![]() Our Man In Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl HarborĪ gripping, behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen through the eyes of the American ambassador who attempted to stop the slide to war. But now Japan was disappearing in their wake. A handful of passengers had told the ambassador that if negotiations for their release failed, they would kill themselves rather than return to land. One imprisoned reporter lost his feet to frostbite and gangrene. Some of the non-diplomats had been imprisoned, beaten or waterboarded as suspected spies. The passengers included journalists, missionaries, businesspeople and diplomats, plus the few women and children who hadn’t been evacuated in the tense months before Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. After six and a half months of internment in the Tokyo embassy and a week aboard ship, the ambassador and his fellow Americans were finally headed home. He snapped alert: The Asama Maru was underway. ![]() A piece of driftwood slipped by, moving a bit too fast, then another moving faster. Half asleep, he glanced out the porthole at the dark waters of Tokyo Bay, with Yokohama silhouetted beyond, so familiar after a week’s confinement aboard the anchored Asama Maru. ![]() The ambassador woke, stirred by some faint shift.
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