Chapter 30: 30. Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack: Reports JCC Report, July 20, 1946

The committee’s report was published in a separate unnumbered volume and transmitted to Congress under date of July 20, 1946.^[1] The hearings had continued much longer than anticipated, and the deadline for the report had been extended. By the time the committee closed down in May 1946, it had held 70 days of open hearings, examined 43 witnesses, taken 15,000 pages of testimony, introduced countless documents, and admitted some 183 exhibits.^[2] Incorporated in the volumes of the hearings were the findings of all previous Pearl Harbor investigations. Moreover, the JCC had had access to a great deal of secret information that had not been available before; much new material had been revealed. To organize all this data, gathered from various sources, to separate the wheat from the chaff, the relevant from the irrelevant, and to determine responsibility was a formidable task.

The Majority Report

The Majority Report itself was a veritable book, 492 pages long. It reviewed in considerable detail the historical background of the attack, Japan’s Asiatic policy, the Japanese-U.S. negotiations, U.S. diplomacy, and U.S. agreements to cooperate with the British and the Dutch. It described the attack itself, including the Japanese plan for making and executing the attack, the defenses of U.S. forces in Hawaii, the surprise occasioned in Pearl Harbor by the attack, and the U.S. losses that resulted.

The Majority Report was signed by only eight of the committee’s ten members. One of the signatories, Keefe, dissented in some respects and presented “Additional Views.”^[3]

The conclusion of the Majority Report was that the “ultimate responsibility” for the attack rested with Japan; the top Washington officials had done nothing to provoke the Japanese into attack and had

discharged their responsibilities with distinction, ability, and foresight . . . and had made every possible effort, without sacrificing our national honor and endangering our security, to avert war with Japan.^[4]

The Majority Report did not let Washington military officials get off scot-free, however. It charged the war plans division of the War Department with having “failed to discharge its direct responsibility to advise the commanding general he had not properly alerted the Hawaiian Department.”

It also held:

The Intelligence and War Plans Divisions of the War and Navy Departments failed: (a) To give careful and thoughtful consideration to the intercepted messages from Tokyo to Honolulu of September 24, November 15, and November 20 (the harbor berthing plan and related dispatches) and to raise a question as to their significance. . . . (b) To be properly on the qui vive to receive the “one o’clock” intercept and to recognize in the message the fact that some Japanese military action would very possibly occur somewhere at 1 p.m. December 7. . . . Notwithstanding the fact that there were officers on twenty-four hour watch, the Committee believes that under all of the evidence the War and Navy Departments were not sufficiently alerted on December 6 and 7, 1941, in view of the imminence of war.^[5]

Thus the Majority Report was somewhat critical of Gerow (War Plans) and Turner (Intelligence), for not being more alert, and it placed some blame indirectly on Marshall and Stark for not having reacted more promptly on receiving the “One p.m. Message.” However, it held Hull’s diplomatic role justified and praised Knox and Stimson.

According to the Majority Report,

everyone was surprised that Japan struck the Fleet at Pearl Harbor at the time that she did. Yet officers, both in Washington and Hawaii, were fully conscious of the danger from an attack; they realized this form of attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan was at least a possibility; and they were adequately informed of the imminence of war.^[6]

The Report listed several failures on the part of the Hawaiian commanders and concluded: “The errors made by the Hawaiian commands were errors of judgment and not of derelictions of duty.”

The principal recommendations were to institute “unity of command . . . at all military and naval outposts” and to integrate “Army and Navy intelligence agencies in order to avoid the pitfalls of divided responsibility which experience has made so abundantly apparent.”^[7]

Keefe’s “Additional Views”

In his “Additional Views,” Keefe said that he agreed with most of the Majority Report’s conclusions and recommendations. For instance, he recognized, as the majority did, that both Washington and Hawaii were surprised. Apparently neither believed that Pearl Harbor would be Japan’s initial target; both expected Japan to strike first in the Asiatic area. “If this belief was unjustified,” as Keefe believed it was,

then the mistake lies on the Washington doorstep just as much as it does upon that of Hawaii. Throughout the long and arduous sessions of the committee in the preparation of the committee report [I had] continuously insisted that whatever “yardstick” was agreed upon as a basis for determining responsibilities in Hawaii should be applied to the high command at Washington.

This was Keefe’s “fundamental objection to the committee report.” If “the high command in Hawaii was subject to criticism for concluding that Hawaii was not in danger,” then Keefe insisted that “the same criticism with the same force and scope should apply to the high command in Washington.”^[8]

Keefe pointed out that it was FDR who had made the decision to retain the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Yet

the position of the Fleet in the Hawaiian area was inherently untenable and dangerous. . . . Once the ships were in Pearl Harbor, with its single channel, they were a target for any successfully launched air attack from carrier-borne planes.

As the fleet lacked sufficient patrol planes to conduct the necessary reconnaissance, out as far as 800 miles and for 360 degrees all around Oahu, the chance of discovering such a hostile carrier would be only “by lucky accident.”

“An inferior Fleet, under enemy surveillance in an exposed naval base without resources to protect it,” Keefe wrote,

could only avert disaster by receiving the best possible evidence of the intentions of its potential enemy. The Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet in 1941 recognized that information was essential to his making appropriate disposition to meet any crisis. He formally requested the Chief of Naval Operations that he “be immediately informed of all important developments as they occur and by the quickest secure means available.^[9]

Yet Kimmel was not kept so informed.

Keefe reviewed some of the more vital information that had been available in Washington but which had not been relayed to Pearl Harbor—the evidence of Japanese intentions, the “bomb plot” or “ships in harbor” messages, FDR’s several statements concerning the imminence of war, the “Pilot Message,” the thirteen parts of Japan’s reply, etc. All in all, Keefe’s objections to the Majority Report were so substantial that Senators Brewster and Ferguson were surprised and disappointed that he did not join them in drafting their Minority Report.

JCC Minority Report

The two committee members who refused to sign the Majority Report, Brewster and Ferguson, submitted their own Minority Report.^[10] In it they pointed out that “the first purpose of the investigation,” according to Barkley, was “that of ‘fixing responsibility’ for the Pearl Harbor disaster ‘upon an individual, or a group of individuals, or upon a system under which they operated or cooperated or failed to do either’.”^[11] They proceeded to lay the blame directly at the door of the Roosevelt administration.

Inasmuch as all decisions and activities connected with this occurrence at Pearl Harbor were decisions and activities of executive authorities of the Government of the United States, the issue of responsibility for the degree of success attained by the Japanese attack involves at least one general question and four subsidiary and specific questions:

The general question is: Did all the civil, military and naval authorities of the United States charged with responsibility for the conduct of diplomatic negotiations with the Japanese Government and for preparedness and defense at Pearl Harbor competently, efficiently, and with proper regard for the trust imposed in them fulfill the duties of their respective offices under the constitution and laws of the United States?

The subsidiary and specific questions are:

1. Did the high civil, military, and naval authorities in Washington secure in advance of 10:00 a.m. (E.S.T.) December 7, 1941, information respecting Japanese designs and intentions sufficient to convince them beyond all reasonable doubt that war with Japan was immediately imminent?

2. If so, did they give to General Walter C. Short and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the commanders at Pearl Harbor, clear and definite orders, immediately prior to the Japanese attack, instructing them to be fully alert for defense against such an attack?

3. Was Hawaii adequately equipped for its defense against a Japanese attack in accordance with the known circumstances?

4. Did the commanders at Pearl Harbor take the appropriate measures required by the orders issued to them from Washington, by the duties of their respective offices, and by the information in their possession and the resources at their disposal, to maintain the security of the possessions of the United States as far as that responsibility was invested in them?^[12]

The Minority Report objected to the trouble the committee had in obtaining documents. The proposal presented to Congress just before the death of FDR in April 1945, to prevent all disclosure of U.S. cryptanalysis activities, had failed to pass, thanks to the charges of censorship raised by Ferguson.^[13] However, the members of the Joint Congressional Committee still encountered obstacles to obtaining documents crucial to their investigation.

Under date of August 28, 1945, President Truman issued an order similar to the April proposal.^[14] This order was relaxed somewhat in October 1945, when its application was limited to the state, war, and navy departments; also the secrecy of records was relaxed “only so far as ‘the Joint Committee’ was concerned.” The opportunity to search the records was still denied to individual members of the committee. Moreover, the order

contained the unfortunate phrase “any information in their [the government’s] possession material to the investigation,” which provided a cloak for those reluctant to yield information requested by members of the Committee. It was always possible to confront individual members with the view that the papers, data, and information desired was not “material to the investigation.” . . .

In an order of November 7, 1945, President Truman relaxed restraints on executives of the Government in order that they may speak freely to individual members of the Committee but the order closed with the direction: “This does not include any files or written material.”^[15]

Brewster and Ferguson charged in their report that when they asked to have a search made for missing records, “Vigorous and public denial was made—presumably on Executive authority—that any records were missing.” Yet when it developed that some records actually were missing

most inadequate explanations were supplied. How any public interest could possibly have been prejudiced by affording any opportunity to examine the manner of keeping records of this character has never been satisfactorily explained.^[16]

The major criticism of Brewster and Ferguson was of the top authorities in Washington—Roosevelt, the secretaries of state, war, and navy, the Army chief of staff, and chief of naval operations.^[17] Hours, even days, before the attack these men all had access to detailed information about Japan’s intentions, information that was not available to the field commanders. They knew that a Japanese strike was imminent. Yet they did not act. They just waited. They waited—for Japan to strike the first blow. Yet all this time they failed to advise the military men in the field of the seriousness of the threat. And the warnings Washington did send to the field were

couched in such conflicting and imprecise language that they failed to convey to the commanders definite information on the state of diplomatic relations with Japan and on Japanese war designs and positive orders respecting the particular actions to be taken—orders that were beyond all reasonable doubts as to the need for an all-out alert. In this regard,

according to Brewster and Ferguson, “the said high authorities failed to discharge their full duty.”^[18]

The Minority Report reviewed some of the crucial information that had been available in Washington, but which had not been transmitted to Hawaii:

Intercepts of Japanese messages made by the Army and Navy intelligence services showed high authorities in Washington that the Japanese Government had ordered its agents in Hawaii to report on American military and naval installations and ship movements in that region. They also required reports on “lack of movement.” For example, September 24, 1941, it ordered an agent to subdivide the waters of Pearl Harbor into five subareas, as well as to report on ship movements there. Prior to and after this date Japanese agents were, up to the Japanese attack, reporting on ship movements, installations, and other matters of military and naval significance to the Japanese government.^[19]

Witnesses before the Committee, it may be noted, in extenuation of their lack of emphasis on the probability of an attack on Pearl Harbor, called attention to the fact that Japanese agents were also reporting on the military and naval installations of the United States at Panama, the Philippines, the west coast, and other points. But to men, competent, careful, and watchful, men alert on their all-around and indivisible responsibility, this fact provided no excuse whatever for minimizing the probability of an attack on Pearl Harbor any more than at any other American outpost. Nor does it excuse the failure of Washington authorities to note that far greater detail was being asked for by the Japanese about Hawaii at a time when Japanese movements in the Southeastern Pacific had to contend with the strategic position of Hawaii where the real American striking force, the fleet, rested.^[20]

Basically, Brewster and Ferguson held Roosevelt to blame:

The President of the United States was responsible for the failure to enforce continuous, efficient, and appropriate cooperation among the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the [Army] Chief of Staff, and the Chief of Naval Operations, in evaluating information and dispatching clear and positive orders to the Hawaiian commanders. . . . In the final instance of crucial significance for alerting American outpost commanders, on Saturday night, December 6; and Sunday morning, December 7, the President of the United States failed to take that quick and instant executive action which was required by the occasion and by the responsibility for watchfulness and guardianship rightly associated in law and practice with his high office from the establishment of the Republic to our own times.^[21]

Evidence set forth in this report in detail is ample to show that in the period approximately from May 1940 to December 7, 1941, the high authorities at Washington assumed so much of the direction of affairs at Hawaii as to remove many of the basic responsibilities from the commanders in the field. The result was to reduce the discretion of the commanders in the field by those things which they were ordered to do by directions from Washington and not to do certain things unless they were so ordered from Washington. Another result of this practice was to lull the commanders in the field into awaiting instructions from Washington.^[22]

Admittedly Marshall and Stark were

carrying heavy burdens in preparing the armed forces of the United States for war; in making war plans; in building up an Army and Navy (which they knew were not yet ready for war), and in struggling for a postponement of the war until the Army and Navy were better prepared to cope with the foe. With regard to the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Navy, it may be said justly that they were carrying heavy burdens also. But all these officials, as Secretary Stimson’s diary demonstrates, spent many days before December 7 in general discussions which led to no decisions. This they did at a time when they possessed special knowledge of Japanese designs and were acquainted with their own intentions and resolves and certainly had the leisure to do the one obvious duty dictated by common sense—that is—draw up a brief plan for telling the outpost commanders just what to do in a certain contingency [a Japanese attack on American possessions somewhere] on receipt of orders from Washington. . . . They had plans for action or actions by the armed forces of the United States if Congress declared war or if by some process the United States got into or entered the war. War plans (for example, Rainbow No. 5 which was WPL 46) were to go into operation only after war had begun and were not intended for preparation in meeting a surprise attack.

They prepared no plan giving the outpost commanders instructions about the measures they were to take in preparing for and meeting a Japanese attack on American possessions when and if it came. This plan could have been drawn up in a few hours at most and set down in two or three typewritten pages at most.^[23]

As to Kimmel and Short, Brewster and Ferguson said,

Whatever errors of judgment the commanders at Hawaii committed and whatever mismanagement they displayed in preparing for a Japanese attack, attention to chain of responsibility in the civil and military administration requires taking note of the fact that they were designated for their posts by high authorities in Washington. . . .

The defense of Hawaii rested upon two sets of interdependent responsibilities: (1) The responsibility in Washington in respect of its intimate knowledge of diplomatic negotiations, widespread intelligence information, direction of affairs and constitutional duty to plan the defense of the United States; (2) the responsibility cast upon the commanders in the field in charge of a major naval base and the fleet essential to the defense of the territory of the United States to do those things appropriate to the defense of the fleet and outpost. Washington authorities failed in (1); and the commanding officers at Hawaii failed in (2).^[24]

The Minority Report acknowledged that, “The question of the wisdom of the foreign policy pursued by the Government of the United States [was] excluded by the terms of the committee’s instructions.”^[25] However, the two Senators did approach the matter as it related to military tactics. They asked why Japan’s request for a modus vivendi had been rejected.

Wholly apart from the merits or demerits of . . . the Japanese proposal of November 20, here was an opportunity at least to prolong “the breathing spell” for which General Marshall and Admiral Stark were pleading in their efforts to strengthen the armed forces of the United States for war.

Although Roosevelt had at first approved of a three-month modus vivendi, as opposed to the six-month version previously proposed, Hull had rejected it after talking with FDR. In doing this, he [Hull]

gave no advance notice to General Marshall and Admiral Stark, who were then preparing their second careful memorandum to the President begging for a postponement of war with Japan until the Army and Navy could make better preparation for waging it.^[26]

As they closed their Minority Report, Brewster and Ferguson said,

How to avoid war and how to turn war—if it finally comes—to serve the cause of human progress is the challenge to diplomacy today as yesterday. Here, too, much cannot be known regarding all the petty episodes that finally add up to war. No war comes in a moment. War is the sum of many minor decisions and some that are major. In this diplomatic aspect the Pearl Harbor investigation has sadly failed to live up to the lofty prospectus with which it was launched. . . .

In our opinion, the evidence before this Committee indicates that the tragedy at Pearl Harbor was primarily a failure of men and not of laws or powers to do the necessary things, and carry out the vested responsibilities. No legislation could have cured such defects of official judgments, management, cooperation, and action as were displayed by authorities and agents of the United States in connection with the events that culminated in the catastrophe at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

This demonstrates the weakness of depending on the political head of the Government to bring about the necessary coordination of the activities of the military branches, particularly in the area of intelligence, and unification of command. The major lesson to be learned is that this coordination should be accomplished in advance of a crisis. . . .

The failure to perform the responsibilities indispensably essential to the defense of Pearl Harbor rests upon the following civil and military authorities:

Franklin D. Roosevelt — President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy

Henry L. Stimson — Secretary of War

Frank Knox — Secretary of the Navy

George C. Marshall —General, Chief of Staff of the Army

Harold R. Stark — Admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Leonard T. Gerow — Major General, Assistant Chief of Staff of War Plans Division

The failure to perform the responsibilities in Hawaii rests upon the military commanders:

Walter C. Short — Major General, Commanding General, Hawaiian Department

Husband E. Kimmel — Rear Admiral, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet

Both in Washington and in Hawaii there were numerous and serious failures of men in the lower civil and military echelons to perform their duties and discharge their responsibilities. These are too numerous to be treated in detail and individually named.

Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who was at the center of Japanese-American negotiations bears a grave responsibility for the diplomatic conditions leading up to the eventuality of Pearl Harbor but he had no duties as a relevant link in the military chain of responsibility stemming from the Commander in Chief to the commanders at Hawaii for the defense at Pearl Harbor. For this reason and because the diplomatic phase was not completely explored we offer no conclusions in his case.

S/ Homer Ferguson

S/ Owen Brewster^[27]