The Army Pearl Harbor Board had somewhat different problems from Admiral Murfin and his group. For one thing, the Hawaiian Department had been responsible for the defense of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. The members of the board knew this before they met and during the investigation made no attempt to prove or even hint otherwise. But no one could say, in effect, “The Hawaiian Department failed to perform its mission; therefore, the Hawaiian Department is solely responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor.” The case was not that simple. Modifying factors such as the Navy’s responsibility for long-range aerial reconnaissance complicated the problem. The relationships between the Hawaiian Department and the War Department as well as the international situation in 1941 offered potentially fertile fields for investigation. Above all, the board had to try to determine why and how the Japanese could have caught such a competent, conscientious general as Short so far off base.
A fundamental difference obtained in the conduct of the Army board and the Navy court because of dissimilar regulations. At the Navy court the “interested parties” were authorized to attend all hearings, listen to all testimony, have counsel, and cross-examine. In marked contrast, Short could not hear the proceedings of the Army board, had no cross-examining privilege, and was permitted counsel only when testifying. His counsel, Brigadier General T. H. Green, could not sit in during the testimony of other witnesses or cross-examine them.1 This was not because anyone wished to be less than just to Short. As the names of the bodies imply, the Navy held a court, the Army convened a board. For this reason the Navy inquiry clung rather closely to its own bailiwick and allowed relatively little hearsay or profitless and irrelevant speculation.
One cannot say as much for the Army board. It did not rebuke hearsay, and it encouraged speculation. Investigative mirages lured the members into deserts of arid inquiry. Still, if the Army board took a broad-gauge approach in its hearings, its actual record is in pleasing contrast with the Navy court’s. One knows exactly who is speaking. Corrections in the text are entered in the proper place. Each day’s session begins with a cover sheet listing the witnesses of the day and the documents placed in evidence.
Not being a court of inquiry, the board members were “not bound by the ordinary rules of evidence.” At the same time, as Russell remarked, “What we may do may be a precedent for a long time or may have an influence on things for a long while, and we have got to go about it cautiously and not make any mistakes.” They feared the extension of the statute of limitations might be illegal, waiver or no waiver.
The generals realized that in any case time had them in a nutcracker. “I think probably if a bunch of lawyers got together they could laugh this all off and call it a bunch of poppycock,” said Grunert. “But we have a job to do and if you won’t do it before the act expires, what will the charge of the press be? ‘Whitewash, and by direction.’” Grunert added, “We could swear ourselves blue in the face that we never received any directive or influence of any kind but they would say it was dragged out until the thing was over.”
Colonel Charles W. West was the board’s recorder. He and his staff corresponded to the counsel and staff of a comparable civilian group, such as the later joint congressional committee. He pointed out another pitfall: “I think we can easily spend two or three months until November 8th . . . and yet I know you would be accused of putting the thing off until after the election. If you rush in and do the job in sixty days you will be accused of not doing a thorough job, as the Roberts Commission.”2 So in all likelihood no illusion of emerging as folk heroes animated these officers as they commenced the hearings on Monday, August 7, 1944, in Marshall’s office in the Pentagon.
Grunert explained to the Chief of Staff that in view of the limited time to cover a large field, individual members had been assigned certain “objectives or phases of inquiry,” although the entire board would pass upon them. Russell had been assigned to the War Department aspects. With this introduction Russell took over the questioning.3
Presently Marshall asked for “about 10 minutes of a closed session.” His estimate fell far short; they remained closeted for fifty-seven minutes. During that time Marshall briefed the three generals on Magic, cautioning them that its compromise would seriously limit “military success and the saving of American lives. . . .” Marshall’s later testimony makes it clear that during this closed session of August 7 he went into specifics. In this off-the-record briefing he spoke only to the three actual members of the board.4 So here was an incongruous situation—West and his associates were supposed to assist the board in assessing the whys and wherefores of Pearl Harbor, yet they were denied knowledge of a vital category of information.
On Tuesday, August 8, the board met in the Munitions Building, where it had established its base of operations. The first witness was Brigadier General John L. McKee, who in the latter part of 1941 had handled matters in the War Plans Division concerning Hawaii. At that time the defense of the Hawaiian Coastal Frontier was assigned Category D, which “did not visualize a major attack . . . which would result in the occupation of the area by a hostile force.” Category D did include “raids, air attacks, and blocking of channels” with reconnaissance “by surface craft, submarine, or carrier-based aviation.”
McKee did not believe that placing long-distance reconnaissance under the Navy relieved Short of all responsibility for aerial scouting. If the Navy commander did not act, McKee saw “no reason why the Army Commander could not inaugurate reconnaissance on his own responsibility. . . . He had the means.” Frank inquired, “If he conducts distant air reconnaissance, his carrying capacity is taken up with gasoline instead of bombs, and he finds something, what is he going to do about it?” McKee remarked, “He could certainly have alerted his antiaircraft artillery, and the troops could have assumed their defense positions. . . .”5
After the noon break General Hap Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Corps, took the stand. He explained that the Army Air Corps had never considered the joint plans for defending Hawaii sound. Its staff feared that the Hawaiian Air Force would waste B-17s on reconnaissance, and when the time came to use them as a striking force, they would not be available. Thus, Arnold echoed Kimmel’s save-the-planes-for-combat rationale. Arnold had no use for Hawaii’s command-by-cooperation arrangement. “In our opinion, there never was any clear-cut line there as to the duties of the Army and the Navy as far as the air was concerned, because the air overlaps both.”
He quoted Rainbow 5, the basic war plan, which instructed Short: “Hold Oahu against attacks by land, sea, and air forces, and against hostile sympathizers.” Arnold added, “No strings attached. So Rainbow 5, as I understand, was in conflict with the joint agreement.” In his opinion, “under Rainbow 5, and with the instructions received from General Marshall, the Commanding General, Hawaiian Department, had sufficient authority to extend his reconnaissance anywhere he wanted to.”6
After Arnold came General Herron, who had preceded Short in command of the Hawaiian Department. A discussion of his alert held in the summer of 1940 brought out that he had only one type: “a total alert.”* Still, he thought that in any event the Japanese could have done considerable damage, although the Army would have “knocked down a lot of their planes. . . . That was what we were there for, to . . . defend the ships and the harbor. Whether or not we saved our own planes was not important relatively.”7 Herron seems to have been one of the few witnesses before any Pearl Harbor investigation who understood that weapons of war exist primarily for use when needed, not to be kept safe for their intrinsic value.
Another excellent witness followed Herron—his former chief of staff, Major General Philip Hayes. He related that when notified of the economic freeze against Japan in the summer of 1941, Short “decided to go into maneuver positions which were battle positions, had press releases made out so that they could be given to the evening paper, to the effect that the Hawaiian Department was taking the field for a 10-day maneuver period.” Thus, he had initiated an all-out alert upon the pretext of maneuvers.8 This was positive thinking and makes all the more puzzling his failure to do the same thing in the much more acute crisis of November 1941. His actions in the summer of that year demonstrate that he could have gone on full alert without unduly alarming the population.
Altogether Short had a tough two-man act to follow when he came center stage before the Army board. His testimony occupied all of Friday and Saturday, August 11 and 12. Much of it concerns facts already dealt with in this study. To his fellow generals he stressed the extent of his reliance upon the Navy, revealing an exaggerated idea of the Navy’s scouting. He seems to have been sure the Navy conducted reconnaissance for about 300 miles in each direction as “part of the task force exercise” whenever Kimmel had a task force out. “I knew that they were doing that kind of work constantly.” Of course, he realized that full coverage was impossible.
He had the impression that Navy reconnaissance under the agreement was from the task forces, Midway, Johnston, Wake, and probably Panama. “But none was going out from Oahu?” Russell asked. Short answered, “No; I don’t think so, because it would have been a big waste of planes.”9 The statement demonstrates that Short misunderstood the type of reconnaissance that Kimmel’s task forces were undertaking. Moreover, he was so sure of himself in this respect that he did not realize he was confused and therefore did not seek clarification from Kimmel or Bloch.
In spite of the urgency of the hour, he and Kimmel had held no formal conferences about the warning messages of November 27. However, they exchanged dispatches and “talked the thing over. . . .” That prompted Grunert to ask, “Did you discuss with the Navy whether they considered your Army Alert No. 1 was sufficient?” Short retorted arrogantly, “I didn’t ask them whether they considered it. I told them that was what we were on.”10
He declared that if he had taken measures “to meet any eventuality,” he would have acted counter to the instructions not to alarm the public, disclose intent, or provoke Japan. In evident perplexity and exasperation, Grunert remarked, “They [the people of Oahu] knew that the Army was kept over there to defend the island. Are they [the Army] supposed to be impotent and not to be trusted to take ammunition out? I cannot understand the psychology.” Short insisted that with the newspapers “writing scare headlines,” for the Army to have taken out live ammunition would have been exactly what the War Department told it not to do.11 This demonstrates again that Short seized upon the negative aspects of his instructions rather than take positive action to protect the Fleet.
In a brief windup session on August 12 Short displayed distrust or ignorance about the functions of fighter aircraft. He admitted that if he had been on Alert No. 3, the damage might have been less. But he did not believe that it “would have kept those low-flying planes from getting in, because the antiaircraft was almost helpless against them. . . .” Short did not say what might have happened to “those low-flying planes” had his aircraft been able to pounce on them as they flew over Oahu. A little later Short took his leave, thanking the board “for very courteous treatment.”12
Short’s testimony does not display him in a favorable light. Certainly one could expect him to make the best possible case for himself, but his defenses leave a poor impression. One sees the picture of an energetic, capable officer very much at home with the technical side of his job but lacking in imagination and the qualities of leadership. What is more, he was surprisingly dependent upon others—the War Department to spell out exactly what he should do, the Navy to warn him of approaching danger. Yet he did not try to determine upon how firm a foundation that trust rested, evidently fearing that he might upset the delicate balance of Army-Navy cooperation.
Short had plenty of company in his reliance upon the Navy for advance warning. For one, General Mollison, who testified on Tuesday, August 15, had “every confidence” that the Navy would inform him if any enemy came near Hawaii. And Mollison agreed with Short’s decision to go to Alert No. 1.* He did not think a more stringent alert would have put them in a better position to meet the attack. The only exception would have been that the Japanese “disabled a good many planes on the ground that perhaps might have been unhurt or undamaged if we had had them in dispersed positions.”13 Of course, that was quite an exception.
A refreshing witness took the stand on Thursday, August 17. In 1941 Lieutenant Colonel H. E. Brooks, then a captain, had commanded a field artillery battery at Schofield Barracks. When Grunert asked if his family knew “what to do in case of an attack,” Brooks replied disconcertingly, “My wife knew she had to go to the hospital and have a baby right away.” He and his family did not fear an attack on Oahu. “We were too dumb to realize that they might hit the Island. . . .” He gave the board valuable insights into the thinking of the junior officers on Oahu. General Frank asked him whether “there must have been some sort of an apprehension among the high command of an attack on the Island?” Brooks declared, “. . . If there was apprehension it was not evident to us. As a matter of fact, it was just the other way.”
This prompted Frank to probe deeper. “There was nothing said or done to develop a warmindedness in the command?” he asked. “That is right, sir,” said Brooks. And he added, “. . . In fact, because it was in the tropics we did very little work in the afternoon. It was just the opposite of a warlike attitude.”14 His comment provides one clue to the Pearl Harbor riddle—psychological unpreparedness.
When Admiral Pye appeared that day, August 17, he seemed to realize that the Army board might have some very different ideas about Pearl Harbor from those of the Navy court. In particular he approached the subject of long-distance air patrols with the wariness of a cat weaving along a shelf of bric-a-brac. He insisted that even after he assumed command of the Fleet, he “had nothing whatsoever to do with it.” Russell could not quite accept that: “When you put your ships into the Port at Pearl Harbor, you did not lose interest in the possibility of their being destroyed, I am sure.” Pye countered, “I didn’t lose interest in that. I lost confidence in the people whose job it was.” The CinCPAC had overall responsibility, the commandant of the 14th Naval District had charge of the planes, and Bellinger was under him. “Those are the three who had direct responsibility for reconnaissance.”15 One wonders if Pye realized how damning his testimony really was.
Once more Lieutenant Colonel Kermit Tyler had to prod his unpleasant memories of December 7. His story brought out the absence of anyone in the Information Center to evaluate sightings. “Well, why were you there at all?” asked Russell. Tyler replied ingenuously, “Sir, I really don’t know.” Grunert recapitulated the situation:
. . . there seemed to be a lack of organization and common sense and reason on this. You went up there to do duty as a pursuit officer in the information center. There was nobody to do the work with, because the controller was not there, and the Navy liaison man wasn’t there . . . and then, at the end of the tour, at 7 o’clock, everybody disappeared except the telephone operator and you. . . .
In apparent disgust, he asked Tyler, “You had no particular duty, did you?” Tyler answered, “No, sir; we hadn’t.” Thereupon Grunert announced to the world at large, “It seems all ‘cock-eyed,’ to me—and that, on the record, too.”16 This appears to be as accurate a summation of the Hawaiian Department’s Information Center on December 7 as one could hope for.
Thus far the board’s record reveals a pattern of courteous, if close, give-and-take. But henceforth little flames of temper and frustration flicker through the transcript. The next witness virtually asked for trouble at the hands of an increasingly unhappy board. When Phillips took the stand on Friday, August 18, Grunert drilled at once into essentials. “Can you tell me the primary mission of the Army in Hawaii?”
This most rudimentary of questions seems to have struck Phillips broadside, for he immediately assumed a defensive posture. Queries about the alerts also sent him off into the protective underbrush.17 Frank mentioned that Army dogma was to “consider the worst thing that the enemy can do to you, and make your decision to meet it.” He queried, “Do you feel that that was done in this case?” This initiated a verbal folk dance with Frank and Phillips skipping in and out of the circle. “You just will not answer that question, will you?” asked the exasperated Frank.18
Grunert tried hard to discover why, in the face of warnings of attack, the Army dwelt only on sabotage. Phillips took refuge in statistics: “We had 165,000 Japanese there.” That was not good enough for Grunert: “Were they not sort of a bugaboo?” he queried. But Phillips clung to his position like a bat to a cliff.19
Throughout the investigation Grunert would return again and again to the vexing question of the Hawaiian Department’s obsession with sabotage. He seemed to feel instinctively that if he could resolve this problem, he would have fitted into position a large piece of the Pearl Harbor puzzle. Unfortunately his quest was doomed because he was trying to dissect an emotion under the microscope of logic. And of all emotions, fear is one of the least susceptible to such analysis.
When Colonel Throckmorton took the stand on August 21, he shed an almost embarrassingly vivid light on the spadework for the Joint Coastal Defense agreement. “. . . considerable pressure had to be brought to get the Navy to sit down at a table with us and actually put the framework of the joint agreement into writing and then get Admiral Bloch to sign it,” he told Grunert. This was during Herron’s tenure, when Throckmorton was G-3. Eventually he suggested that the Army write the agreement and submit it to the Navy. The Navy liaison officer was “delighted” with this. “So the Army wrote the agreement without the aid of the Navy.” Throckmorton took it to Pearl Harbor, “and, with just a few minor changes, Admiral Bloch signed it. . . .”20 This example of the let-George-do-it mentality leaves one wondering just how well Bloch understood what he signed.
The board had its chance to evaluate Bloch on Tuesday, August 22. He added no new points to his testimony before the Navy court and proved as elusive as the Loch Ness monster. He was even obscure about the phrase “This is a war warning.” He had never heard it used to begin a dispatch. “The obvious conclusion is that that is naval phraseology, and it is not naval phraseology insofar as I know.” That was not all. According to Bloch, “the term ‘defensive deployment’ has never been used in any textbooks, tactical books, or tactical instructions and orders that I know of, in the Navy.”21 One receives the impression that any instructions not couched in “naval phraseology” or included in standard naval textbooks ranked with Babylonian cuneiform as something no bluff old salt could be expected to master.
The board secured a more detailed picture when Bellinger took the stand on Thursday, August 24. He described the “normal procedure for vitalizing” the Naval Base Defense Air Force: Bloch would send out a dispatch, which included the word “drill,” of an air raid on Pearl Harbor. “This placed the search-and-attack groups in a functioning status.” Bellinger in turn ordered all aircraft placed “in the highest degree of readiness. At this point . . . searches were immediately started. . . .”22 If Bloch was the individual to activate the Naval Base Defense Air Force for a drill, he certainly was the one responsible for doing so in a genuine crisis situation such as that signaled by the “war warning” of November 27 or the presence of an enemy submarine in the Pearl Harbor operating area early in the morning of December 7, 1941.
Kimmel was the last witness the board heard before it left for the West Coast. He appeared on Friday, August 25, accompanied by Hanify. The board plunged into the relationship between Kimmel and Bloch in the important area of long-distance reconnaissance. Kimmel explained that when Bloch “agreed to this plan he had been informed that he would eventually have 109 patrol planes assigned to him and that the Army would have something on the order of 200 flying fortresses. . . .” This attitude of pie-in-the-sky does not gibe with Kimmel’s statement that the joint defense plan “was a realistic plan based on what was available. . . .”23
As the questioning drew to a close, Grunert offered Kimmel the opportunity to make any further statement or say “anything that you want to bring to the Board’s attention.” That was all Kimmel needed. Out popped the cork: “Since Pearl Harbor information has come to my knowledge that vital information in the hands of the War and Navy Departments was not supplied to responsible officers . . .” on Oahu. “I am further certain that several days prior to 7 December, 1941, there was information in the War Department and the Navy Department that Japan would attack the United States and, very probably, that the attack would be directed against the fleet at Pearl Harbor, among other places. . . .” Kimmel further declared “that there was information in the War and Navy Departments on 6 December, 1941, that the hour of the attack was momentarily imminent, and that early on 7 December, 1941, the precise time of the attack was known. . . .” Kimmel added bitterly, “All this information was denied to General Short and to me.”24
Of course, the board knew about the Magic items from Marshall’s briefing. But they had never heard anyone say that Washington had information which indicated an attack on Pearl Harbor, much less “the precise time” of the strike. This was a quantum leap into a new dimension. The board was scheduled to leave for San Francisco to conduct hearings at the Presidio, but it immediately began laying groundwork to prepare for its invasion of this fresh territory. It asked for Marshall to reappear when the board returned to Washington and requested of the State Department that Grew be made available as a witness. It also sought from Hull information “as to the truth or falsity” of the statement that on November 26, 1941, the United States had delivered “an ultimatum” to Japan. This Hull firmly denied.25
Thus, approximately midway in its inquiry the Army board broadened its range considerably. It had to decide whether the Pearl Harbor attack had been the inevitable outcome of State Department diplomacy. It had to ponder the meaning or lack of meaning in the “winds” complications. And it had to determine whether the War Department really had definitive indications of a forthcoming attack on Pearl Harbor which Marshall and his staff withheld from Short, from either stupidity or malice. If all of Kimmel’s allegations proved true, how would this affect Short’s position? Would the extenuating circumstances outweigh the failed mission, or would the stain of disgrace spread without fading?
The board opened hearings at the Presidio in San Francisco on Tuesday, August 29, with General Martin. Grunert seemed almost overcome by the contrast between the solid, realistic Martin-Bellinger Report and the action Short’s command took upon receipt of the warning of November 27. “Here you make an estimate and you seem to hit it right on the nose as to what actually did happen, and then when the time comes you pay no attention to that. You say, ‘I am afraid of sabotage.’” Martin explained that from the information Short had, “he was not of the impression that they were alarmed about an attack on the Hawaiian Islands.” Exasperated, Grunert repeated, “Then what are you out there for? You are out there as an outpost, aren’t you?”26
The last major witness of the day was Colonel Donegan. As Short’s G-3 in the latter part of 1941, he should have provided valuable insights, but he was both reluctant and belligerent. When asked about Phillips’s competence as chief of staff, Donegan fluttered, “I would rather not answer. We have been warned on this thing. . . .” He was equally reluctant concerning Fielder: “I would rather not discuss personalities.” Evidently annoyed, Grunert shot back, “Well, discuss officialities, then. Officially, was he considered O.K.?” Donegan’s reply told plenty: “As far as I know, he was as good a G-2 as I was a G-3.”27
Most of the hearings in the Presidio were a dead loss in solving the mystery of Pearl Harbor. But the pace picked up once the board reached Oahu. Questioning at Fort Shafter began on Friday, September 8, with Major General Henry T. Burgin, who had commanded the Coast Artillery under Short. Burgin spoke of the difficulty in obtaining ammunition from its custodians. Grunert retorted that guns were “no good without ammunition” and wanted to know what warning had been anticipated. This varied, said Burgin, “but six hours was considered to be the maximum.” He explained further, “There were no instructions forbidding the antiaircraft or any other outfit from having the ammunition, but it was just impossible to pry the ammunition loose from the Ordnance, the G-4’s, or from General Short himself.”28
The next morning, Saturday, September 9, a real collector’s item came before the board. Frank H. Locey, who in 1941 had been president of the Board of Forestry and Agriculture for Hawaii, had worked closely with Short and admired him greatly. “. . . I think that General Short was a savior to this country on December 7th,” Locey said extravagantly. He distrusted the local Japanese so much that he called any talk of statehood for Hawaii “the most asinine thing I ever heard.” Evidently his principal reason was the possibility that Hawaii might send a Japanese-American to Congress—an idea which obviously he rated a disaster second only to Moana Loa’s blowing its top. “Now the Japs started to crawl into our House of Representatives. . . . Then one crawled into the Senate. . . . Why, Goddamit, if we got statehood, some day we would have a Japanese governor and a couple of Japanese delegates in Washington.”29 One would like to picture the board smiling after Locey departed, breathing figurative fire and brimstone. Unfortunately at least one of its findings revealed some contamination from the digs of Locey and a few others.
Shivers, formerly in charge of the FBI in Honolulu, took the stand on September 12. Surprisingly he established himself as one of the Pearl Harbor myth makers. In the first place, he thought the maps captured after the attack revealed that Japanese submarines had been in Pearl Harbor prior to the strike. He also believed that the Japanese had hit Utah in mistake for Saratoga because the maps showed the carrier in that position. And he asserted:
If we had been able to get the messages that were sent to Japan by the Japanese consul, we would have known, or we could have reasonably assumed, that the attack would come, somewhere, on December 7; because, if you recall, this system of signals that was devised by . . . Otto Kuehn for the Japanese consul general simply included the period from December 1 to December 6.30
His comment proves that even an experienced FBI agent is not immune to misinterpretation of the material in hand.
For the next few days the board slogged through a morass of basically irrelevant material. Then it returned to San Francisco for two more days of hearings at the Presidio. It concluded its business there on Thursday, September 21, and headed east. Meanwhile, Stimson devoted considerable time and attention to preparing his testimony. His assistant, Robert Patterson, reported that Roosevelt “was worried for fear there would be an adverse report by the Grunert Committee just before election. . . . The President rather characteristically isn’t worried at all about the Navy inquiry but is worried about the Army and was anxious to have the termination of the inquiry postponed until after Election.”
Once more Roosevelt’s keenly developed political instinct collided with the secretary’s equally acute sense of justice and legality. Stimson thought that “any attempt to approach the Board would be sure to be fraught with great criticism, and justly.”31
He devoted the morning of September 26 to his testimony. Typically he started off by stressing that after the investigation he would have “a quasi-judicial duty” to ascertain what procedures the facts might justify. Therefore, “by becoming a witness, I have to ‘watch my step’ very carefully that I do not get into a position of advocacy or bias toward any person who may afterwards be proceeded against or concerned with the action which your report may recommend.” At first he had wondered whether he “could properly appear at all” but had decided that the board was entitled to the facts he could give it.32
Later Stimson wrote in his diary his impressions of the two-and-a-half-hour hearing. He “sensed a feeling of questioning, not to say criticism, in the attitude of the Board as we opened, although they did nothing that was at all unfair.” Then, as the session proceeded and “the full impact” of notes covering the weeks preceding Pearl Harbor “got in their work,” he thought “the attitude of the Board showed reassurement as to the situation. At any rate, I did my best to give them everything, although of course one always feels after such an engagement that he might have done better.”33
As events moved rapidly forward, Marshall worried increasingly about the security of Magic. In September he learned “that it was the purpose of the Republican party, in the campaign that was then in progress, to launch a detailed attack on the Administration in connection with the Pearl Harbor incident.”34 This Republican ploy held explosive military possibilities. What particularly alarmed Marshall was a tip-off “that the question of cracking the Japanese codes might become involved in the campaign. . . .” Appalled at the prospect, Marshall decided on a bold move. Gambling upon the patriotism and good sense of Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, Republican candidate for President, Marshall determined to appeal to him to protect the all-important Magic secret.
In the utmost secrecy, without informing either Roosevelt or Stimson, he wrote to Dewey, laying the problem on the line in the frankest terms. He described the Magic machine and explained that “our main basis of information regarding Hitler’s intentions in Europe is obtained from Baron Oshima’s messages from Berlin reporting his interviews with Hitler and other officials to the Japanese Government. These are still in the codes involved in the Pearl Harbor events.” He went on urgently: “You will understand from the foregoing the utterly tragic consequences if the present political debates regarding Pearl Harbor disclose to the enemy, German or Jap, any suspicion of the vital sources of information we possess. . . .” In view of the seriousness of the problem, Marshall added, “I am presenting this matter to you in the hope that you will see your way clear to avoid the tragic results with which we are now threatened in the present political campaign.”35
Dewey decided to go along with Marshall. Later, when this story broke, some of Dewey’s more ardent supporters hailed his action as “one of the most extraordinary examples of patriotism and self-restraint that’s ever been exhibited, because it was tantamount to giving up his chance to become President of the United States.”36 This reaction was more partisan than logical, for one may hazard the guess that had Dewey blown Magic while the war was in progress, he could not have been elected dogcatcher of Point Barrow, let alone President of the United States.
Unaware of this dramatic development, the Army board settled back into its Munitions Building command post and plugged away at extracting pertinent information from its witnesses. On September 27 the board questioned former Ambassador Grew. By far the most important part of his testimony pertained to the Hull Note.* He expressed his view of that document in terms no one could possibly misunderstand: “It was in no sense an ultimatum, either in tone or substance.”37 If the board had dropped the subject there, much future controversy could have been avoided. However, Colonel Harry A. Toulmin, Jr., the board’s executive officer, asked, “What do you think, then, Mr. Grew, was the motivating cause and incident that brought about the decision of Japan to go to war? At what time do you think factually something occurred that committed them to this course of action?” Grew replied, “. . . it has always been my belief that it was about the time of the receipt of Mr. Hull’s memorandum of November 26 that the button was touched.”38
Meanwhile, Short had received a transcript of the Roberts Commission and what was available of the Army board’s record. On September 29 he wrote to Stimson: “I fail to find a disclosure of certain vital information which high Washington officials appear to have had prior to December 7, 1941, of the imminence of an attack by the Japanese. . . .” Citing certain actions, he continued forcefully:
The facts upon which these actions and statements were based clearly go to the very essence of the present inquiry. I believe, therefore, that you will readily agree that a full and complete disclosure of all the information which was in the hands of Washington officials prior to December 7, 1941, with regard to the imminence of an attack, should be obtained and made a matter of record in the proceedings of the current investigation. . . . 39
Like Kimmel, Short was coming out of his corner slugging. In fact, the entire situation was boiling toward a climax. That afternoon, Friday, September 29, Short appeared for his second hearing, accompanied by his counsel, General Green. Evidently Short had sought this session. He referred to Kimmel’s statement, which he was sure the admiral would not have made “unless he had factual data to corroborate it.” Short also produced a copy of his letter to Stimson. After a bit of reviewing of previous evidence, the board dismissed Short.40
At Grunert’s direction, West read into the record an interesting exchange. On August 11 Short had written to ask for a transcript of the testimony—his own and that of others taken to date. Grunert recommended that the first request be granted, the second denied, because of “the danger of publicity, the granting to one witness what is denied to others, and the possible jumping to conclusions as to the Board’s report. . . .” Grunert was willing to allow Short or Green access to exhibits, but at the board’s headquarters, with the understanding that the exhibits were to remain with the board. However, the War Department, through Green to Short, granted the latter’s request.41
Obviously a trend was developing—a curious one which might be termed openness within security. Hence, when Marshall testified again on the same crammed-full September 29, the session was top secret but on the record. Marshall appeared more self-confident and at ease than before. This time he could work from the letter the board had sent him on August 31, concerning the items in Kimmel’s statement. Marshall’s precise mind seems to have been more at home with a clearly established plan of approach than in answering questions off the cuff. Grunert asked the key one of this session: “Do you consider that the Commanding General of the Hawaiian Department was furnished with sufficient information from the War Department on which he could reasonably and intelligently base a decision as to the defensive measures that he should take to meet any probable eventuality?” Marshall answered firmly, “I do.”42
After leaving the Pentagon on October 2, the board held no more sessions until Friday, October 6, at which time it closed its hearings. But documents sizzled back and forth between the board and the War Department. On October 2 Stimson replied to Short’s letter of 27, informing the general that he might “rest assured that the Board is exploring all sources bearing upon the subject. . . . I am directing General Grunert to permit your Military Counsel to examine its exhibits in the presence of a member of the Board. No copies of these exhibits, however, may be made.” Deputy Chief of Staff McNarney forwarded this correspondence to the board on October 3. The same day Grunert wrote back to McNarney a letter exuding alarm for the security of the highly classified documents involved. After explaining the board’s measures for protecting these items, Grunert requested “authority to withhold from General Short and his counsel the records referred to, both as to copies of transcripts of testimony and exhibits.” The next day McNarney replied stiffly, “. . . the Secretary of War thoroughly considered this question prior to his reply to General Short and is not disposed to reverse his considered opinion.”
Grunert impressed upon Green the significance of Magic and warned him “that General Short has not been granted the authority to know what has been disclosed to you in this warning to you nor to be informed of what you glean by an examination of the secret records and files.”43
With this the Magic story reached the apex of absurdity. The imagination boggles at the picture of a counsel granted access to evidence he was not at liberty to discuss with his client. The almost neurotic concern for the security of Magic licked like a sullen tongue of flame through the pre-Pearl Harbor period and the postattack investigations. And in the nature of fire, it threw off smoke. By early autumn of 1944 Short knew that Washington was withholding something. Naturally he suspected that this was evidence damaging to the government, hence favorable to him.
The War Department would have been well advised at this time to take Short into its confidence, as the Navy Department had Kimmel in connection with the Navy court. Not even his harshest critic ever questioned Short’s integrity and patriotism or considered him a security risk, and as a retired officer he was still subject to military justice. But fear is not conducive to cool reason.