Obituary: John Toland, 91, Author of Best-Selling History Books, Dies

New York Times ^ | January 7, 2004 | CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT

[OESY]

John Toland, a best-selling historian whose book "The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945" won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, died on Sunday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. He was 91 and lived in Danbury.

The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter Tamiko Toland.

Reviewing "The Rising Sun" (Random House) for The New York Times, Walter Clemons called it a "big, absorbing and finally very moving history of the Pacific war, told primarily from the Japanese viewpoint."

In research for his books, Mr. Toland typically sought to do as many interviews as possible, sometimes hundreds. For "Rising Sun" his subjects ranged from Japanese generals and admirals to housewives who had survived the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. This technique served him well in perhaps the most popular of his histories, "Adolf Hitler" (Doubleday, 1976), an anecdotal portrait that several reviewers called the most comprehensive biography of Hitler up until that time.

He entered a long-running historical debate about the Roosevelt administration's culpability at the start of the Pacific war with " "Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath" (Doubleday, 1982). In a shift from his conclusions in "The Rising Sun, " Mr. Toland said he had turned up evidence to conclude that Roosevelt had known in advance of Japan's impending attack but failed to inform the naval command in the Pacific in the hope of rousing America from its isolationism. This view put him at odds with a series of official federal investigations and historians who said Roosevelt may have made errors in judgment but neither knew about nor encouraged the attack.

John Willard Toland was born June 29, 1912, in La Crosse, Wis. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Williams College, getting his B.A. in 1936, and set out to become a playwright, attending the Yale University School of Drama in 1936-37. From 1942 to 1949, he served as a captain in Special Services in the Army Air Force, stationed in the United States. During the war, he married Dorothy Peaslack, a dancer. They had two children, Diana Netzer, of Basalt, Colo., and Marcia Toland, who lives in Oman. The marriage ended in divorce.

In 1960, while doing research in Japan, he married Toshiko Matsumura. She and their daughter, Tamiko, of Ithaca, N.Y., also survive him, as do three grandchildren.

By the mid-1950's, he had written many plays, novels and short stories, but remained unpublished. Encouraged by a friend, he turned to nonfiction and began to sell articles to magazines. His agent got him a contract to write a book on dirigibles, "Ships in the Sky" (1957), and he followed with a dozen books for adults and young people, specializing in World War II. A memoir, "Captured by History," was published in 1997.

[tcuoohjohn]

Crock..

ON December 7, 1941 were were reading ZERO Japanese OPerational Naval Messages. Either in whole or in part. Why?..because they had changed the additive books on their naval codes on December 1 The also changed the code from JN-25A to JN-25B.

Broke radio silence?...not according to the Japanese Naval Communications who ran their communications plan and its corrollary decpetion plan. They were transmiting like sumbitches. But it wasn't Kido Butai doing the transmitting. They aren't stupid.

Stinnett's book is a joke and has been roundly bashed by crypanalysts. Read the review by Budiansky in Cryptologia. Stinnett didn't know his fanny from a frequency.

[jamaksin]

On SSB ... agreed. And this phrase-locked loop, synchronous detection, DSP stuff, ... , etc. Why? Use a 6DC6 (as in R-390's) or even better a 6BZ6 (HQ-180AC) for first RF ... and Wow!!!

Of course, antenna design is another issue. There a R/S ESH 3 is quite nice.

73 and VA.