From the Publisher
Meticulous, eloquent, and compelling - and hugely readable. The 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack is well served by A Matter of Honor.” — Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Men Who United the States and Pacific
“Anthony Summers’ & Robbyn Swan’s A Matter of Honor is a noble and right-minded portrait of Admiral Kimmel, the scapegoat for Pearl Harbor. The amount of fresh research is deeply impressive. Highly recommended!” — Douglas Brinkley, author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt & the Land of America
“The most comprehensive, accurate and thoroughly researched book of events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ever written. It provides new information never before revealed.” — Admiral James Lyons, former Commander in Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet
“Streamlined, muscular, objective, and well-written - a sensitive examination of a vast constellation of source material. [Summers and Swan] present a powerful argument in defense of Admiral Kimmel, who was blamed for the attack and forced into inglorious retirement. An excellent book.” — Martin Morgan, World War II historian and author
“Meticulous research...thorough-going...provides a great deal of insight into the ordeal of Admiral Husband Kimmel, who served his nation well but was treated shabbily by its leaders.” — Paul Stillwell, author of Battleship Arizona
“A fine book. Scrupulously researched and rigorously argued..[a] compellingly told story.” — David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression & War, 1929-1945
Paul Stillwell
Meticulous research...thorough-going...provides a great deal of insight into the ordeal of Admiral Husband Kimmel, who served his nation well but was treated shabbily by its leaders.
Douglas Brinkley
Anthony Summers’ & Robbyn Swan’s A Matter of Honor is a noble and right-minded portrait of Admiral Kimmel, the scapegoat for Pearl Harbor. The amount of fresh research is deeply impressive. Highly recommended!
Martin Morgan
Streamlined, muscular, objective, and well-written - a sensitive examination of a vast constellation of source material. [Summers and Swan] present a powerful argument in defense of Admiral Kimmel, who was blamed for the attack and forced into inglorious retirement. An excellent book.
Simon Winchester
Meticulous, eloquent, and compelling - and hugely readable. The 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack is well served by A Matter of Honor.
David M. Kennedy
A fine book. Scrupulously researched and rigorously argued..[a] compellingly told story.
Admiral James Lyons
The most comprehensive, accurate and thoroughly researched book of events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ever written. It provides new information never before revealed.
Kirkus Review
Sept. 8, 2016
This evenhanded exposé of the scapegoating of the commander in chief of the Pacific fleet at the time of Pearl Harbor challenges official memory.Adm. Husband Kimmel was roundly blamed for the destruction of the fleet at Pearl Harbor and loss of 2,403 lives on that terrible day of Dec. 7, 1941, but as co-authors Summers and Swan (The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11, 2011, etc.) show, he was conveniently used to hiding many missteps by his Washington, D.C., superiors. Both Kimmel and the Army’s Hawaiian commander, Lt. Gen. Walter Short, were forced into retirement after the debacle. The subsequent official fact-finding commission (the first of nine), the Roberts Report, blamed them for “dereliction of duty,” and they were charged with having failed to “confer and cooperate” with warnings by Washington leading up to the surprise Japanese attack. Kimmel dedicated the rest of his life to challenging these charges and vindicating his name. The truth, as close as the authors can ascertain, is that the intercepts cracking a Japanese supercode were not adequately shared with Kimmel, although Washington officials assumed that they had been. The key middleman in this failure to pass on valuable intelligence information was Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark, who was ostensibly Kimmel’s longtime friend yet withheld critical information from him—e.g., the telltale Japanese dispatch of Sept. 24, which requested that Pearl Harbor be divided into special zones for the location of specific kinds of ships. Moreover, Kimmel was out of the loop in knowing about the deterioration of diplomatic negotiations between Japanese representatives and Washington in the final weeks leading to the attack, while the traffic analysts guessed that Japanese heavy carriers (which no one could locate) must be in home waters. In the end, the authors find enough blame, high and low, to go around. A solid demonstration of how an insistence on secrecy proved to be a fatal breakdown as the Japanese attack loomed. A good complement to Steve Twomey’s Countdown to Pearl Harbor (2016).
