The Whole Story?

Perhaps the whole story of Pearl Harbor would now be told in public. The Congressional investigation, that had apparently been headed for the shoals of political recrimination, had now gone about on a steady course toward full and complete inquiry.

The first hearings were set for this week and President Truman, after considerable backing & filling, finally authorized all Army & Navy personnel to "come forward" with anything they might know about the military debacle. Then Committee Chairman Alben Barkley announced that all information, "whether top secret, secret, confidential or otherwise," would be available to all committee members.

The list of witnesses was impressive. First on deck will be officers who were on the scene at the time, i.e., Admiral Kimmel and General Short, followed by Admiral James Otto Richardson, stubborn prewar advocate of the theory that the Japs would be hard to beat, who was succeeded by the more optimistic Admiral Kimmel ten months before Pearl Harbor.

Others who would help piece the story together: General George Marshall, Lieut. General Leonard T. Gerow, chief of the war plans division; Admiral Harold R. Stark, then Chief of Naval Operations; Admiral William F. Halsey, who was leading a task force toward Pearl Harbor when the Japs struck; Grace Tully, personal secretary to Franklin Roosevelt and guardian of his personal papers; Secretaries Hull, Welles and Grew and Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who in his 1944 campaign had abjured all reference to the cracking of the Jap code, on the suggestion of the U.S. Army.

One aspect which the committee would no doubt probe thoroughly was the break ing of coded Japanese messages and the information they gave the U.S. high command before war began. Among the witnesses are Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson, chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1941; Captain Alwin D. Kramer, also of ONI; and various decoding and radar officers.

The inquiry would almost certainly have its bizarre aspects. It had one last week, when Captain Kramer was reported by the Hearst press to be "missing," only to be found within a few minutes at the Navy's Bethesda Hospital (see PRESS). In some ways the investigation might be the biggest Congressional show since the midget sat on Morgan's lap. But at last the facts of the most rankling disaster in U.S. history would be spread on the public record.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.