It is safe to say that Japanese thronging the malls in Honolulu and scooping up apartments thanks to the mighty yen probably don't give much thought to how Hawaii became part of the United States, but they know about Pearl Harbor.
Pacific Gibraltar: U.S.-Japanese Rivalry Over the Annexation of Hawaii, 1885-1898, by William Michael Morgan. Naval Institute Press, 2011, 330 pp., $34.95 (hardcover)
Similarly, as evident in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when the U.S. mass media frequently invoked Pearl Harbor, it remains the iconic association with this island paradise in the American mind.
William Morgan draws our attention to the U.S.-Japanese rivalry over Hawaii at the end of the 19th century and, in doing so, tries to set the record straight about U.S. annexation and bilateral polarization.