PEARL HARBOR, like our previous nine nonfiction books, demanded that we scale a mountain range of research. The focus on Admiral Kimmel led us to the thirty-six reels of microfilm of the former commander in chief’s own papers, which were donated to the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming; to thousands of pages of information maintained by his grandson Thomas Kimmel Jr.; to hundreds of family letters and scrapbooks kept by another grandson, Manning Kimmel IV; to material collected by his daughter-in-law Harriott Johnson Kimmel; and to Kimmel family records dating back to prerevolutionary days shared by Dorothy Kimmel Newlin.
One and all, the Kimmels responded patiently to our myriad questions—in the case of Tom and Manning, questions that persisted until the book went to the printer. It was unique, in our experience, to come upon an extended family so committed—three generations on—to the search for vindication that their forebear pursued to the end of his life. Clearing his name, they fervently believe, is a cause justified not only by family loyalty but by the facts. Those most involved in fighting Kimmel’s cause hoped our work would help that cause, but insisted that what matters above all is historical truth. “Let the chips fall where they may,” one of the grandsons said to us at the outset. We have striven to bring out the facts, some of them hitherto unknown.
We thank all the family members named above, especially Harriott Kimmel, who—in her early nineties—twice submitted to interview. We thank, too, Virginia Kimmel Herrick and her husband Steven; Husband Kimmel II and his wife Susan; William Kimmel and his wife Gail; Harriott Kimmel Silliman and her husband Henry; Edward Kimmel Jr. and his wife Rebecca; John Newlin; Cassin Kimmel Williams and her husband Paul; and Singleton Kimmel. Tom Kimmel Jr.’s wife Judy and Manning Kimmel IV’s wife Sheilah both contributed in many ways—not least with endless hospitality.
More than seven decades after the Pearl Harbor attack, we expected few if any veterans of 1941 to have survived—let alone be available to share their thoughts on the details of the catastrophe. All the more welcome was it, then, to discover that centenarian Vice Admiral David Richardson was alive and cheerfully helpful. Richardson, who as a young pilot flew out of Pearl Harbor in 1940, had gone on to distinguish himself at Guadalcanal, eventually rise to command the U.S. Sixth Fleet, and then—his career took him full circle—to retire as Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet. He was a tireless advocate of posthumous restoration of Admiral Kimmel’s four stars. Ambassador William vanden Heuvel, who had been an aide to Office of Strategic Services chief William Donovan, corrected a published suggestion that Donovan told him that President Roosevelt indicated he had had a degree of foreknowledge of the attack on Hawaii.
John Hanify, whose father was a key member of the legal team that served Admiral Kimmel, shared both his recollections and his privately held documents. John Connorton Jr., son of the man who conducted a post–Pearl Harbor review of MAGIC intercepts of Japanese messages for the Office of Naval Communications, recalled his father’s conclusion that the Admiral was a scapegoat. Michael Smith, a former codebreaker, now an author who has written on intercepts of Japanese traffic in World War II, offered guidance. Bruce Lee, coauthor with Henry Clausen of Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement—an account of the latter’s one-man probe conducted for the Secretary of War—and later author of a book of his own, Marching Orders, was generous with his time. Both books contain pertinent information on MAGIC.
Of the very many books on or related in one way or another to Pearl Harbor, some are of special note. Gordon Prange, professor of history at the University of Maryland, studied the disaster for thirty-seven years, only to die before his work was published. His books At Dawn We Slept and Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History, published in the 1980s with the collaboration of Donald Goldstein and Katherine Dillon, are indispensable—as are his papers, held by the university. The collection holds the product of the almost two hundred interviews conducted by Prange, and they are invaluable. Though compact, the 2001 book Pearl Harbor Betrayed, by Michael Gannon, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Florida, is also indispensable.
So too is The Accused: The Ordeal of Rear Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, U.S.N. by Donald Brownlow, who benefited in 1968 from interviews with Kimmel himself and others—notably Admiral Stark. Roberta Wohlstetter’s 1962 book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, which won the Bancroft Prize, is renowned for its scholarship. Wohlstetter, an analyst at the Rand Corporation, interviewed among others former Pacific Fleet intelligence officer Edwin Layton; Commander Arthur McCollum, former chief of the Far Eastern Section of the Office of Naval Intelligence; and key cryptanalysts. The 1981 compilation of key oral history interviews by Paul Stillwell, of the U.S. Naval Institute’s journal Proceedings, is a vital resource. David Kahn’s The Codebreakers, a 1966 history of codes and ciphers, remains seminal.
Books like ours are made possible by the quiet help of those who manage archives across the nation. We thank: Matthew de Salvo of the LibTech section of the University of Central Florida; Anne Turkos and Jason Speck in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Maryland; Scott Reilly and Dara Baker at the U.S. Naval War College’s Historical Collection; Dale “Joe” Gordon, reference archivist for the Naval History and Heritage Command at Washington’s Navy Yard, and his colleagues John Hodges and Glenn Gray; Mark Savolis, archivist of Special Collections at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts; Kathryn Dundon of Special Collections at the University of California at Santa Cruz; Tammy Williams of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri; Steven Shafer and Nathaniel Patch of the National Archives at College Park; and those who helped us in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Special thanks are due for the help over many months of Sarah Malcolm and her colleagues at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.
We acknowledge the willing cooperation of others in several countries. In the United States: Ruthanne Annaloro, who graciously arranged meetings with her father, Vice Admiral David Richardson; Christopher O’Connor, for his original research on the 1940 raid by British aircraft against Italian battleships at Taranto; attorney James Lesar, who introduced us years ago to the tangled tale of how Washington handled, or mishandled, early intelligence on a possible attack on Pearl Harbor.
In Canada: retired Lieutenant-Colonel Angelo Caravaggio, former director of the Centre for National Security Studies at the Canadian Forces College, conferred with us on the Taranto raid; and Alicia Floyd, Collections Technician at the City of St. Catherines Museum in Ontario, helped us to access documents relating to supposed foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. In the United Kingdom, Mark Dunton of the National Archives at Kew and Andrew Riley, Senior Archivist at the Churchill Archives in Cambridge, dealt patiently with our questions about alleged British foreknowledge, and about allegations that material is still being withheld; Chris Williams guided us toward archive material on Frederick Rutland, a former Royal Air Force officer who spied for the Japanese; John Simkin shared his information on British Security Coordination; and Sian Padgett, Archives Research Manager at the UK Hydrographic Office, supplied charts of the Italian port at Taranto. From France, Marco Popov worked with us—as he did years ago during research for our biography of J. Edgar Hoover—on the mission by his father, British double agent Dusko, to warn Washington of Japan’s intentions.
Our own researchers served us handsomely. In particular, Jacob Williams, in Washington, proved indefatigable. Ariel Robinson went back and forth to the National Archives for us at an early stage. In the UK, we had the benefit of Dr. Kathryn Castle’s experience in the successful effort to obtain a key document at the National Archives. In Germany, Josie Le Blond and Hannah Cleaver proved swift and able. In the Netherlands, our friend Tim van der Knaap relentlessly chased elusive Dutch leads.
In Ireland, the stalwart Sinéad Sweeney transcribed many hours of recording with sensitivity. Sam Brittain built a very large file system from scratch. Pauline Lombard maintained it, as she has on eight previous projects. Emma-Louise O’Shea and Caroline Virtue did marathon Xeroxing. Emily Evans did a stint as an intern and survived. Moss McCarthy of LED Technology continued to solve our computer problems. Ger Killalea kept the office functioning.
This has been, more than usually, a complex and highly pressured operation—one made possible by the people at our publisher HarperCollins. Claire Wachtel saw the potential at the outset, and Jonathan Jao steered the project to completion, ably assisted by Sofia Groopman. We owe much to the professionalism, experience, and wisdom of our editor, Roger Labrie. Copy editor Susan Gamer guided us on the last lap. Our publisher, Jonathan Burnham, understood the challenge of a subject that has sparked controversy for decades, and instilled confidence in us when the going was toughest. Yet a third Jonathan, who has seen A Matter of Honor from concept to publication, is our longtime agent and trusted friend, Curtis Brown chairman Jonathan Lloyd. (As all his clients know, his able assistant Lucia Walker really runs the show . . .)
We are indebted once again to friends and close family. Miles Kara, a former Army intelligence officer, read the manuscript—in the spirit of comradeship—and helped us avoid some military howlers. Jo Deutsch and Teresa Williams, in Washington, extended hospitality better than any hotel could offer. Robbyn’s mother Theresa saw us through the months as she always has done, and both she and Pete Swan even went to the FDR Library for us. Sons Ronan and Colm Summers were press-ganged to do vital work, and did it excellently well. Fionn and Lara put up with us—again.
Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
Ireland, 2016