Target: Pearl Harbor
Michael Slackman. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press and Arizona Memorial Museum Association, 1990. 365 pp. Append. Bib. Ind. Maps. Notes. Photos. $19.95 ($17.95).
Investigations of the Attack on Pearl Harbor: Index to Government Hearings
Compiled by Stanley H. Smith. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1990. 260 pp. $45.00 ($40.50).
Reviewed by Captain Roger Pineau, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
Readers who enjoyed Walter Lord’s Day of Infamy (Holt, 1957) and appreciated Roberta Wohlstetter’s landmark Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford University Press, 1962) will find Target: Pearl Harbor an interesting companion volume. Lord limited his highly readable book to a kaleidoscopic view of that one day; Wohlstetter concentrated her superb work on a careful and detailed examination of just why we were surprised; Slackman covers both these aspects briefly, with the same scholarly insight and reasoning, as he crafts a broader treatment of the attack.
Wohlstetter’s principal source of communications intelligence information was the 40 volumes of official Pearl Harbor investigations (Government Printing Office, 1946); Lord relied mainly on personal interviews; Slackman makes use of both, plus several sources available only since 1962. These include collections by a wide range of talent or hubris, and, most importantly, official communications intelligence documents. (Since the late 1970s the Department of Defense— thanks to President Jimmy Carter’s administration—has been releasing a wealth of such material, now available in National Archives Record Group 457.)
Using this and other new material, and profiting from the indiscretions of some intervening writers, Slackman has assembled a straightforward account of Pearl Harbor from the beginning of Japanese- U.S. relations through details of the attack to consideration of its lessons.
The closing chapter, titled “Reactions and Reflections,” presents a balanced appraisal of responsibilities, saying that “None of the American principals emerge with much credit. But . . . they were conscientious and competent.” He comes to the “inescapable conclusion that responsibility for U.S. unpreparedness stemmed from institutional and cultural factors, rather than any single individual or clique.”
Slackman assembled seven helpful appendixes, which include notes on sources and revisionism. Still others give texts of Army and Navy war warnings and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 8 December 1941 address to Congress, plus lists of Japanese and U.S. naval vessels involved in Pearl Harbor, and attack losses of both sides.
The bibliography bespeaks the author’s careful and thorough selection of sources. It contains one of the book’s very few typographical errors: referring to Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton as “Edward.”
Slackman writes, “Historians have a special obligation to present the whole truth,” which he does in compact and readable fashion. He also notes that the work of the congressional joint committee provided historians with a splendid documentary base for studying the Pearl Harbor attack, concluding that “prospective users of these transcripts and exhibits should be warned . . . that the paucity of indexing requires a substantial investment of time and patience.”
If only Slackman had known about a book published just two months earlier than his own: Investigation of the Attack on Pearl Harbor: Index to Government Hearings, compiled by Stanley H. Smith. It indexes in great detail all eight of the official investigations. First among them was the hastily assembled Roberts Commission, appointed by President Roosevelt in December 1941, which lasted five weeks. The last was that of the Joint Congressional Committee, begun 15 November 1945; it lasted until 31 May 1946.
The results of these deliberations were published in 1946 by the Government Printing Office in 40 volumes (19,182 pages and 566 items, plus maps and charts) of testimony and evidential material. Each volume lists the names of witnesses examined therein, but the GPO provided no overall index or cross-references. Forty-four years later. Smith has done it all.
I wince thinking of the time this index could have saved Michael Slackman and other Pearl Harbor researchers in the intervening years. I reflect on how I myself labored years ago through the unindexed volumes (called “parts”), first for Samuel Eliot Morison’s naval history, or, most recently, together with John Costello for our coauthored Admiral Layton memoir “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway-Breaking the Secrets (William Morrow and Co., 1985), and many times in between.
Smith’s contents include 25 parts on Hearings of the Joint Congressional Committee; 4 on the Roberts Commission Proceedings; 1 on the Hart Inquiry Proceedings; 4 on the Army Pearl Harbor Board; 2 on the Navy Court of Inquiry; 1 on the Clarke Investigation; 1 on the Clausen Investigation; 3 on the Hewitt Inquiry Proceedings; 1 that covers reports of the Roberts Commission, Army Pearl Harbor Board, Navy Court, and Hewitt Inquiry; and 1 on a report of the Joint Congressional Committee.
The index includes not only individuals involved, but also ships of many nations, military organizations, place names, and numerous letters, memorandums, messages, and dispatches. There are detailed subheadings.
The name that appears most frequently is Franklin D. Roosevelt, with some 3,500 page references (his wife, Eleanor, appears twice). Next come Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter C. Short, each with more than 2,000 page references. “Messages” of various kinds occupy 15 pages of the index. Other examples include 50 or so references to drunkenness, 35 to scrambler telephones, 1 to poison gas, and 1 to Amelia Earhart.
The method and organization of this compact book are explained in the preface, which should be read carefully. Morison’s general index—the last volume of his 15-volume naval history— was wisely used as a guide by Smith in listing personnel names, except that he chose to stick with ranks and rates at the time of first mention, whereas Morison used the highest rank attained.
Typographical slips are almost inevitable in a work of this scope. Some bloopers originate in the 40 volumes themselves, and many occur in Japanese names, which present the usual transliteration problem. A few examples that some readers might miss are: “Shinsaku Hirata” for “Naosaku Hirsta” as the author of When Japan Fights', “JN-25” was the American designator for the Japanese fleet operational cipher, not the Japanese flag officers’ code, which was “AD”; since the Redman brothers each had the initials J.R., it should be noted that Joseph was the captain, and John the commander; and “Tankan Bay” for “Tankappu Wan.” Misspelled names include various renderings of Ful- linwider, Ghormley, Kinkaid, Newfoundland, Oldendorf, Schuirmann, Tomioka, and, as in Slackman’s work, Admiral Layton’s name suffers. His first initial should be “E,” not “R.” Considering the complexity and vastness of the coverage, errors in this index are relatively minor and surprisingly few. The redoubtable John Taylor of the National Archives’ military reference section tells me that in the past few months since its publication, many researchers there have already benefited from this index.
Diplomatic Ramifications of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 1939-1941
Janet M. Manson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. 233 pp. Bib. Figs. Ind. Maps. $39.95 ($35.95).
Reviewed by Captain Ernest L. Schwab, U.S. Navy (Retired)
This book purports to study the origins of the American decision on 7 December 1941 to undertake unrestricted submarine warfare in a dramatic reversal of historic policy. The study is conditioned by the author’s assertion that the decisions to undertake unrestricted submarine warfare made by Imperial Germany in January 1917 and by the United States in December 1941 were similar in their violation of neutral rights and were adopted and justified by both countries for similar reasons- German submarine warfare decisions in World War II are also examined. The “ramifications” of the title are allegations that such resorts to unrestricted submarine warfare have created the climate for extension of total war to civilians as military targets and thereby undermine the laws of war and the bases of civilization. In other words, unrestricted submarine warfare at sea breeds unrestricted warfare on land.
Dr. Manson supports her study of submarine warfare decisions with a plethora of in-depth research into political and military archival materials from both Germany and the United States. Three chapters trace the American transition from President Woodrow Wilson’s adamant stand on “neutral rights,” through the series of neutrality acts in the 1930s that virtually repudiated American freedom of the seas policies, to the “undeclared war at sea” in the Atlantic. Special attention is paid to German perceptions and decisions affecting their World War II submarine operations.
Dr. Manson makes a valid argument that German and American resort to unrestricted submarine warfare has been justified on similar grounds, namely, military necessity and reprisal. German military necessity in World War I was based on the surface vulnerability of the “new” weapon—the submarine—making cruiser rules (visit, search, and provision for crew and passenger safety) impractical. Submarines were the naval weapons of j last resort after the British bottled up the German High Seas Fleet. German reprisal was the response to British mining and declaration of war zones. The war zones, said Germany, were essentially illegal paper blockades to deprive Germany of all maritime trade, in effect, economic war.
Although the author acknowledges that the foreign policy objectives of the two countries at the times noted were completely different, she does not adequately stress that the German decision was the continuation of an aggressive pattern, j whereas the American unrestricted warfare decision was taken for defensive reasons and in reprisal for the Japanese surprise attack prior to declaration of war. As a result of that attack, residual surface fleet strength in the Pacific was only of marginal defensive value. American military necessity was the use of the only instantly available weapon—the submarine—to thwart Japan’s aggressive aims by destroying her seaborne assets.
Regarding violations of neutral rights. Dr. Manson seems to downplay the fact that neutral shipping was active in the Atlantic during World War I and was sunk by German submarines. Conversely, neutral shipping was essentially nonexistent in the Pacific during World War II, even before the Pearl Harbor attack.
Documentation of the 7 December 1941 American decision to execute unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan is ambiguous. Dr. Manson conjectures that: “Close cooperation between the navy, the State Department and the President preceded the decision for unrestricted submarine warfare.” There is no evidence, however, of awareness that the decision could be labelled as something “No other foreign policy reversal in United States history quite matches in magnitude.” In fact, if, as cited by the author, Professor Samuel F. Bemis’s account of a 1961 conversation with Admiral Harold R. Stark (CNO when Pearl Harbor was attacked) is correct, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the execute message over the telephone.
Coincidentally, while this reviewer was in graduate school, he did a paper on the submarine warfare decision that included a letter from Admiral Stark in April 1957 in which he stated that he had “no clear recollection of the decision process leading to the CNO dispatch on unrestricted submarine warfare.” He noted: “that with the German Jap set up what it was it appeared to be the only thing to do.” The memoirs of Cordell Hull, Secretary of State at the time, say nothing about an unrestricted submarine warfare decision.
The “ramifications” conclusion of the book was obviously written before Desert Storm and the current dissolution of superpower military opposition. Thus, the fear of the author that advances in technology will foster continual violation of international rules protecting noncombatants may be overdrawn, at least at the high end of the spectrum. To forestall the extinction of civilization and mankind. Dr. Manson calls for international treaties limiting the scope and destructiveness of warfare. In light of her scholarly study and her knowledge of the disregard of international law when military necessity dictates, she should recall the observation of Cicero (106-43 B.C.): “Laws are mute in time of war.”