Blamed for Pearl Harbor
Sixty years later, relatives still fight to clear the names of two commanders
By the time the last Japanese planes over Hawaii wheeled north toward their aircraft carriers just before noon on Dec. 7, 1941, the American fleet in the Pacific was on its knees. Eighteen ships were either on the bottom of Pearl Harbor or seriously damaged, and the death toll would reach 2,403. As the shock of the sneak attack sank in, a shaken America wanted to know why U.S. forces had been caught unprepared.
Less than two months later, a hastily convened commission came up with an answer. It laid the blame squarely on Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, the commander of the Pacific Fleet based in Hawaii, and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, commander of the Army forces on the islands. The two were accused of "dereliction of duty . . . . The Japanese attack was a complete surprise to the commanders, and they failed to make suitable dispositions to meet such an attack." Their careers ruined, the two retired in disgrace, their names associated with the traumatic defeat that drew America into war. "He spent the rest of his life trying to expose what happened," says Thomas Kimmel, 57, of his grandfather. "It's the word 'dereliction' that really sticks in our craw." He pulls out a critical history written just after the war, its margins filled with penciled notes in his grandfather's hand that still convey a sense of anguish--and anger.
To mark the 60th anniversary of the infamous day, a $140 million movie and more than a dozen new books are retelling the story of Pearl Harbor. Kimmel is a character in the film and again looks culpable--he is (incorrectly) shown golfing as the Japanese attack. But a collection of historians and relatives are trying to redeem the reputations of the two officers, armed with revelations ignored by or unavailable to the original commission. The case for the two commanders rests on the theory that plenty of people knew of an imminent attack--but never told Kimmel or Short.
FDR's magic. By the time the Japanese launched their planes that sunny morning, a handful of American cryptographers had been working 20-hour days breaking Japanese diplomatic and spy codes for at least three months. The decoded intercepts were dubbed "Magic," and told a clear tale of Japanese duplicity. By autumn of 1941, hard-line militarists had taken power in Tokyo. Despite President Franklin Roosevelt's peace negotiations with Japan, they were threatened by his oil and raw-material embargoes and the freezing of Japanese assets in the United States. The cables revealed that Japan began planning for war as peace talks continued. Japanese strategists hoped a surprise attack would demoralize America, giving free rein to Nipponese dreams of a pan-Asian empire. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto gathered his forces for an all-out air attack on America's Pacific Fleet, which lay at anchor in Pearl Harbor.
The intercepts uncovered Japan's espionage requests as well. One of the most controversial was decoded in October 1941. Now known as the "bomb plot" message, it asked the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu for regular reports on the location of "warships and aircraft carriers . . . at anchor, tied up at wharves, buoys, and in the docks" in Pearl Harbor. After Yamamoto's fleet sailed, vague warnings were sent to the commanders in Hawaii on November 27 and 28, encouraging them to be on alert but stating that "protective measures should be confined to those essential for security, avoiding unnecessary publicity and alarm."
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