Kimmel, Short, and Pearl Harbor: The Final Report Revealed

Military Review,  July-August, 2005  by Tom Allen

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KIMMEL, SHORT, AND PEARL HARBOR: The Final Report Revealed, Fred Borch and Daniel Martinez, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2005, 220 pages, $25.95.

The word "final" in the title of Fred Borch and Daniel Martinez's Kimmel, Short, and Pearl Harbor: The Final Report Revealed is not an empty claim. This indeed should be the final assessment of whom to blame for what happened at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

The reader who knows little about Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Major General Walter C. Short's conduct on 7 December can learn here all they need to know. Countless books and reports look at other aspects of the attack, but this one clearly and objectively tells the story of how loyal and embittered champions of Kimmel and Short have attempted to clear their names.

The core of the book is the 1995 "Dorn Report," named for Undersecretary of Defense Edwin Dora, who at the request of Senator Strom Thurmond investigated the question of posthumously promoting Kimmel and Short. The officers' families and supporters saw such promotions (restoration of Kimmel's rank to four stars and Short's rank to three stars) as a vindication of the officers' behavior at Pearl Harbor. Kimmel and Short advocates hoped that Dorn's investigation would be objective and shorn of military bias. Borch and Martinez clearly show that the advocates' hopes were fulfilled.

Borch, a career Army lawyer, was assigned by Dorn as an investigator and one of three writers of the report. Martinez is a respected historian highly knowledgeable about the Pearl Harbor attack. Their annotations include succinct explanations of murky military personnel regulations; a devastating 5-1/2 page critique that shows how Kimmel and Short's "mental unreadiness" radiated through the Navy and Army command structures; and how "no one else in Hawaii was mentally prepared either." Borch and Martinez named other general officers who were also relieved of command primarily because of judgment errors during World War II.

The authors link Kimmel and Short's professional actions directly to the promotion issue that launched the investigation: "Given their errors in judgment, and the death and destruction that followed from these mistakes, the loss of a few stars is not much to ask of them."

Tom Allen, Bethesda, Maryland

COPYRIGHT 2005 U.S. Army CGSC
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