"And I Was There"; Pearl Harbor and Midway--Breaking the Secrets

New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1985. Second Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Good/Fair. 596 pages. Co-Author's Notes. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Edwin Thomas Layton (April 7, 1903 - April 12, 1984) was a rear admiral in the United States Navy. Layton is most noted for his work as an intelligence officer during WWII. Layton was in charge of all intelligence in the Pacific Ocean area. Layton was a champion of using code-breaking information in war planning operations. Layton's book describes how Kimmel and his army counterpart at Pearl Harbor, General Walter C. Short, the commanders there, were scapegoats for failures by higher-ups in Washington, D.C. The late Admiral Layton, who was the fleet intelligence officer for Admiral Nimitz through out World War II, describes the breakdown in the intelligence process prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and shares his experiences witnessing feuding among high-level naval officers in Washington that contributed to Japan's successful attack. Roger Pineau entered the Navy in 1942 and spent most of World War II at the Naval Communications Annex in Washington, where he worked in code-breaking operations. In 1947, he became an assistant to Samuel E. Morrison, a Harvard University historian and Navy rear admiral who wrote the official Navy history of World War II. John Edward Costello (1943-1995) was a British military historian, who wrote about World War I, World War II and the Cold War. He then worked as a director and scriptwriter for the BBC before writing on military history. Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor? How did they inflict the greatest military defeat in American history? What went wrong? "And I Was There" is the first book by a top-ranking American navy officer to answer these questions. Admiral Layton scrupulously kept these secrets to himself until the recent declassification of a half million documents from U.S. military archives. Only then did Layton believe he was free to tell his story. He names those who knew about Japanese intentions, how they acquired their knowledge and how they misused it. He speaks with unique authority. He was the Pacific Fleet's intelligence officer prior to Pearl Harbor, and he continued to serve in the same capacity for Admiral Nimitz throughout the war. As Layton says: he was there.