Scapegoats: A Defense of Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor

As an analyst and historian of the Pearl Harbor attack, Ned Beach brings to the table qualifications few others can match: a career as a highly-decorated Navy commander and combat veteran. That makes this look at America's on-scene military leaders on the Day of Infamy particularly insightful, and Captain Beach's opinions particularly worthy of respect.Almost from the moment the bombs stopped falling, the rush was on to hold someone responsible for the catastrophe. Anxious to draw attention away from errors (or, according to some, deliberate policy decisions) by senior officials in Washington, D.C., government investigators and their defenders fingered Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter Short, the commanders in Hawaii, as the men to blame.Beach sees this as accusation as a slur on the memories of two competent and dedicated officers. Kimmel and Short, Beach argues, did the best they could with the incomplete information and insufficient tools they were given. Beach does not subscribe to the 'Roosevelt knew' school of thought, though he does argue that Roosevelt's policies regarding Japan made war inevitable. Beach's main criticisms are directed at America's military and diplomatic intelligence services, short-sighted budget priorities, and political pressure to 'make someone pay' for what happened.Very useful in its own right is Beach's concluding 'References' section, in which he shares his thoughts on nearly three dozen books, articles, and government reports on the Pearl Harbor attack. Toland, Prange, Clausen, George Morgenstern, and other key pillars of Pearl Harbor historiography are all covered in this chapter.Author of the classic navy story 'Run Silent, Run Deep,' Captain Beach is a skilled writer as well as a keen observer, and the prose in this relatively short book never lags. 'Scapegoats' helped start the movement, still ongoing in Congress and elsewhere, to rehabilitate Kimmel's and Short's reputations, and clear their names of six decades of tarnish and shame. Beach ably makes a strong case for righting this wrong as soon as possible.

CAPT Beach's book is extremely well researched and expertly written. In just 200 pages, he provides the reader with the information available in D.C. prior to 12/7/41. He also shows how little of the information was passed to Hawaii. As to Kimmel and Short: "The glove does not fit; so...."