In the Cauldron recounts the unrelenting efforts of Joseph Grew, America’s ambassador to Japan, to orchestrate an agreement between Japan and the United States in the months before the Pearl Harbor attack. In pushing for that agreement, Grew tried to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt that US economic sanctions would not bring Japan to its knees, that Japanese sanity could not be measured by Western standards of logic, and that Japanese leaders would prefer annihilation through war with the United States than the humiliation of succumbing to American pressure. When he saw that an agreement was unattainable, Grew warned President Roosevelt in November 1941 — only a few weeks before Pearl Harbor — that Japan was prepared to launch a “suicidal” war with the United States and that armed conflict could come with “dangerous and dramatic suddenness.” Grew’s story is filled with hope and heartache, with complex and fascinating characters, and with a drama befitting the momentous decisions at stake. And, more than that, it is a story that has never previously been told.
Nonfiction
In the Cauldron: Terror, Tension, and the American Ambassador’s Struggle to Avoid Pearl Harbor
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2019
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