No One Avoided Danger, Hard Cover

"No One Avoided Danger" is a detailed combat narrative of the 7 December 1941 Japanese attacks on NAS Kaneohe Bay, one of two naval air stations on the island of O’ahu in Hawai’i. Partly because of Kaneohe’s location, fifteen air miles over a mountain range from the main site of that day’s infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, military historians have largely ignored the station’s story. Though there is an understandable tendency to focus on the massive destruction sustained by the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the attacks on NAS Kanehoe Bay were equally destructive and no less disastrous, notwithstanding the station’s considerable distance from the harbor.

Examining actions in the air and on the ground at the deepest practical, personal, and tactical level from both the American and Japanese perspectives, “No One Avoided Danger” is an intricate and highly integrated story without parallel. Such synthesis is made possible only by pursuing every conceivable source for documents, reminiscences, interviews, and photographs on each side of the conflict. Much of this material- especially that which pertains to the Japanese air group and aircraft carrier actions-appears in print for the first time.

On the American side, the authors researched official military personnel files at the National Personnel Records Center and National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri. Among the first historians allowed access to previously unused service records, they extracted service photographs and details of the military careers of American officers and servicemen. Likewise, the authors delved into the backgrounds and personalities of key Japanese participants, and they translated and incorporated the Japanese aircrew rosters from the attack.

Through their research, which allowed Wenger, Cressman and Di Virgilio to interweave American and Japanese narratives of NAS Kaneohe Bay, “No One Avoided Danger” makes a significant contribution to a deeper understanding of the events of 7 December 1941.

J. Michael Wenger is a military historian who has conducted research since the 1970s in repositories the world over. He received the 2012 U.S. Naval Institute Author of the Year Award. Wenger is the coauthor of ten books and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Robert J. Cressman is a Naval historian and a recipient of the John Lyman Book Award in 1999 and the Admiral Arthur W. Radford Award in 2008. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

John Di Virgilio is the author of two groundbreaking articles related to Pearl Harbor and is recognized for this extensive research on Japanese naval ordnance and for his illustrated Pearl Harbor battleship damage profiles. He lives in ‘Ewa Beach, Hawaii.