This  article is dedicated to restoring the honor of Rear Adm. Kimmel and Maj. Gen Walter Short.

The Lie:

The two United States commanders at Pearl Harbor, Rear Adm. Husband Kimmel and Maj. Gen. Walter Short, were negligent in their duties in allowing the Pearl Harbor attacks to occur.

The Truth:

By the closing months of 1941, the United States was intercepting and breaking within a matter of hours almost every code produced by Japan. The United States sent duplicate code machines to London, Singapore, and the Philippine Islands to keep the British and our Far East forces informed. Hawaii never received a duplicate code machine. Therefore, our government in Washington, D.C. had a major responsibility to make certain that Hawaii was properly informed and alerted.

The two United States commanders at Pearl Harbor, Rear Adm. Husband Kimmel and Maj. Gen. Walter Short, were never informed of the intercepted Japanese messages. The Roosevelt administration did not disclose these intercepted Japanese messages to Kimmel and Short because it wanted the Japanese to make a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Adm. Kimmel was dumbfounded that the decoded Japanese messages were never disclosed to him. Kimmel states that if he had all of the important information then available to the Navy Department, he would have gone to sea with his fleet and been in a good position to intercept the Japanese attack. Adm. Kimmel concludes in regard to the Pearl Harbor attacks:

 

      “Again and again in my mind I have reviewed the events that preceded the Japanese attack, seeking to determine if I was unjustified in drawing from the orders, directives and information that were forwarded to me the conclusions that I did. The fact that I then thought and now think my conclusions were sound when based upon the information I received, has sustained me during the years that have passed since the first Japanese bomb fell on Pearl Harbor.

When the information available in Washington was disclosed to me I was appalled. Nothing in my experience of nearly 42 years of service in the Navy had prepared me for the actions of the highest officials in our government which denied this vital information to the Pearl Harbor commanders.

If those in authority wished to engage in power politics, the least that they should have done was to advise their naval and military commanders what they were endeavoring to accomplish. To utilize the Pacific Fleet and the Army forces at Pearl Harbor as a lure for a Japanese attack without advising the commander-in-chief of the fleet and the commander of the Army base at Hawaii is something I am wholly unable to comprehend.”

 

The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor was no surprise to the Roosevelt administration. Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short were denied the vital information of a planned Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor because Roosevelt wanted an excuse to get the United States into the war. Roosevelt made Kimmel and Short the scapegoats for the Pearl Harbor tragedy. This is consistent with Franklin Roosevelt’s complex and devious nature. Roosevelt admitted to Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau six months after Pearl Harbor:

“You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does…and furthermore I am willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war.”

 

Top Right: Maj. Gen. Walter Short Below: Rear Adm. Husband Kimmel

Rear Adm. Kimmel’s grandson is still fighting to clear his grandfather’s and Maj. Gen Walter Short’s name after “… the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association asked his dad and uncle to take up the cause back in 1984.”

 

This article is dedicated to restoring the honor of Rear Adm. Kimmel and Maj. Gen Walter Short.

In memory of the victims of the Pearl Harbor attacks and their loved ones.