4. The Scapegoats

Chapter Four

THE SCAPEGOATS

IN THE excitement and confusion on December 7, 1941, it was not immediately noticed that the leaders of the Roosevelt administration were frantically scurrying about proving their surprise and injury, shouldering the blame for the disaster at Pearl Harbor away from themselves. Events were moving too fast for citizens to detect that the disengaging tactics of the politicians were far more successful than had been those of the Pacific fleet.

The Japanese declaration of war was announced by imperial headquarters two hours and thirty-five minutes after the attack.* Premier Shidehara explained after Japan’s surrender four years later that an “error in procedure” prevented the declaration from reaching the State Department in Washington before the attack.¹ Adm. Nagano, commander of the combined imperial fleets, said the Japanese plan was to send notification to the United States at 7:30 A.M., Hawaii time, on December 7, 1941. The necessary time lapse, he explained, between dispatch of such a message, its decoding by the Japanese embassy in Washington, and its delivery to the State Department, would mean at best a notification virtually simultaneous with the attack.

“At first,” Nagano said, “we were going to give a one-hour notice before the attack, but the United States was fully prepared and its communications excellent, so it was shortened to thirty minutes’ notice.”²

On Monday Mr. Roosevelt sent his message to Congress calling for a declaration of war. The declaration was approved by both houses with one dissenting vote—that of Representative Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who had also voted against war with Germany in 1917.³Britain, Canada, Australia, and Holland had already declared war against the Japanese.⁴ On Thursday, December 11, Germany and Italy, acting under their tripartite pact commitments to Japan, declared war against the United States.⁵ The same day Congress passed resolutions declaring the existence of a state of war with these two nations⁶ after receiving a message in which President Roosevelt said: “The long known and the long expected has taken place.”⁷ This equivocal expression implied that Germany and Italy had long been meditating an attack upon the United States. Again the vote was unanimous for war, with the exception of Miss Rankin, who voted “present” in each instance.

Meanwhile, there had been ominous reports of the losses at Pearl Harbor. The first Japanese claims were that the battleships “West Virginia” and “Oklahoma” had been sunk and that four other capital ships and four cruisers had been damaged.⁸ The first report from the American government came from the White House on December 8. About 3,000 casualties, equally divided between dead and wounded, were acknowledged by Roosevelt, while it was said that one old battleship had capsized, a destroyer had blown up, several other smaller ships had been seriously damaged, a large number of planes had been put out of commission, and several hangars destroyed in the bombing of Army and Navy air fields.⁹

The President on December 7 knew the true extent of the losses. Some of his alarm and dismay were communicated to the Cabinet members and congressional leaders who attended him in the White House that night. Roosevelt told them:

The casualties, I am sorry to say, were extremely heavy. I cannot say anything definite in regard to the number of ships that have been sunk. It looks as if out of eight battleships, three have been sunk, and possibly a fourth. Two destroyers were blown up while they were in drydock. Two of the battleships are badly damaged. Several other smaller vessels have been sunk or destroyed. The drydock itself has been damaged. . . .

Now I think that is all there is in the way of information, but it has been suggested that the Army and Navy losses, and the rather definite statements I have made about these ships, could not be spoken of outside, because we must remember that detailed military information, such as the damage to ships, or even the loss of personnel—that information is of value to an enemy. I think that is a matter of discretion, which all of you will accept.¹⁰

The first “official” report on the damage was to come from Secretary Knox. At 8:00 A.M., December 9, Knox left Washington in his own plane, “conscious,” as Davis and Lindley put it, “of his share in the blame for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. . . . The Secretary of the Navy regarded his mission as an expiation.”¹¹

Upon his return to Washington, December 15, Knox hurried to the White House and conferred with Roosevelt. Later he called the press to his office and announced a total of 2,897 Army and Navy dead, 879 wounded, and 26 missing. The “Arizona,” “Utah,” “Shaw,” “Cassin,” “Downes,” and “Oglala,” he said, had been sunk; the “Oklahoma” was capsized but salvageable, and other vessels had suffered damage requiring repairs of a week to several months.¹²

Knox’s published report had been prepared with the assistance of Comdr. Leland P. Lovette, whom the Secretary found at Pearl Harbor, where Lovette was commander of Destroyer Division 5, which included the “Cassin,” “Downes,” and “Shaw,” all of which had been wrecked in the Jap attack.¹³ Lovette, subsequently to be named director of Navy public relations by Knox, was an officer-author of some reputation. The statement which he and Knox drew up for submission to the public emphasized the heroism of the men at Pearl Harbor, but carefully refrained from giving the American people anything like a true accounting of the damage suffered by the fleet.

More important than what Knox chose to tell the people was the decision which he and Roosevelt reached at their conference preceding the release of the report. It would not be known for another four years that, although Knox in a private report to Roosevelt at this very meeting did not impute exclusive or even specific blame to the Hawaiian commanders,¹⁴ Kimmel and Short were then assigned the role of scapegoats for the disaster. Adm. Stark, chief of naval operations in 1941, testified at the Congressional investigation in 1945 that the first thing Knox did after conferring with the President was to issue orders for the removal of Adm. Kimmel as commander of the Pacific fleet. Asked whether Knox’s action was based on orders from Roosevelt, Stark said, “You always need the President’s permission to remove a fleet commander.”¹⁵

At his press conference, however, Knox made no admission that any such action would be taken. “The United States services were not on the alert against a surprise attack on Hawaii,” his report stated. “This fact calls for a formal investigation which will be initiated immediately by the President. Further action is, of course, dependent on the facts and recommendations made by this investigating board.”

Knox sought to create the impression that any assessment of blame would await later investigation by an impartial commission. The impression he gave the press and the nation was wholly disingenuous. He and the President had already decided to put the onus on Kimmel and Short. The commanders were relieved of their posts, but the announcement was held up for two days, until December 17. Maj. Gen. Martin, commander of the Army Air Forces in Hawaii, was relieved at the same time.¹⁶

On December 16 Roosevelt, moved by a rising tide of indignation in Congress which made it apparent that an investigation by that body was likely, forestalled independent inquiry by appointing his own investigating commission.¹⁷ This was a five-man board of inquiry headed by Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts of the United States Supreme Court, who had been a proponent of war as a means of achieving world-government.¹⁸

The other members were two retired admirals, Rear Adm. William H. Standley, former chief of naval operations, and Rear Adm. Joseph M. Reeves, former commander-in-chief of the United States fleet, Maj. Gen. Frank R. McCoy, retired, and Joseph T. McNarney, a brigadier general on the active list of the Army Air Corps. McNarney later was promoted to the rank of four-star general, became deputy chief of staff, second only to Gen. Marshall in the Army hierarchy, and, finally, commander of all occupation forces in Europe. The selection of these men was not accidental. Reeves was the first commander-in-chief of the fleet to take it to Pearl Harbor. He was therefore disqualified from criticizing the selection of Pearl Harbor as its base. Standley, retired in 1937, was recalled to active duty March 6, 1941, and would not be disposed to criticize the decisions of the Navy leadership in Washington, of which he had formerly been a ranking member as chief of naval operations. McCoy, as president of the Foreign Policy Association, per se was a staunch supporter of Roosevelt’s diplomacy. McNarney was a member of the Marshall clique which ran the War Department. Since 1939 he had been a member of the general staff, which was responsible for the failure to build up the defenses of Pearl Harbor and which withheld knowledge of Japanese designs and intentions from the field commanders.

Four of these men later were the recipients of honor and favors from the Roosevelt administration. Five and one-half years after his retirement with the rank of rear admiral, Reeves was promoted to admiral on the retired list June 16, 1942. This was five months after he had signed the Roberts report. Standley was decorated by Roosevelt with the Distinguished Service Medal after signing the report, and was appointed ambassador to Russia, a post which he held in 1942 and 1943. McCoy was appointed chairman of the Far Eastern Advisory Commission when allied control was established following the surrender of Japan. McNamey’s meteoric rise in the Army has been described.

Roosevelt, in fixing jurisdiction, charged the commission with determining whether “any derelictions of duty or error of judgment on the part of United States Army or Navy personnel contributed to such successes as were achieved by the enemy” in “the attack made by Japanese forces upon the territory of Hawaii.” These instructions were intended to exclude consideration of the behavior of official Washington.

Roosevelt had already tried the case. Without calling witnesses, he found Kimmel and Short guilty, condemned them, and carried out his sentence. He announced their removal from command the very day that the Roberts Commission assembled in Washington. Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that the President’s hand-picked commission should report findings to order. On January 24 it submitted a report to Roosevelt which held that Kimmel and Short were guilty of “dereliction of duty.”*¹⁹

The report ignored many vital considerations and its findings on points of major importance were contradicted in both the Army and Navy reports of a later day and in testimony before the Congressional Investigating Committee. In addition, the findings of the commission were based upon misinformation and errors in fact. The minority report of the Joint Congressional Committee (p. 3) remarks:

It is extremely unfortunate that the Roberts Commission report was so hasty, inconclusive, and incomplete. Some witnesses were examined under oath; others were not. Much testimony was not even recorded. The commission knew that Japanese messages had been intercepted and were available, prior to the attack, to the high command in Washington. The commission did not inquire about what information these intercepts contained, who received them, or what was done about them, although the failure of Washington to inform the commanders in Hawaii of this vital intelligence bears directly on the question of whether those commanders performed their full duties. Mr. Justice Roberts testified before this committee: “I would not have bothered to read it [the intercepted Japanese traffic] if it had been shown to us (Tr., Vol. 47, p. 8836).”

If it were necessary to do so, detailed examples of the many short-comings of the Roberts Commission could be set forth. . . . It should be noted, however, that Justice Roberts had sufficient legal experience to know the proper method of collecting and preserving evidence which in this case involved the highest interests of the nation. The facts were then fresh in the minds of key witnesses in Washington. They could not then have been ignorant of their whereabouts at important times or have forgotten the details of events and operations. No files would have been “lost” and no information would have been distorted by the passage of time. The failure to observe these obvious necessities is almost as tragic to the cause of truth as the attack on Pearl Harbor itself was a tragedy for the nation.

For example, although the report did not mention that the United States had cracked the Japanese code months before Pearl Harbor, the commission had been informed by the chief of naval intelligence, Adm. Wilkinson, that all of the information from Jap code intercepts had been sent to the Hawaiian commanders. In fact, only a few of the hundreds of these messages, and none of major importance, had been relayed to Kimmel and Short. Four years later, when he was examined by the congressional Pearl Harbor investigating committee, Wilkinson “corrected” the statements he had given the Roberts Commission.²¹

The report held that Short’s alert against sabotage “was not adequate,” but had only the gentlest sort of criticism for his superiors in Washington, who had been informed by him of the action he had taken and had not even responded, let alone ordered him to go on an all-out alert. It criticized Kimmel for not taking “appropriate measures” in view of “war warnings,” but held that in ordering attacks to be made upon Japanese submarines found in operating areas around Oahu, he had exceeded the authority given him by the Navy Department.

The commission greatly emphasized such information as could be construed to have given the Hawaiian commanders warning that war was imminent, but it withheld reference to the far more vital intelligence which was not transmitted to Hawaii. Of seven warning messages from Washington to Short and Kimmel which were recorded in the Roberts report, no less than four referred to the danger of sabotage. Not one suggested the possibility of surprise air attack.

These so-called warnings were so qualified by hampering instructions that the Army Board of Inquiry in its report, drafted in October, 1944, called them “do-don’t” messages. The actual effect of the messages was to transfer responsibility from Washington to the field commanders if anything went wrong, but so to tie the hands of the commanders and restrict the course of action open to them that they were in no position to meet the attack when it came. The Roberts report devoted no attention to the fact that Washington had definite and detailed intelligence in the days preceding the attack that war was coming within predictable limits of time and had ample reason to believe the Jap blow would fall on Pearl Harbor.

On December 7, Gen. Marshall had opportunity to warn the Hawaii commanders that all evidence available to Washington indicated that an attack was coming. He sent a message, but its transmission was so botched that it reached Gen. Short seven hours too late. The Roberts report stated that at about 6:30 A.M., Honolulu time, Marshall dispatched “an additional warning message indicating an almost immediate break in relations between the United States and Japan.” It continued, “Every effort was made to have the message reach Hawaii in the briefest possible time, but due to conditions beyond the control of any one concerned, the delivery of this urgent message was delayed until after the attack.” The message, the report said, was “intended to reach both commanders in the field at about 7:00 A.M., Hawaii time,” but the report adds that even “if the message had reached its destination at the time intended, it would still have been too late” because dispositions made by Kimmel and Short “were inadequate to meet a surprise air attack.” By such statements, the commission glossed over Marshall’s mishandling of a crucial dispatch which could have averted much of the damage suffered at Hawaii.*

The commission, although charged with seeking derelictions of duty and errors of judgment only among Army and Navy officers, was at pains to state that Gen. Marshall, Adm. Stark, and Secretaries Hull, Stimson, and Knox had discharged their responsibilities. In Conclusion 17, however, it implied that these officials did bear some responsibility, after all. It said that the dereliction of Kimmel and Short consisted of failing to “consult and confer . . . respecting the meaning and intent of the warnings” dispatched from Washington. It need hardly be said that such action would not have been necessary if the warnings were clear and precise.† By a curious exercise of inverted logic, the commission also advanced the contention that because Washington was keeping them in the dark on the vital intelligence obtained from Japanese code intercepts, Kimmel and Short by some process of clairvoyance should have realized the necessity of placing a more urgent degree of readiness in effect. The report said in this connection, “Both commanders were handicapped by lack of information as to Japanese dispositions and intent. The lack of such knowledge rendered more urgent the initiation of a state of readiness for defense.” Kimmel and Short did not know until much later that Washington even possessed information of the character which was being withheld from them.

Adm. Kimmel said that the Roberts Commission had informed him that he was not on trial. Kimmel, upon later inspection of the record of his own testimony, said that he found so many errors in the record that he spent two days correcting it, only to have the board refuse to change his statements as recorded originally. All that the investigators would do finally was to attach the corrected statement to the minutes. He said of the commission, “It permitted me to testify—that’s all.”²²

Gen. Short said that upon his relief from command in Hawaii he had reached Oklahoma City when he read the report of the Roberts Commission in the press. He said:

When I read the findings of the Roberts Commission, I was dumbfounded. To be accused of dereliction of duty after almost 40 years of loyal and competent service was beyond my comprehension. I immediately called Gen. Marshall on the telephone. He was an old and trusted friend of 39 years’ standing. I asked him what I should do—having the country and war in mind should I retire? He replied, “Stand pat, but if it becomes necessary I will use this conversation as authority.”

Short said that, having faith in Marshall’s “judgment and loyalty,” he wrote Marshall a personal letter and inclosed a formal application for retirement, to be used only if Marshall thought it desirable. His covering letter was not produced in evidence before the congressional committee, but a memorandum from Marshall to Secretary Stimson on January 26, 1942, reporting Short’s telephone call of the day before, stated, “I am now of the opinion that we should accept Gen. Short’s application for retirement today and do this quietly, without any publicity at the moment. Adm. Stark has requested me to advise him if we do this, as he proposes to communicate this fact to Kimmel in the hope that Kimmel will likewise apply for retirement.” This correspondence demonstrates that, the day after reassuring Short, Marshall took steps in secret to get rid of him.

The War Department’s order accepting Short’s application for retirement was drafted after Stimson consulted Attorney General Francis J. Biddle as to how it should be worded. As finally phrased, Short’s retirement was “accepted without condonation of any offense or prejudice to any future disciplinary action.” The implication of this language was that Short faced court-martial action at some future date, and its effect was to seal his lips and to prevent him from making any defense of himself until he should be called for trial.²³

Once in possession of Short’s resignation, Roosevelt, Knox, and Stimson proceeded to use it as a lever to induce Kimmel to retire. Adm. Stark notified him on orders from Secretary Knox that Short had asked to be retired. “I took this as a suggestion and I submitted a similar request,” Kimmel said. “Up to that time I never considered retiring. It had not even entered my head, but I thought it over and decided that if the Navy wanted it that way, I would not stand in the way.”

Kimmel thereupon forwarded a request for retirement to Washington, but two days after sending his application was informed by Stark that the notification of Gen. Short’s application was not meant to influence him. Although he then modified his request for retirement by telling the Navy he wanted to do whatever would best serve the country, he received a letter from Knox on February 16 peremptorily ordering him to retire as of March 1, also “without condonation of any offense or prejudice to future disciplinary action.”

Six days afterward, in a letter to Stark, Kimmel said of this qualifying clause,

I do not understand this paragraph unless it is to be published to the country as a promise that I will be disciplined at some future time. I stand ready at any time to accept the consequences of my acts. I do feel, however, that my crucifixion before the public has about reached the limit. I am in daily receipt of letters from irresponsible people all over the country taking me to task and even threatening to kill me. I am not particularly concerned except as it shows the effect on the public of articles published about me.

I regret the losses at Pearl Harbor just as keenly, or perhaps more keenly, than any other American citizen. I wish that I had been smarter than I was and able to foresee what happened on December 7, but I do think in all justice the department should do nothing further to inflame the public against me.²⁴

Gen. Short expressed similar resentment before the congressional committee. He said:

I do not feel that I have been treated fairly or with justice by the War Department. I was singled out as an example, as the scapegoat for the disaster. My relatively small part in the transaction was not explained to the American people until this joint congressional committee forced the revelation of the facts. I fully appreciate the desire of the War Department to preserve the secrecy of the source of the so-called “Magic” [cracking of the Japanese code], but I am sure that could have been done without any attempt to deceive the public by a false pretense that my judgment had been the sole factor causing the failure of the army to fulfill its mission of defending the navy at Pearl Harbor.

I am sure that an honest confession by the War Department general staff of their failure to anticipate the surprise raid would have been understood by the public, in the long run, and even at the time. Instead, they “passed the buck” to me, and I have kept my silence until the opportunity of this public forum was presented to me.²⁵

Senator Ferguson asked him what meaning he wished to convey when he said he had been made the “scapegoat.”

“I meant just exactly what the common usage meant, that it was some one that they saddled the blame on to get it off of themselves.”

“In other words,” suggested Ferguson, “they were in this position—that some one had to take some blame for what happened at Pearl Harbor, that certain people in Washington that you had named in your opinion were to blame, that they shifted that blame over to you as the commanding general at Hawaii, and therefore made you, in the common language, a scapegoat?”

“That is exactly what I want to convey.”²⁶

Thus the Pearl Harbor commanders were driven in disgrace from their professional careers, having been identified thoroughly in the minds of the public as bearing the sole blame for the Pearl Harbor disaster. The leaders of the Roosevelt administration and of its Army and Navy high command, who were in possession of the untold story of the catastrophe, saw to it that no hint of the concealed facts should leak out. Censorship and the pretext of “national security” enabled them for four years to suppress all facts which could damage them.

These men never confessed that they were in any way at fault or that the slightest blame attached to them. None of them resigned, and in less than a year they went to the country in a national election with the slogan that any political opponent “who had not been right before Pearl Harbor” should be retired by the electorate.

Representative Keefe, in “additional views” appended to the majority report of the Joint Congressional Committee (Maj., pp. 266-Q to 266-S), said of the process employed in retiring the Hawaiian commanders:

The President personally directed the method of handling the requests for retirement of Kimmel and Short. On Jan. 29, 1942, he instituted a three-point program for dealing with the matter. The Army and Navy were to act together. After a week’s waiting they were to announce that Kimmel and Short had applied for retirement and that their applications were under consideration. After another week had passed, public announcement was to be made that the applications had been accepted with the condition that acceptance did not bar subsequent court-martial proceedings. Court-martial proceedings, however, were to be described as impossible without the disclosure of military secrets. The wording of the condition in the acceptance was troublesome to the administration. The President, Secretary Stimson, Secretary Knox, and Attorney General Biddle labored over the language (Tr., pp. 8462, 8464, Ex. 171). The administration wanted to avoid public criticism for having barred court-martial proceedings. On the other hand, it did not wish to stimulate the public or the two officers to expect or demand court-martial proceedings (Tr., p. 8464, 8467). Finally language as suitable as possible was agreed upon. The phrase to be used in accepting the retirement applications was “without condonation of any offense or prejudice to future disciplinary action.” Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short were each retired by letters so worded, dated respectively, Feb. 16 and Feb. 17, 1942. The Secretary of the Navy, in announcing the Navy’s action, stated that he had directed the preparation of charges for court martial of Adm. Kimmel alleging dereliction of duty. The public were informed that a trial could not be held until such time as the public interest and safety would permit.

The public reaction was as planned. Kimmel and Short were considered solely responsible for Pearl Harbor. The Roberts report, considered by Justice Roberts as only an indictment, became, in effect, a conviction. The two officers were helpless. No court martial could be had. They had no way of defending themselves. They remained in ignorance of what evidence the Roberts Commission had heard. Adm. Stark wrote to Adm. Kimmel on Feb. 21, 1942:

“Pending something definite, there is no reason why you should not settle yourself in a quiet nook somewhere and let Old Father Time help the entire situation, which I feel he will—if for no other reason than he always has (Ex. 121).”

The high civilian and military officials in Washington who had skillfully maneuvered Kimmel and Short into the position of exclusive blame knew at the time all the hidden facts about Pearl Harbor, at least as much and probably more than this investigation has been able to uncover. As the two-year statutory period for instituting court-martial proceedings was about to expire, Kimmel and Short were requested by the Secretaries of War and Navy to waive the Statute of Limitations. Adm. Kimmel did so but with the provision that any court martial be held in “open court” (exhibit 171). Gen. Short did likewise (Tr., pp. 8496–99). Similar requests were not made of other officers, not even of those who before this committee publicly accepted responsibility for certain failures of the high command in Washington.

In June of 1944 the Congress directed the Secretaries of War and Navy to conduct investigations into the Pearl Harbor attack. The War Department denied the Army Board of Investigation access to the intercepted messages. Gen. Miles, director of military intelligence at the time of Pearl Harbor, was ordered by Gen. Marshall not to testify on the subject of the intercepts (Tr., p. 11843). For a considerable period the Navy Court of Inquiry was denied access to the same material (exhibit 195). After repeated demands by Adm. Kimmel, the Navy Department released this restriction upon its own court. The War Department finally followed the same course. For the first time, late in the board’s proceedings, Army officers were permitted to testify before the Army Board as to all details regarding the intercepts (Tr., p. 12035). But many important Army witnesses had already testified under the limitations previously ordered.

In the fall of 1944 the Army Board and Navy Court made their reports to the Secretaries of the War and Navy. These reports were critical of the conduct of Adm. Stark and Gen. Marshall. The findings were not made public. The Navy Court exonerated Adm. Kimmel. Adm. Kimmel’s request to read its report was refused by the Secretary of the Navy (Tr., p. 6811). The Secretaries of War and Navy instituted further secret investigations dispensing with the services of the three-man board and court previously established, and each entrusting the conduct of proceedings to a single officer. Adm. Kimmel’s request to be present at the further Navy investigation, to introduce evidence, to confront and cross-examine witnesses, was denied by the Secretary of the Navy (Tr., p. 6812). The affidavits and testimony at the further investigations contain many instances where witnesses gave evidence materially different from that which they had previously sworn to before the army board and the naval court. These changes were especially marked in testimony of certain key witnesses on the subject of the dissemination and evaluation of the intercepted messages in Washington. Again, before this committee these same witnesses further changed their testimony from that sworn to twice previously, or pleaded lapses of memory.

The record of the high military and civilian officials of the War and Navy Departments in dealing with the Pearl Harbor disaster from beginning to end does them no credit. It will have a permanent bad effect on the morale and integrity of the armed services. The administration had ample opportunity to record and preserve all the facts about Pearl Harbor, even if their public disclosure needed to wait upon the war’s end. This was not done. The policy adopted was to place the public responsibility for the disaster on the commanders in the field, to be left there for all time. The policy failed only because suppression created public suspicion, and the Congress was alert.

*At 6:00 A.M., Dec. 8, Tokyo time: 10:30 A.M., Dec. 7, Hawaii time; 4:00 P.M., Dec. 7, E.S.T.—N. Y. Times, Dec. 8, 1:2.

*The record of the commission’s proceedings and exhibits covers 2,173 printed pages.²⁰

*Cf. pp. 238-39, 241, 253.

†Cf. pp. 240-41.