John Bell Smithback

Asia Betrayed : John Bell Smithback

"Somebody knew. Who knew?"

Did Winston Churchill lure Japan into attacking Pearl Harbour as a cynical ruse to pull the United States into the war against the Nazis to save England? Did he deliberately weaken the defences of Singapore and Hong Kong to convince the Japanese to jump? Did he even run a double spy to feed information to Tokyo?

John Bell Smithback examines the evidence in a shocking new assessment of the origins and backstory of one of the turning points of the twentieth century-the Pacific War 1941 to 1945. He looks at Churchill's role in how Japan came to make one of the biggest strategic errors in history, and the horrific consequences for tens of millions of people across East Asia.