The [Japanese] could have landed anywhere on the coast, and after our handful of ammunition was gone, they could have shot us like pigs in a pen.
— Major General Joseph Warren Stilwell
Commander, Western Defense Command Southern Sector
(December 11, 1941)
It was still a peaceful morning on Dec. 7, 1941 when the news came in from across the Pacific that Japanese aircraft had bombed Pearl Harbor. On the West Coast, the naïve complacency that “it can’t happen here” abruptly rotated to the frenzied fear that “it can happen here, and it can happen at any moment!”
In his new book, "Panic on the Pacific: How America Prepared for a West Coast Invasion", noted historian and author Bill Yenne returns to the dark and fearful early months of World War II to examine the reaction of the people, the politicians, and the military to what was genuinely perceived as an immediate threat of a full-scale Japanese invasion.
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