For months Slattery and his team had been working long hours at the
Army Signal Corps laboratories in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. They
did so with a sense of urgency as the war in Europe worsened and the
verbal war with Japan intensified. The system had already proven itself
for England during the Battle of Britain. Although Slattery was tired on
the weekend of December 6-7, 1941, he and his fellow engineers felt a
great sense of accomplishment. The equipment they designed had been
working as well as they dared hope. Several sets had been installed: along
both American coasts, in the American territories of Hawaii and the Phil-
ippines, at the entrances to the Panama Canal, and in Iceland. Now Slat-
tery was home for a quiet weekend with his wife and their fourteen-
month-old son.

"The reports on the equipment were very good, and we were elated,"
Slattery said. "However, there was a general unease about the diplomatic
exchanges of our State Department and the Japanese emissaries. Those of
us who were active in military research and development felt that a crisis
was at hand but had no specific idea how it might evolve."

Although radar had already proven its value in the Battle of Britain,
the American military leaders did not yet take it very seriously. In Hawaii
and the Philippines the stations were operated only sporadically, even though
war warnings had been issued from Washington to these isolated Ameri-
can outposts.

In Louisville, Kentucky, a public relations counselor and newspaper-
man named Henry S. Evans had his own fears. All during the 1930s and
into the 1940s, he had been convinced that Japan was preparing to con-
quer the United States. Japan was doing so by buying the weapons--steel,
scrap iron, entire mills, and the technology to make its own steel--from
the United States. Evans believed all of this would be used against the
United States in the war he was certain would come. Evans was not a
lone voice in the wilderness of those Great Depression years, but the mes-
sage he had been delivering through various media had not been heeded.
On that Saturday he was positive war with Japan was inevitable and would
come soon. The only thing he did not know was when or where the
opening shots would be fired.

America's Pacific Fleet, more than a hundred vessels strong, was in
Pearl Harbor for the weekend. Part of the fleet had been on training
exercises during the past week; and the two carriers, the Enterprise and
the Lexington, were still at sea with their destroyer and cruiser escorts,

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