It was Captain (later Rear Admiral) Hideo Hiraide who broke the news to the Japanese people on Dec. 7, 1941: "In the early morning, units of the imperial navy launched an attack on Pearl Harbor ... Two battleships sunk, four severely damaged . . ." Last week Admiral Hiraide and 451 others, put on a war-criminal purge list in 1946 by General Douglas MacArthur, were de-purged by the Japanese government. Admiral Hiraide died in 1948, but his de-purging is more than a posthumous attempt to blot out the stain on the family escutcheon....
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