From Pearl Harbor •• To 911 •• How Should America Deal
With Lacking Adequate Defense?
"Several naval commanders in Washington placed the blame for
unpreparedness [at Pearl Harbor] squarely on Admiral
Kimmel and his staff. Admiral Turner, head of Navy war plans
in Washington, told the Naval Court of Inquiry that just
reading the newspapers should have prompted Kimmel to
order a full alert and to prepare adequately for the December
7 attack. Admiral Kimmel retorted that during the first week of
December the newspapers in Honolulu continued to carry
news of negotiations between the United States and Japan and
that messages from Washington were at fault because they
failed to mention specifically that Hawaii was a possible target
of attack. As a result of their lack of explicitness, Kimmel
argued, the warnings from Washington failed to correct the
reasonable inferences he and his staff had drawn from the
limited information available to them. His defence was deemed
unacceptable. He was court-martialed, reprimanded, and
demoted to a position in which he would not be required to
make any important decisions."
•• Irving L. Janis •• Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological
Study of Foreign Policy Decisions and Fiascoes
12:23:31 AM
