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from here on December 11, 2007:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4205617
Morning Edition, December 7, 2004 · Sixty-three
years ago today, Americans were shocked out of their normal routine by news that
a Japanese force had attacked the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor, destroying
18 ships and nearly 200 aircraft.
More than 2,400 Americans died that day, as many at the base were as surprised
by the Sunday morning attack as were those on the mainland. Eyewitnesses recall
hearing over loudspeakers that the aerial attack was not part of a drill.
In the days following, Americans demanded to know who was responsible for
leaving the Pacific fleet so vulnerable. For even though the United States was
at peace, war was spreading from continent to continent.
Within weeks of the attack, a commission appointed by President Franklin
Roosevelt accused Lt. Gen. Walter Short and Adm. Husband Kimmel, the Army and
Navy commanders in Hawaii, of being derelict in their duties, giving them sole
responsibility for the catastrophe. As NPR's John Ydstie reports, the family of
one of those men has spent the past 60 years trying to clear his name.
Retired lawyer Ned Kimmel, Adm. Kimmel's only surviving son, says the
scapegoating of his father was "outrageous." Now he's working to restore his
father's four-star status and remove a stain on his service record.
The effort stems from a day in 1944, when Capt. Laurence Safford, the Navy's
former chief code breaker, said Washington officials had withheld from Adm.
Kimmel secret information gleaned from decoded Japanese messages hinting at a
Pearl Harbor attack.
The information, codenamed "Magic," included transmissions between Tokyo and its
Washington embassy during late 1941. The messages detailed rising tensions with
the United States over Japan's ambitions. It also included reports from the
Japanese consul in Honolulu on the locations of naval vessels in Pearl Harbor.
While top Army and Navy officers in Washington saw the reports, they were
reluctant to share the information -- due in part to a desire to keep secret the
fact that the United States had broken Japan's code. Warnings had been issued
that a Japanese attack on U.S. targets was imminent -- but many expected it
would come not at Pearl Harbor but in the Philippines.
Daniel Martinez, chief Park Service historian at the USS Arizona Memorial in
Pearl Harbor, has written about the controversy. He says that although Kimmel
and Short could have done more, many U.S. leaders miscalculated the Japanese,
both militarily and politically.
For his part, Ned Kimmel's most recent success was a congressional amendment
describing the actions of Kimmel and Short as professional and competent. It
urges President Bush to restore them to their highest World War II rank.
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From the sidebar at the above NPR link:
Pearl Harbor's Lessons
The 9/11 Commission's final report drew parallels with Pearl Harbor:
Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies. For example,
before Pearl Harbor the U.S. government had excellent intelligence that a
Japanese attack was coming, especially after peace talks stalemated at the end
of November 1941. These were days, one historian notes, of "excruciating
uncertainty." The most likely targets were judged to be in Southeast Asia. An
attack was coming, "but officials were at a loss to know where the blow would
fall or what more might be done to prevent it." In retrospect, available
intercepts pointed to Japanese examination of Hawaii as a possible target. But,
another historian observes, "in the face of a clear warning, alert measures
bowed to routine."
Elias Alias note: In keeping with everything else the Kean 911 Commission did (and failed to do), this statement itself is testament of the trickery of language used by the Commission to obscure and obfuscate the truth. As we now know, FDR himself knew exactly where and when the Japanese would attack, and systematically prevented Admiral Kimmel and General Short from receiving the Intelligence reports which would have alerted them to the coming attack.
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