Pearl Harbor Betrayed (46 page)

When the commission members wrote the report of their findings, which was presented to Roosevelt on 24 January, it was the “no conference on warnings or orders” issue that they chose as the frame within which to deliver their predictable indictment: dereliction of duty.
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Roosevelt released the entire report to the press and radio on the following day. The charge of dereliction that it contained was red meat to the reporters, as it was also to an angry public clamoring for someone to blame. Kimmel and, far less so, Short were roundly condemned in every public arena for “permitting” the catastrophe of Pearl Harbor to take place. Since the commission had found no major fault with their subordinate commanders or with their superiors in Washington, Kimmel and Short were singled out for a nation's vilification. Kimmel received scores of abusive letters, some suggesting that he be made to retire without a pension, others that he make the only honorable expiation for his treachery, which was suicide. Even U.S. Representative Andrew J. May, chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, proposed in a speech at Pikeville, in Kimmel's home state of Kentucky, that the admiral should be shot.
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Others in the House demanded a court-martial. Kimmel kept copies of those letters and threats, but it should be pointed out that the collection of his papers at the University of Wyoming contains an equal or greater number of letters showing understanding and support.

What stung him most was the charge of dereliction of duty. Although there was no such specific charge in the Articles of War, the contrived censure offended his honor as one who had always and faithfully performed his duty. After years of sterling service, it was a tarnish that he found impossible to accept, particularly at the hands of a body of men who had looked at his difficult but faithful duty at Pearl for no more than thirty-four days. He knew, as Neuleib has noted, that it would be difficult for the American people to dislodge this judgment from their minds. The Roberts Commission had provided the nation a “correct” perception: “Kimmel had violated the public image of what an admiral should be and do.”
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The dereliction charge would not be repeated in any of the findings of the subsequent eight formal investigations, boards, inquiries, and hearings about the Pearl Harbor attack that took place from 1944 to 1995.
50
Indeed, some thirteen years after the Roberts report was disseminated, one of the commission members, Admiral Standley, looking back on what he called the “irregularity,” “inaccurate reporting,” and “unfairness” of the commission's proceedings, expressed his regret that Kimmel and Short had not instead been given general courts-martial, in which they would have been afforded rights denied them by the commission: to have counsel, to introduce evidence, to be present during the testimony of witnesses, and to cross-examine witnesses. (Kimmel was not permitted to read the full testimony of others until 1944.) Said Standley: “Thus, these two officers were martyred, as it were, for in my opinion, if they had been brought to trial, both would have been cleared of the charge of neglect of duty.”
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Kimmel, like Short, retired from his service soon afterward. But, unlike Short, he fought back vigorously throughout the next two years. Specifically, he sought a court-martial. The Navy finally, in July 1944, granted him an equivalent court of inquiry, in which he would have all the same rights as a defendant in a court-martial. While preparing for those proceedings, he was approached by cryptanalyst Capt. Laurance Safford, who, angered to discover that Kimmel had been denied Magic, gave the former CINCPAC a verbal account of the most critical decrypts affecting Hawaii. “This information made me almost sick,” Kimmel told Prange in 1963.
52
With the help of attorneys Charles Rugg, Capt. Robert A. Lavender, USN, and Lt. Edward F. Hanify, USNR, Kimmel forced the Navy to provide him access to the pre–Pearl Harbor Magic.
And he broke off all personal relations with Stark.

Presiding over the Navy court of inquiry were Admiral Orin G. Murfin, USN (Ret.), Admiral Edward C. Kalbfus, USN (Ret.), and Vice Admiral Adolphus Andrews, USN, with Comdr. Harold Biesemeier, USN, judge advocate. After three months of taking testimony and reading documents, the court found, among eighteen specific findings:

That relations between Kimmel and Short were cordial, and that there was “no failure to cooperate on the part of either, and that each was cognizant of the measures being undertaken by the other for the defense of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base to the degree required by the common interest.”

That Kimmel's action “in ordering that no routine, long-range reconnaissance be undertaken was sound and that the use of fleet patrol planes for daily, long-range, all-around reconnaissance was not possible with the inadequate number of fleet planes available.…”

That Kimmel's decision “to continue preparations of the Pacific Fleet for war was sound in the light of the information then available to him.”

That the “war warning” message of 27 November “directed attention away from Pearl Harbor rather than toward it.”

That Admiral Stark “failed to display the sound judgment expected of him” in that, on the morning of 7 December, “he did not transmit immediately the fact that a message had been received which appeared to indicate that a break in diplomatic relations was imminent, and that an attack in the Hawaiian area might be expected soon.”

That, even with a last-minute telephoned warning, “there was no action open to Admiral Kimmel which could have stopped the attack or which could have had other than negligible bearing upon its outcome.”
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The findings constituted the first time that anyone in high position in the Navy Department was brought to account as wholly or partially responsible for what happened at Pearl Harbor. Stark's performance was held to two standards, or principles, that were policy in 1941, as they are today:

He who denies intelligence to commanders shares in the blame for any disaster that results.

When a commander denies information to subordinates who command the forces he provided them to accomplish the missions he assigned he controls what they do and do not do.
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An Army Pearl Harbor Board was in session during the same three months. In October it submitted to the War Department a set of findings that came down hard on General Gerow, less severely on General Marshall, and least harshly on General Short. Gerow was declared to have “failed in his duties” in that (1) he failed to keep Short “adequately informed” on the impending war situation; (2) he approved a warning message to Short on 27 November that “contained confusing statements”; (3) he failed to correct Short's actions pursuant to the 27 November message; and (4) he did not take steps to implement the existing joint defense plans of the Army and Navy in Hawaii. Marshall was criticized for (1) not having kept Short informed of the “growing tenseness” of the Japanese situation; (2) for, like Gerow, not correcting Short's reply to the 27 November warning; (3) for not sending additional warnings to Short on the evening of 6 December and in the early morning of the seventh; and (4) for not investigating and determining the “state of readiness of the Hawaiian Command between 27 November and 7 December.” Short was concluded to have “failed in his duties” by (1) adopting an alert against sabotage only instead of guarding “against surprise to the extent possible”; (2) failing to implement the joint Army-Navy defense plans; and (3) by not informing himself “of the effectiveness of the long-distance reconnaissance being conducted by the Navy.”
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Before Kimmel learned of his exculpation it was snatched away from him by CNO-CINCUS Admiral King. In a second endorsement (opinion) to the court of inquiry dated 3 November 1944, King overturned its findings where Kimmel was concerned. His reason: CINCPAC should have conducted long-range air searches at least “in the more dangerous sectors.”
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Which these were he did not say, but on that basis he charged Kimmel anew with “dereliction,” and urged the newly appointed Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal to concur, which the secretary did in his own endorsement.
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On the dismal anniversary day of 7 December 1944 King invited Kimmel to his office to convey the bad news in person. When he heard it, Kimmel wondered if the testimony and the findings of the court were not to the contrary (they were), and in an aide-mémoire written afterward he expressed his stupefaction in capital letters: “KING SAID THAT HE HAD NOT READ THE TESTIMONY GIVEN BEFORE THE COURT.”
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(Nor, it turned out, had Admiral King written his own endorsement; it was authored by Vice Admiral Richard S. Edward, his deputy chief of staff.
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Nor had King even
read
his endorsement before signing it.
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) Perhaps King read the court testimony in the postwar years, since in 1948 he wrote to the secretary of the Navy softening the language of his endorsement—Kimmel's were “errors of judgment,” he wrote, “as distinguished from culpable inefficiency”—though without retracting the word “dereliction.”
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*   *   *

Although the Navy court recommended “that no further proceedings be had in the matter,” the United States Congress decided to intervene in September 1945, when it authorized a Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack (JCC), its membership to be five senators and five representatives, six Democrats and four Republicans. Its proceedings, which consisted mostly of the taking of testimony, lasted from 15 November 1945 to 15 July 1946. Though the hearings amassed a huge amount of data, not much of what was new information was essential to understanding the Pearl Harbor event. At their weary conclusion, the committee announced findings that divided fairly closely along party lines. The majority (Democratic) report cited twelve “errors of judgment and not dereliction of duty” on the part of the Hawaiian commanders. It also concluded that Stark and Marshall should share in the blame. Roosevelt was completely exonerated. Two Republicans on the committee took a middle-of-the-road approach, finding fault with both the Hawaiian commanders and official Washington. A minority report was submitted by the two other Republicans. While not entirely exculpating Kimmel and Short, that report focused on failures it attributed to Roosevelt, Stimson, Knox, Marshall, Stark, and Gerow. It fell short, however, of charging Roosevelt with having foreknowledge of the Japanese attack that he did not share with his Hawaiian commanders—a favorite conspiracy theory that would soon become a cottage industry, one alive and well to this day.
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General Short, who had not publicly struggled with the charges made against him beginning with the Roberts Commission, joined Kimmel in a friendly relationship during the hearings, and gave a scrappy performance at the witness chair, after which he retired again into desired obscurity. He died on 3 September 1949 in Dallas, Texas, and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. (He was preceded in death by Japanese admirals Yamamoto and Nagumo. On 18 April 1943, acting on a decrypted Japanese itinerary for an inspection tour of the northern Solomon Islands by Yamamoto, U.S. fighters intercepted the admiral's aircraft and shot it down. During the last stages of the U.S. Marine and Army conquest of Saipan Island [June–July 1944], Nagumo and all but one of his staff shot themselves rather than be taken alive.) Kimmel kept fighting to overcome the stain of “dereliction” dripped on him by King. In letters, articles, and a book he defended his performance and his honor, not ceasing in that labor until a heart attack claimed him in his eighty-sixth year, on 14 May 1968, in Groton, Connecticut. Sometime during the last year of his life he drafted, but never sent, a response to a letter received from his onetime friend Admiral “Betty” Stark. The language expressed his deep pain at recalling a professional association and a long friendship gone terribly wrong. As he vented his feelings, probably with no real intention of placing them in a mailbox, there was overt bitterness in every use of the word “betrayed”:

You betrayed the officers and men of the Fleet by not giving them a fighting chance for their lives and you betrayed the Navy in not taking responsibility for your actions; you betrayed me by not giving me information you knew I was entitled to and by your acquiscence [
sic
] in the action taken on the request for my retirement; and you betrayed yourself by misleading the Roberts Commission as to what information had been sent to me and by your statements made under oath before the Court of Inquiry that you knew were false.

I hope that you never communicate with me again and that I never see you or your name again that my memory may not be refreshed of one so despicable as you.
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Looking back over the preceding chapters, I have resisted the temptation to summarize or to draw last conclusions. I leave that to the reader.

“Truth is the daughter of time.”

NOTES

Pearl Harbor has become one of the most exhaustively examined and debated single events in United States history—more so than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the Watergate political scandal. The documents from eight official commissions, courts, boards, inquiries, or investigations conducted from December 1941 through May 1946 fill 23 volumes, 40 parts, and 25,000 closely printed pages. The personal archive of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel amounts to another 35,000 pages in typescript, some of it duplicative. More than 140 books and innumerable articles have been written on the subject.

“Defeat cries out for explanation; whereas success, like charity, covers a multitude of sins.”

Alfred Thayer Mahan