husband Albert are Nuclear Heuristics: Selected
She compiled a numerous amount of information which proves her point, but in particular she explained how the U.S. intelligence activity code named Magic had compiled so much information about the military activity of the Japanese that the U.S. should have almost expected an attack, including at Pearl Harbor. Another reason why I feel that she is correct is because the United States at that time and even now was a great power meaning that they would have the technology available to find out if an enemy was preparing an attack on them which they did. Meaning that they should have taken better steps to protect the U.S. bases in the Pacific, especially Pearl Harbor since it was a major source of U.S. power in the Pacific. I think it that the United States was attacked because of laziness and arrogance in thinking that no one would dare attack the mighty United States. A similar type situation occurred during 9/11 in which terrorists somehow made it past security with pocketknives and managed hijack planes in which they used to fly into the World Trade Center. Once again because of laziness and/or arrogance the United States suffered an attack which potentially put American citizens lives in danger. I liked how the author explains step by step how the American government missed opportunities to thwart the attack by the Japanese because it challenges the conventional thinking about Pearl