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Why Weren’t We Warned?

by David Kahn

For America, the greatest single controversy of the Second World War has always been the attack on Pearl Harbor. The success of the Japanese assault seared the psyche of the nation. How, with the United States reading the highest-level Japanese diplomatic codes, could the country be caught by surprise? How, despite a November 27, 1941, waning of imminent war with Japan, could the Pacific Fleet be found at anchor? How, despite the brilliant and heroic efforts of its gnome-like cryptanalysts, could the nation have been so unprepared? Some historians have argued that the answer lies with human failure, others that it rests with criminal conspiracy. In its fixation on self-flagellation, however, America has usually ignored another possibility: The answer may center not on what the Americans did wrong, but on what the Japanese did right.

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Forced to the Cannon’s Mouth’: An Ohio Regiment’s Desperate Venture From Perryville to the War’s End

by Thomas M. Grace and Allen F. Richardson

John Marshall Branum knew about abolition and slavery in the South from an early age. His parents were both Swedenborgian, members of a Christian sect founded in the 18th century that followed the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a theologian and philosopher known for his praise of the spiritual character of the African people. When the Civil War began, the 21-year-old Branum was enrolled at the Hopedale Normal School, a teachers’ college near his hometown of Bridgeport, Ohio. The school, which counted future Union icon George Armstrong Custer among its alumni, had been established by New England abolitionists in 1849.