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IN THE CAULDRON
Terror, Tension, and the American Ambassador’s Struggle to Avoid Pearl Harbor
In the second half of 1941, America was tightening its noose around Japan’s neck.  President Roosevelt’s economic sanctions were crippling the country, but its leaders refused to yield to American demands.  Roosevelt thought it was just a matter of time.  Joseph Grew, America’s ambassador to Japan, knew time had nothing to do with it. Grew had lived and worked in Tokyo for almost ten years.  He knew America couldn’t gauge Japan’s mindset by Western standards of logic. He knew the Japanese would rather face annihilation than endure the humiliation of surrendering to American pressure. And he knew they could start a war with the United States “with dangerous and dramatic suddenness” however suicidal that seemed at the time.  In the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Grew tried, with increasing urgency, to orchestrate an agreement between the two countries. The American government wouldn’t listen to him; The Japanese became increasingly hostile. Pervasive surveillance, arbitrary arrest, and even unspeakable torture by Japan’s secret police were constant threats. Grew’s diaries, letters and memos, interviews with his family and an abundance of other primary source materials reveal the political cauldron brewing and the man who tried to stop the inevitable. WATCH THE TRAILER!

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