Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

The Public Had Questions 359
Knox went on to name some of the ships that were damaged.
He admitted that Army losses were “severe,” and he cited the latest
fi gures on Navy killed and wounded: “offi cers 91 dead and 20
wounded; enlisted men, 2,638 dead and 636 wounded.” He then
described in detail some of the acts of heroism and valor on the
part of Navy men in fi ghting the Japanese and told of remarkably
heroic rescues of men from the water after their ships had gone
down.
* * * * *
Th e following important points in the report Knox turned
in to the president were specifi cally omitted in his formal press
release:
1. In spite of the information available in Washington, Kimmel
and Short had received no warning from Washington since November
27. Th e army had then considered the most imminent threat to
be from sabotage. And the navy, warned that southeast Asia was
Japan’s likely target, was concerned with the possibility of a submarine
attack on the fl eet at Pearl Harbor. Most importantly,
neither Kimmel nor Short had any “intimation of some surprise
move, made clear in Washington, through the interception of
Japanese instructions to Nomura . . . by the insistence upon the
precise time of Nomura’s reply to Hull, at 1:00 on Sunday,” i.e.,
7:30 a.m. in Hawaii. 20 For security reasons, of course, the press
couldn’t be told that the Japanese instructions had been intercepted
and decoded in Washington. But Knox could have admitted,
without revealing anything of signifi cance to the Japanese,
that it was not astonishing that the Hawaiian commanders had
been caught by surprise.
20 Joint Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack, part 5, p. 2338. From Knox’s report.