Percy L. Greaves, Jr., 1906-1984

Veteran Pearl Harbor revisionist and IHR Editorial Advisory Committee member Percy L. Greaves, Jr., died of cancer on 13 August 1984, 11 days short of what would have been his 78th birthday. A highlight of Mr. Greaves’s long and distinguished career in both the private and public sectors was his service as Chief of Minority Staff for the 1945–46 Joint Congressional Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Prior to this, in 194345, he was Research Director of the Republican National Committee. A frequent contributor to The Journal of Historical Review, he authored most of the Winter 1983–84 special JHR issue entitled “Pearl Harbor: Revisionism Renewed.” Mr. Greaves was a much sought-after speaker on historical and economic subjects; his presentation at the IHR’s Third International Revisionist Conference (1981) in Los Angeles, “Pearl Harbor: 40 Years On,” capped that weekend event.

Since 1944 Percy Greaves had relentlessly pursued clarification of the facts about the Pearl Harbor attack. At the time of his death he was putting the finishing touches on a volume, The Real Infamy Of Pearl Harbor, which would have been the definitive summation of his decades of research. He was perhaps more qualified than any other man to speak and write with authority on the Washington events contributing to the attack, a point made by historian Harry Elmer Barnes in his introduction to Mr. Greaves’s chapter “The Pearl Harbor Investigations” in Barnes’s classic 1953 anthology Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. More recently, historian John Toland noted, in his best-selling Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath, Mr. Greaves’s “outstanding” aid in researching that book, calling him “an invaluable living source” on Pearl Harbor.

Mr. Greaves was a free market economist for U.S. News (the forerunner of U.S. News and World Report), and authored several books on economics, including Understanding the Dollar Crisis and Mises Made Easier: A Glossary for Ludwig von Mises’ “Human Action”. A long-time associate and friend of Ludwig von Mises, he served as Armstrong Professor of Economics with Mises at the University of Plano, Texas. He was also a seminar speaker and discussion leader with the Foundation for Economic Education at Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.

Survived by two sons, a daughter, six grandsons, and his wife, Bettina, Percy Greaves was a tough, tireless advocate of the truth about Pearl Harbor, as well as an enduring friend of the IHR. He will be sorely missed.