World War II - Nonfiction

"Pearl Harbor Betrayed" By Michael Gannon

I must confess that I greatly looked forward to this book, having much enjoyed Gannon's "Black May" dealing with the defeat of the U-boats in 1943. In this book, he analyzes the causes of the army and navy to be adequately prepared for the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor. He spends only a chapter on the attack itself, dealing more with the failures in intelligence, communication and interservice coordination. Admiral Kimmel is the focus of the book, and much of it is spent detailing what intelligence and resources were available to CINPAC and what other tasks interfered with the defense of the fleet and base (like training PBY crews that were then shipped off to the Atlantic Fleet). He believes, and this is supported by Samuel Eliot Morison, that the primary failure was due to Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner, who was then chief of the navy war plans division. Turner was smart, but he thought that he was much smarter than he was. He usurped the intelligence functions into the war plans division and passed out only vague warnings, not forwarding detailed material that would have pointed to specific targets and method of attack - probably the most infamous of these was a coded message to the Japanese consul in Honolulu asking whether the navy had deployed barrage balloons and torpedo nets at Pearl. Turner's caustic, sarcastic and vindictive nature kept people from questioning his judgment. After the attack, everybody in Washington proceeded to cover their asses (entirely human of them, if I had been responsible for a failure like that, I'd try to cover my ass too). Kimmel demanded a board of inquiry and, only then, got hold of the pre-Pearl Harbor decrypted Japanese messages - he was exonerated by the board, but the board's findings were reversed by Adm. King, the Chief of Naval Operations, who found Kimmel guilty of dereliction of duty.

The book is a rather dry read except to Pearl Harbor buffs (such as the this reviewer - my maternal uncle Arthur Manlove was killed on the Arizona, and memorialized in the USS Manlove, DE-36), but the arguments are compelling with a few exceptions. Requiring the officers to live on board would have helped - the vast majority of sailors were on the ships, but some ships had up to half the officers ashore. Going to General Quarters when the midget submarine was sunk and closing watertight doors in ships would have greatly increased casualties in the attacking force (my making all AA batteries ready with full ammunition supplies) and perhaps have reduced damage to some of the ships, but there wasn't much in the way of long range aircraft patrols really possible with the resources Kimmel had. Lt. Gen Short, the army commander is more culpable, with all but one radar shut off and the plot room closed at 7am, and the P-36 and P-40 fighters moved together and unarmed and fueled. He had two infantry divisions which could have quite adequately guarded the planes from sabotage and still kept them ready for use.



Reviewed by
James L. Gilbert 6/23/2001

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