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Day of Lightning, Years of Scorn: Walter C. Short and the Attack on Pearl Harbor (Association of the U. S. Army Book Series)

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General Short is remembered as the General who parked the airplanes wing tip to wing tip on the Hawaiian airfields around Pearl Harbor. Like the title of this book that one day is what we remember of General Short. We don't remember the forty years of Army service that Gen. Short put in before that day. Nor do we remember the years of life afterward. This is a biography of all of his life. But of course a major part of the book is on the one day.

On the whole the book is quite sympathetic to Short. For instance, this book says: "Aboard the Graceful Matsonia, steaming west through Pacific swells, Walter Short had plenty of time to think about the command that awaited him." Henry Clausen's book Pearl Harbor Final Judgement says, "Gen Herron [previous Army commander in Hawaii] prepared the briefing book for Short about how to defend Hawaii. But Short read a novel [on the ship to Hawaii], not the briefing book, and never asked Herron a single question about what his new job as Army commander in Hawaii entailed."

I don't know that it matters what Gen. Short read or didn't read on the way over. But there is no question that parking the planes wing tip to wing tip was a mistake, and it is clear that a couple of other mistakes were made, and Gen. Short gets the blame for them.

After Pearl everyone in the Army, the Navy, in Hawaii, in Washington and every where else tried to look innocent and pointed the finger at the two men in command. There were enough mistakes made to cover everyone. Forty years of peacetime Army service did not prepare this sixty year old general for what was going to happen. Indeed, the country wasn't prepared for what was going to happen. The inter service rivalry between the Army and the Navy was unbelievable. Could or would any general have done any better?

I think the last sentence in the book sums everything up pretty well: "While the Japanese prepared to demonstrate the new power projection tactics of seaborne attack from aircraft carriers, American officials and outpost commanders struggled to respond to a rapidly deteriorating situation in the Pacific with poorly coordinated national command and regional defense procedures basically unchanged since 1898."

Those interested in the events of 7 December 1941 will want to read this extremely well-written biography. Anderson clearly places Walter Short in the context of his times, and the Army of the early 20th century. In the first part of the book, Anderson shows Short as a dedicated professional soldier for almost forty years before the Pearl Harbor attack. The book describes the measures that Short took to improve the defenses of Hawaii as well as the many problems that he encountered as the United States struggled to prepare for war. Anderson carefully sifts through the records of the four major investigations of the Pearl Harbor disaster. Throughout, Anderson takes a sympathetic view of Short, but remains even-handed and balanced. In the end, Short comes across as a honorable man and competent soldier, who unfortunately made mistakes. This book will complement other books which often take a more clinical view of the tragedy. Also, the book will make readers wonder if any of their own decisions and actions would be able to stand up to the intense scrutiny that Short had to endure.

The wrangling over who should have been to blame for the Pearl Harbor attack had never produced, until now, a full-scale study of the most likely culprit, Lt. Gen. Walter Short.
Short was commander of the Hawaiian Department, and the Army was responsible for protecting the fleet when it was in harbor.
Charles Anderson makes the best of a colorless personality, but "Day of Lightning, Years of Scorn" is still a thin tome. Short, a quiet, dignified man with many admirable qualities, did not leave much in the way of personal documents, nor did he get involved in any controversies during a 40-year Army career that was remarkably smooth, except for one day.
To the end of his life, which came in 1949, Short insisted that nothing he did or failed to do contributed to the shocking defeat on Dec. 7, 1941.
This is a surprising conclusion from any CEO whose roof has caved in, but Anderson is largely -- not wholly -- sympathetic to Short's predicament.
During four investigations, Short's defense amounted to a claim that if Washington had told him when and how the Japanese would attack, he would have been ready.
Washington didn't and he wasn't.
Although Anderson says the wrangling about who was responsible will never end, it probably should end, at least as regards Short's performance.
The fact is, he made one of the commonest and worst mistakes a commander can make -- he prepared for what he thought his enemy would and should do, not for what his enemy could do.
A man who had attended the Army War College should have known better. Almost a century and a half before Pearl Harbor, the British Admiralty, facing an exactly similar situation, cautioned its equivalent of Short: "We are not at liberty to calculate solely on what is rational or probable, but we must likewise keep in view such contingencies as may be barely possible and such as passion and intemperance may give rise to."
Others, notably the corrupt and incompetent Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines, did even worse than Short but got away with it. The difference, as Anderson acknowledges, is that MacArthur had a right-wing political claque that President Franklin Roosevelt feared.
Short was such a political innocent that when he was retired (with a big pension), he took a job with Henry Ford, one of the men FDR had struggled against for years to awaken America to its peril. If there was ever any slender chance that Roosevelt, always a good hater, would relent, that must have squelched it.
Even if Short had made all the best decisions, America likely would have been defeated at Pearl Harbor. Though even Gen. George Marshall, the chief of staff of the Army, called Oahu the world's strongest fortress, it wasn't.
Short rightly demanded more men, antiaircraft guns and interceptors. Yet he was unprepared to use the ones he did have.
The depth of his confusion was proved by his own words. Asked why he did not call a higher level of alert, he told an Army investigation he had "confidence that (the Navy) could prevent the carriers from getting through."
If that was the case, then the planes and guns he demanded would have been better sent elsewhere. (As many of them were.)
By the time the last and most thorough Pearl Harbor investigation began, Harry Truman was president. Truman was not disposed to rescue Short from his shame, but he was more judicious and correct than most when he said all Americans were to blame for the disaster.
That was not entirely fair -- there were plenty of Americans who were prepared to take on the dictators before December 1941 -- but it did put the finger on the real culprits who were responsible for 2,400 dead at Pearl Harbor: the isolationists, defeatists and pacifists like Calvin Coolidge, Charles Lindbergh and William Borah who had led the United States down a path of silly fantasies for 20 years, ever since the Republicans scrapped Woodrow Wilson's "Navy Second to None" act in 1920.
In the end, Anderson is unable to add anything profound to the tale, a point he admits. But it was necessary for some historian to have made the attempt, and all the many who are disposed to reargue Pearl Harbor controversialists will want to read this book.