a North Korean drone had crashed while taking pictures of the site: Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Suspected North Korean Drone Photographed Advanced US Missile Defense Site, Report Says,” Washington Post, June 13, 2017.
They trained to reduce that launch time to about twenty minutes: The estimate of twenty minutes is provided in an account of Iraqi Scud operations and the challenges associated with hunting them. See Peter de la Billière, Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).
within fifteen minutes, the unit needed to move 15 kilometers away: The Iraqis trained to be within nine miles of the launch point within fifteen minutes. See Jeffrey D. Isaacson and David R. Vaughan, Estimation and Prediction of Ballistic Missile Trajectories, RAND/MR-737-AF (Washington, DC: RAND, 1996).
5. Sunshine State
Because it was Saturday morning, his son-in-law and daughter were out of contact: The Kushners discussed turning off their cell phones in a profile for Vogue. Jonathan van Meter, “Ivanka Trump Knows What It Means to Be a Modern Millennial,” Vanity Fair, February 24, 2015.
The secure video conference hardware in the Mar-a-Lago Situation Room was made by CISCO: “It’s possible the black box to the left of the photo is a Cisco Telepresence Touch, according to Brian Roemmele.” Sarah Emerson, “What the Heck Are These Electronic Devices in Trump’s Situation Room?” Motherboard, April 7, 2017.
Chuck Robbins, had been critical of a number of Trump initiatives: Berkeley Lovelace Jr., “Cisco’s Chuck Robbins: CEOs on Trump Panels Followed Their Conscience and Now It’s Time to Move On,” CNBC, August 17, 2017.
But when the president did not forget, he grew increasingly angry with Tillerson for slow-rolling him: David E. Sanger, “Trump Seeks Way to Declare Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal,” New York Times, July 27, 2017.
When Trump suggested something crazy, Mattis would compliment the president on his strong instincts: This strategy is attributed to Mattis in Peter Nicholas and Rebecca Ballhaus, “Talking to Trump: A How-To Guide,” Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2018.
The White House would often simply refuse to confirm whether the president was playing golf: “Officials often don’t release details about whether Trump is golfing, and with whom, and reporters have a tough time confirming what he’s doing.” Amanda Terkel, “White House Says Secret Rounds of Golf Make Donald Trump a Better President,” Huffington Post, January 2, 2018.
In one case, a white panel truck just happened to appear: Elizabeth Preza, “‘We Can See You, Mister!’: CNN’s Keilar Mocks Truck Driver Who Obscured His Face While Blocking Trump Golfing,” Raw Story, December 27, 2017. The Secret Service and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office both denied placing the truck. See Brett Samuels, “Secret Service Denies Hiding Trump’s Golfing from Media,” The Hill, December 27, 2017.
was parked in a spot reserved for the Palm Beach County sheriff: “CNN Learns Whose Truck Blocked View of Trump,” Anderson Cooper 360, December 30, 2017.
This is what the historian Roberta Wohlstetter called the “background of expectation”: Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962).
Both the Roberts Commission… and the 9/11 Commission observed: See Report of the Commission Appointed by the President of the United States to Investigate and Report the Facts Relating to the Attack Made by Japanese Armed Forces upon Pearl Harbor in the Territory of Hawaii on December 7, 1941, Senate Document 77-2, 1942; Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (9/11 Commission Report) (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2004).
Former president Trump was emphatic that the commission note his score: This quote is adapted from a remark Trump reportedly made in 2007 to reporter David Owen, who wrote: “He was upset that I hadn’t written that he’d shot 71—a very good golf score, one stroke under par. He wanted the number, and the fact that I hadn’t published the number proved that I was just like all the other biased reporters, who, because we’re all part of the anti-Trump media conspiracy, never give him as much credit as he deserves.” Owen, “Lessons from Playing Golf with Trump,” New Yorker, January 14, 2007.
6. A False Dawn Breaks
Kenichi Murakami was the chief of the Tokyo Fire Department: Kenichi Murakami is, in fact, the name of the chief of the Tokyo Fire Department, although the character depicted here is completely fictional.
The traditional ladder-wielding fireman depicted in Kabuki theater or in a woodblock print: The description of Edo firefighters is drawn from William W. Kelly, “Incendiary Actions: Fires and Firefighting in the Shogun’s Capital and the People’s City,” in Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, eds. James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and Kaoru Ugawa (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
The Olympic Security Command Center (OSCC) was now largely functional and outside of central Tokyo: Tokyo’s Olympic Security Command Center is described in Eva Kassens-Noor and Tatsuya Fukushige, “Tokyo 2020 and Beyond: The Urban Technology Metropolis,” Journal of Urban Technology, published online July 1, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2016.1157949.
Oh Soo-hyun shared a name with a doctor in a Korean soap opera: There really is a South Korean television drama with a doctor named Oh Soo Hyun. The Dr. Oh depicted here, however, is a fictional homage to the real Dr. Terafumi Sasaki, who was profiled in John Hersey’s Hiroshima (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946).
With more than 72,000 hospital beds: The statistics in this section are drawn from Oh Youngho, “Optimal Supply and the Efficient Use of Hospital Bed Resources in Korea,” Working Paper 2015-21, Korea Institute of Health and Social Affairs, 2015.
7. Fumble
After reassessing the status of North Korea’s nuclear development: The 2017 reassessment of the size of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is detailed in two news reports from August of that year. “The analysis, completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency, comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The United States calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.” Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima, and Anna Fifield, “North Korea Now Making Missile-Ready Nuclear Weapons, US Analysts Say,” Washington Post, August 8, 2017.
The low end remained at thirty: “Some US assessments conclude North Korea has produced or can make around 30 to 60 nuclear weapons, said two US officials who weren’t authorized to discuss sensitive intelligence matters and demanded anonymity.” “Estimates of North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Are Difficult to Nail Down,” Associated Press, August 18, 2017.