Senate vote, Pearl Harbor, FDR, Kimmel, Short & Marshall

After WW2, Kimmel & Short had been demoted as punishment for failing to respond adequately to the Japanese air attack that crippled our Pacific fleet. Kimmel & Short, however, always maintained that they were scapegoats for those higher up the chain of command. The Senate vote belatedly acknowledges that they were right.
There is no question that the Army and Navy were unprepared on that day of infamy. Although Kimmel and Short knew that war with Japan was a growing possibility, they had no special reason to expect an air attack on the morning of December 7. If they had any such expectation, our ships would not have been anchored at harbor but sent to sea, and our fighter planes would not have been bunched together against sabotage but dispersed or in the air. The crux of the case against Kimmel and Short is that they should have known better
The problem with the case against the commanders has always been that the United States had broken Japan's top-secret diplomatic code, known as the Purple Code, in 1940. Eventually, U.S. code breakers were actually able to build duplicate code machines, allowing them to decipher Japanese diplomatic messages almost as fast as Japan's embassies. Although eight of these machines were manufactured, none was ever sent to Pearl Harbor. Indeed, Kimmel and Short were in complete ignorance of the intelligence these duplicate machines provided until after the war.

Roosevelt Knew Of Imminent Attack

It is clear from reading these decoded messages, which were known as Magic, that the imminence of attack was much greater than Kimmel and Short had been led to believe. In particular, a message intercepted on December 6 pointed to an attack at Pearl Harbor the next morning.
When President Roosevelt saw the message, he said, "This means war." Yet no warning was sent to Hawaii until about an hour before the first bombs fell. Moreover, for some inexplicable reason, Gen. George Marshall the Army chief of staff,sent this last warning by commercial telegraph, rather than phone or radio. As a result, the warning was not received until after the attack.

For many years, there has been speculation that Roosevelt deliberately denied Kimmel and Short adequate warnings in order to ensure a Japanese attack and America's entry into World War II, which had been raging in Europe since 1939. This was necessary to overcome the political resistance against American involvement. Supporting this view is the fact that Roosevelt had taken a number of actions to goad Japan into an attack, including embargoes on oil and steel scrap.

Only a few months before the attack, Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets in the United States, which effectively cut off all trade. And just days before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt personally ordered three small Navy ships into the path of a Japanese naval task force in hopes of triggering an attack Although this last effort failed, the leader of the mission, Adm. Kemp Tolley, had no doubt that his job was to provoke war.

Sounds to me like Gen Marshall, failed to do a very good job. Were I him,
I would want to talk with both Gen Short and Adm Kimmel, on the phone,
if I could. I would want to know what they were doing to get ready.
Is there a rational reason, why Marshall failed in the respect?

Is the article accurate on Adm Tolley? I have never heard of him before.

Anyway, Gen Marshall was a very accompished man and this is one of
the things, that to me just don't add up.

Here is the article: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_199906/ai_n8877134/

 

Ok, I have to respond as the post, err, quote, posted by Dogfather, is pretty much bunk! Did the author do any research? even a simple Google search would have helped!

The reason you never heard of Admiral Kemp Tolley heading the mission, is because he was a LIEUTENANT at the time! He retired as a Rear Admiral, but at the time(1941) he was a lowly lieutenant. He was not the leader of the mission, but he was given command of one of the ships, the schooner Lanikai(ex-USS Hermes): Patrol Yacht Hermes The other ships were the USS Isabel(PY-10), commanded by Lieutenant John W. Payne Jr., and the schooner Molly Moore(the Molly Moore was selected, but never taken over by the USN for this mission. The overall head of the mission would have been either Asiatic Fleet commander Admiral Thomas C. Hart or Asiatic Fleet operations officer Commander Harry Slocum. Do a Google search on the USS Lanikai and USS Isabel.

Is a misleading statement. Station Hypo, the Pearl Harbor code breakers, was specifically tasked with cracking the Japanese "Admiral's Code", having a Purple machine(Magic) would have done them no good in cracking the Admiral's Code, hence, they did not get one since they did not need one. For more on American code breaking activities, I suggest you read "Combined Fleet Decoded" by John Prados.

 

And when the article starts with an out-right lie, what is the point in continuing?

Neither Kimmel nor Short were demoted as punishment, etc., etc.

Hogwash!

 

First, Both Admiral Kimmel and General Short were NOT demoted because of Pearl Harbor. Both had received only temporary promotions contingent on the command they held. When they were relieved, their permanent ranks were restored.

The 14 Part Message was in fact deciphered before the Japanese were able to translate it, however, anyone who cares to read it (link attached below) would see it makes no mention of Pearl Harbor, an attack on any US possession, or even a declaration of war. Even Nomura knew nothing of the attack beforehand as he states in his dairy he did not learn of it until he had left the State Department

Diary of Admiral Kichisabura Nomura, Contained within The Pacific War Papers - Goldstein and Dillon

Sunday, December 7, 1941
The Day on which diplomatic relations between Japan and America were severed

At 2pm, called on the Secretary of State and handed him our reply (though it was instructed to be handed at 1pm, we could not make preperations in time).

After reading it through once, the Secretary of State said that he had told only the truth during the past nine months, but that he had never seen a public document crowded with more "distortions" than this one. (see acompanying clipping.)

The report of our suprise attack against Hawaii reached my ears when I returned from the State department; this might have reached Hull's ears during our conversation.

F.B.I. began strict surveillance from today and we began a life of confinement.
(emphasis is Nomura's)

HyperWar: Japanese "14-Part Message" of 7 December 1941

 

How about I ask the question this way. Shouldn't there have been an
immediate and reliable way, to contact Pearl Harbor, form Washington DC?
Shouldn't this have been thought about and tested in advance?

Communications would be part of command and control. Gen Marshall was
responsibile for this and command and control, failed when the time came.

The message was that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked. Had that
gotten out to PH, as soon as the target was determined, things might
have turned out very different.

 

1940's communications . . . phones, telegraph, radio. None of which even approached today's capabilities.

Now, specifically, and from what source, who, when, how, was anyone in the War Department or the Navy Department informed that specifically Pearl Harbor was about to be attacked?

Try not to generalize or do the would have, could have game.

You seem to espouse that someone, somewhere, besides the Japanese, and apparently in Washington DC had that information on the eve of the attack, specifically targeting Pearl Harbor.

Who? and your source
When? and your source
How? and your source

 

Then let me ask it this way. What was in the telegram, sent to Pearl
Harbor, that got there late? If it was not about an attack, was was it
about and why was time an issue?

 

I understand what year it was and there were no cell phones. The point is
there were ways to communicate, had the attack warning go there on
time, it might well have changed things. There is no way to know how
Kimmel and Short would have reacted, has the warning got there on time.

The cable to PH was nationalized after the war started, don't you think
it would have been a good idea, to have a cable that would be sure to
work. Like I said before command and control, everyone knows this a
very important part of any war plan.

 

The problem was that the undersea cable which did exist (from T.R.'s time) was privately owned, and NOT by Western Union. Neither it nor the Atlantic Cable systems were "nationalized" until war had been declared, either time. First or Second World War.

This meant that the government had to be "in line" just like any other customer, until war was declared and the cables were nationalized. Even then, sending a telegram wasn't fool-proof, and so it would have had to be en-coded and de-coded to be sent on a commercial system.

It wasn't like "pick up the phone", nor was it like; "open up a channel on the radio", it just wasn't that good. And until the government "declared" war or war was "declared on us" by others, they were commercial enterprises which weren't under military control.

These things have been altered these days, but they hadn't been until way into the fifties.

 

The military couldn't have had there own cable? Maybe there was not
budget, but I think they could have had there own cable. The fact that
they did not, was a failure of command and control. I have read this
in many different sources. Not my idea, but I do agree with it. The US
Navy had spent lots of money on ships, bases and manpower etc.
They should have had a way to contact those bases, were these military
assets were.

 

That was a budgetary decision made in the twenties when the military budget was shrunken (under Republican Congress and Administration) when military "defense" spending was miniscule. Tell the tale to the hisory of military reductions post WW-1. The cable existed, but it was a private concern and the military couldn't afford to lay down a duplicate line.

 

In my possession, a cablegram, from Honolulu TH to Norfolk VA via the, by then, nationalized cable was sent on 14 June 1942 at 2:50 pm. The delivery time stamped in Norfolk is 15 June 1942 at 12:10 pm. Hardly a quick method.

What you think the gov't or the Army or the Navy should have had in 1941 is just more of the would have and could have. If they did not have this, that, or the other, then your wanting them to have same means nothing and is not evidence of the GPHC.

Still looking for your specific info on who knew what, when, and how.