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

Joint Congressional Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack: Part 3 811
call from somewhere in the War Department? From Stark’s offi ce
in the Navy Department? Th e White House?
One report of Marshall’s whereabouts that morning comes
from then Colonel (later Major General) John R. Deane. On the
day of the attack, Deane was one of the secretaries of the general
staff . Marshall had asked him to come in to the offi ce that
Sunday morning to write a one-page statement on the number
of planes and antiaircraft guns in the United States. Marshall
wanted that information to refer to during his scheduled appearance
before a congressional committee the next day. Later, in
describing the events of the day, Deane wrote that Marshall had
“arrived at the offi ce at about 10:00 or shortly thereafter and had
a series of conferences with staff offi cers from G-2 and the War
Plans Division.” 267
So Marshall could have phoned Bratton from the War
Department at 10:00. But why would Marshall not want to tell
Bratton where he was? Why would he want to conceal his activities
that morning? Would they have destroyed the myth that the
Japanese attack was unexpected? Or was some devious scheme
afoot that would have ruined the nation’s reputation as a peaceloving
nation if it had become known?
Some years later in an interview (May 3, 1961), Captain
Arthur H. McCollum, at the time of the attack chief of the Far
Eastern section of the Navy’s communications division, told
me that he knew nothing about the JCC testimony reporting
Marshall out horseback riding that Sunday morning, but he was
willing to swear that he had seen Marshall coming out of Stark’s
offi ce at around 9:30.
267 Ibid., part 14, p. 1411, Exhibit 39, Deane June 8, 1942, memorandum about
the events of the morning of December 7, 1941.