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

The Navy Court of Inquiry (July 24–October 19, 1944) 497
to keep Kimmel informed “so far as we thought he could have
a vital interest.” 18 Did he know of any “important development”
preceding the attack of which Kimmel had not been advised, as
Kimmel had requested, “by the quickest secure means” then available?
Stark replied:
I have searched my brain, my conscience, my heart, and everything
I have got, since Pearl Harbor started, to see wherein
I was derelict or wherein I might have omitted something.
Th ere is only one thought . . . that I regretted . . . . [T]hat was
the dispatch which was sent by the Army on the morning of
December 7, that I had not paralleled it with my own system,
or that I had not telephoned it. . . . [T]hat is the one conscious
realization I remember and regret. 19
Th e Japanese intercepts had not been actually introduced
into the record, but Kimmel used what he had learned about
them from Captain Lavender in questioning Stark. Kimmel
asked Stark if he had received “information that the Japanese
Government regarded November 25 as an absolute immovable
deadline for the negotiations then being conducted between
Japan and America.”
Stark: No; I don’t remember that.
When Kimmel tried to refresh Stark’s memory by referring to
Saff ord’s testimony before Admiral Hart, Biesemeier objected: “It
was an attempt to show in the form of a question that there was
certain evidence before the Hart examination, what the evidence
was, and the fact that the evidence was given under oath.” 20
Kimmel tried another tack. “Between December 1 and
December 4 [had Stark received] information that Japan was
18Ibid., p. 82.
19Ibid., p. 99.
20Ibid., part 33, pp. 727–28.