"Ten days before Pearl Harbor, the chiefs ordered an 'appropriate defensive deployment' in a terse cable that dramatically began, 'This dispatch is to be considered a war warning.' The alarm couldn't have been more clear—or less specific.
"The warning didn't mention Hawaii. And Kimmel could not conceive of a Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.
"His fleet couldn’t sail all the way to Japan in secret, launch a major attack and get away. If he couldn't do it, he reasoned, neither could the Japanese.
"Thus he took no precautions to guard the fleet at anchor."
Bob Drogin in the Los Angeles Times reviews Steve Twomey's Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack.
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