Pearl Harbor Story

Military Review, March-April, 2003 by David G. Rathgeber

Henry Dozier Russell, Mercer University Press, Macon, GA, 2001, 160 pages, $19.00.

Major General Henry Dozier Russell, a member of the U.S. Army Pearl Harbor Investigation Board, which finished its work in 1944, stated, "I doubt if at any critical time in our history our interests were in the hands of a weaker group of men than those constituting the War Department in December 1941." As a member of the Board, Russell was sworn to secrecy, an oath he promised to himself to violate as soon as the war was over. This book is Russell's testimony of the Board's activities and findings. He dictated it in 1946, but it was unpublished until now. To appreciate the book, one must appreciate the man.

Russell was a National Guardsman who, by his own admission, had little faith in active-duty soldiers. Before the war, Russell was the commanding officer of the 30th Division. Once the war began, the Army retired or reassigned many National Guard leaders in favor of Regular Army officers. Russell was not excepted: "I was relieved from the command of the Division and sent before a reclassification board.... Such conditions were created by the Regular Army as a part of an overall policy to eliminate the National Guard as a major component of the Army of the United States. It was my firm belief that Chief of Staff [George C.] Marshall played a large part in the formulation and execution of this anti-National Guard policy. Certain it is that his conduct in the purge of the 30th Division was utterly and almost unbelievably reprehensible."

Despite his training as a lawyer, which dictated his impartiality and his protestations of always trying to be fair, his anger toward the Regular Army, in general, and Marshall, in particular, seethes throughout the book. Russell's anger is so great that anyone who gives testimony supporting Marshall is painted as either part of a great military conspiracy to cover up the troth or as totally inept.

Russell feels with equal vigor that General Walter Short was made a scapegoat. All testimony against Short is downplayed and invariably Short's mistakes are the result of malfeasance by Marshall (or at the least, the stupidity of Marshall's school-trained staff officers). This attitude is so pervasive as to become distracting. Worse, it hides important lessons that can be learned from the mistakes of the past. However, once past the hyperbole, the reader finds fascinating lessons learned--some of which we are still learning.

Problems associated with a lack of a unified commander; of living in a peacetime democracy yet preparing for war; of writing orders with an eye on culpability; of having too much authority vested in one individual; and of course its corollary, not having enough authority vested in subordinates, are all indicated in the failures at Pearl Harbor. The reader will even find a hint of the dangers associated with political correctness in the intelligence community at not spying on the Japanese because we were not yet at war and did not want to offend them. The book, a fascinating foray into the workings of the War Department in 1941 and the Army Pearl Harbor Investigation Board, gives an interesting picture of how and why the United States was caught so completely by surprise.

LTC David G. Rathgeber, USMC,

Retired, Fallbrook, California