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

618 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
the two Hawaiian commanders, Admiral Kimmel and General
Short, guilty of “derelictions of duty” and “errors of judgment”
and they had been retired from service and demoted in rank. Th e
Army and Navy reports released by Truman eff ectively absolved
Kimmel and Short of blame and placed much of the responsibility
on four top-level Washington offi cials—Secretary of State
Cordell Hull, Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall,
Chief of the Army’s war plans division General Leonard T.
Gerow, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold R. Stark.
As the New York Times reported,
It was not a pretty story that President Truman released in making
public War and Navy reports on the reasons why Army and
Navy offi cials at Oahu were taken by surprise in the Japanese
attack on Dec. 7, 1941. 2
In spite of the volume of material released by Truman, the
public still was not satisfi ed. Th ere were obvious omissions.
Under orders of the secretary of war and the secretary of the navy,
sections of both reports had been deleted. And Top Secret portions
were still being withheld. In the words of Senate Majority
Leader Alben Barkley, the reports were “confusing and confl icting
when compared with one another, and to some extent contain
contradictions and inconsistencies.” 3 Moreover, both Secretary of
War Henry L. Stimson and Navy Secretary James Forrestal had,
according to Senator Homer Ferguson, “issued critical opinions
of the fi ndings of their own boards.” 4
2 Ibid., p. 1.
3 Congressional Record, September 6, 1945, reprinted in 79th Cong., 1st sess.
Joint (Congressional) Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor
Attack. Pearl Harbor Attack, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Offi ce, 1946), part 1, p. 11.
4 Ibid, p. 16.