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

Joint Congressional Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack: Part 2 679
Kimmel had “tried to impress on the Navy Department” that
what he “needed out there was information . . . information upon
which to base my actions.” He had recognized “the vulnerability
of the fl eet largely due to the fact that we had only one base [at
Pearl Harbor] and to the limitations of fuel and other things.”
Further, he had “hoped and believed that the information would
come . . . in time to at least alleviate the situation.” Having pointed
out the problem, he said, he “accepted the risks.” 19
Later when questioning Kimmel, Representative Gearhart
agreed that, rather than being a deterrent, keeping the fl eet at
Pearl Harbor had actually proved to be “a direct invitation to
the Japanese Government to come there and put our fl eet out
of commission.” If it had been stationed on the west coast, as
Richardson had recommended, the added distance would have
made a Japanese attack more diffi cult. Moreover, the west-coast
location, with a land mass on one side, would have simplifi ed the
task of reconnaissance; U.S. air patrols would have had to survey
only a radius of 180°, not 360° as in Hawaii. 20
After receiving the November 27 “war warning” and the
November 29 notice describing the practical end of U.S.-Japanese
negotiations, Kimmel said he received no further news from
Washington on the relations between the two countries and was
left to read public [newspaper] accounts of further conversations
between the State Department and the Japanese emissaries
in Washington which [in contradiction of the Washington
messages] indicated that negotiations had been resumed. 21
He also said that between November 27 and the attack, there
was in Washington “a rising intensity in the crisis in Japanese-
19Ibid., pp. 2718–19.
20Ibid., pp. 2848–49.
21Ibid., p. 2548.