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Pearl Harbor: From Infamy To Greatness

Page 55

by Craig Nelson


  There is however an entirely forgotten legacy of December 7—its inspiration to American leaders to make sure such a cataclysm could never happen again. In a speech prepared for Jefferson Day on April 13, 1945 (which he was never to give), Franklin Roosevelt wrote, “Today we are part of the vast Allied force—a force composed of flesh and blood and steel and spirit—which is today destroying the makers of war, the breeders of hatred, in Europe and in Asia. . . . We, as Americans, do not choose to deny our responsibility. Nor do we intend to abandon our determination that, within the lives of our children and our children’s children, there will not be a third world war. We seek peace—enduring peace. More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.”

  This legacy of Pearl Harbor was reiterated in the proclamations that Douglas MacArthur gave from the decks of the USS Missouri during Japan’s surrender, the start of Japan’s transformation from one of America’s greatest enemies to one of her greatest allies:

  “It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice. . . .

  “Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. . . . We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.

  “A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.

  “Men since the beginning of time have sought peace. . . . Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature, and all material and cultural development of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”

  • • •

  The course Douglas MacArthur pursued to ensure peace in Asia was simultaneously followed by another American general to bring peace and stability to Europe. In 1947, President Truman used General Eisenhower as an intermediary to ask George Marshall to be his secretary of state and Marshall replied, “My answer is in affirmative if that continues to be his desire. My personal reaction is something else.” At that moment Europe was destroyed, the Soviet empire was gobbling up territory, and regional Communist Parties were growing in popular support among citizens desperate to survive. Secretary of State Marshall presented his solution at a June 5 speech—an economic reconstruction of Europe backed by American financing: “It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health to the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Any government that is willing to assist in recovery will find full cooperation on the part of the USA.”

  Marshall got Congress to pass 1948’s Economic Cooperation Act, which would over the next four years send Europe $13.3 billion—$130 billion in 2015 dollars—and be known as the Marshall Plan; another $6 billion would be sent to Asia. Besides keeping devastated nations from again collapsing into fascism or communism, most of this money was used to buy American-made products, adding to the United States’ own postwar economic boom.

  The four years of the Marshall Plan unleashed the fastest economic growth in Europe’s history, with industry boosted by 35 percent, agriculture surpassing prewar conditions, and two decades of continuous growth. For this great success, George Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, becoming the first professional soldier Peace Prize laureate.

  Starting with the news of Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, meanwhile, Cordell Hull’s State Department began outlining a global organization that could succeed where the League of Nations had failed by providing a counterforce that could stop future Hitlers in Europe, Mussolinis in Africa, or Tojos in Asia. Three weeks after Pearl Harbor on December 29, 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill expanded Hull’s State-drafted Atlantic Charter into the “Declaration of United Nations,” which pledged to fight the fascists through mutual defense as well as begin a new global peacekeeping organization. The declaration was signed on New Year’s Day 1942 by the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the next day by twenty-two other countries. The following year, Hull and Roosevelt drafted a “Charter of the United Nations,” and to overcome deep-seated American isolationism, State sent officials across the country to appear at over five hundred meetings to raise popular support. On October 24, 1945, the United Nations was founded with fifty-one members and grew in time to 193.

  Some are quick to criticize the United States’ behavior on the global stage; they were answered by Barack Obama in his last year as president: “For all of our warts, the United States has clearly been a force for good in the world. If you compare us to previous superpowers, we act less on the basis of naked self-interest, and have been interested in establishing norms that benefit everyone. If it is possible to do good at a bearable cost, to save lives, we will do it. . . . We should be promoting values, like democracy and human rights, because not only do they serve our interests the more people adopt values that we share—in the same way that, economically, if people adopt rule of law and property rights and so forth, that is to our advantage—but because it makes the world a better place. [Yet] I also believe that the world is a tough, complicated, messy, mean place, and full of hardship and tragedy. And in order to advance both our security interests and those ideals and values that we care about, we’ve got to be hardheaded at the same time as we’re bighearted.”

  Others are quick to find fault with the United Nations. In his memoirs, Cordell Hull answered these critics by saying that the UN is “a mirror of the world, and if we don’t like what we see, let’s not blame the mirror.” Franklin Roosevelt called Hull “the one person in all the world who has done his most to make this great plan for peace [the United Nations] an effective fact,” and for this work Cordell Hull was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945.

  In the years directly after 1945, half of the world’s industrial production was American, as was eighty percent of its gold. Yet at the height of its preeminence, America became a victor like no other in the history of the world. Instead of demanding territory and treasure such as had concluded nearly every other great military conflict, the United States created, through the United Nations, through such alliances as NATO, SEATO, and the European Union, through global financial diplomacy such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and foreign aid, and through the threat of the world’s largest military force, seven decades of Pax Americana—a world at peace—described by John F. Kennedy on June 10, 1963: “What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”

  With a rage ignited by Tokyo, a confidence born with Doolittle, and the great idealism of ensuring such a thing would never happe
n again, Pearl Harbor’s greatest legacy is our nation’s continuing struggle to make sure that there will never be a World War III. Whatever you think of the United States of America, its foreign policy, its military, and its actions overseas, the world at overall peace since 1945 has been an American goal and an American triumph. What could be a greater legacy to those who served and died in World War II, beginning at Pearl Harbor?

  APPENDIX 1

  * * *

  JUDGMENT AND CONTROVERSY

  Six weeks after the attack on Oahu, the Roosevelt Administration–convened Roberts Commission, the first Pearl Harbor investigation after Frank Knox’s preliminary report, released its conclusions on January 24, 1942:

  The Commission examined 127 witnesses and received a large number of documents. All . . . who were thought to have knowledge of facts pertinent to the inquiry were summoned and examined under oath. . . . The oral evidence received amounts to 1,887 typewritten pages, and the records and documents examined exceed 3,000 printed pages in number. . . .

  The Commanding General, Hawaiian Department [Short], the Commander in Chief of the Fleet [Kimmel], and the Commandant 14th Naval District, their senior subordinates, and their principal staff officers, considered the possibility of air raids. Without exception they believed that the chances of such a raid while the Pacific Fleet was based upon Pearl Harbor were practically nil. . . . On November 27 each responsible commander was warned that hostilities were momentarily possible. The warnings indicated war, and war only. Both of these messages contained orders. The Commanding General was ordered to undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as he deemed necessary. The Commander in Chief of the Fleet was ordered to execute a defensive deployment in preparation for carrying out war tasks.

  Other significant messages followed on succeeding days. These emphasized the impending danger and the need for war readiness. In this situation, during a period of ten days preceding the Japanese attack, the responsible commanders held no conference directed to a discussion of the meaning of the warnings and orders sent them, and failed to collaborate and to coordinate defensive measures which should be taken pursuant to the orders received. . . .

  Had orders issued by the Chief of Staff and the Chief of Naval Operations on November 27, 1941, been complied with, the aircraft warning system of the Army should have been operating; the distant reconnaissance of the Navy, and the inshore air patrol of the Army, should have been maintained; the antiaircraft batteries of the Army and similar shore batteries of the Navy, as well as additional antiaircraft artillery located on vessels of the fleet in Pearl Harbor, should have been manned and supplied with ammunition; and a high state of readiness of aircraft should have been in effect. None of these conditions was in fact inaugurated or maintained for the reason that the responsible commanders failed to consult and cooperate as to necessary action based upon the warnings and to adopt measures enjoined by the orders given them by the chiefs of the Army and Navy commands in Washington.

  • • •

  The commission was especially taken aback by General Short’s interpretation of the November 27 war warning, asking him, “In other words, there were no troops in your command ready for war at that moment?” General Short: “No, sir. They were ready for uprisings. They were—we were definitely organized to meet any uprising or any act of sabotage.” Short’s other response to the war warning was to order his radar service, the Aircraft Control and Warning System—whose Opana station sighted the arriving enemy forces—to mildly expand their hours. Originally operating from 0700 to 1100 for routine training except Sundays and from noon to 1600 for training and maintenance except Saturdays and Sundays, the system now additionally ran from 0400 until 0700—three extra hours a day—seven days a week. But Short, like many high-ranking officers, didn’t understand this nascent technology’s value, saying, “At that time we just got machines and set up. I thought this was fine training for them. I was trying to get training and was doing it for training more than any idea that it would be real.”

  After being vilified by the public, Admiral Kimmel demanded a court-martial to clear his reputation, but no one except Kimmel wanted a public investigation into December 7 during the war. The solution was December 1943 legislation extending the statue of limitations for responsibility at Pearl Harbor, and a June 1944 joint resolution of Congress that instructed both services to further investigate Pearl Harbor. The Army Pearl Harbor Board of 1944 found General Short responsible, but additionally censured George Marshall and War Plans Division chief Leonard Gerow for failing to keep General Short adequately informed of the collapsing diplomatic relationship with Tokyo, for not making the November 27 war warning clear enough, for not getting him Marshall’s last-minute warning in time, and for failing to correct Short’s alert for sabotage. That same year’s Navy’s Court of Inquiry criticized Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark for inadequately warning Kimmel in a failure “to display the sound judgment expected,” but essentially absolved everyone in Hawaii, concluding that “no offenses have been committed nor serious blame incurred on the part of any person or persons in the naval service.”

  Even so, the navy’s court was astonished by the army’s reaction to the war warning: “General Marshall had told the commanding general of the Hawaiian Department much earlier, with emphasis and clarity, that the function of the Army in Hawaii was to defend the fleet base. Despite this fact, when warned that Japan’s future action was unpredictable but hostile action was possible at any moment and when his attention was called to the necessity for reconnaissance, General Short proceeded to institute an alert against sabotage only. This was done although there had not been one single act of sabotage on the islands up to that time; for that matter, there were no acts of sabotage thereafter. . . . General Short has stated that the silence and failure of the War Department to reply to his report of measures taken constituted reasonable grounds for his belief that his action was exactly what the War Department desired. He has pointed out that if the action taken by him was not consistent with the desires of the War Department it should have informed him of that fact.”

  Short testified that he didn’t go to an ALL-OUT alert after receiving the war warning since it had specifically said not to alarm the local civilians. But his predecessor, Herron, had told Short that he had run an ALL-OUT during the war games of June 17, 1940, without the locals becoming concerned.

  War Department Secretary Henry Stimson was particularly enraged by the general’s explanations:

  When General Short was informed on November 27 that “Japanese action unpredictable” and that “hostile action possible at any moment,” and that the policy directed “should not comma repeat not comma be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might jeopardize your defense,” we had a right to assume that he would competently perform this paramount duty entrusted to him. . . . The very purpose of a fortress such as Hawaii is to repel such an attack, and Short was the commander of that fortress. Furthermore, Short’s statement in his message that “liaison” was being carried out with the Navy, coupled with the fact that our message of November 27 had specifically directed reconnaissance, naturally gave the impression that the various reconnaissance and other defensive measures in which the cooperation of the Army and the Navy is necessary, were under way and a proper alert was in effect. . . .

  To cluster his airplanes in such groups and positions that in an emergency they could not take the air for several hours, and to keep his antiaircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available, and to use his best reconnaissance system, the radar, only for a very small fraction of the day and night, in my opinion betrayed a misconception of his real duty which was almost beyond belief. . . .

  From some of the comments quoted in the public papers, one would get the impressions that the imminent threat of war in October and November 1941 was a deep secret, known only to the authorities in Washington who kept it mysteriously to themselves. Nothing could be fu
rther from the truth.

  • • •

  Perhaps the most damning evidence against Husband Kimmel and Walter Short is that, even after all the warnings from Washington and even after all their own staff memos across 1941 warning of the possible attacks, the levels of reconnaissance that they conducted were cavalier to the point of comedy. Short’s army was supposed to conduct regular overflights of Oahu through a range of twenty miles. It only did so during drills and exercises, with pilot training limited to daylight hours on weekdays. Supplementing this, Kimmel’s navy was supposed to conduct distant surveillance of from seven hundred to eight hundred miles. This was also only achieved during drills and maneuvers, never through a full arc of 360 degrees, and rarely to seven hundred miles.

  Admiral Kimmel told the court of inquiry that this reaction to the war warning wasn’t ineptitude: “The omission of this reconnaissance was not due to oversight or neglect. It was the result of a military decision, reached after much deliberation and consultation with experienced officers, and after weighing the information at hand and all the factors involved.” His belief was that, by sending Halsey and his task force to Wake on November 28, and Newton to Midway and Brown to Johnston with their task forces on December 5, as well as ordering a squadron on December 2 and 3 to survey the territory between Midway and Wake, around 2 million square miles of ocean were patrolled, so the surveillance he was supposed to maintain was unnecessary.

 

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