Recently uncovered documents about prewar Japanese intelligence that offer new insights to the World War II Pacific theater will be discussed in a free, public presentation on Wednesday, Sept. 25, at WSU Pullman. Tosh Minohara, professor in the Graduate School of Law at Kobe University, Japan, will present “Reconsidering the Road to Pearl Harbor: The Role of Intelligence in Decision Making,” noon-1:30 p.m., Sept. 25, in Bryan Hall 324.
His approach will be two-fold: first, to briefly overview the obscure history of the Japanese Black Chamber, a code breaking operation; and second, to examine the intelligence dimension of policy formulation in Tokyo. This will include the impact of signals intelligence on decision making, most notably at the critical juncture of November 1941 during U.S.-Japan negotiations. The talk is sponsored by the WSU Department of History, the George and Bernadine Converse Historical Endowment, and the WSU Asia Program.