At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor

At Stimson’s suggestion and with Knox’s concurrence, Roosevelt selected Roberts. He was a good choice to direct the investigation. Congressman Roy O. Woodruff of Michigan placed great faith in Roberts. “His presence and position on the Board alone would be sufficient to assure the Nation of a thorough, searching, and honest investigation of conditions and causes of the disaster of December 7.”² Roberts had come to national attention when President Calvin Coolidge appointed him the special government prosecutor in the Teapot Dome and Elk Hill trial.

To be just, the situation was enough to make a lawyer tear his hair. One literally could not find qualified commission members genuinely without prejudice. Only little green men from Mars could have reviewed this problem with coldly impersonal, judicial eyes. Every thinking man and woman in the country had read about the Pearl Harbor attack, and few indeed could hear testimony concerning the case with complete objectivity. What is more, in the closely knit armed services of 1941 almost any officer was bound to have dozens of friends stationed in Hawaii and so could not fail to be emotionally involved. No wonder Stimson and Knox paid particular attention to their recommendations for membership on the commission. On the basis of their previous records, those selected appeared highly qualified.

First in seniority stood sixty-nine-year-old Admiral William H. Standley, USN (Retired). He had been “a very outstanding Chief of Naval Operations” from 1933 to 1937. Roberts described him as “one of the keenest and ablest men I have ever known and one of the fairest.” This assessment speaks well for Roberts’s own fairness because Standley gave the chairman some difficult moments.

Next came Rear Admiral Joseph M. Reeves, USN (Retired). After years of service as an engineering officer, in 1925, at the age of fifty-three, he went to flying school, where he gained his pilot’s and observer’s wings. Roberts called Reeves “the outstanding original airman in the Navy.” He told the congressional committee that Reeves “was Admiral of the United States Fleet more years than any other man in your life or mine” and that “wherever he appeared in Honolulu or anywhere else Navy men just flocked to him, as if to a father. . . .” When World War II broke out, Reeves “was called back to take care of the Navy’s end of the lend-lease with Britain. . . .”⁴ In Safford’s judgment, “If F. D. R. had been looking for a whitewash, he never would have appointed men like Admiral Standley and Admiral Reeves to the Roberts Commission.”⁵

But opinions concerning Reeves were not all sweetness and light. Standley informed Harry E. Barnes that Reeves had been “incompetent and disobedient” when he served under Standley and during the investigation had appeared “very antagonistic to Kimmel and Short.”⁶

The ranking Army member of the Roberts Commission was sixty-six-year-old Major General Frank B. McCoy. He had served on the Lytton Commission to evaluate the controversial Manchurian situation in the early 1930s, winning “a very high reputation among all nations involved for his balance and tact.” Stimson considered that he had “the most outstanding record of any man in the Army” for appointment to the Roberts Commission, a position requiring “breadth of view, superlative character, and wide similar experience.”⁸ Standley agreed that McCoy truly wanted to get the facts about Pearl Harbor.⁹ Kimmel later claimed that he did not “share Standley’s opinion of McCoy. He was a Stimson man completely. He was smoother than Reeves, McNarney or Roberts but his interest was to clear Washington and condemn Short and me.”¹⁰

The Army Air Corps representative, Brigadier General Joseph T. McNarney, was on active duty, but Stimson recommended him to the President as “the best air man we have for that purpose. . . . We have no retired officers in the Air Corps fit for this assignment, but McNarney has a reputation which commands the respect of everybody. . . . Marshall and I think he is the most competent man we have at the present time on air and ground joint requirements.”¹¹

At forty-eight McNarney was considerably younger than his service colleagues on the commission. During his career he earned a reputation as a real twenty-minute egg who would not give his best friend a break. In later days Stimson praised him as “clear-headed in his judgments, . . . highminded and loyal in everything. . . .” In April 1941, in which month he pinned on his first temporary star, McNarney went to London as an observer. In late autumn of that year Marshall sent for him to head a board to reorganize the War Department.

McNarney was on his way to Washington to take up this herculean task when he learned about the Pearl Harbor attack. It was “a very inconvenient thing” for Marshall to have McNarney tied up on the Roberts Commission when the reorganization was so urgent. But he recommended him because “he was an air man and a very able individual. . . .”¹² Kimmel had his own ideas about McNarney, most of which would melt type. “McNarney was a lying s.o.b. who had no more morals than a crawling snake,” the admiral snarled.¹³ Short, too, formed an unfavorable impression of McNarney. The general confided to Fleming that “McNarney seemed to be the s.o.b. of the Commission.”¹⁴

Chairman Carl Vinson of the House Naval Affairs Committee decided “that his naval committee would not make an investigation ‘since the president has announced such an outstanding board in the immediate future.’”¹⁶ The press agreed that a congressional inquiry was neither necessary nor desirable because it would be a waste of time and money; it would be impossible to maintain secrecy; headline-hunting congressmen might capture the investigation; the inevitable controversy should be avoided in wartime—and the whole matter lay in the executive area anyway. Congress might have its innings in the future, but it should hold off until the Roberts Commission made its report.¹⁷

For all its top-notch personnel, the commission started out firmly on the wrong foot. On December 18 and 19 it heard two days of nonverbatim, unsworn testimony from a number of key officers, among them Marshall, Stark, Turner, Gerow, Wilkinson, Miles, and Bratton.¹⁸ This was a most unfortunate arrangement, wasting important source material and leaving the door just enough ajar for someone to claim possible dirty work at the crossroads.

Roberts spent “an entire day” in Hull’s office. But he emphasized that the commission “did not pass on” State Department or presidential policy—“that was not within our function at all.” Roberts’s sole concern regarding the State Department was whether or not Stark and Marshall had been warned of the situation which existed. Both of them, as well as Stimson and Knox, told the commission “that every time Hull gave them a warning they would go and repeat it to the Chief of Staff and to the Admiral. . . . That is all I was interested in,” Roberts emphasized.

Surprisingly the commission knew about Magic. But, as Roberts said, “the Navy was rather chary about even telling us about the thing for fear there might be some leak from our commission.” Roberts did not ask to see any of the messages. “The magic was not shown to us. I would not have bothered to read it if it had been shown to us,” he explained. “All I wanted to know was whether the commanders had been advised of the criticalness of this situation . . . the commission found that they had had ample warning and that they had orders from headquarters.”¹⁹

So here we have the stupefying picture of a Supreme Court justice and his colleagues accepting the unsupported word of interested parties that they had given Kimmel and Short sufficient warning, reaching findings and conclusions upon the basis of unsworn testimony of key witnesses, and expressing sublime indifference to the “best evidence”—Magic.

Quite a few people retrospectively thought Roberts and his colleagues were trying to do just that. Rear Admiral T. L. Gatch, the Navy’s Judge Advocate General, remarked to Captain Robert A. Lavender, one of Kimmel’s counsels, that evidently the Army had put men like McNarney on the commission “with the hopes that the blame could be shifted to the Navy.”²¹ Safford wrote to Hiles: “The jury . . . was not exactly ‘fixed,’ but it had 2 stooges plus 1 stool-pigeon so the Navy was outvoted from the start.”²²

In decided contrast, Fleming thought Kimmel “more or less got what was coming” because the Navy was responsible for long-range reconnaissance and certain high-ranking Navy officers—notably McMorris—had “‘pooh-poohed’ the idea of any attack on Pearl.”^* But Fleming did have “some very, very strong thoughts, almost explosive thoughts, on the Roberts Commission’s treatment of General Short.”²³

But for all the post facto recriminations, Allen, who worked closely with its members during its actual deliberations, thought the commission did a good job.²⁴ And Bloch, although “very sorry for both Kimmel and Short,” could “pick no flaws with the logic of the Roberts Commision.”²⁵ Any inquiry implies that something has gone wrong. And no realist could deny that Kimmel and Short were on the spot. Both were willing, cooperative witnesses because they, too, wished to get to the bottom of this ugly business and hoped to vindicate themselves.

Two days before Christmas the commission, then operating from Headquarters, Hawaiian Department, Fort Shafter, called Short as the first major witness. He brought no legal assistant and did not ask for counsel. Believing himself “absolutely not guilty in any sense,” he was confident that he could take care of his own case. He did not even have anyone with him to handle documents.²⁶

Nonetheless, Short had done a formidable amount of homework. As he had become accustomed to doing, he turned to Fleming, who “prepared General Short’s defense before the Roberts Commission.” Short selected the documents he considered pertinent, and Fleming dug them up. He “had a team of about 20 to 25 typists working around the clock” copying the papers. Then Fleming put the package together.²⁷

After preliminary queries on name, rank, service record, and Short’s command, the investigators drilled right into the warnings from Washington that led to alerts on Oahu. “In the period of the emergency, General, how many times were there warnings which caused alerts to be ordered here?” asked Roberts. “Give us your best memory.”²⁸

Short’s testimony presents the image of a man with a large fund of information at his fingertips, who cooperated fully, gave the best answers he could under very trying conditions, stood by his convictions, and did not seek refuge in alibis—withal a fine human being. But we also see a man who became confused now and then and who did not understand his true mission. We likewise see one who lacked imagination and the ability to read between the lines, who did not seem to realize how strongly the tide had set against him.

Out of his deep conviction that he had done a good job on Oahu, Short made every effort to step out on the right foot. Proud of his efforts to awaken Hawaii to its responsibilities, he presented in evidence letters from community leaders attesting to their regard for him,³⁰ all of which was very understandable, for Short was not in the business of cutting his own throat.

Neither was Kimmel. The admiral sailed in with all guns loaded and decks cleared for action. Later he told the congressional committee, “. . . I was called before this commission and questioned at length, I had no time to prepare myself, I had been without sleep for some time, I was, to a considerable extent, strained. . . .”³¹ Tired and strained he may well have been; however, he had spent considerable time and thought upon his preparations to meet the commission.

He asked Rear Admiral Robert A. “Fuzzy” Theobald, commander, Destroyers, Pacific Fleet, “to act as his counsel.” Although glad to help, Theobald suggested that because he had no legal training, “it might be at least desirable to have an assistant counsel with legal knowledge.” Kimmel answered “that he did not desire this, that all he wanted was a straightforward presentation of his conduct of Fleet affairs prior to and during the attack. . . .” Thereupon Theobald agreed.³²

It is well that Kimmel acted to establish his position before he testified because the commission went far more deeply into the naval aspects of the attack than into the Army’s side.³³ This was natural because the Navy’s losses had been so spectacular, the very name “Pearl Harbor” exemplified American sea power, and of course, Knox had briefed the members about his own investigation before they left Washington.

A strong, aggressive witness, Kimmel seized the initiative at the outset and from time to time actually lectured the commission. The habit of command was so ingrained in him that on occasion he virtually took charge of the investigation. Like Short, he admitted to some errors. For example, he had not believed on December 6 that war would break out at once. And he conceded that he had missed the boat on the subject of the code burning. On the question of immunity from torpedo attack in Pearl Harbor, he said, “Of course, I was entirely wrong.”³⁵

Despite certain similarities—their honesty, loyalty, and genuine desire to tell their stories so that the commission could understand them—Kimmel and Short differed as much in their manner of testifying as in their respective personalities. The general seemed far less sophisticated than the admiral. He still did not fully appreciate how deep and rough were the waters he had to breast. So he faced the commission with the self-assurance of naïveté. For this reason he does not come across as a forceful witness. Kimmel had a stronger sense of survival and was far more realistic than the general. He knew he was in trouble and fought to keep his head above water. In a way, Short reminds one of a well-trained bird dog eager to please. Kimmel said he had “every confidence in the judgment of this Commission” and “absolutely no complaint” about his treatment.³⁶ But one can see him bristle from time to time like a vexed porcupine. Despite his disclaimer, he resented the commission’s handling of his case, and his resentment gathered momentum with the years.

After three or four days of waiting for the chance “to revise and correct” his testimony, Kimmel asked for this opportunity. He received permission to come to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel alone to do so. He claimed to have found many omissions and inaccuracies. So he spent “the better part of two days” with Theobald and his former stenographer, a chief yeoman, endeavoring “to reconstruct an accurate version” of his testimony. On January 5 he wrote to the commission asking that the record be revised accordingly.³⁷

But it refused to alter the record. Roberts was not unsympathetic. Nevertheless, the commission told the admiral, “The stenographic transcript to our mind is correct as to what you said, Admiral, and we can’t let you interlard things that you did not say.” However, they permitted Kimmel’s corrections to appear at the appropriate place. So the record shows both the original text and Kimmel’s adjustments. The commission also refused to substitute Kimmel’s revised testimony but, “so there would be no question of unfairness to him,” agreed to include his document in the transcript as a supplement.³⁸

The commission finished its work about 1430 on Friday, January 23. In the presence of his colleagues Roberts telephoned the White House, informing Miss Tully that the report “would be ready within an hour or so. . . .” The President relayed instructions through Miss Tully to bring the report to him at 1100 the next day.

At the appointed hour, seated behind his desk in his second-floor study, Roosevelt read the document “line by line.” He devoted meticulous care to his task, following the words with his finger. “Two or three times he would shake his head and say ‘Tsk, tsk,’ or something of that sort.” Occasionally he made a comment, apparently as much to himself as to Roberts.

Having finished his perusal, he asked in effect, “Is there anything in this report that might give our enemies information they ought not to have?” Upon Roberts’s assurance that Stimson and Knox had cleared it, the President summoned his secretary Marvin O. McIntyre and directed him: “Mac, give that to the Sunday papers in full.”⁴⁰

The report falls into three main parts—an introduction explaining in general terms the work of the commission, its findings of fact, and its conclusions. Its first conclusions boil down to this: Hull, Stimson, and Knox had “fulfilled their obligations” in conferring with one another and with Marshall and Stark about pertinent events; the Chief of Staff and the CNO had fulfilled their “command responsibility” by issuing warnings and direct orders to Oahu. But it did not let the Washington authorities off scot-free. Among the contributory causes the report listed:

Emphasis in the warning messages on the probability of aggressive Japanese action in the Far East, and on antisabotage measures.

Failure of the War Department to reply to the message relating to the antisabotage measures instituted by the commanding general, Hawaiian Department.

The report did not criticize Martin, Bellinger, or the other generals and admirals at Hawaii. It merely stated: “Subordinate commanders executed their superiors’ orders without question. They were not responsible for the state of readiness prescribed.” The brunt of the report fell upon Kimmel and Short:

. . . In the light of the warnings and direction to take appropriate action, transmitted to both commanders between November 27 and December 7, and the obligation under the system of coordination then in effect for joint cooperative action on their part, it was a dereliction of duty on the part of each of them not to consult and confer with each other respecting the meaning and intent of the warnings and the appropriate means of defense required by the imminence of hostilities. The attitude of each, that he was not required to inform himself of, and his lack of interest in, the measures undertaken by the other to carry out the responsibility assigned to each other under the provisions of the plans then in effect, demonstrated on the part of each a lack of appreciation of the responsibilities vested in them and inherent in their positions as commander in chief, Pacific Fleet, and commanding general, Hawaiian Department.

. . . The Japanese attack was a complete surprise to the commanders, and they failed to make suitable dispositions to meet such an attack. Each failed properly to evaluate the seriousness of the situation. These errors of judgment were the effective causes for the success of the attack.⁴¹

So now Kimmel and Short had to endure—along with the bitterness of defeat, their sorrow at the death and suffering of their men, and the humiliation of removal from command—the charge of “dereliction of duty.” Possibly only an individual who, like these two officers, had given decades of stainless service to his country could understand just what that scalding verdict meant to them. Duty was the cornerstone of their lives. The armed forces did not expect every man to be brilliant or victorious, but they did expect every man to be dutiful. The blow was doubly hard to bear because of the long, efficient careers which had preceded it. Kimmel in particular had always possessed the knack of impressing his superiors and hated to admit being in the wrong. So this charge landed a vicious right cross to his ego.

Nor was Short the man to turn the other cheek to such a stinging slap. Fleming had found the general a dynamic officer who “had a temper. He didn’t show it very often but when somebody goofed Short could be very, very brutal.” Now the Roberts Commission had told the entire world in “very, very brutal” terms that he himself had “goofed.” Short would have been less than human had he not writhed under this humiliation.

Fleming considered that the Roberts Commission made the general “the goat” for the Navy. Fleming stressed that the Army was not responsible “for the long range defense of the Hawaiian Islands. . . . But then the Roberts Commission turned around and pointed much more of a finger of guilt at General Short than it did at Admiral Kimmel.”⁴²

Actually Kimmel and Short suffered equally from the Roberts Commission’s findings unless one accepts Fleming’s premise that the Navy’s long-distance reconnaissance responsibility lifted all blame from Short’s shoulders. This is somewhat difficult to do in view of the fact, which Short never denied, that the Hawaiian Department’s primary responsibility was to defend the Fleet at its moorings.

To a certain extent the aftermath of the Roberts Commission demonstrated the problems inherent in releasing the report of an investigative body without at the same time releasing the evidence upon which it was based. Of course, the government could not have published the full testimony because much of it dealt with defense matters legitimately classified. But, however justifiable, the net result was that the public of the day had no way of judging the validity of the Roberts Commission’s findings and conclusions because the full testimony was not released until February 17, 1946.⁴⁴ The people had to rely upon the press for comment and analysis. Yet the press knew no more than its readers.

Although the document humbled American pride, many commentators rejoiced that it had been published, thus demonstrating that the government had leveled with the people.⁴⁵ But these sentiments could not soften the unpleasant revelations. In some respects the press overreacted. The commission had cited—correctly—the failure of the two commanders to confer about the various warnings. But by the time the newspapers got through with the subject the average American could well believe that Kimmel and Short barely spoke. “Judging from the Roberts Report there was practically no cooperation” between the two, reported Gould Lincoln in a typical comment.⁴⁶

A large segment of the press, as exemplified by the Wheeling (West Virginia) News-Register, wanted “to see those directly responsible, shorn of their rank and drummed out of the service” because “those entrusted with the defense of Hawaii were the enemy’s best ally in making the attack successful.”⁴⁷ Congress added its bit to the clamor. “It’s high time we were getting rid of these incompetents . . .” exclaimed Representative Dewey Short of Missouri. “We’ve got a lot of gold braiders around here who haven’t had a new idea in 20 years. They should be court martialed.”⁴⁸

A number of lawmakers praised the Roberts Commission and agreed with its findings. Congress, however, was accustomed to surveying problems from the political angle, and many lawmakers distrusted a strictly military interpretation. Even Representative William J. Ditter of Pennsylvania, who voiced his state’s pride in its native son, Justice Roberts, did not believe the report had gone far enough: “The Commission is the creature of the executive branch of the Government. I believe this Congress owes it to the country to initiate its own inquiry. . . .”⁴⁹ Already the seeds of revisionism began to shoot up like bean sprouts. Representative Fred L. Crawford of Michigan suggested that “the ineptitude of the men in charge at Pearl Harbor, was simply a reflection of what was taking place in Washington. . . .”⁵⁰

At this stage of the Pearl Harbor investigations not even confirmed antiadministration newspapers adopted the idea that Washington was guilty instead of Kimmel and Short; the thesis went no further than that Washington shared their guilt.⁵¹ Some, such as Knox’s own paper, the Chicago Daily News, entered a plea for mercy: “. . . many people are thinking that the officers directly accused have already been punished enough by the knowledge that the responsibility for what happened was theirs.”⁵² This may well have expressed Knox’s personal opinion. No doubt he much preferred to drop the whole subject of Pearl Harbor and get on with prosecuting the war. Then, too, he knew very well that valid courts martial for Kimmel and Short were out of the question during the war because Magic and other highly classified material in all probability would be seriously compromised.

Other papers also pleaded against throwing the two commanders to the lions. Those who spoke for mercy, however, acted upon the good old American principle of not kicking a man when he is down, not from any doubt that Kimmel and Short were guilty as charged.⁵³ Almost no journalists questioned the logic of the commission’s findings.

Many newspapers agreed that the warnings to Hawaii absolved Washington of blame. This was one of the areas in which headlines, column headings, and editorials blew up certain findings out of all proportion. If the reader scrutinized the entire report, which most major newspapers printed in full, he could follow the course of events and keep the whole matter on an even keel. But if he hastily skimmed the headlines, he could easily receive the impression that Washington had bombarded Kimmel and Short with repeated and explicit warnings of a Japanese attack against Hawaii which the two commanders had deliberately disregarded: WASHINGTON WARNINGS THAT JAPS MIGHT RAID HAWAII WAS IGNORED;⁵⁴ REPEATED WARNING OF JAP RAID IGNORED BY TWO COMMANDERS.⁵⁵

Stimson had been pleased in general with the commission’s efforts. “It is an admirable report, candid and fair, and thorough in its study of the facts.” Then his sharp mind cut through to a major weakness: “. . . the printed report does not and could not go into what is the real underlying basis of the trouble, namely that both services had not fully learned the lessons of the development of air power in respect to the defense of a navy and of a naval base.”⁵⁶ A number of journalists agreed that the lack of air-mindedness lay at the root of the tragedy, and the cause of unification of the armed forces received a stiff shot in the arm.⁵⁷

In the second place, the appointment of the commission had received such nationwide acclaim that no five men could have lived up to the expectations engendered. And with publication of the report came such a flood of comments that to a certain extent the actual report became engulfed in a whirlpool of verbosity. The overreaction in some newspapers made it appear that Kimmel and Short had been far more culpable than they actually were or than the Roberts report had charged.

Thirdly, the commission received much unfavorable publicity during the congressional investigation and subsequently from certain revisionists.⁵⁹ It earned the latter’s hostility by dumping the major load of blame on Kimmel and Short and failing to indict Roosevelt and his administration.

There is no valid reason to doubt the integrity of Roberts and his colleagues. These men were not headhunters or political hacks, dependent upon the goodwill of the “organization.” Each had served long and well under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Nor need one necessarily challenge the good faith of the Washington authorities. Obviously something had gone wildly askew with the defenses of Oahu, and every dictate of common sense urged that the trouble spot be located and corrected as soon as possible, if only to preclude a recurrence there or elsewhere.

The transcript of the proceedings reveals that the commissioners conducted their inquiry searchingly but courteously. They let witnesses have their say, asked intelligent questions, and stayed on the main track of the investigation. Manifestly they could not have found that everyone in the Army and Navy on Oahu had done exactly as he should have. The evidence to the contrary confronted them in the shape of sunken and damaged warships, blasted planes, burned-out hangars, wounded men, and new graves.

Later investigations, concerned primarily with matters of policy and with the whys and wherefores of Pearl Harbor, as a general rule called their witnesses from the civilian “big shots” and military top brass. Roberts and his colleagues likewise interviewed generals, admirals, staff officers, and key civilian leaders on Oahu. But they also questioned junior officers, enlisted personnel, and civilians who manned the ships and installations which the Japanese struck. These men had no positions to protect, no policies and decisions to explain and defend. So they told their stories in simple, direct English. This testimony is absolutely basic for anyone who wants to know how it was on Oahu on December 7, 1941. For this reason the Roberts transcript is one of the most human, most fascinating, and most important of all United States source documents on Pearl Harbor.

CHAPTER 70

“DERELICTION OF DUTY”