Pearl Harbor Betrayed

by Michael Gannon

  At the order of Roosevelt, who wanted to restore the public’s confidence in the two services as quickly as possible, the Navy and War Departments issued simultaneous orders on the sixteenth relieving Admiral Kimmel of his command and displacing General Short as well as his Hawaiian Air Force commander General Martin. Yielding both CINCPAC and CINCUS, Kimmel was assigned to “temporary duty in the Fourteenth Naval District.” Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was assigned to CINCPAC and (temporarily) to CINCUS with the rank of admiral. Pending Nimitz’s arrival at Pearl, temporary command of the Pacific Fleet would be held by Vice Admiral Pye, commander, Battle Force. The Army replaced its ground and air commanders in Hawaii with two Air Corps officers, Lt. Gen. Delos C. Emmons and Brig. Gen. Clarence L. Tinker, respectively. Martin apparently paid the price for Short’s decision to bunch up his aircraft on the ground, where many were easily destroyed. Altogether, The New York Times declared, the changes in command constituted “one of the most drastic shake-ups in American military and naval history.”36

  Knox’s published report of Navy losses at Pearl combined with the relief of Kimmel had the effect of fixing Kimmel in the public mind as the principal miscreant in the debacle, however weak the evidence against him. The Army, which had primary responsibility for protecting Pearl and the fleet, was barely mentioned in the recriminations that now swept the country. Nor were the War and Navy Departments cited as having any particular responsibility for the defeat. The lion’s share of the blame belonged to Kimmel, the country was led to believe, because he was the one who lost the ships and most of the lives. Kimmel’s discharge from command before the “formal investigation” even began had the further effect of branding him publicly as derelict in his duty.

  * * *

  In CINCPAC headquarters, at 1500 on the seventeenth, Rear Admiral Kimmel and Vice Admiral Pye read their orders to each other and shook hands. Kimmel said good-bye to his downhearted staff and retired to his quarters. Pye now inherited direction of the Wake relief expedition being led at sea by Fletcher in Saratoga. At 1000 on the twenty-first (Wake time) Wake radioed that it was under heavy air attack by carrier-borne dive-bombers; at noon it reported severe damage inflicted by seventeen heavy bombers. Certain to follow in a day or two was a second and larger landing force. By 2000 on the twenty-first Fletcher was just 500 miles distant from the beleaguered atoll. But instead of pressing forward at twenty knots to be in position to attack such a landing force at or before dawn on the twenty-third he took a time-out—ten hours—on the twenty-second to refuel four of his eight destroyers from the fleet oiler USS Neches, which Kimmel had dispatched ahead. As a result, by 0800 on the twenty-third Saratoga was only ninety miles closer to Wake than she had been twenty-four hours earlier. Meanwhile, the bombing of Wake continued, and, as expected, a formidable invasion force, attended by carriers Soryu and Hiryu as well as by heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma, all detached from Nagumo’s Kido Butai on its homeward voyage, assembled offshore. Landings began at 0235 on the twenty-third and by 0500 an overwhelming number of Japanese troops controlled a solid beachhead.37

  At Pearl, Pye, his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Milo F. Draemel, and Soc McMorris deliberated on what further could be done. All three concluded that Wake could no longer be relieved. But should Saratoga proceed to engage the enemy, regardless? The country needed a victory. Pye decided no. He ordered Fletcher to retire. To Stark he reported, “The conservation of our naval forces became the first consideration.” On Saratoga the order to withdraw angered officers from the bridge to the flight deck; Marine pilots bent on saving their service-mates on Wake raged at the pusillanimity. But it was too late for Wake, which surrendered directly after Pye’s order. Saratoga’s aircraft may not have reached the Japanese carriers and cruisers even if they tried, since that supporting force began retiring to the westward shortly after the landings. Even so, the withdrawal of Saratoga left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Navy and Marine personnel—more bitter for some than what had happened on the seventh. Samuel Eliot Morison, the official historian of U.S. naval operations in World War II, concluded in his account of the fiasco, “If Admiral Kimmel had been allowed to retain the Pacific Fleet command a few days longer, Wake might have been relieved, and there would certainly have been a battle.”38

  * * *

  On 16 December Roosevelt appointed a five-man commission consisting of two Army officers, two Navy officers, and a civilian “to investigate the losses and to make recommendations.”39 White House press secretary Stephen Early stated that “if it [commission] finds that negligence contributed to the losses it will fix responsibility for them.”40 Upon the recommendation of Stimson, Roosevelt chose for the chairman Owen J. Roberts, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Roberts had gained national attention as a prosecutor in the Teapot Dome oil scandal. As the only member of the Court who had not been appointed by Roosevelt—Herbert Hoover named him in 1930—Roberts was thought to be a neutral, objective choice, and press reaction was favorable. For the Navy members Knox chose Admiral William H. Standley, Retired, chief of Naval Operations from 1933 to 1937, and a member of the United States delegation to the London Disarmament Conference in 1934; and white-whiskered Rear Admiral Joseph M. Reeves, Retired, holder of the Navy Cross and first naval aviator to serve as Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, from 1934 to 1936. Stimson chose Maj. Gen. Frank R. McCoy, Retired, holder of the Silver Star, veteran of campaigns in Cuba and the Philippines, and member of the general staff in France (1918); and General Marshall selected an airman and the only actively serving officer on the commission, Brig. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney, a World War I Army Air Service veteran.

  The commission got off to a questionable start on 17 December by accepting Stimson’s invitation to meet privately with him and Knox in the former’s office. Their conversation was unsworn and unrecorded. Conversations of the same character took place the next day between the commission members and such key witnesses as Marshall, Stark, Turner, Gerow, Wilkinson, Miles, and Bratton.41 It is unlikely that the leadership of the War and Navy Departments did not exploit this unusual opportunity to prepare the ground for the commission’s deliberations, if not its findings. Certainly, in unsworn and unrecorded testimony, the temptation to deflect blame from the departments in Washington to Hawaii would have been strong.

  In the course of those meetings, somewhat surprisingly, the commissioners were briefed on Magic, though the import of the decryptions seems not to have impressed Roberts: “The magic was not shown to us,” he told the JCC in 1945. “I would not have bothered to read it if it had been shown to us. All I wanted to know was whether the commanders had been advised of the criticalness of the situation.”42 As Robert Neuleib has pointed out, Roberts’s 1945 testimony implied “that he viewed the purpose of the commission much like that of a grand jury investigation. He was to see if there were enough facts to indict, and it would be up to someone else to gather the proper evidence for an actual trial.” Roberts thus had set a low threshold for damaging statements to be made and accepted against the Hawaiian commanders without any care for their probative value. The fact that the decrypted intercepts existed and that, on their basis, Kimmel and Short had been sent a warning, “was sufficient for an indictment.”43

  * * *

  The Roberts Commission, as it came to be called, commenced sworn, recorded hearings in Hawaii on 22 December. Short was the first major witness, on the twenty-third. Kimmel’s first appearance was on the twenty-seventh. Both former commanders made strong, confident defenses of their performances. At the same time, both acknowledged that they had made mistakes. Short said, “I think that we [the Army] made a very serious mistake when we didn’t go to an alert against an all out attack.”44 Kimmel conceded that he underestimated the importance of the code burning message, and that his judgment on torpedoes running in Pearl’s shallow water had been “entirely wrong.”45 The commanders’ testimony, and that of other principals, has been considered in the Pearl Harbor literature many times and
need not be repeated here. But one constant refrain in the commission’s questioning does bear mention: it was the charge advanced time and again that Kimmel and Short failed to confer with each other about the meaning of the warning messages sent them on 27 November by the War and Navy Departments and about the specific actions that each intended to take in the light of those messages. No single matter is dealt with at greater length in the commission record than that one.46 Although it recognized that the two men did confer at length on 27 November, 1, 2, and 3 December, the commission observed that the subjects of their conversations seemed not to include the defensive deployment each had made, with the result that each was unaware of the other’s exact alert status; as specific examples, Kimmel did not know that Short’s radar was operating only for a limited number of hours each day, and Short did not know that Kimmel was not conducting distant aerial reconnaissance.

  When the commission members wrote the report of their findings, which was presented to Roosevelt on 24 January, it was the “no conference on warnings or orders” issue that they chose as the frame within which to deliver their predictable indictment: dereliction of duty.47

  Roosevelt released the entire report to the press and radio on the following day. The charge of dereliction that it contained was red meat to the reporters, as it was also to an angry public clamoring for someone to blame. Kimmel and, far less so, Short were roundly condemned in every public arena for “permitting” the catastrophe of Pearl Harbor to take place. Since the commission had found no major fault with their subordinate commanders or with their superiors in Washington, Kimmel and Short were singled out for a nation’s vilification. Kimmel received scores of abusive letters, some suggesting that he be made to retire without a pension, others that he make the only honorable expiation for his treachery, which was suicide. Even U.S. Representative Andrew J. May, chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, proposed in a speech at Pikeville, in Kimmel’s home state of Kentucky, that the admiral should be shot.48 Others in the House demanded a court-martial. Kimmel kept copies of those letters and threats, but it should be pointed out that the collection of his papers at the University of Wyoming contains an equal or greater number of letters showing understanding and support.

  What stung him most was the charge of dereliction of duty. Although there was no such specific charge in the Articles of War, the contrived censure offended his honor as one who had always and faithfully performed his duty. After years of sterling service, it was a tarnish that he found impossible to accept, particularly at the hands of a body of men who had looked at his difficult but faithful duty at Pearl for no more than thirty-four days. He knew, as Neuleib has noted, that it would be difficult for the American people to dislodge this judgment from their minds. The Roberts Commission had provided the nation a “correct” perception: “Kimmel had violated the public image of what an admiral should be and do.”49

  The dereliction charge would not be repeated in any of the findings of the subsequent eight formal investigations, boards, inquiries, and hearings about the Pearl Harbor attack that took place from 1944 to 1995.50 Indeed, some thirteen years after the Roberts report was disseminated, one of the commission members, Admiral Standley, looking back on what he called the “irregularity,” “inaccurate reporting,” and “unfairness” of the commission’s proceedings, expressed his regret that Kimmel and Short had not instead been given general courts-martial, in which they would have been afforded rights denied them by the commission: to have counsel, to introduce evidence, to be present during the testimony of witnesses, and to cross-examine witnesses. (Kimmel was not permitted to read the full testimony of others until 1944.) Said Standley: “Thus, these two officers were martyred, as it were, for in my opinion, if they had been brought to trial, both would have been cleared of the charge of neglect of duty.”51

  Kimmel, like Short, retired from his service soon afterward. But, unlike Short, he fought back vigorously throughout the next two years. Specifically, he sought a court-martial. The Navy finally, in July 1944, granted him an equivalent court of inquiry, in which he would have all the same rights as a defendant in a court-martial. While preparing for those proceedings, he was approached by cryptanalyst Capt. Laurance Safford, who, angered to discover that Kimmel had been denied Magic, gave the former CINCPAC a verbal account of the most critical decrypts affecting Hawaii. “This information made me almost sick,” Kimmel told Prange in 1963.52 With the help of attorneys Charles Rugg, Capt. Robert A. Lavender, USN, and Lt. Edward F. Hanify, USNR, Kimmel forced the Navy to provide him access to the pre–Pearl Harbor Magic. And he broke off all personal relations with Stark.

  Presiding over the Navy court of inquiry were Admiral Orin G. Murfin, USN (Ret.), Admiral Edward C. Kalbfus, USN (Ret.), and Vice Admiral Adolphus Andrews, USN, with Comdr. Harold Biesemeier, USN, judge advocate. After three months of taking testimony and reading documents, the court found, among eighteen specific findings:

  That relations between Kimmel and Short were cordial, and that there was “no failure to cooperate on the part of either, and that each was cognizant of the measures being undertaken by the other for the defense of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base to the degree required by the common interest.”

  That Kimmel’s action “in ordering that no routine, long-range reconnaissance be undertaken was sound and that the use of fleet patrol planes for daily, long-range, all-around reconnaissance was not possible with the inadequate number of fleet planes available.…”

  That Kimmel’s decision “to continue preparations of the Pacific Fleet for war was sound in the light of the information then available to him.”

  That the “war warning” message of 27 November “directed attention away from Pearl Harbor rather than toward it.”

  That Admiral Stark “failed to display the sound judgment expected of him” in that, on the morning of 7 December, “he did not transmit immediately the fact that a message had been received which appeared to indicate that a break in diplomatic relations was imminent, and that an attack in the Hawaiian area might be expected soon.”

  That, even with a last-minute telephoned warning, “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.”53

  The findings constituted the first time that anyone in high position in the Navy Department was brought to account as wholly or partially responsible for what happened at Pearl Harbor. Stark’s performance was held to two standards, or principles, that were policy in 1941, as they are today:

  He who denies intelligence to commanders shares in the blame for any disaster that results.

  When a commander denies information to subordinates who command the forces he provided them to accomplish the missions he assigned he controls what they do and do not do.54

  An Army Pearl Harbor Board was in session during the same three months. In October it submitted to the War Department a set of findings that came down hard on General Gerow, less severely on General Marshall, and least harshly on General Short. Gerow was declared to have “failed in his duties” in that (1) he failed to keep Short “adequately informed” on the impending war situation; (2) he approved a warning message to Short on 27 November that “contained confusing statements”; (3) he failed to correct Short’s actions pursuant to the 27 November message; and (4) he did not take steps to implement the existing joint defense plans of the Army and Navy in Hawaii. Marshall was criticized for (1) not having kept Short informed of the “growing tenseness” of the Japanese situation; (2) for, like Gerow, not correcting Short’s reply to the 27 November warning; (3) for not sending additional warnings to Short on the evening of 6 December and in the early morning of the seventh; and (4) for not investigating and determining the “state of readiness of the Hawaiian Command between 27 November and 7 December.” Short was concluded to have “failed in his duties” by (1) adopting an alert against sabotage only instead of guarding “against surprise to the extent possible�
��; (2) failing to implement the joint Army-Navy defense plans; and (3) by not informing himself “of the effectiveness of the long-distance reconnaissance being conducted by the Navy.”55

  Before Kimmel learned of his exculpation it was snatched away from him by CNO-CINCUS Admiral King. In a second endorsement (opinion) to the court of inquiry dated 3 November 1944, King overturned its findings where Kimmel was concerned. His reason: CINCPAC should have conducted long-range air searches at least “in the more dangerous sectors.”56 Which these were he did not say, but on that basis he charged Kimmel anew with “dereliction,” and urged the newly appointed Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal to concur, which the secretary did in his own endorsement.57 On the dismal anniversary day of 7 December 1944 King invited Kimmel to his office to convey the bad news in person. When he heard it, Kimmel wondered if the testimony and the findings of the court were not to the contrary (they were), and in an aide-mémoire written afterward he expressed his stupefaction in capital letters: “KING SAID THAT HE HAD NOT READ THE TESTIMONY GIVEN BEFORE THE COURT.”58 (Nor, it turned out, had Admiral King written his own endorsement; it was authored by Vice Admiral Richard S. Edward, his deputy chief of staff.59 Nor had King even read his endorsement before signing it.60) Perhaps King read the court testimony in the postwar years, since in 1948 he wrote to the secretary of the Navy softening the language of his endorsement—Kimmel’s were “errors of judgment,” he wrote, “as distinguished from culpable inefficiency”—though without retracting the word “dereliction.”61