» "And I Was There": Pearl Harbor And Midway -- Breaking the Secrets (Bluejacket Books)

"And I Was There": Pearl Harbor And Midway -- Breaking the Secrets (Bluejacket Books) Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: A 'Must Read' for Anyone Interested In Pearl/Midway
Comment: As the Fleet Intellegence Officer of Admirals Kimmel and Nimitz Edwin Layton was in a unique position to see and to understand what was going on regarding the battles at Pearl Harbor and Midway. This welcome reprint to the 1985 book has to be considered one of the more definitive books of the couple of hundred on the subjects.

Layton was a language officer stationed in Japan before the war to learn Japanese. He followed Japan and the Japanese developments closely. He was at Pearl before the attack and remained there throughout the war. He was on the Missouri at the Japanese surrender.

There are a series of revisionist history books that propose such things as Roosevelt and Churchill conspiring to let the Japanese attack at Pears. Yes there is evidence that we had some intelligence pointing to the Japanese attack. But you have to look carefully at how much material there was, how many messages had been intercepted, how few had been translated and you come up with the basic understanding that it just hadn't been put together. A lot like the situation with 9/11, Monday morning quarterbacking is much easier than being in the midst of the game.

Layton was there, he knew what Kimmel and Short knew, indeed he had briefed them with the material on hand. Could they have been better prepared, yes, Layton says, if Admiral Richmond K. Turner had forwarded the information. But like any inter-departmental power struggle, Turner held the information to himself.

I was also surprised by the relatively little animosity shown towards the Redman brothers who bounced Rochefort and Safford out. Indeed Layton points out that the do it themselves style of Rochefort and Safford probably wouldn't have done a very good job of managing the Navy Radio Intelligence activities that grew to almost 8,500 people by the end of the war.

All in all, a must read for anyone interested in what happened at Pearl and Midway.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Navy coverup for their Pearl Harbor incompetence
Comment: And I was there.
This is a great book by one who was there, Adm Layton. He was Adm Kimmels intelligence officer at Pearl Harbor.
He shows how the incompetence of the Navy in Washington led to the surprise attack at Pearl, by the Navy, specifically adm Stark and Kelly Turner, not giving Pearl the vital information they had about Jap intentions, but refused to give Pearl. The Navy also had 2 intelligence groups fighting for the information, and control, evaluating, and dissemination of the information. This too sabotaged the intelligence efforts, and does to this day.
Gen Marshall is also responsible for the debacle. He was reprimanded, but Roosevelt set aside the Congressional verdict on him.
Kimmel was judged not guilty of any wrongdoing by the Navy, but found derelict by Congress, a tragic miscarriage of justice, due to lies under testimony by Stark, and Turner.

The Redmon brothers are faulted too for ousting the most brilliant Navy intelligence officer, Rochefort, who correctly guessed the time and location of the Midway battle.

Another tragic aftermath of Pearl, was the loss of Wake Island. Kimmel had a carrier task force sailing to resupply and relieve the garrision that was under attack by the Japs. This would have surprised the Japs and could have sunk many Jap ships, saved Wake Island, and kept open the supply lines to the Phillipines. Unfortunaely, Kimmel was relieved, and Adm Pye replaced him Pye lost his nerve and cancelled the mission.

MacArthur is noted, as being in charge of the Phillipines, and being under orders to attack Formosa with his B17's when Pearl was attacked. He had a 9 hour warning after Pearl had been attacked, and had been told to attack. It was not until years after this book was published that the records of why Mac did nothing in the Phillipines were found. He was paid $650,000 by Pres Quezon of the Phillipines to do nothing, as he wanted to be neutral. MacArthur lost the Phillipines, a far more important strategic outpost than Pearl, as well as half the B17's we had, and 1/5 of our fighters, on the ground, just as what happened at Pearl, only 9 hours later, after he had multiple phone calls from Washington to attack the Japs.

The battle of Guadalcanal and other Pacific battles is also gone into in some detail
It was Nimitz, not Mac Arthur that devised the island hopping idea.
A great book by a hero who was there.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Codebreaker's Analysis of Pearl Harbor and Midway
Comment: Edwin T. Layton served as Fleet Intelligence Officer for Admirals Kimmel and Nimitz. He, along with the other members of station Hypo, were assigned the task of breaking into Japan's secret codes, especially their JN-25 cypher. Through exhausting efforts by its members, they were finaly able to penetrate enough of the JN-25 code to make reasonable assumptions as to what the Japanese navy was planning. "Magic" was the term used for the intercept and decryption of these secret codes.

However, no decoding was actually done at Pearl Harbor, because there was no "Purple" decoding machine there. All intercepts had to be sent to Washinton for decryption, and Hawaii relied on Washington for their information. Layton's thesis is that Pearl Harbor was denied vital intelligence which, if issued in a timely fashion, could have alerted Pearl Harbor to the impending attack which occurred on December 7, 1941. Although I agree with some of his thesis, I also believe that the Pearl Harbor commanders made terrible mistakes of their own which also contributed to the unpreparedness of Pearl Harbor.

One message that Washington failed to send Pearl Harbor which I believe, along with Layton, could have alerted the fleet to the attack was the so-called "bomb plot" message. In a nutshell, this message divided Pearl Harbor into several sections and placed ships in each section; almost like laying an invisible grid over the harbor. Of all the messages that Pearl Harbor failed to receive, this was probably the most important.

However, with this stated, I also believe that the commanders made grievous errors of their own. On November 27, 1941, a "war warning" message was sent to both commanders at Pearl Harbor. Both seemed perplexed and unsure of the course of action to be taken. Why was this? Both Admiral Kimmel and General Short were high ranking members of the military, yet they both dragged their feet when they received this message. Short simply ordered defense against sabotage instead of ordering an all-out alert, while Kimmel failed to order any further long-range patrols, plus he didn't order the battle force to sea. They seemed incapable of making any independent judgement of their own. Instead, they needed to be told directly what to do. These omissions are unforgivable.

Inter-service rivalry also played a role in the failure. As pointed out by Layton, there was very little inter-service cooperation or sharing of messages, so most of the time, one usually didn't know what the other was doing. Further, during the Midway operation, a rivalry betwen station Hypo and the Washington-based intelligence unit nearly cost us the battle, but fortunately, Layton and commander Joe Rochefort were able to convince Nimitz that Hypo, not Washington, was correct.

I thought this was a good book, but I disagree with Layton's assertion that Kimmel and Short were scapegoats and had no clue what was happening. Granted, there was some intelligence that was definitely denied to them, but they should have been able to interpret events on ther own, namely the war warning message. This book is a good counter-argument to other works, such as "At Dawn We Slept". The information about the battle of Midway is especially interesting, plus the story of the codebreaking activities was well-done.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A real eye opener!
Comment: Before you jump on some revisionist books about Pearl Harbor, like Stinnet's Day of Deceipt, you should get it from the horses mouth! Layton, et al, tell a little known side of the war in the pacific. His opinions of some famous naval personalities like Stark and R.K. Turner will really have you thinking about how war is run when powerful, ambitious officers are running the show. It's a shame that lives had to be wasted while the U.S. got its act together to finally win the war in the pacific, but Layton's tale will give you a new perspective and supports much of what was previously written, like Prang's "At Dawn We Slept", about the debacle of Pearl Harbor and the genius that followed at Midway. Buy it!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: CONCISELY
Comment: First and major portion of book covering Pearl Harbor is excellent. However, after Layton's death, the book was continued from his notes and descriptions of campaigns after Pearl Harbor suffer in quality by comparison.

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