Pearl Harbor: Mother of All Conspiracies

Rating:
Summary: Newspaper Book Review - Excellent Book!
Review: "Wllley's book is nothing if not exhaustive. He includes several hundred decrypted Japanese pre-Pearl Harbor military messages, examples from the main Japanese codebook, incriminating U.S. Navy and diplomatic memos leading up to December 7, and more in eight appendices, an extensive bibliography and 30 pages of footnotes."
Dubuque Telegraph Herald, December 9, 2001

Rating:
Summary: Great Work Of Fiction
Review: Its a shame this book fails in its promise to expose a conspiracy but it makes for some good fiction. The author seems to feel that FDR was a communist and the reason he allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked is to spread communisim around the world.

I was left confused and bewilderd by Mr. Willey's arguments as most of the evidence presented was taken out of order or mixed and matched to fit his argument.

Rating:
Summary: Myth making and outright falsehoods.
Review: Mark's book simply fuels the fantasy world of conspiracy "fans". He routinely takes quotes out of context, ignores inconvenient facts and distorts information to promote his own program, that of hate for FDR. Compare this book with Gordon Prange's works. It's easy to tell which person did the work and gives a rational view of the events surrounding this sad day in US history. If you want to see where Wiley has distorted the original information, check out www.ibiblio.org/pha, where thousands of pages of text await the person who doesn't want to be lead by the nose.

Rating:
Summary: Myth making and outright falsehoods.
Review: Mark's book simply fuels the fantasy world of conspiracy "fans". He routinely takes quotes out of context, ignores inconvenient facts and distorts information to promote his own program, that of hate for FDR. Compare this book with Gordon Prange's works. It's easy to tell which person did the work and gives a rational view of the events surrounding this sad day in US history. If you want to see where Wiley has distorted the original information, check out www.ibiblio.org/pha, where thousands of pages of text await the person who doesn't want to be lead by the nose.

Rating:
Summary: Finally - The Truth!
Review: Of all the books I've read about Pearl Harbor, this is the best!
The author seems to know a great deal about codebreaking and, if
anybody can nail the betrayal, Willey has done it!

Rating:
Summary: The most scholarly yet
Review: The definitive work for those interested in the incriminating details; from the most scrupulous analysis yet of pre PH decrypted traffic, to the part which the U.S. intelligence located in the Philippines played in insuring that the Dec. 7 attack was successful for Japan; from the culpability of FDR and some two dozen of his closest advisors in keeping the information of the closing Japanese fleet from the Pearl Harbor command to the cover ups in the post war investigations. This should prove to be t h e reference book for PH scholars.

Rating:
Summary: Outdated Fraud
Review: This book is a mess of every conspiracy under the sun. It was proven false by Budiansky and MANY others. THE KEY documents that CONSPIRACY theorists (like Willey) told us the government was keeping SECRET were DECLASSIFIED in 1998 and 1999 and are at the National Archives at College Park. They state that as of December 1, 1941, only 10 percent of the code groups and 5 percent of the additive groups had been recovered in AN-1 (aka JN-25B). Also a report by OP-20-G on decrypts produced in various Japanese code systems for each month of 1941 reports the number of decrypts in JN-25 as "none" Futhermore a complete internal history of the solution of JN-25, was written at the end of WWII. This document, which provides great cryptologic detail,explains how JN-25 was broken during each period. It fully confirms the testimony of the USN personnel involved. By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, no JN-25 message had been read for intelligence value.
I'd also like to say that ALL of the Japanese officers involved including, Abe, Chigusa, Fuchida, Fujita, Genda, Goto, Ishiguro, Kusaka, Maki, Matsumoto and Yoshioka all maintain radio silence was strictly observed. Fuses were removed from the transmitters and the transmitter keys were disabled. Read ("The Pearl Harbor Papers") It was NOT possible! Willey, it seems will not engage in defending his work. More that likely he knows that it is outdated.