Into the records of the Pearl Harbor investigating committee last week went a little-noticed document that added new mystery to the disaster of December 7, 1941:
Four months before the enemy struck, the Army and Navy air command at Pearl Harbor drew up a joint defense plan which correctly forecast the hour, the direction, the size of the force and the strategy by which the Japs actually attacked.
Recognizing that responsible commanders must always assume the blame for the failings within their respective domains, former U.S. General George C. Marshall and General Leonard T. Gerow stood up and claimed responsibility for leaving Pearl Harbor vulnerable to Japanese attack. Marshall had been FDR’s Army Chief-of-Staff since the Autumn of 1939 and Gerow had been serving as executive officer of the War Plans Division at the time of the sneak attack – however, To read this article is to understand that these men were responsible for Pearl Harbor’s lack of preparedness…
One morning a 17 year-old boy exclaimed to his amateur aviator father: Let’s fly around the island, Dad! – this article wouldn’t seem worthy of appearing on the internet if they lived on Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, but the island in question was Honolulu and the morning was December 7, 1941…
