I finished Bratton’s affidavit on July 27, 1945, and returned immediately to Washington. I told Bundy that, in legal terms, I had uncovered enough evidence to refute the findings of the Army Board.
By August 1, I had a memo ready for Bundy and Secretary Stimson showing the importance of the changes in Bratton’s contrasting testimony to me. They included the following points:
(1) Bratton had testified to the Army Board that the material I carried in my bomb pouch, which was labeled Exhibit B, had been delivered to the President, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of State, the Chief of Staff, the Assistant Chief of Staff in War Plans and the Assistant Chief of Staff in G-2.
But in his affidavit to me, Bratton swore he could not recall with any degree of accuracy who had delivered what to whom during the period in question. Nor were any records kept to prove what had been delivered or to whom it had been delivered.
(2) In his testimony to the Army Board, Bratton had also stated that he was the one who delivered the Top Secret radio intercepts to the officers concerned. In recanting his testimony to me, however, Bratton changed his story to say that three other people—Dusenbury, Schindel and Moore—were also delivering this Top Secret material.
(3) In his testimony to the Army Board, Bratton testified that on the evening of December 6, he personally had delivered the thirteen parts of the fourteen-part Japanese message to the office of General Marshall and to the office of the Secretary of State. He also claimed that he had put the thirteen-part message on Marshall’s desk. (In retrospect, this never could have been true, because Bratton would have had to hand over the material in a locked pouch to the Duty Officer. If the pouch was not transmitted immediately to Marshall, it would have been placed in the safe in Marshall’s office. No Top Secret papers could be left on Marshall’s desk, where unauthorized people might see them.) Bratton had named the following people as those to whom he had given the thirteen-part message: Col. Walter Bedell Smith for General Marshall; Major Gailey, for Lieutenant General Gerow; and Brigadier General Miles, the head of G-2. It was his recollection that these officers received all of this information that evening. He also testified that he had discussed the Japanese message with Miles.
In his contradictory testimony to me, however, Bratton confessed that the only package of the thirteen-part message he delivered on the evening of December 6 was to the Duty Officer of the Secretary of State. The other deliveries Bratton had said were made, in fact, were not made!
Nor could Bratton recall discussing the thirteen-part message with Miles, as he had claimed before the Army Board. He told me that he had ordered Colonel Dusenbury to deliver the thirteen-part message to Marshall at his quarters. But Bratton could not recall how the material Marshall was reading at his office desk the next morning came into the Chief of Staff’s possession. (Dusenbury had admitted to me in his affidavit that he had not delivered the messages received on the evening of December 6 until after nine o’clock the morning of December 7.)
(4) Bratton had testified to the Army Board that on Sunday morning, December 7, he arrived at his office at about seven or eight. He further testified that he had tried to telephone the quarters of General Marshall at about nine A.M., but that the Chief of Staff did not arrive at his office until 11:25 that morning.
The affidavit of then-Colonel Deane, however, fixed the time that Bratton arrived at his office that morning as being between nine and nine-thirty. (This is confirmed by the affidavit of Colonel Dusenbury.) Thus, two witnesses dispute the time that Bratton claimed he came to the office, which destroys Bratton’s claim that he tried to call General Marshall at nine that morning.
In his affidavit to me, Bratton changed his story again. He said that General Marshall was in his office between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty. This vital point, which placed Marshall in his office an hour earlier than Bratton had sworn to before the Army Board, and forty-five minutes earlier than the Final Congressional Report indicated (page 223), was supported by affidavits I had taken from Generals Gerow, Smith and Deane.
I believed it safe to conclude that all of Bratton’s testimony prior to my interrogation of him was now highly suspect and could not stand up in a court of law. Some historians and writers of Congressional reports have ignored this fact, however. They have continued to misuse Bratton’s earlier testimony to the Army Board, because it is more convenient in supporting their cockamamie theories about what happened at Pearl Harbor. This is a tragedy for the public. Perjured testimony must be identified as such, lest history become tainted.
The situation reminds me of the wonderful line in John Le Carré’s book The Honourable Schoolboy, when the CIA man, Martello, asks George Smiley, “Which is it going to be, that’s all. The conspiracy or the fuck-up?”1 I can only say that what I was uncovering was not a conspiracy.
By now I also believed that I could put an end to the debate over the Winds Code. During my discussions in England with Capt. Edward Hastings of the Royal Navy, and after reviewing the signals files in Bletchley Park, I was unable to discover any evidence that the British had intercepted a broadcast from Tokyo that would have activated the Winds Code. The existence of an execute broadcast before the bombs fell depended primarily on the recollections of certain personnel in the U.S. Navy. Colonel Schukraft had claimed that he had seen an implementation that was in a form different from that reported by these Navy people, but when asked to produce the evidence, Schukraft could not do so.2
As I said earlier, the action that the Winds Code was supposed to have triggered—i.e., the destruction of codes and code machines by Japanese diplomatic and consular representatives around the world in the event regular communications were broken down—had already been ordered via Magic by Tokyo in a message that was intercepted between December 1 and December 3. This meant that the execute message for the Winds Code never had to be broadcast by the Japanese. They already had achieved their required result.
Short’s own staff gave him the information of the destruction of the codes by the Japanese diplomats before December 7. Yet Short testified before the Navy Court of Inquiry that he never knew about it. More importantly, Short swore that the news about the destruction of codes was the only important information in the message that Marshall sent him on the morning of December 7. But the affidavits I had taken from members of Short’s staff proved that Short did in fact previously possess the ultimate, indispensable information he claimed he needed. If one takes Short’s testimony before the Navy Court at face value, that the information of the destruction of the Japanese codes was the highest and most important information he could have had, the fact that he did possess it but failed to understand its importance explains why he ordered the wrong defense alert for Pearl Harbor.
As for Short’s claim that the War Department’s warnings to him had been inadequate, the affidavit of General Gerow crushed Short’s argument to smithereens. Gerow told me that Short had been given adequate information of impending events. Furthermore, it should be considered that, for security reasons, the Navy Department restricted the information the Army could send in its messages. Also, the Navy had assured the Army that the Naval unit at Honolulu was intercepting and decoding the Japanese Purple messages from its own facilities.
I now knew the latter claim of the Navy was untrue.
There were also other questions. When did the fourteenth part of the Japanese message of December 6 actually arrive in Washington? What had happened to it?
Almost everyone who had read the first thirteen parts of the message, with the exception of Roosevelt, claimed that by itself the message was of little importance. The fourteenth part held the key. It read: “… The Japanese Government regrets to have to notify hereby the American Government that in view of the attitude of the American Government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.” (Emphasis added)
So, after having accused the Americans of conspiring with the British and other countries “to obstruct Japan’s efforts towards the establishment of peace through the creation of a New Order in East Asia,” the Japanese finally had broken diplomatic relations with America. Yet another short intercept of a separate, subsequent message ordered the news of this break to be announced by delivering the fourteen-part message to Secretary of State Hull at one P.M. (Washington time) on Sunday, December 7, 1941.
Reading the intercepts in sequence,3 it becomes obvious that the fourteenth part, which said that diplomatic relations were to be broken off, clearly meant that war was going to begin. It was the final message, and again a separate message, saying when the fourteen-part message should be delivered, that gave a time when war might start. But it did not say where the fighting would first break out.
To my civilian, lawyerlike mind, the fourteenth part should have been enough to alert the Navy or the Army, or any intelligent civilian, that war was about to begin. Everyone to date had testified that the fourteenth part did not arrive much before seven A.M. in Washington on December 7. But in taking the testimony of Bratton and Dusenbury, I got the idea that the fourteenth part had been received in Washington much earlier than that. My suspicions having been aroused, I thought that if this proved to be true, the failure in Washington was far more devastating than anyone had considered, or dared suggest.
I might add that even the Congressional investigators failed to get the matter right in their final report of the Pearl Harbor Hearings, and many historians who have written about Pearl Harbor to date have failed to note this error. The significance of this will be developed later, when I comment on my recommendations to Congress about what should be done to correct the errors of Pearl Harbor that I had exposed.
Setting out on the final stages of my investigation, I felt more and more like Sherlock Holmes. I had dogs that barked, while others remained silent. Analyzing the clues would be tricky. The first person I took an affidavit from was Col. Otis K. Sadtler. He was the Signal Corps officer named as being involved in the attempt to send Honolulu the warning message of December 5 about the Winds Code.
One of the first things that Sadtler said to me ended a dispute that arose from his testimony to the Army Board. He had said that he learned from Admiral Noyes that the Navy had intercepted a broadcast that executed the Winds Code. Ordered to check back with Noyes, Sadtler now admitted to me that he had not made the check, nor to his knowledge had anyone else. He had assumed that Noyes would officially notify Army G-2 through channels that the implementation broadcast had been intercepted.
As Sadtler told me his story, I could understand his desire to quickly send a further warning to the Hawaiian Department. Sadtler gave me the text of the message he claimed he drafted for transmittal. However, Sadtler then admitted: “I have since checked with my office staff at the time and they have no recollection of the drafting of this proposed warning. I did not show it to anyone. I do not know where the message is now, and I made no copy at the time.” I began to think that Sadtler was living in a dream world.
To make matters worse for himself, Sadtler then stated that the affidavits given to me by General Gerow and General Smith were, in fact, more accurate than his testimony to the Army Board. To cap matters off, Sadtler swore to me: “I did not see any execute message as contemplated by the so-called Japanese ‘Winds Code,’ and so far as I know there was no such execute message received in the War Department.”
Sadtler went on to make other denials. I concluded that he was a sad, burned-out witness. He had reversed himself a number of times over the years, and from my point of view, it was time to close the charity office on him. He had consistently expressed himself in a dubious or ambiguous fashion. First, he reversed what he told the Army Board. Then, he told me that the affidavits of General Gerow and General Smith were correct, and he was wrong. Later, when he appeared before Congress, Senator Ferguson almost put the words in his mouth so that he could deny yet again what he intended to say. In later years, when people sought to ignore or criticize my affidavits, or vilify Marshall and Roosevelt, while extolling Sadtler’s virtues, I thought it was the kiss of death to their claims as far as he was concerned.
Sadtler had also said that he wanted to send a message to the Pacific commands that they should take every precaution to avoid a repetition of Port Arthur (where the Japanese mounted a highly successful surprise attack against the Russians). He was going to say this message was based on reliable information. That was the talisman of those days: reliable information. The phrase possessed less value than the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
My point is that reliable information didn’t really mean anything. What was needed was someone to ask: Just how reliable is this information, and on what is it based?
If Short or Fielder had asked Bicknell this question, what would have come out was the complete background on the information that Washington had sent Kimmel. To make a point that people should comprehend, Sadtler or Bicknell should have said “most important information” or “most highly placed information.” It’s like an unattributed story in the newspapers. The source is often the real news.
When Bicknell went into the Hawaiian staff meeting on December 6 and began talking about the Japs’ burning their codes “according to reliable information,” he had said similar things so many times before. His cry of “Wolf!” was old and tired. The people at the meeting yawned and let it pass over their heads.
I have always wondered what would have happened if Bicknell had told the meeting on December 6: “I don’t wish to jar you or upset you, gentlemen, but this is the most important, the most important information I have ever in my career received.…” What would have happened? Most likely, everyone would have woken up and said, “What the hell are you waiting for? Get in there and tell it to General Short the way you’ve told it to us!”
I don’t think I’m being too harsh on Bicknell when I say that he failed in his chance to light a fire under Fielder and Short. On the other hand, after discovering the facts set forth in my next affidavit, I’m not sure any fire could have been lit under Short that might have prevented Pearl Harbor.
This conclusion is a harsh one. I reached it upon completing my interrogation of Maj. Gen. Charles D. Herron, who had been the commander of the Hawaiian department from October 1937 until he moved on to Washington and was replaced by Short on February 7, 1941. In Herron’s affidavit to me, he said he knew it was crucial that Short be fully briefed about Herron’s knowledge and experience of his Hawaiian appointment. It would be difficult to accomplish this, Herron knew, because Short was scheduled to arrive with his wife aboard the same vessel on which Herron was scheduled to leave for the West Coast. This meant that the two men would have less than two and one-half days to confer.
To make things easier for Short, Herron sent to San Francisco a complete briefing book, plus an agenda and exhibits for discussion. This material covered all the aspects of the Hawaiian command. Short was supposed to study it during his five-day voyage to Honolulu.
“Upon my meeting Short when he arrived,” said Herron, “I asked him whether he had read the papers and material. He replied that … he had not given them much time while en route.”
According to Herron, he did what he could in the limited time remaining to brief Short, including giving Short an evaluation of the officers and men in his command. According to Herron: “I told him of my estimate as to the efficiency of the staff officers and, with respect to G-2, that Col. George W. Bicknell, a Reserve Officer, was an experienced and qualified, efficient man for that position, and that it had been my intention to make him my G-2 [in charge of all intelligence]. I further told him [Short] of the G-2 work being done, of the liaison with the Navy, the FBI, and related sources of information, of the defense plans [for Pearl Harbor], of my experience with the all-out alert of 1940.…” (Emphasis added)
This trial alert had been ordered by the War Department on June 17, 1940, as an exercise based on war games that had shown that the best way for an unknown enemy to devastate the fleet in Pearl Harbor would be a surprise aerial attack. The actual order for the alert from Washington had read:
Immediately alert complete defensive organization to deal with possible trans-Pacific raid, to the greatest extent possible without creating public hysteria or provoking undue curiosity of newspapers or alien agents. Suggest maneuver basis. Maintain alert until further orders. Instructions for secret communications direct with Chief of Staff will be furnished you shortly. Acknowledge.
The testimony of everyone to whom I spoke in Hawaii during my investigation was consistent: Herron had conducted these maneuvers successfully. The civilian population of Hawaii had been unconcerned.
I believe it fair to say, judging from past experience, that if Short had called for an all-out alert upon receiving the war warning of November 27, 1941, the alert would not have upset the civilians of Hawaii.
Herron reiterated to me his statement that he had briefed Short about “the relations and cooperation which had existed with the Navy, of the civilian population, of the Japanese situation, of the assumption that alien agents conducted espionage for the Japanese government.”
Herron also took Short around the island of Oahu. He showed his replacement the installations and “gave him my ideas of possible attack and defense of that island.”
Then Herron dropped a bombshell. “Following my talks with Gen. Short at the time,” said Herron, “he did not ever ask my opinion, or for information, or correspond with me on the subject of command or related problems.”
I gave a mental gasp at this statement, promising myself to dig into it later. I asked Herron if Short had been empowered to change the standard operating procedures relating to the various stages of alert for an enemy attack without consulting with, or reporting it to, the War Department.
Herron looked me straight in the eye and without a flicker of emotion drove a nail into Short’s coffin. “The Commander,” he said, “may and should take whatever action he believes dictated by necessity, but must so report to the War Department at the earliest possible moment.”
As we know, Short had reversed the SOP for staging the alert, but he failed to inform Washington of the changes.
Thus, it is easy to understand how Washington was confused by Short’s reply to the warning of November 27: His message saying he was in liaison with the Navy indicated that he had ordered an alert to repel a surprise attack when, in fact, he had only gone to his revised minimum stage (i.e., protect against sabotage). This meant that Pearl Harbor was ripe for a surprise attack, but Washington did not know it.
After testifying and signing his affidavit, Herron and I discussed in general terms the material he had prepared for Short to read on his voyage to Hawaii. Herron was positive the briefing book was in really shipshape order. Everything was spelled out for Short, but Short ignored it all. Herron was a no-nonsense type of fellow, who believed in letting the chips fall where they may.
Herron said he asked Short if he had read the briefing book. Short replied: “No, I did not. I read a novel, Oliver Wiswell.”
Herron said that Short’s statement absolutely flabbergasted him. His immediate reaction was that Short wasn’t up to the job. According to Herron, Short was in the last post of his career. He was a specialist in training troops, but he did not want the Hawaiian command. He thought it beneath him. Apparently, Short was supported in this by his wife. She believed that she had served her time as an Army wife and deserved better than to be taken away from her friends and relatives and isolated in a distant base at Honolulu. Both she and her husband had been hoping for a post at Fort Myer, outside Washington, or at the Presidio in San Francisco.
After Herron returned to Washington, he said he received back-channel reports about the nonchalance with which Short attended to his duties in Hawaii. This was exacerbated by the fact that Short’s wife would frequently call her husband on a busy day at the office and complain vehemently about life in general. Short would then put on his jacket, abandon the office and go home to placate his wife.
I was astounded by what Herron was telling me. I immediately made separate notes for the file about what he said. I have them in my records today. But all that appears in Herron’s affidavit is his laconic comment about the briefing book and exhibits: Short “had not given them much time while en route.”
This answered the question about why Short had promoted an inexperienced officer like Fielder to be his G-2 over the head of the more experienced Bicknell. There were two reasons. One, Bicknell was a Reserve Officer, recently called to active duty, a rough-tough man who was more like a cop. Fielder was a graduate of West Point, smooth, polished, urbane, a ten-handicap golfer and a good dancer. When Short was involved with official business in the evening that precluded entertaining his wife, someone else had to take care of Mrs. Short during dinnertime. That person was, of course, Fielder. The more professional, job-oriented Bicknell was considered a bit uncouth to be Mrs. Short’s companion.
Such were the problems of the peacetime Army of 1941.
I have often wondered why no historian ever probed more deeply into the subject. Only Gordon Prange, who wrote the best-selling At Dawn We Slept, ever interviewed me, and he never asked a single question about my views of the readiness of the Hawaiian command to resist a surprise Japanese attack. But when you tie in the comments by Herron with the report by the Inspector General as to the effectiveness of the Hawaiian command under Short’s tenure, you will understand the scope of the problem I had discovered.
One item I had brought home with me from Pearl Harbor in May was a copy of a special investigation by Col. H. S. Burwell, AC, dated July 1941. It reported to Short the many deficiencies existing in his command. Perhaps the most important problem it noted was that the mind-set of both the Hawaiian Department and the Hawaiian Air Force, plus the air base at Hickham Field, was seriously deficient. Not only were the various Air Force staffs unable to understand the immediate need for steps to prevent sabotage, but “a considerable portion of the Command” failed to comprehend the realities of modern warfare. As Burwell had put it: “[They] do not see the mental picture of the interplay of relations now existing between intercontinental theatres of war and our local sphere of action.”
Burwell went on to point out that the Hawaiian command was not alert to the possibility that the American Forces in Hawaii might have to react quickly in the event of a surprise enemy attack. This was especially true in the event of “an abrupt conflict with Japan.”
The causes for these failures, declared Burwell, were those of the ingrained habits of peacetime. There was a carefree sense of “no worry” that was created by the isolation of a tropical island with a large force of troops stationed on it.
This meant that operations and supply functions received priority attention from Short’s staff, and there was “relative inattention accorded in peacetime to intelligence functions.”
In turn, the troops had lost their “aggressive initiative.” The posture of the command was one of a purely defensive attitude. Nor was there any evidence by which Burwell could ascertain that the command itself had any “critical concern for the future.”
In other words, Burwell’s inspection report said that Short’s command was lazy and ill prepared for the outbreak of a war that everyone believed was coming. Worse, nothing was being done to change the situation. The Army’s Hawaiian command was a perpetual happy hour.
If Short did anything to make his command better prepared for war, and more alert to repulse a surprise aerial attack by an unknown enemy, the evidence that he chose his new staff wisely is missing. We have seen how Short chose Colonel Fielder to be his G-2 instead of Colonel Bicknell, the man recommended for the job because of his experience in intelligence matters that dated back to World War I. And we know that on November 5, 1941, Short designated Col. Walter C. Phillips to be his new Chief of Staff.
The testimony before the Army Board is replete with numerous views of Phillips by witnesses. Their replies ranged from a total reluctance to answer to flat statements that Phillips was unqualified for the job. It was said that Short did not treat Phillips as he would have treated a more experienced Chief of Staff. For example, Phillips was excluded from important conferences with the Navy. The Army Board never probed the matter more deeply, so the ultimate conclusion I could reach was simply that Phillips was not fully qualified for the job.
I cannot help believing that if Phillips had been better qualified, of stronger character and more conversant with the primary mission assigned to Short (to defend Pearl Harbor from surprise attack), then Phillips might have advised Short to go on alert to prevent an enemy aerial attack instead of simply making an arbitrary decision to be on alert only for sabotage.
If I were to fault General Marshall in this, it would be for his decision to send Short to Hawaii when it was apparent that Short didn’t want the job. Of course, Short hadn’t specifically told Marshall about his objections to the posting, although he hinted them to Marshall fairly clearly. But the Chief of Staff needed someone there to get the troops trained to fight. Short had a great reputation in the Army for this. Also, he was a moral man, not a hard drinker, and these are the many things that Marshall must have considered when he was appointing a commander for the Hawaiian Islands. I also doubt that Marshall ever knew the full extent of Short’s problems at home.
The choice facing Marshall was typical of the pre–World War II Army. Everything is different today. There are all kinds of support programs to ensure that husbands and wives are fit for their assignments abroad. But back in 1941, if General Herron believed that General Short was not prepared to take over as commander of the Hawaiian District, he just couldn’t go to Marshall and say, “You’ve made a mistake.” This problem with personnel was a real nightmare. Marshall kept a little notebook in which he wrote the names of officers he discovered in peacetime who should be promoted over the heads of the older, but inefficient, peacetime commanders when war broke out.
More was needed than that. When I finished my investigation in 1945, I was asked to head up a new department in the Army, in which anybody could make a complaint against a superior officer directly to the commanding general. This office would have been more than that of an ombudsman, because it would have to not only judge the validity of the complaint, and recommend what needed to be done about it, but also protect the person who had made it. (So, you can see that the Army learned from its mistakes at Pearl Harbor.) But I replied, just as I told everyone, that all I wanted after the war was to be a civilian and resume my law practice.
1 John Le Carré. The Honourable Schoolboy. New York: Knopf, 1977, p. 518.
2 See appendix, the Winds Code report, pp. 447-470.
3 See appendix, pp. 342–352.