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

1944: A Year of Investigations 425
available in Hawaii. Even under the best of circumstances, Davis
said testifying in 1944, when an attack might be expected, it isn’t
easy to sight an incoming enemy force.
We have, ourselves, quite often made an attack wherein
Japanese search planes failed to sight our forces, even though
in many of these cases we know that they were making intensive
search fl ights. In the Guadalcanal landing, as an example, a
Japanese search plane, under scattered cloud conditions, came
close enough to our force actually to be sighted by long-range
telescope from the ENTERPRISE, but failed to see and report
the force. 14
Due to their dependence on Washington, the men in intelligence
in Hawaii had no more reason to expect a surprise air
attack on Pearl Harbor than had the men on the Navy’s ships and
planes. Th ere were serious gaps in their intelligence.
Captain Edwin T. Layton, fl eet intelligence offi cer at the time
of the attack, said intelligence was “evaluated information and a
commodity of which you can never have quite enough. . . . [I]t is
like a jig-saw puzzle with parts missing; the whole picture is rarely
available as important pieces are missing.” He was convinced the
State Department must have had information during the preattack
period “that would have been of value to the Commanderin-Chief.”
15 On the morning of December 6, when Layton delivered
to Kimmel a report on the sightings of Japanese ships in the
Gulf of Siam and Camranh Bay, “the thought of attack on Pearl
Harbor at that time was very far from most people’s minds.” 16
Naval offi cers questioned by Hart rejected the Roberts
Commission’s charge that Kimmel and Short had failed “to confer
14 Ibid., pp. 105, 109.
15 Ibid., p. 226.
16 Ibid., p. 237.