The report of the Army board was of great concern to the War Department. Marshall recalled that it arrived at headquarters on the day Brigadier General Thomas T. Handy replaced McNarney as deputy chief of staff, and they “were both together at the time.” Marshall asked Handy, “Have you a copy of that that I can read?” Instead of turning over the report, Handy explained its “general nature” and told Marshall of the “strictures” against him. Marshall informed the congressional committee that Handy “advised me not to read it because I was implicated in the statements of the board for various derelictions and therefore, as that would be a concern of mine and I was Chief of Staff, he thought the whole matter should be handled entirely on the Secretary of War side of the Department, the civil side, and therefore . . . I did not read it.”1
In its report the Army board announced self-righteously that it had been “conscious of the deep spiritual and moral obligation, as well as its professional and patriotic duty, to present an impartial and judicial investigation and report.” It claimed to have “set out with no thesis to prove, nor person to convict. Our approach has been, we hope, diligently and completely factual; and also equally impartial.”2 It did not quite achieve this laudable end. Its report reveals a deep bias against the War Department and against prewar government policy in general.
The second chapter dealt with background, drawing a sketch of events in 1940 and 1941 which leaves the impression that everyone in the United States was sticking straws in his or her hair:
The winds of public opinion were blowing in all directions; isolationists and nationalists were struggling for predominance; public opinion was both against war and clamoring for reprisal against Japan; we were negotiating for peace with Japan, and simultaneously applying economic sanctions that led only to war. . . .
Such was the confusion of men and events, largely unorganized for appropriate action and helpless before a strong course of events, that ran away with the situation and prematurely plunged us into war.3
The report was by no means devoid of sense; indeed, it contained much solid fare. Perhaps the board’s most unfortunate error was the serious misinterpretation of Grew’s testimony pertaining to the Hull Note. The report referred to this as “the document that touched the button that started the war, as Ambassador Grew so aptly expressed it.”4 As we have seen, Grew said nothing of the kind.
The board labored under another, related misapprehension. It believed that the Japanese had timed the Pearl Harbor attack
as an answer to our counter proposals of November 26, which the Japanese considered an ultimatum; because it was on or after the delivery of that document against which General Marshall and Admiral Stark warned too late, that the task force of Japan that attacked Hawaii moved out of its rendezvous at Tankan Bay on the 27th or 28th of November to launch the attack. . . . 5
The reader knows that Nagumo’s task force sortied on the morning of November 26, local time,* well before Hull presented his note to Nomura and Kurusu.
The board was equally mistaken about certain aspects of the situation on Oahu. The members gave far more credit to the German sleeper spy, Otto Kuehn, than he deserved:
. . . the Otto Kuehn trial revealed his complete disclosure of the fleet dispositions and locations in Pearl Harbor in the period December 1 to December 6. . . .
Undoubtedly the information of the alert, the placing of planes wing-to-wing, etc., as well as the disposition of the fleet was reported by Kuehn through the Japanese Consul. . . .6
On the basis of two maps salvaged from midget submarines, the board deduced erroneously that:
. . . the Japanese must have been in the harbor a few days before the attack and evidently were moving in and out of the harbor at will. . . . As the ships actually in the harbor on December 7th were somewhat different from those shown on the map, it is conclusive proof that this submarine was in the harbor and probably advising the fleet of Japan as to our dispositions prior to December 7th.
The report rambled on about very interesting but irrelevant material pertaining to construction in the Hawaiian Islands and took several unwarranted digs at the local Japanese. While conceding that Short had erred in concentrating upon sabotage, the report offered a unique rationale:
It is obvious that the reason why the Japanese aliens did not commit sabotage was that they did not want to stimulate American activity to stop their espionage and intern them. . . . Short appears to have completely misapprehended the situation, the psychology and intention of the enemy, by putting into effect his sabotage alert.7
Along with this complacent assurance of its ability to read the collective mind of the alien Japanese in Hawaii, the board expressed an equally astounding political opinion: “. . . we permitted the introduction into the population of the islands of Japanese, to the extent of 30% of the total population or 160,000.” Inasmuch as the first generation of immigrants, the Issei, at that time totaled only about 37,500, one wonders how the United States could have screened out the remainder who had arrived in Hawaii via the maternity wards. The board also remarked, with an air of grievance, “This policy of encouraging the Japanese and permitting them to become dominant in the affairs of the island has even gone so far as to permit the Japanese to become important political factors with membership in both the Senate and House of Hawaii, and to dominate, by way of majority, the Island governing councils in some of the islands. . . .”8 It is difficult to believe that the generals realized the implications of their words. Any Japanese-American in Hawaii had the right of every citizen to vote and to be elected to public office.
The board concluded, “The extent of the Pearl Harbor disaster was due primarily to two causes. . . .” The first was Short’s failure “adequately to alert his command for war. . . .” The second was the War Department’s failure to direct Short “to take an adequate alert, and the failure to keep him adequately informed as to the developments of the United States-Japanese negotiations, which in turn might have caused him to change from the inadequate alert to the adequate one.” The report assigned tangential responsibility to Hull because his action “in delivering the counterproposals of November 26, 1941, was used by the Japanese as the signal to begin the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
Of the three officers blamed, Short came off best. Primarily the board decided that he had failed to
place his command in a state of readiness for war in the face of a war warning. . . . The information which he had was incomplete and confusing but it was sufficient to warn him of the tense relations between our government and the Japanese Empire and that hostilities might be momentarily expected. This required that he guard against surprise to the extent possible and make ready his command so that it might be employed to the maximum and in time against the worst form of attack that the enemy might launch.
Short also failed to have reached an agreement with Kimmel and Bloch to implement the existing plan for joint action, to inform himself of the effectiveness of the Navy’s long-distance reconnaissance, and to “replace inefficient staff officers.”9
Marshall took a far heavier pounding. In brief, the board faulted him for his failure to have kept his three deputy chiefs of staff fully informed, to have kept Short abreast of the international situation “and the probable outbreak of war at any time,” and to have acted on Short’s reply to the warning message of November 27. They also held him blameworthy for delay in sending Short “important information” on December 6 and 7 and his “admitted lack of knowledge of the condition of readiness of the Hawaiian Command” during November and December 1941.10
Gerow fared even worse. The former chief of War Plans had been pulled out of his command of the Fifth Corps in Luxembourg to testify and was grilled mercilessly, especially by Russell, whose lengthy questioning was stringent to the point of hostility.11 The board criticized Gerow “for drafting the confusing message of November 27,” then failing to follow through on Short’s unsatisfactory reply; for failing to determine the Hawaiian Department’s “state of readiness” following the warning; and for assuming that this famous message gave Short “all the information he needed for full preparation for war” without determining “if that was a fact.” In the board’s opinion Gerow also should have corrected “Short’s mistake in going to Alert Number 1 instead of to Alerts Number 2 and 3,” and he should have directed immediate activation of the Joint Hawaiian Coastal Defense Plan.12
In a separate top secret memorandum for Stimson the board dealt with the highly classified matters it had considered. It reached the rather startling conclusion that the State, War, and Navy departments in November and December 1941
had a reasonably complete disclosure of the Japanese plans and intentions, and were in a position to know what were the Japanese potential moves that were scheduled by them against the United States. . . .
The messages actually sent to Hawaii by either the Army or Navy gave only a small fraction on this information. No direction was given the Hawaiian Department based upon this information except the “Do-Don’t” message of November 27, 1941. . . . 13
The board cited specifically the Japanese deadline date of November 29; the known concentration of Japanese fleet units; the establishment of the “winds” codes; the code destruction dispatch of December 3; and the fourteen-part and “one o’clock” messages.14 It accepted Safford’s account of the alleged “winds execute,” saying, “This original message has now disappeared from the Navy files and cannot be found.”15
Stimson’s assistant Harvey Bundy telephoned a summary of the Army board’s findings to Stimson on the weekend of October 21–22. And it was “a very poor report according to Bundy. . . .” It posed “a big problem” for the secretary. “While I am not criticized explicitly in the report, the report does criticize Marshall and Gerow for things that I knew about and participated in and I have got therefore to be very careful not to be biased in the action I take.”16
The Navy court’s report was definitely protective of the Hawaiian command. It declared that Kimmel and Short had been “personal friends” who conferred frequently. “Each was informed of measures being undertaken by the other in the defense of the Base to a degree sufficient for all useful purposes.” The report dwelt upon extenuating circumstances, such as the demand for men and munitions exceeding the national supply. “Although shortages were inevitable, it is a further fact that they had direct bearing upon the effectiveness of the defense of Pearl Harbor.”17
There had been no misunderstanding on the part of the Army and Navy that the “defense of a permanent naval base is the direct responsibility of the Army. The Navy is expected to assist with the means provided the naval district. . . .” In the case of naval districts outside the continental United States, the commandant was, in addition to the usual duties of that position, “an officer of the Fleet.” This was “the circumstance that links the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, with the duty of assisting the Army in defending the permanent naval base of Pearl Harbor.”18 This officially relieved Bloch of responsibility but left Kimmel dangling on the hook. The court hastened to repair the damage. Local defense plans were sound. But their effectiveness
depended entirely upon advance knowledge that an attack was to be expected within narrow limits of time and the plans were drawn with this as a premise. It was not possible for the Commander in Chief of the Fleet to make Fleet planes permanently available to the Naval Base Defense Officer, because of his own lack of planes, pilots, and crews and because of the demands of the Fleet in connection with Fleet operations at sea.19
The court blessed and approved the conditions of readiness in effect aboard ship in Pearl Harbor on December 7 and strongly supported Kimmel’s decision not to institute long-range reconnaissance. “Where planes are not available to cover all sectors,” the report observed, “the selection of the sectors to be covered is left purely to chance. . . .”20 This was an astounding assessment. There is such a thing as an informed, well-considered estimate of action to be taken.
The court would not go into details of “certain other important information” for security reasons. Stark’s stand, it stated, was that the war warning “completely covered the situation. The fact remains, however, that this message, standing alone, could not convey to the commanders in the field the picture as it was seen in Washington.”21
The court mildly scolded Stark for “having important information in his possession during this critical period, especially on the morning of 7 December,” which he failed to transmit to Kimmel.22 But a little later it declared that even if Stark had phoned the warning message of December 7 in plain language, “there was no action open to Admiral Kimmel which could have stopped the attack or which could have had other than negligible bearing upon its outcome.”23 Such fatalism was worthy of a Muslim bowing to the will of Allah or a Hindu untouchable resigned to his karma. It accorded ill with the bracing Occidental tenet that the Lord helps those who help themselves.
The document wended its way to the predestined conclusion: “Finally, . . . the Court is of the opinion that no offenses have been committed nor serious blame incurred on the part of any person or persons in the naval service.” And it recommended “that no further proceedings be had in the matter.” All told, the report gives the impression that the members of the court tried very hard to convince themselves and their readers that with minor exceptions, the entire U.S. Navy had been the helpless victim of circumstances. Over the report brood the gray ghosts of two sentences: “The attack of 7 December 1941, on Pearl Harbor, delivered under the circumstances then existing, was unpreventable. When it would take place was unpredictable.”24
Naturally the fact that the War and Navy departments did not immediately release the results of their respective investigations aroused a storm of criticism. From Boston Rugg pronounced, “This inconsistent and dilatory procedure is unjust to Admiral Kimmel. He is entitled to hear the verdict of the court promptly.” Robert R. Reynolds of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, saw no reason for the secret classification. “There are too damn many secrets,” he declared vigorously. “It looks to me like it’s time for the American people to know how Pearl Harbor happened. The Japanese certainly know and the only reason for keeping anything secret is to keep it from the enemy.”25
Stimson would have to wait almost a month before receiving The Judge Advocate General’s recommendations, but Gatch hastened to place his legal analysis of the Navy report on record in a first endorsement dated November 2. He had few quarrels with the court’s findings. He noted the “apparent contradiction” between the findings against Stark and the final opinion that no serious blame attached to anyone in the Navy. But he thought that this was “not a real incongruity” because “the evidence adduced did not prove that Admiral Stark’s failure to transmit the information in question to Admiral Kimmel was the proximate cause of the damage suffered by the Fleet on 7 December, 1941. . . .” So, subject to his comments, Gatch found the report “legal.”26
King, too, wasted no time in forwarding the report to Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal. Obviously no one on the uniformed side of the Navy Department wanted to be responsible for delaying the report beyond election day. In a separate letter of November 3 King furnished his comments concerning the security problems involved. He stated unequivocally that the top secret volume of the proceedings “must not be made public.” And he preferred to release none of the report. Publication of abridged findings could only have “undesirable results.” In brief, King wanted the Navy Department to sit tight and reveal nothing, letting the political chips fall where they might.27 His attitude made considerable sense. In the field and on the high seas American officers and men were laying their lives on the line. The least their superiors in Washington could do was keep faith with them and take all possible precautions to guard the precious Magic secret.
By second endorsement of November 6 King concurred in the findings, opinions, and recommendations of the court subject to Gatch’s opinion and his own remarks. He agreed with some of the findings, disagreed with others. He concurred that there was “not adequate evidence to support general court martial proceedings, but this does not bar administrative action, if such action is found appropriate.” Then came the big admission: “Despite the evidence that no naval officer was at fault to a degree likely to result in conviction if brought to trial, nevertheless the Navy cannot evade a share of responsibility for the Pearl Harbor incident. That disaster cannot be regarded as an ‘act of God,’ beyond human power to prevent or mitigate.” King concluded sternly:
The derelictions on the part of Admiral Stark and Admiral Kimmel were faults of omission rather than faults of commission. In the case in question, they indicate lack of the superior judgment necessary for exercising command commensurate with their rank and their assigned duties, rather than culpable inefficiency.
. . . Since trial by general court martial is not warranted by the evidence adduced, appropriate administrative action would appear to be the relegation of both of these officers to positions in which lack of superior judgment may not result in future errors.28
On November 11 Stimson talked “a little bit” about the Army report with Marshall for the first time. Three days later the secretary found the Chief of Staff experiencing an uncharacteristic but natural letdown of morale. “As usual he was so modest that he admitted to me that he thought his usefulness to the Army had been destroyed by this Board’s report. . . . I told him that was nonsense, to forget it. But he was very grateful for the work I had done on it and the fight that I was making for him.”
Later that day Stimson and Forrestal had “a long talk” about the reports and rather optimistically concluded “that we were not very far apart and that there was to be no clash between the standards and views of the two Departments. . . .”29
A fundamental question plagued both departments—how much, if anything, to reveal concerning the findings and conclusions of these inquiries. On November 20 for the first time Stimson brought into the case his public relations officer, Major General Alexander Surles, who had been on leave. The principal problems were the swipes at Marshall and Gerow. Marshall presented a special case. Not only did Stimson consider the criticism of his Chief of Staff totally unjustified, but he also saw in Marshall “the strongest man there is in America . . . the one on whom the fate of the war depends. . . .” One can forgive Surles that “his first reaction was to try to keep back the findings.” He feared lest the Navy “ride in behind our publicity and escape it themselves and leave us to bear the whole brunt of it.” But Stimson convinced him “that if we do not take the initiative ourselves and publish the fact that Marshall has been criticized at the same time with the vindication of it, why it will leak out in a much more disadvantageous way. . . .”30
The day after Stimson’s conference with Surles, Forrestal landed a haymaker on Stimson’s hopes for parallel action. In a phone conversation Forrestal warned that his public statement would be short, and he would send it over. Stimson recorded indignantly: “After all the preliminaries, the preambles, and recitals, it consisted of just one sentence in which he said that . . . it was not in the public interest or something like that to take any proceedings against any naval officers.” A sorely troubled man, Stimson took off for the White House.
After lunch the President brought up the subject. “I think the less said the better . . .” he remarked. Stimson explained that the Army “could not afford to go ahead and be frank when the Navy was not being frank.” He showed the President the Army board’s conclusion, which he read carefully. When he came to the names of those criticized, he exclaimed, “Why, this is wicked; this is wicked.” However, “he still adhered to his view that the safer plan was to follow as nearly as possible the Forrestal method.” Stimson expressed his fear “that Congress could get after us, get at the papers and get at the facts. . . .” To this Roosevelt replied “that we must take every step against that and that we must refuse to make the reports public. He said that they should be sealed up and our opinions put in with them and then a notice made that they should only be opened on a Joint Resolution of both Houses of Congress approved by the President after the war. . . .”
Back at the Pentagon Stimson set his assistants to work drafting a paper more in line with Roosevelt’s desires. But it would “say at least that we believe there have been delinquencies in the War Department and also that Short was guilty of delinquency.”31
The secretary of war flew to Highhold on the afternoon of Friday, November 24. On the way he dug into The Judge Advocate General’s critique of the Army board report. Stimson called it “really a humdinger. . . .”32
Even Flaubert would have acknowledged that “humdinger” was le mot juste. Cramer had a gift of pithy expression. He made a very important point which seems to have been generally overlooked: “Short is in a dilemna sic in contending that distant reconnaissance was a Navy responsibility . . . because it only became a Navy responsibility if and when the Joint Army and Navy Agreement was put into effect. Yet Short made no effort to put it into effect, even in part.”33 Because the Navy never made this obvious defense for its own failure to institute long-distance air patrols, this particular responsibility appears to have changed hands by a sort of tacit agreement.
The top secret portion of the report did not impress Cramer from the standpoint of evidence. He called it “mainly a collection of conclusions by the Board” based upon transcripts and exhibits. “These references in turn indicate that the testimony given by the witnesses consists largely of their conclusions or evaluations of certain intercepts. . . . Moreover, the quantum of the information thus received by the War Department and not sent to Short has been magnified out of all proportion. . . .”34 Cramer believed that “while there was more information in Washington than Short had, Short had enough information to indicate to any responsible commander that there was an outside threat against which he should make preparations.” But he believed that Short’s mistakes “were honest ones, not the result of any conscious fault, and having in mind all the circumstances, do not constitute a criminal neglect of duty.”35
With the strictures against Marshall, Cramer disagreed totally. In the case of Gerow, he agreed with some, but not all, of the board’s criticisms. He added, “The nature of the errors and the fact that he has since demonstrated his great qualifications for field command indicate that his case is now far removed from disciplinary action.”36 This may seem a non sequitur, but it made better sense than the ridiculous action the Navy took in Stark’s case—proclaiming as unfit for high command an officer who had served with a large degree of competence in a top job throughout the war.
Cramer saw nothing to be gained by court martialing Short even after circumstances permitted such a trial. So he suggested a statement by Stimson “pointing out that General Short was guilty of errors of judgment, for which he was properly removed from command, and that this constitutes sufficient disposition of the matter at this time.”37
Thus, the Army and Navy investigations had not solved the Pearl Harbor puzzle. They had produced much valuable evidence, but their reports with the resulting legal opinions and suggestions had only dumped a large problem upon their respective departments. With the exception of its mild strictures against Stark, the Navy court blamed nobody. Of course, one was at liberty to read between the lines and decide that inasmuch as the naval establishment on Oahu was without spot or blemish, the fault must lie with the Army. At the opposite end of the scale, the Army board swung at Marshall, Gerow, and Short and even glancingly at Hull.
Nor had the upper-level evaluations helped matters much. King bracketed Kimmel with Stark as blameworthy but recommended that Forrestal maintain secrecy beyond a parallel statement with Stimson. Cramer exculpated Marshall, recommended no action against Gerow, and suggested that Stimson issue a statement to the effect that Short, while he had erred, had been punished enough. It would take all the considerable skill of Stimson, Forrestal, and their advisers to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable.
For Stimson November 30 “was a red letter successful day because at last after all these pullings and haulings we have got the first step of the Pearl Harbor report settled.” Forrestal had reworked his draft while the War Department had made some changes in its own. That afternoon Forrestal and Stimson phoned Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Georgia, and received his authority to release the two statements simultaneously “within the next two or three days.” Although relieved, Stimson feared that this was not “a final settlement. . . .” He thought “it was a great mistake not to go into a frank full statement of what had happened and what we have done. . . .”38
There is little doubt that Roosevelt mismanaged the release of the Army-Navy statements. Stimson had been correct. Never famous for the common touch, he nevertheless had an abiding faith in the basic nobility of the American people, an assurance that they would act as they should once they had the facts. The Roosevelt who so overreacted in his conference with Stimson, urging security measures just short of locking up the reports in Fort Knox, was not the Roosevelt who had established such an understanding dialogue with the electorate for so many years. Today, knowing that death awaited him in fewer than five months, one can see that illness had already taken a toll of his sharp reflexes and political acumen. He should have dealt frankly with the public, as Stimson wished to do, and should have insisted that Forrestal do the same. Marshall, Gerow, and Stark needed no coddling, Kimmel and Short had nothing to lose, and Roosevelt would not have placed his administration in such an equivocal position.
Forrestal returned the Navy court’s report to that body by third endorsement on December 1: “. . . I find that the evidence obtained to date indicates that there were errors of judgment on the part of Admiral Kimmel and Admiral Stark. I am not satisfied, however, that the investigation has gone to the point of exhaustion of all possible evidence.” He directed further investigation, specifically to include the testimony of Wilkinson and McCollum. Forrestal added that he was withholding his decision on any proceedings against any naval officer pending completion of this additional investigation.39
The findings of the court gave the signal loud and clear to exonerate Kimmel, had Forrestal been so inclined. Indeed, had he accepted the legality of the findings—and Gatch had so certified—he would have had little choice. It was King who flung the monkey wrench into the machinery by linking Kimmel with Stark as blameworthy, a conclusion he could scarcely avoid in logic. The Pearl Harbor debacle had been far too serious to permit every American naval officer involved to escape judgment. If everyone had done just as he should, why had the Japanese won so signal a victory? Still, Forrestal’s public statement was mild enough:
The net result of the findings of fact and opinion of the Pearl Harbor court of inquiry, as reviewed . . . is that the evidence now available does not warrant and will not support the trial by general court martial of any person or persons in the naval service.
The Secretary . . . has found that there were errors of judgment on the part of certain officers in the naval service, both at Pearl Harbor and at Washington.40
Stimson followed Cramer’s advice and in his statement of December 1 took Short off the hook:
So far as the Commanding General of the Hawaiian Department is concerned, I am of the opinion that his errors of judgment were of such a nature as to demand his relief from a Command status. This was done on January 11, 1942, and in itself is a serious result for any officer with a long record of excellent service, and conscientious as I believe General Short to be. In my judgment, on the evidence now recorded, it is sufficient action.41
These statements were all very well up to a point, but both left much territory untouched. Certain lawmakers took up the cudgels. Senator Ferguson, whose resolution had set the twin investigations in motion, clearly was dissatisfied with the fruit that ripened from the seed he had planted. “The question in the public mind is this: How could it happen that our fleet could be sunk and our boys could be killed at Pearl Harbor without any one’s being to blame?” Thereupon he called for “a full dress senate investigation.”42
The joint press releases represented an important breakthrough in the Pearl Harbor story. Newspapers picture Kimmel as “smiling and obviously in good spirits” while Short’s “sparkling eyes expressed satisfaction. . . .”43 Nevertheless, the action could not have entirely satisfied either these men or their ardent supporters. True, there was no mention of that hateful, rankling phrase “dereliction of duty.” But a mere announcement that neither man had done anything to warrant court martial was cold comfort at best. Kimmel and Short could only look hopefully toward exoneration at some future time. From his home in Dallas Short issued a statement to the effect that when the entire story was told, he was “certain of complete vindication in the eyes of the American people.” Rugg spoke for Kimmel. He declared that Forrestal’s statement had cleared the admiral of charges of dereliction of duty. “When the people have the full facts, they will agree.”44
Actually, whatever mask of smiling “good spirits” Kimmel presented to the press, he was exceedingly angry over the turn events had taken. In Washington on December 6 and 7 he visited certain members of the court and of the Navy Department. He talked “at some length” with Andrews. The latter believed that Kimmel “would be pleased with every word of the findings,” although he did not discuss details. He advised Kimmel “to ‘blow the lid off’ and publish everything.” While Kalbfus gave Kimmel the impression that he thought the latter “was not to blame in this matter,” he advised Kimmel “that in view of all the circumstances there was nothing that I could do at the present time, that the war effort came first and that unjust as the action may appear to me or to others, the only thing I could do was to stand and take it.”45
In his interview with Gatch, Kimmel asked what would happen to him if he “published the story containing the secret matter.” Gatch replied, “You would be brought to trial before General Court Martial on charges that you had divulged secret matter and you would be convicted, thereby confusing the whole issue and absolutely discredit sic you.” If Kimmel published a statement containing no secret information, “the Navy Department would merely state that you are a liar and you would be unable to prove any of your contentions unless you reverted to the secret matter.”
Kimmel asked Gatch what assurance he could give “that the record of this court, including the findings, would not be tampered with or destroyed.” Gatch told Kimmel that as long as he, Gatch, was The Judge Advocate General, the copy in his safe “would not be tampered with.” Kimmel trusted Gatch “but pointed out that he might be relieved at any time and that his successor might be picked with the view of doing away with all or part of this record.”46
The Husband E. Kimmel who awoke to the dawn of December 7, 1941, would have died rather than knowingly betray any of the classified material entrusted to his care. Now, exactly three years later, he was considering publication of one of the nation’s most precious top secrets, with the almost certain result of lengthening the war and costing thousands of lives—and for what? To try to cleanse his name of a charge of “errors of judgment”—a charge from which no human being can ever be entirely free. And this dark picture is made no brighter by the failure of the Navy’s top lawyer to point out that in so doing, Kimmel would betray his country and his fellow fighting men, an action infinitely worse than “errors of judgment” at Pearl Harbor.
Earlier in the week King had been reviewing the records and reports of the Army board. He briefed Forrestal thereon by a memorandum dated December 3. All told, he found nothing in the record of the Army board to cause him to modify his opinions in connection with the Navy court
except in relation to the cooperation between Admiral Kimmel and General Short. . . . I am no longer of the opinion that cooperation between these two officers was adequate in all respects. . . . However, . . . this fault was part and parcel of the general blindness to Japanese potentialities in the Central Pacific which was the basic cause of the Pearl Harbor disaster.
So King still believed that Stark and Kimmel “failed to display the superior judgment they should have brought to bear in analyzing and making use of the information that became available to them.”47
When Kimmel visited King on the third anniversary of the attack, the Cominch appeared “friendly and sympathetic” toward Kimmel. He “strongly implied” that the court had “completely cleared” Kimmel. Nonetheless, King was sure that the proceedings and findings would not be published before the end of the war. Until that time Kimmel “had no redress. . . .” The Cominch waxed confidential concerning some of the background of the investigations. Roosevelt had “stated that Stark is performing highly valuable services and cannot be spared.” Nor could Marshall. King, too, believed Marshall to be “irreplaceable.” The Cominch explained that “while the findings were drawn to permit publication,” he recommended against that action, believing “that the Japs might be able to deduce the source of the information which is still of great value to the Navy.” Among other items of what was obviously a long session, King informed Kimmel that the “further inquiry” being contemplated “had no bearing whatsoever” on Kimmel’s action.
Kimmel emerged from the Navy court and particularly its aftermath a confirmed revisionist. “Immediately after Pearl Harbor I felt that no matter how hard and how conscientiously I had tried that I had not been smart enough and to that extent must accept blame for Pearl Harbor. . . . I now refuse to accept any responsibility for the Pearl Harbor catastrophe.”48
Displeasure with the War and Navy departments’ handling of the reports was by no means limited to Kimmel, Short, and their personal supporters. Far from quieting the anti-Roosevelt furor of preelection days, the joint statements of Stimson and Forrestal added to the discord. While avoiding the venom and simplistic conclusions expressed in some newspapers, the Washington Post was also unhappy. Dissatisfaction breathed from a lengthy editorial. “The question that springs out from both reports is this: Who were the officers in Washington who failed in their duty?” The Post urged: “would it not be possible to eliminate that testimony that might be valuable to the enemy and then let the public have the story?”49 This illustrated the public relations problem which plagued Washington. To excise from the evidence the information which might be of value to the enemy and still present “the story” to the public would be like Shylock’s attempting to cut off his pound of flesh without spilling blood.
There is no question that the Army and Navy inquiries had been a serious burden on the War and Navy departments at a time when their every thought should have centered on winning the war promptly with the least possible cost in lives. Yet the whole exercise had not been without value. For all their faults, the investigations produced records of considerable worth.
In the case of the Roberts Commission, the chief value of its record was the preservation of on-the-spot descriptions of the attack written while memories of the event were still fresh. So, in the Army and Navy investigations, the reports are of secondary importance to the testimony. The former are the work of judgment with a spicing of prejudice. But in the words of the witnesses one begins to experience the atmosphere of preattack Washington and Oahu and to grasp how it all could have come about.
On the military side one finds a strange compartmentalism. The War and Navy departments could not imagine that State Department business could possibly be of direct interest to a field commander. On Oahu the Army and Navy were proud of their “command by cooperation” but quite unable to see the difference between friendly cooperation and the active official coordination necessary for a full team effort in a crisis.
The civilians who testified on Oahu were mostly of the territorial upper crust—intelligent, civil-minded, somewhat paternalistic, and in general tolerant by the standards of the day. Through their words one can visualize the comfortable sense of security engendered by a flower-crowned land blessed—or perhaps slightly cursed—by a climate so benign that it had bred out of its children the prickling awareness of danger. And over all hovers the simple belief of a primarily maritime society in the enveloping protection of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.