Authors: Michael Gannon

Pearl Harbor Betrayed (58 page)

37
. Morison,
Rising Sun,
pp. 243â49.

38
. Ibid., pp. 249â50, 253.

39
. Stimson diary, 15 December 1941;
The New York Times,
16 December 1941.

40
.
The New York Times,
17 December 1941.

41
. Prange,
At Dawn We Slept,
pp. 592â95.

42
. PHA, Pt. 7, p. 3280.

43
. Robert Neuleib, “Kimmel, the Roberts Commission and Public Myths,” a lecture presented to the Tenth Naval History Symposium, U.S. Naval Academy, September 1991. The writer is grateful to Mr. Neuleib for a copy of his remarks.

44
. PHA, Pt. 23, p. 987.

45
. Ibid., Pt. 22, pp. 379, 418.

46
. Short's testimony is given in ibid., Pt. 22, pp. 31â106, Pt. 23, pp. 975â92; Kimmel's testimony is found in ibid., Pt. 22, pp. 317â459, Pt. 23, pp. 893â901, 931â47, 1049â51, 1123â1244.

47
. Ibid., Pt. 39, p. 21. The entire Report of the Roberts Commission is given in pp. 1â21.

48
. Brownlow,
The Accused,
p. 148. The speech was given on 6 April 1942.

49
. From the writer's notes of Mr. Neuleib's lecture; see n. 43, above.

50
. These were, in abbreviated form, the:

Hart Investigation	Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â	Clausen Investigation
12 Februaryâ15 June 1944	Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â	24 Januaryâ12 September 1945
Army Pearl Harbor Board	Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â	Hewitt Inquiry
20 Julyâ20 October 1944	Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â	14 Mayâ11 July 1945
Navy Court of Inquiry	Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â	Joint Congressional Committee
24 Julyâ19 October 1944	Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â	15 November 1945â23 May 1946
Clarke Investigation	Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â	Dorn Investigation
4 Augustâ20 September 1944	Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â	27 Aprilâ1 December 1995

The last named investigation, directed by Edwin Dorn, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, was prompted by a rising tide of support for Kimmel and Short that gathered from 1986 to 1995, and continues to the present. The crest of that tide has been formed by the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, the Naval Academy Alumni Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and thirty-four retired four-star admirals, whose numbers include two former chairs of the joint chiefs of staff and five former chiefs of naval operations. The Dorn Investigation resulted in five findings, the first of which was: “Responsibility for the Pearl Harbor disaster should not fall solely on the shoulders of Admiral Kimmel and General Short; it should be broadly shared.” This finding constituted the first admission by the military establishment in fifty-four years that the War and Navy Departments of 1941 were guilty of mistakes, be they of commission or omission, in the matter of Pearl Harbor. Subsequently, the United States Congress, in Section 547 of the Defense Authorization Act for 2001, recommended that the President of the United States advance Kimmel and Short posthumously to their highest temporary rank held during the war, admiral and lieutenant general, respectively, as provided by the Officer Personnel Act of 1947, from which they alone, among flag and general officers, had been punitively excluded by the two services. There, at the date of this writing, the matter stands.

51
. Quoted in Kimmel,
Admiral Kimmel's Story,
p. 144. The language “dereliction of duty” originated, apparently, in the White House executive order establishing the Roberts Commission, dated 18 December 1941. It mandated that the commission determine whether “dereliction of duty” or “errors of judgment” on the part of Army or Navy personnel had contributed to the Japanese success.

52
. Prange,
At Dawn We Slept
, p. 622; interview with Kimmel, 1 December 1963.

53
. Report of Navy Court of Inquiry and Addendum to Court's Finding of Facts, PHA, Pt. 39, pp. 319â21, 330.

54
. Letter of Vice Admiral David C. Richardson, USN (Ret.), to the writer, 7 February 2001.

55
. PHA 39, Army Pearl Harbor Board Report, pp. 175â76.

56
. Ibid., p. 344. Use of the language “most dangerous sectors” reminds one of historian Gordon W. Prange, on two counts. First, because, as Prange wrote, the Martin-Bellinger estimate of 31 March 1941 was an “historic work” “famous to all students of the Pacific war,”
At Dawn We Slept
, p. 93. Second, because he (or his two collaborators) wrote that the Martin-Bellinger estimate of 31 March 1941 postulated that the “most dangerous sectors” from which an air attack on Pearl might be mounted were “the north and northwest.” Gordon W. Prange, with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon,
Pearl Harbor
:
The Verdict of History
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986), p. 441. But Martin-Bellinger states no such thing; the text can be found in three places in the JCC record: Pt. 1, pp. 379â82; Pt. 22, pp. 349â54; and Pt. 33, pp. 1182â86. It appears that the “famous” “historic work” is also an unread work. Two other historians, Paolo E. Coletta and Michael Slackman, have also alleged that Martin-Bellinger stated that a Japanese attack would most likely come from the south or from the north, respectively. But Martin-Bellinger names no likely or most dangerous sectorâneither “north,” “northwest,” nor “south,” nor any equivalent nautical or numerical terms. See Paolo E. Coletta, “Rear Admiral Patrick N.L. Bellinger, Commander Patrol Wing Two, and General Frederick L. Martin, Air Commander, Hawaii,” in William P. Cogar, ed.,
New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Eighth Naval History Symposium
(Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1989), p. 269; Slackman,
Target: Pearl Harbor,
p. 56. Elsewhere in his book Slackman makes the pertinent statement: “A body of folklore has developed around the Pearl Harbor attack as stories and âfacts' are passed from source to source with little critical examination;” p. ix.

57
. Ibid., Pt. 16, pp. 2393â2431.

58
. KFP, “Memorandum of Interview with Admiral King in Washington on Thursday, 7 December 1944,” signed Husband E. Kimmel, 6 pp., n.d.

59
. Simpson,
Stark,
p. 265.

60
. Prange, with Goldstein and Dillon,
Pearl Harbor,
p. 230.

61
. KFP (copy), King to Secretary John L. Sullivan, 14 July 1948.

62
. The most recent such expression of that conspiracy revision appears in
Golden Age
(New York: Doubleday, 2000), a novel by Gore Vidal. Apart from the fact, several times mentioned in this volume, that no one has yet produced an original document connecting Roosevelt to perfidy on that scale, it offends credulity to think that FDR, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, who had a passionate affection for the naval service, would coldly and deliberately have sacrificed the heart of his fleet and the lives of 2,403 servicemen and civilians. As to the charge that he set up the Pacific Fleet for destruction or crippling damage as a means of getting the nation into war with Germany, two things might be said: (1) Germany was not obligated to declare war against the United States if Japan attacked the United States; and (2) in his address to Congress on 8 December FDR did not ask for a declaration of war against Germany. One need not hold FDR to blame for what happened at Pearl Harbor if one's wish is to exonerate Kimmel and Short. One need only cite the faithlessness and ineptitude of the War and Navy Departments, about which much has been written in these pages.

63
. KC, Roll 35. The draft letter is undated, but it appears among Kimmel's correspondence and papers from 1968. As noted earlier, he broke off his friendship with Stark in 1944, when he first learned of the Magic information that had not been sent him. His feelings toward Stark in 1945 are revealed in a letter he wrote to his older brother Singleton on 15 February, in which he wrote about Stark's behavior at the time of Kimmel's retirement. Claiming that Stark said one thing but did another, Kimmel wrote: “I tell you this to show what an awful liar this fellow has turned out to be.” KC, Roll 28.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to many persons who assisted me in the research for this book. I thank archivists John E. Taylor, Barry Zerby, and Sandy Smith at the National Archives and Records Administration, Archives II, at College Park, Maryland; Sally A. Cravens and her fellow librarians in the Documents Collection of the University of Florida Libraries; and Jim Craig, of Micrographics, Inc. Leonidas Roberts, Professor Emeritus of Physical Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Florida and a Martin PBM Mariner pilot in the Pacific War, devoted many hours to helping me solve the time-to-intercept problem described in chapter 6. Daniel A. Martinez, National Park Service historian at the USS
Arizona
Memorial at Pearl Harbor, kindly conducted me on a detailed tour of the harbor and base installations. Vice Admiral David C. Richardson, former deputy commander in chief, Pacific Fleet, who has spent many years studying the operational history of the Pearl Harbor attack, generously shared his information with me at the admiral's home in Julian, California.

For biographical research on Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, I express my thanks to the admiral's sons, Thomas K., now deceased, and Edward R., in Wilmington, Delaware. The admiral's grandson, Thomas K., Jr., in McLean, Virginia, who is an accomplished Pearl Harbor scholar, has helped me on more occasions than I can count. Others from whom I have learned are: Captain Edward L. Beach, USN (Ret.), a distinguished naval historian and good friend; the late John Costello; B. Mitchell Simpson III; Commander Thomas Buell, USN (Ret.); Paul Stillwell; David Hackett Fischer; Robert Neuleib; David W. Richmond; George Victor; and David Chalmers.

A special thanks is given to my agent, Michael Congdon, and to my editor at Henry Holt, the esteemed Jack Macrae. Barbara Smerage assisted with preparation of the manuscript. And, as usual, my best helper, critic, and friend during the writing was my spouse, Genevieve.

Three paragraphs in chapter 2 and two in chapter 6 derive from my article “Reopen the Kimmel Case,” in Naval Institute
Proceedings
, vol 120/12/1, 102 (December 1994), pp. 51-56. I thank the Naval Institute for their permission to use that material.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

ABC-1 Staff Agreement

Adams, Emory S.

ADB Agreement

Admiral Scheer

Advance Expeditionary Force

aerial reconnaissance