Predicting Pearl Harbor: Billy Mitchell and the Path to War

The signs were there, but only he saw them.

From Commodore Matthew Perry’s 1853 voyage into Japanese waters to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States and Japan were on a collision course. Gen. Billy Mitchell recognized the signs and foresaw the eventual showdown between the two nations—eighteen years before the tragedy of Pearl Harbor. Yet his predictions were dismissed out of hand. Mitchell’s attempts to have his theories taken seriously led to scorn and a subsequent court martialing. Primary-source documents, memoirs, and firsthand testimonies deliver an exhaustive background to Mitchell’s prescient reports. Now, historian Ronald J. Drez finally gives credence to the man called the “Cassandra General.”