On December 7, 1941, Japan unleashed the might of its seaborne air arm on the unsuspecting U.S. Pacific Fleet docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Within 24 hours Japanese air raids had crippled American airfields and naval bases in the Philippines. On December 10, Japanese infantry stormed ashore on the northern coast of Luzon. The United States, which Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had portentously described as a’sleeping giant had finally been awakened to war.

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Millions of Americans were shocked by their sudden, bloody entry into World War II. But there were some, including the commander of American forces in the Philippines, Lt. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had long expected it. They had read a little-known book, The Valor of Ignorance, first published in 1909. Despite its having been written 32 years beforehand, the small volume carried an amazingly accurate warning of Japan’s surprise attack and its follow-up moves. In fact, the work seemed so prescient that members of MacArthur’s staff later went on to label its American author, who had acquired his own share of experience fighting in the Far East, a clairvoyant.

And yet, when The Valor of Ignorance was first published, mainstream U.S. military thinkers and planners had not only rejected the work, they had actively derided it. The book had also predicted the fall of Manchuria, Hong Kong, Indochina, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies and parts of the West Coast — and to most Western officers, the whole idea was absurd. The Japanese officer class, however, did not think so. They had bought the book from the outset and, having studied it avidly, put its deadly lessons into practice in 1941.

Who was this 20th-century Cassandra whose advice and warnings had been dismissed by his countrymen but recognized by his enemies? Born in 1876, Homer Lea was never considered normal by his contemporaries. A hunchback, he weighed less than 100 pounds and stood a diminutive 4 feet 11 inches. Nevertheless, even from an early age he was filled with a burning desire to become a military colossus. He managed to get an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., but was soon dismissed because of his frail health. Little Scrunchneck, as his classmates affectionately called him, then settled for study at Stanford University before again declaring his intention to join the U.S. Army. He was turned down. Frustrated but undaunted by these setbacks, Lea, like several military adventurers before him, turned his attentions eastward to China.

Imperial China in the final years of the 19th century was in a state of political and social flux. Faced with a variety of taxing and complex issues, the young Manchu Emperor Kwang Hsü recognized that the country had to modernize in order to survive in the modern world. But the reign of that forward-thinking emperor lasted barely 100 days. Reactionaries, led by Kwang Hsü’s virulently xenophobic aunt, the Dowager Empress Tzu-hsi, held a palace coup. Seizing the reins of power, they whipped up Chinese fears of foreigners. Instrumental in the increasing tension was the secret society I Ho Ch’uan, The Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known to Westerners as Boxers because of their martial beliefs and practices. The Boxer Rebellion of 1900, backed by imperial forces, was marked by its violence and brutality. European, Japanese and American trading centers were targeted. Foreigners were hunted down and butchered, although it was Chinese Christian converts who bore the brunt of the Boxers’ wrath — thousands were massacred for holding foreign beliefs. The missionaries and their flocks fled to Peking and to the protection of the foreign legations. The Western world waited with bated breath for the international response.

At age 23 Lea, a Sinophile, was keen to enter this boiling cauldron. He was sure that the world stood on the brink of a new global epoch, and that events in China were the beginning of an inevitable historical force. In his opinion, the imperial blocs of Russia, Britain and France and the growing militarism of Germany and Japan were set to clash. War in the Pacific was inevitable, and the United States, like it or not, would be drawn into the vortex. Lea’s friends, concerned that he would be placing himself in grave danger, urged caution. All great careers are carved out by the sword, he told a worried friend. Mine, too, I shall carve that way. It was gently pointed out to him that his deformity might make him ineligible for service with anyone. Citing the example of his hero, the club-footed poet George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, in the Greek war for independence from Turkey in the 1820s, Lea retorted, China shall be my Greece. Another friend was far more direct: You’ll get your head cut off. Brilliant at repartee, Lea wryly commented, Fortunately they’ll have a hard time in finding my neck. What Lea did not let on, however, was that he was already corresponding with a number of influential reformists.

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