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

Army Pearl Harbor Board 491
so critical a situation when he could not readily be reached.” 179 No
accounting for this was made even though
[t]he evidence indicates that the manner in which authority
to act was delegated or not delegated had its infl uence on
this situation. Th e Chief of Staff had three deputies, Generals
Bryden, Arnold, and Moore. None of these three was given
the secret information concerning the known Jap intentions.
. . . Complete authority to act in General Marshall’s absence
does not seem to have been given to any one subordinate. Had
there been an offi cer either with authority or with courage to
act on the information that was in the War Department on the
evening of December 6, and had he sent a message to Short,
Hawaii should have been fully alerted. 180
Th e board report attributed the extent of the Pearl Harbor
disaster
primarily to two causes: (1) Th e failure of the Commanding
General [Short] of the Hawaiian Department adequately to
alert his command for war, and (2) Th e failure of the War
Department, with knowledge of the type of alert taken by the
Commanding General, Hawaiian Department, to direct him to
take an adequate alert, and the failure to keep him adequately
informed as to the developments of the United States-Japanese
negotiations, which in turn might have caused him to change
from the inadequate alert to an adequate one. 181
Th e board cited several factors that contributed to the disaster:
Th e failures of (1) Th e Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, (2) Th e
Chief of Staff of the Army, General George C. Marshall, (3) Chief
of War Plans Division, War Department General Staff , Major
General Leonard T. Gerow, and (4) Commanding General of the
179Ibid., p. 140.
180Ibid., pp. 144–45. APHB report, part 39.
181Ibid., p. 175.