The Pearl Harbour Inquest
If the United States is unwilling to take severe punitive action against the commanding officers who failed to take adequate measures for the defence of Pearl Harbour in 1941, that is prob- ably because, as President Truman said, the trouble was that the whole country was not prepared for Pearl Harbour. The reports of the Army and Navy Boards of Inquiry, published, with the state- ments of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, last week, serve to show that the blame for the disaster must be widely distributed. General Short, who was in command at Hawaii, is severely criticised for failing to place his command in a state of readiness for war ; but the War Department is also blamed for not keeping him sufficiently informed of the growing tension with Japan. Admiral Stark, Com- mander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, and Rear-Admiral Kimmel, who was in command at Pearl Harbour, are criticised for the disposition of the fleet. The Army Board spares neither General Marshall, the Chief of Staff, nor even Mr. Cordell Hull, whom it charges with forcing the pace in the negotiations with Japan when the Services were not ready for war. If the charge of responsibility were to be pressed against all who had any share in it there is no reason why the Boards should stop short at the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State ; they would also, as President Truman recognises, have to accuse Congress itself, for having stifled suggestions for prepared- ness, and all those forces in the country which were behind Congress. America is in no mood to shelter behind the mistakes and omissions of a few commanding officers, serious as they were, or to make scapegoats of them ; it frankly accepts the disaster of Pearl Harbour as a failure on the part of the American nation to wake up in time to the stark realities of the world position.
Previous page
