At 30 minutes past noon on December 8, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt began an address to a Joint Session on Congress:
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
A Japanese task force of six aircraft carriers had slipped its moorings in the home islands on November 26, 1941 and sailed to an attack staging point northwest of Hawaii. The attack employed 360 planes in two waves – the first wave focused on the American fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor while the second destroyed parked aircraft to prevent their mounting a retaliatory attack.
At 7:53 a.m. Hawaii Time the slow torpedo bombers arrived over target and commenced the attack on Battleship Row anchored at Ford Island.
The USS Raleigh was the first ship hit. After receiving six torpedo hits, the USS West Virginia quickly sank.
The Utah, an ancient battleship converted to a target ship, was bombed and torpedoed. Rolling over, she snapped her mooring lines and settled on her outboard side. Sailors trapped inside began banging on the hull, and many who had escaped the Utah went back to rescue them. Since the trapped sailors were in an air pocket near the keel, a welder had to sit on the bottom of the hull under Japanese strafing fire to burn two escape holes.
On the other side of Ford Island, the Oklahoma, bombed and torpedoed, heeled over and sank.
At 8:10 a.m. an armor-piercing bomb fell between the No. 1 and No. 2 turrets of the Arizona, exploding the forward magazine. The explosion ripped open the ship like a tin can igniting a fire that swept the entire ship, cremating many of its sailors. Within minutes the Arizona sank to the bottom taking 1,300 lives with her.
Dive bombers and fighters tore up Hickam Field and Wheeler Field, the main air bases on Oahu. The 171 planes in the second wave attacked Bellows Field near Kaneohe on the windward side of the island, and went on to attack Ford Island.
Ninety minutes after the attack began, it was over. The toll was staggering – 2,386 Americans were killed, including 55 civilians who died from unexploded American anti-aircraft shells landing in civilian areas. Among the wounded were 1,139 civilians.
Eighteen ships, including five battleships, were sunk or run aground in their escape.
Of 402 American aircraft in Hawaii, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged, 155 of which never got off the ground. Almost no aircraft were in a state of readiness that would have allowed them to take off and defend the base. Twenty-four out of 33 PBYs were destroyed, and six others were damaged beyond repair. Panicky friendly fire on the ground shot down some airborne American planes, among them five inbound from the carrier Enterprise which was at sea with the carriers Lexington and Saratoga.
Troops caught in barracks and bunks were mostly killed by Japanese fighter aircraft.
Only 55 Japanese airmen and nine submariners were killed in the action. One Japanese submariner was captured. Of Japan's 414 planes engaged in the attack, only 29 were lost during the battle.
The American servicemen who distinguished themselves in the attack on Pearl Harbor received 16 Medals of Honor, 51 Navy Crosses, 53 Silver Crosses, four Navy and Marine Corps Medals, one Distinguished Flying Cross, four Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, and three Bronze Stars – a measure of the valor shown that day.
Work began immediately on ships that could be refloated and repaired, a task that required 20,000 hours of underwater work by divers. Within six months, five battleships and two cruisers were patched well enough to tow them to mainland shipyards for extensive repair.
The Oklahoma was raised but never repaired. The Utah and Arizona were so badly damaged that they were left where they sank and are visible today. The Arizona would become a permanent memorial and the tomb of the sailors who died on it that day. It remains a ship of the line and its flag is raised every day, but only to half-mast.
It would be May 17, 1942 before the West Virginia would be pumped out. During its repairs, the bodies of 70 crewmen were found as well as a calendar that had days scratched off. The last date scratched off was December 23 1941 – 16 days after the attack.
As bad as things were, they could have been worse.
America’s three aircraft carriers – the Lexington, Saratoga, and Enterprise – were untouched by the Japanese attack because they were at sea and the attackers did not look for them. Had they been taken out of action, the Pacific Fleet's ability to conduct offensive operations against the Japanese would have been crippled for at least a year.
Since the attack had taken the battleships out of action for some time – the intent of the Japanese was to destroy them – the US Navy had no choice but to change strategy and emphasize carriers and submarines over battleships, something it had not done in its pre-war planning. Navy doctrine heretofore had been heavily influenced by the theories of Captain (later Admiral) Alfred Mahan who lived before the era of carriers. He contended that the decisive battles in war would be won at sea by battleships. Battleships, therefore, became the capital ships of the American Navy and consequently were the targets of the Japanese attack. The attackers had also read Captain Mahan’s writings.
Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?
War between Japan and the US had been considered a possibility since the 1920s, although real tension did not begin until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. During the decade that followed, Japan expanded into China, leading to all out war between the two countries in 1937. In 1940 Japan pushed forward and invaded French Indochina (modern day Vietnam). The attack on the American installations at Pearl Harbor was part of the Japanese grand strategy to block the US Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl from taking action against Japan’s next conquest into Southeast Asia against Britain, the Netherlands, and the US presence in the Philippines.
Planning for the attack began early in 1941 by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander in chief of Japan's combined fleet. It was Yamamoto's duty to carry out Japan’s plan to rule the Pacific. He did not believe that Japan could win a sustained war with the US, but if it could knock out the strength of the US fleet, the balance of power in the Pacific would shift.
The true genius behind the strategy for the attack on Pearl Harbor, however, was Commander Minuru Genda. He may have been the most brilliant officer, Japanese or American, that took part in the Pacific Campaign. Genda believed the task would be "difficult, but not impossible" and began working on the details of a plan that employed six Japanese carriers in an overpowering air strike.
Captain Mitsuo Fuchida was responsible for the coordination of the entire aerial attack. He led the first wave to its targets. Once the operation was underway, Fuchida and Genda became the subordinate officers of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the senior commander of the attack fleet.
Yamamoto insisted on compliance with the conventions of war and demanded that Japan declare war on the US at least 30 minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor commenced. Japanese diplomats tried to uphold these conventions, but the attack nevertheless began before the notice was delivered. The reason? Tokyo had cabled a 5,000-word notification to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, but transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese Ambassador to deliver in time. In fact, US code breakers had already deciphered and translated most of the message hours before the Japanese Ambassador was scheduled to deliver it.
Because of the delay in notifying the American government, the Pearl Harbor attack became a strategic blunder in Yamamo’s mind, even though both he and Genda wanted a surprise attack. While his staff members were celebrating its victory, Yamamoto spent the day after Pearl Harbor "sunk in apparent depression." Upset that the bungling of the Japanese Foreign Ministry allowed the attack to happen while their countries were technically at peace, Yamamoto quickly realized American citizens would be enraged and said prophetically, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
With considerable accuracy, American war planners had assessed how the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor, but they believed war would be declared first before any attack was launched. There was, however, a general sentiment that the Japanese would be foolish to attack an American territory and certainly "the most impregnable fortress in the world" – Pearl Harbor.
The American counterparts of the Japanese commanders were Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commander of the US Pacific fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, and Lt. General Walter C. Short, the commander of the army base charged with the protection of Oahu. If one were to look at the training the Japanese troops underwent in preparation for Pearl Harbor supervised by Genda, Fuchido, and Nagumo, and the training that took place under Kimmel and Short, knowing as they did how high the tensions between the US and Japan were, one would find the American commanders severely lacking.
Kimmel and Short, however, were ignorant of vital intelligence that might have made a difference in their preparation. Fearing that it could reveal that cryptographers had broken the Japanese code and were routinely reading their cable traffic, Washington did not pass on information to Kimmel and Short that there was a strong likelihood of an imminent attack.
During a later naval inquiry of the attack in 1944, a cryptographer testified that:
“On December 1, we had definite information from three independent sources that Japan was going to attack Britain and the United States ...”
“On December 4, 1941, we received definite information from two more independent sources that Japan would attack the United States and … at 9:00 p.m. December 6, 1941, we received positive information that Japan would declare war against the United States, at a time to be specified thereafter. This information was positive and unmistakable and was made available to Military [US Army] Intelligence at this same time. Finally at 10:15 a.m. (Washington time), December 7, 1941 [about 5:00 a.m. Hawaii time], we received positive information ... that the Japanese declaration of war would be presented to the Secretary of State at 1:00 p.m. (Washington time) that date.”
All decoded messages, the cryptographer testified, were promptly passed on to the President and other key civilian and military personnel. Yet both Kimmel and Short were kept in the dark about the most pertinent of these messages.
Blame for the Pearl Harbor disaster, therefore, can be laid everywhere from Washington to the Hawaiian department. The Roberts Commission put most of the blame on Kimmel and Short, citing dereliction of duty and errors in judgment on their part. Both officers got their day in court, but it did not go well for them. While all blame for Pearl Harbor could not be squarely placed on their shoulders, none would be placed on Washington.
Admiral Kimmel lost one of his four stars and was relieved of command. Until his death in 1968, he worked to clear his name, an effort taken up by others after his death, including his son and grandson. Attempts to restore his rank as a four-star Admiral were rejected by Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
General Short also lost a star, retired from the Army 14 months after Pearl Harbor, and took a job at a Ford Motor Company plant in Dallas, Texas. He lived to see the end of the war but died in 1949 of a chronic heart ailment.
The results the Japanese later achieved in the Philippines were essentially the same as they achieved at Pearl Harbor, although General Douglas MacArthur, the commander in the Philippines, had been given almost nine hours’ warning that the Japanese had attacked Pearl, and he was given specific orders to prepare before a follow up attack could strike his command. MacArthur did nothing. His inaction resulted in the loss of US air power in the western Pacific, forcing the complete withdrawal of the US fleet from Philippine waters and allowing the Japanese invasion of the mainland. He was never censured, relieved of command, or reduced in rank.
In order to boost morale following the Japanese defeat at Guadalcanal, Admiral Yamamoto decided to make an inspection tour of Japanese defense bases throughout the southwestern Pacific. On April 14, 1943, US naval intelligence decrypted a message containing Yamamoto’s specific itinerary – complete with arrival and departure times and locations – as well as the number and types of planes that would transport and protect him. Yamamoto was killed on the morning of April 18, 1943 near Bougainville when his aircraft was shot down in an ambush by American P-38 fighter planes. His death was a major blow to Japanese military and homeland morale.
After leading the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nagumo went on to lead it in the Battle of Midway where his luck ran out. American code-breakers enabled his Midway attack to be ambushed. He lost four carriers and most of their air crews. It would prove to be the turning point of the Pacific Campaign. When it was apparent that his defense of Saipan against the American attack was doomed, Nagumo committed suicide on July 6, 1944.
The military career of Yamamoto’s brilliant subordinate, Minuru Genda, who had planned the Pearl Harbor attack, came to an end when the Imperial Japanese Navy was dissolved. He returned to active duty in 1954 as a member of the newly-established Japan Air Self-Defense Force, eventually rising to the rank of general and later the chief of staff. After retiring from the postwar military in 1962, he was elected to the upper house of Japan's legislature. Genda died on August 15, 1989, exactly 44 years to the day after the Japanese surrender in World War II, and just one day short of his 85th birthday
Mitsuo Fuchida, the leader of the air attack on Pearl Harbor, became a Christian and an evangelist preacher after the war. Among several books that he wrote in the postwar years was From Pearl Harbor to Calvary, the biographical story of his conversion. In 1960, he became an American citizen. Fuchida died in 1976.
This week, Tuesday December 7 will pass almost unnoticed by the current generation of Americans, as it usually does. It will be the 69th anniversary of the Day of Infamy.
Post script: After 30 years of researching the Pearl Harbor attack and interviewing the principal survivors, Gordon W. Prange published the seminal work on the event: At Dawn We Slept. From it was produced the 1970 film Tora! Tora Tora!, whose title comes from the code-words used by the Japanese to indicate that complete surprise was achieved. Tora means tiger in Japanese.
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
A Japanese task force of six aircraft carriers had slipped its moorings in the home islands on November 26, 1941 and sailed to an attack staging point northwest of Hawaii. The attack employed 360 planes in two waves – the first wave focused on the American fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor while the second destroyed parked aircraft to prevent their mounting a retaliatory attack.
At 7:53 a.m. Hawaii Time the slow torpedo bombers arrived over target and commenced the attack on Battleship Row anchored at Ford Island.
The USS Raleigh was the first ship hit. After receiving six torpedo hits, the USS West Virginia quickly sank.
The Utah, an ancient battleship converted to a target ship, was bombed and torpedoed. Rolling over, she snapped her mooring lines and settled on her outboard side. Sailors trapped inside began banging on the hull, and many who had escaped the Utah went back to rescue them. Since the trapped sailors were in an air pocket near the keel, a welder had to sit on the bottom of the hull under Japanese strafing fire to burn two escape holes.
On the other side of Ford Island, the Oklahoma, bombed and torpedoed, heeled over and sank.
At 8:10 a.m. an armor-piercing bomb fell between the No. 1 and No. 2 turrets of the Arizona, exploding the forward magazine. The explosion ripped open the ship like a tin can igniting a fire that swept the entire ship, cremating many of its sailors. Within minutes the Arizona sank to the bottom taking 1,300 lives with her.
Dive bombers and fighters tore up Hickam Field and Wheeler Field, the main air bases on Oahu. The 171 planes in the second wave attacked Bellows Field near Kaneohe on the windward side of the island, and went on to attack Ford Island.
Ninety minutes after the attack began, it was over. The toll was staggering – 2,386 Americans were killed, including 55 civilians who died from unexploded American anti-aircraft shells landing in civilian areas. Among the wounded were 1,139 civilians.
Eighteen ships, including five battleships, were sunk or run aground in their escape.
Of 402 American aircraft in Hawaii, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged, 155 of which never got off the ground. Almost no aircraft were in a state of readiness that would have allowed them to take off and defend the base. Twenty-four out of 33 PBYs were destroyed, and six others were damaged beyond repair. Panicky friendly fire on the ground shot down some airborne American planes, among them five inbound from the carrier Enterprise which was at sea with the carriers Lexington and Saratoga.
Troops caught in barracks and bunks were mostly killed by Japanese fighter aircraft.
Only 55 Japanese airmen and nine submariners were killed in the action. One Japanese submariner was captured. Of Japan's 414 planes engaged in the attack, only 29 were lost during the battle.
The American servicemen who distinguished themselves in the attack on Pearl Harbor received 16 Medals of Honor, 51 Navy Crosses, 53 Silver Crosses, four Navy and Marine Corps Medals, one Distinguished Flying Cross, four Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, and three Bronze Stars – a measure of the valor shown that day.
Work began immediately on ships that could be refloated and repaired, a task that required 20,000 hours of underwater work by divers. Within six months, five battleships and two cruisers were patched well enough to tow them to mainland shipyards for extensive repair.
The Oklahoma was raised but never repaired. The Utah and Arizona were so badly damaged that they were left where they sank and are visible today. The Arizona would become a permanent memorial and the tomb of the sailors who died on it that day. It remains a ship of the line and its flag is raised every day, but only to half-mast.
It would be May 17, 1942 before the West Virginia would be pumped out. During its repairs, the bodies of 70 crewmen were found as well as a calendar that had days scratched off. The last date scratched off was December 23 1941 – 16 days after the attack.
As bad as things were, they could have been worse.
America’s three aircraft carriers – the Lexington, Saratoga, and Enterprise – were untouched by the Japanese attack because they were at sea and the attackers did not look for them. Had they been taken out of action, the Pacific Fleet's ability to conduct offensive operations against the Japanese would have been crippled for at least a year.
Since the attack had taken the battleships out of action for some time – the intent of the Japanese was to destroy them – the US Navy had no choice but to change strategy and emphasize carriers and submarines over battleships, something it had not done in its pre-war planning. Navy doctrine heretofore had been heavily influenced by the theories of Captain (later Admiral) Alfred Mahan who lived before the era of carriers. He contended that the decisive battles in war would be won at sea by battleships. Battleships, therefore, became the capital ships of the American Navy and consequently were the targets of the Japanese attack. The attackers had also read Captain Mahan’s writings.
Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?
War between Japan and the US had been considered a possibility since the 1920s, although real tension did not begin until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. During the decade that followed, Japan expanded into China, leading to all out war between the two countries in 1937. In 1940 Japan pushed forward and invaded French Indochina (modern day Vietnam). The attack on the American installations at Pearl Harbor was part of the Japanese grand strategy to block the US Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl from taking action against Japan’s next conquest into Southeast Asia against Britain, the Netherlands, and the US presence in the Philippines.
Planning for the attack began early in 1941 by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander in chief of Japan's combined fleet. It was Yamamoto's duty to carry out Japan’s plan to rule the Pacific. He did not believe that Japan could win a sustained war with the US, but if it could knock out the strength of the US fleet, the balance of power in the Pacific would shift.
The true genius behind the strategy for the attack on Pearl Harbor, however, was Commander Minuru Genda. He may have been the most brilliant officer, Japanese or American, that took part in the Pacific Campaign. Genda believed the task would be "difficult, but not impossible" and began working on the details of a plan that employed six Japanese carriers in an overpowering air strike.
Captain Mitsuo Fuchida was responsible for the coordination of the entire aerial attack. He led the first wave to its targets. Once the operation was underway, Fuchida and Genda became the subordinate officers of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the senior commander of the attack fleet.
Yamamoto insisted on compliance with the conventions of war and demanded that Japan declare war on the US at least 30 minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor commenced. Japanese diplomats tried to uphold these conventions, but the attack nevertheless began before the notice was delivered. The reason? Tokyo had cabled a 5,000-word notification to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, but transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese Ambassador to deliver in time. In fact, US code breakers had already deciphered and translated most of the message hours before the Japanese Ambassador was scheduled to deliver it.
Because of the delay in notifying the American government, the Pearl Harbor attack became a strategic blunder in Yamamo’s mind, even though both he and Genda wanted a surprise attack. While his staff members were celebrating its victory, Yamamoto spent the day after Pearl Harbor "sunk in apparent depression." Upset that the bungling of the Japanese Foreign Ministry allowed the attack to happen while their countries were technically at peace, Yamamoto quickly realized American citizens would be enraged and said prophetically, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
With considerable accuracy, American war planners had assessed how the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor, but they believed war would be declared first before any attack was launched. There was, however, a general sentiment that the Japanese would be foolish to attack an American territory and certainly "the most impregnable fortress in the world" – Pearl Harbor.
The American counterparts of the Japanese commanders were Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commander of the US Pacific fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, and Lt. General Walter C. Short, the commander of the army base charged with the protection of Oahu. If one were to look at the training the Japanese troops underwent in preparation for Pearl Harbor supervised by Genda, Fuchido, and Nagumo, and the training that took place under Kimmel and Short, knowing as they did how high the tensions between the US and Japan were, one would find the American commanders severely lacking.
Kimmel and Short, however, were ignorant of vital intelligence that might have made a difference in their preparation. Fearing that it could reveal that cryptographers had broken the Japanese code and were routinely reading their cable traffic, Washington did not pass on information to Kimmel and Short that there was a strong likelihood of an imminent attack.
During a later naval inquiry of the attack in 1944, a cryptographer testified that:
“On December 1, we had definite information from three independent sources that Japan was going to attack Britain and the United States ...”
“On December 4, 1941, we received definite information from two more independent sources that Japan would attack the United States and … at 9:00 p.m. December 6, 1941, we received positive information that Japan would declare war against the United States, at a time to be specified thereafter. This information was positive and unmistakable and was made available to Military [US Army] Intelligence at this same time. Finally at 10:15 a.m. (Washington time), December 7, 1941 [about 5:00 a.m. Hawaii time], we received positive information ... that the Japanese declaration of war would be presented to the Secretary of State at 1:00 p.m. (Washington time) that date.”
All decoded messages, the cryptographer testified, were promptly passed on to the President and other key civilian and military personnel. Yet both Kimmel and Short were kept in the dark about the most pertinent of these messages.
Blame for the Pearl Harbor disaster, therefore, can be laid everywhere from Washington to the Hawaiian department. The Roberts Commission put most of the blame on Kimmel and Short, citing dereliction of duty and errors in judgment on their part. Both officers got their day in court, but it did not go well for them. While all blame for Pearl Harbor could not be squarely placed on their shoulders, none would be placed on Washington.
Admiral Kimmel lost one of his four stars and was relieved of command. Until his death in 1968, he worked to clear his name, an effort taken up by others after his death, including his son and grandson. Attempts to restore his rank as a four-star Admiral were rejected by Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
General Short also lost a star, retired from the Army 14 months after Pearl Harbor, and took a job at a Ford Motor Company plant in Dallas, Texas. He lived to see the end of the war but died in 1949 of a chronic heart ailment.
The results the Japanese later achieved in the Philippines were essentially the same as they achieved at Pearl Harbor, although General Douglas MacArthur, the commander in the Philippines, had been given almost nine hours’ warning that the Japanese had attacked Pearl, and he was given specific orders to prepare before a follow up attack could strike his command. MacArthur did nothing. His inaction resulted in the loss of US air power in the western Pacific, forcing the complete withdrawal of the US fleet from Philippine waters and allowing the Japanese invasion of the mainland. He was never censured, relieved of command, or reduced in rank.
In order to boost morale following the Japanese defeat at Guadalcanal, Admiral Yamamoto decided to make an inspection tour of Japanese defense bases throughout the southwestern Pacific. On April 14, 1943, US naval intelligence decrypted a message containing Yamamoto’s specific itinerary – complete with arrival and departure times and locations – as well as the number and types of planes that would transport and protect him. Yamamoto was killed on the morning of April 18, 1943 near Bougainville when his aircraft was shot down in an ambush by American P-38 fighter planes. His death was a major blow to Japanese military and homeland morale.
After leading the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nagumo went on to lead it in the Battle of Midway where his luck ran out. American code-breakers enabled his Midway attack to be ambushed. He lost four carriers and most of their air crews. It would prove to be the turning point of the Pacific Campaign. When it was apparent that his defense of Saipan against the American attack was doomed, Nagumo committed suicide on July 6, 1944.
The military career of Yamamoto’s brilliant subordinate, Minuru Genda, who had planned the Pearl Harbor attack, came to an end when the Imperial Japanese Navy was dissolved. He returned to active duty in 1954 as a member of the newly-established Japan Air Self-Defense Force, eventually rising to the rank of general and later the chief of staff. After retiring from the postwar military in 1962, he was elected to the upper house of Japan's legislature. Genda died on August 15, 1989, exactly 44 years to the day after the Japanese surrender in World War II, and just one day short of his 85th birthday
Mitsuo Fuchida, the leader of the air attack on Pearl Harbor, became a Christian and an evangelist preacher after the war. Among several books that he wrote in the postwar years was From Pearl Harbor to Calvary, the biographical story of his conversion. In 1960, he became an American citizen. Fuchida died in 1976.
This week, Tuesday December 7 will pass almost unnoticed by the current generation of Americans, as it usually does. It will be the 69th anniversary of the Day of Infamy.
Post script: After 30 years of researching the Pearl Harbor attack and interviewing the principal survivors, Gordon W. Prange published the seminal work on the event: At Dawn We Slept. From it was produced the 1970 film Tora! Tora Tora!, whose title comes from the code-words used by the Japanese to indicate that complete surprise was achieved. Tora means tiger in Japanese.
Bill,
ReplyDeleteYour “Bloviations” for December 4th, “The Day of Infamy,” are in need of modification:
1. Your comment, “Both officers [Kimmel and Short] got their day in court, but it did not go well for them,” makes no sense. Neither officer had his day in court—there never was a court-martial. The Naval Court of Inquiry (NCI) was the closest thing Kimmel had to “his day in court,” and the NCI completely exonerated him. The NCI found that there was not a scintilla of evidence to support a charge of dereliction of duty against Kimmel; they found that he committed no errors of judgment on the basis of information that he was given; they approved of all of Kimmel’s force dispositions on the basis of information that he was given; they opined that Kimmel did everything possible under the political circumstances; and, lastly, they severely criticized Admiral Kimmel’s only uniformed boss, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark, for not keeping Kimmel properly informed of political events as he had promised to do on four occasions in writing.
2. Your comment, “Admiral Kimmel lost one of his four stars . . .,” is in error. He reverted from four stars to two by operation of law. This is the matter that the Congress voted to change in 2000 when it called upon the President to posthumously advance Kimmel and Short on the retired list.
3. Your comment, “If one were to look at the training the Japanese troops underwent in preparation for Pearl Harbor supervised by Genda, Fuchido, and Nagumo, and the training that took place under Kimmel and Short, knowing as they did how high the tensions between the US and Japan were, one would find the American commanders severely lacking,” is supported by nothing. Why the gratuitous slur? None of the 10 Pearl Harbor investigations faulted Kimmel for training in any way.
There is much more information of these matters available on my website at:
http://www.pearlharbor911attacks.com.
Regards,
Tom Kimmel