A Matter of Honor: Pearl Harbor: Betrayal, Blame, and a Family's Quest for Justice

This book is nothing but revisionist history in an effort to exonerate Admiral Kimmel from the fate he suffered as a result of his bungling at Pearl Harbor. It is another effort by his family to have the Admiral absolved of the blame for what happened and to have him restored to the rank of Admiral. Oddly though, his real rank was as a brevet Rear Admiral and he held the rank of Admiral only while he was Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet so once he was relieved of his duties as CinC, Pacific Fleet, he was reverted to his regular rank. Therefore, even if he was exonerated of his responsibility for the Pearl Harbor disaster, the only rank he is entitled to is as a Rear Admiral, which is the rank he retired at. This latest effort to revise the history of Pearl Harbor is only one of many efforts to revise that history since World War II. This book is typical of efforts. It is just another example of the conspiracies often advanced to explain historical events. The main revisionist theory is and has been to blame it on President Franklin Roosevelt. But extensive and thoroughly examined historical evidence has absoved FDR of in anyway knowingly allowing the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. In fact, FDR had less knowledge of that possibility than Admiral Kimmel who was so convinced that the Japanese fleet would not attack Pearl Harbor, that he ignored such a possibility. One of Kimmel’s problems was that he was old Navy, a battleship man, who thought little of aircraft carriers and did not understand their potential to wreak havoc on surface ships. One example of his lack of understanding was that he thought that it was safe to dock all his ships in Pearl Harbor which he thought was too shallow for a torpedo attack. If he had been more up to date on what carrier planes could do was the fact that the British had inflicted major damage on the Italian fleet at the battle of Taranto, launching torpedoes at a shallow depth. While Kimmel was ignorant of that, the Japanese were not and knowing that aircraft torpedo attacks were possible at Pearl Harbor convinced the Japanese to attack there. In order to prove their point, the authors of this book cherry pick their facts in order to substantiate their claims that Kimmel was scapegoated. But when all the evidence is examied, Kimmel clearly derelict in his duties. He was not alone. There were a lot of people who shared in the blame but Kimmel was the man in charge and he made the bad decisions that led to the disaster. Indirectly, part of the blame falls on FDR because he fired Admiral James O. Richardson, in February 1941 and replaced him with Kimmel. Richardson, with the support of most of the Navy, was opposed to stationing the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii but Roosevelt wanted to station the Fleet in Hawaii as a means of discouraging the Japanese. Bad choice because that only encouraged the Japanese to attack the fleet which was a major concern of Admiral Richardson. Moreover, Richardson was well aware of the power of aircraft carriers. Thus Roosevelt’s folly was appointing Kimmel, who was not qualified to handle such a task and it was his incompetence that led to the disaster. He was so convinced that the Japanese would not attack Pearl Harbor that he did not have his two radar stations manned and instead of using his PBY sea planes to patrol around the island as a precaution, he parked them on Ford Island where they were destroyed on Dec. 7. Kimmel, like too many people, expected that if the Japanese attacked the U.S., it would be in the Phillipines and not at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Kimmel’s miserable performance at Pearl Harbor is taught as an example of how not to command at the Naval Academy and in the U.S. Naval War College. If the Navy is that convinced that Kimmel’s performance at Pearl Harbor was dereliction of duty, then that is how he should be judged in history. Not as the revisionist authors of this book write of him.

"A Matter of Honor" traces the age old incompetence and blame game of high politics and what it did to one man on the receiving end of it - Admiral Kimmel, the commander at Pearl Harbor in 1941. A truly fascinating read.