Paul S. Burtness was a professor at Northern Illinois University when, along with Warren U. Ober, he began researching the events surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific. Both men are U.S. Navy Veterans of World War II. Letters were written to a number of prominent military figures who were in power either at the time of the attack or shortly after America entered into the conflict. The letters, and subsequent research, have lead to a variety of publications over a fifty year period. (From GA 261 and http://english50th.uwaterloo.ca/faculty/profiles/WOber.html).

Dr. Warren Ober is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Ober came to Waterloo in 1965 from Northern Illinois University when he accepted the position of Chair of English, and retired in 1994. He has written, or collaborated on, works about Keats, Wordsworth, Alice Munro, Thomas Crofton Croker, William Blake, and Pearl Harbor.

Major General Sherman Miles was the Assistant Chief of Staff G-2 (the head of the Military Intelligence Division) in the time leading up to World War II.