Using previously unreleased documents, the author reveals new evidence that FDR knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and did nothing to prevent it.

To defeat your enemies you must know them well. In wartime, however, enemy codemakers make that task much more difficult. If you cannot break their codes and read their messages, you may discover too late the enemy's intentions. That's why codebreakers were considered such a crucial weapon during World War II. In Secret Messages, David Alvarez provides the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of decoded radio messages (signals intelligence) upon American foreign policy and strategy from 1930 to 1945. He presents the most complete account to date of the U.S. Army's top-secret Signal Intelligence Service (SIS): its creation, its struggles, its rapid wartime growth, and its contributions to the war effort. Alvarez reveals the inner workings of the SIS (precursor of today's NSA) and the codebreaking process and explains how SIS intercepted, deciphered, and analyzed encoded messages. From its headquarters at Arlington Hall outside Washington, D.C., SIS grew from a staff of four novice codebreakers to more than 10,000 people stationed around the globe, secretly monitoring the communications of not only the Axis powers but dozens of other governments as well and producing a flood of intelligence. Some of the SIS programs were so clandestine that even the White House—unaware of the agency's existence until 1937—was kept uninformed of them, such as the 1943 creation of a super-secret program to break Soviet codes and ciphers. In addition, Alvarez brings to light such previously classified operations as the interception of Vatican communications and a comprehensive program to decrypt the communications of our wartime allies. He also dispels many of the myths about the SIS's influence on American foreign policy, showing that the impact of special intelligence in the diplomatic sphere was limited by the indifference of the White House, constraints within the program itself, and rivalries with other agencies (like the FBI). Drawing upon military and intelligence archives, interviews with retired and active cryptanalysts, and over a million pages of cryptologic documents declassified in 1996, Alvarez illuminates this dark corner of intelligence history and expands our understanding of its role in and contributions to the American effort in World War II.

The story of how nearly 100,000 Americans achieved reparations and an official apology for one of the most shameful episodes in US history. For decades the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans remained hidden from the historical record, its shattering effects kept silent. But in the 1970s the Japanese American Citizens League began a campaign for an official government apology and monetary compensation. Redress is John Tateishi's firsthand account of this against-all-odds campaign. Tateishi, who led the JACL Redress Committee for many years, admits the task was herculean. The campaign sought an unprecedented admission of wrongdoing from Congress. It depended on a unified effort but began with an acutely divided community; for many, the shame of "camp" was so deep that they could not even speak of it. And Tateishi knew that the campaign would succeed only if the public learned that there had been concentration camps on US soil. Redress is the story of a community reckoning with what it means to be both culturally Japanese and American citizens, and what it means to prevent terrible harms from happening again. This edition features a new preface about the lessons Tateishi's story might have for reparations efforts today.