Bearing in mind how decision-making can go wrong, try to put yourself in Admiral Kimmel’s shoes (without the benefi t of hindsight) and say what questions he should have asked at various key points:
In the summer of 1941 Admiral Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the American Pacifi c Fleet, received many warnings from Washington about the possibility of war with Japan. [His men were not fully ready so he instituted a training programme, but he did not suspend peace-time shore leave. As a result,] at weekends there were sixty American warships anchored in Pearl Harbor and the airports on Hawaii contained lines of planes wing-tip to wing-tip . . . On 24 November he was warned by naval headquarters that a ‘surprise aggressive movement in any direction including attack on Philippines or Guam is a possibility’. Despite a meeting with his staff he decided not to change his orders. One of [his] staff pointed out that Pearl Harbor had not been mentioned in the message from Washington and was therefore not at risk. Although this was clearly not implied by the message, which referred to an ‘attack in any direction’, the meeting came to the conclusion that there was no further need for action . . . If [Kimmel] thought the message was ambiguous, he should have asked Washington to clarify it. Moreover, he assumed, wrongly, that the army, which manned the anti-aircraft guns, was on full alert. He had only to pick up the telephone to check his assumption, but he failed to do so . . . Further warnings of war were received on 27 November and 3 December. The latter reported that American cryptographers had decoded a message from Japan ordering their embassies throughout the world to destroy ‘most of their secret codes’ . . . Kimmel and his staff seized on the word ‘most’: surely if Japan were going to war with America they would have instructed their embassies to destroy all secret codes. On 6 December, the day before the battle of Pearl Harbor, there was more evidence of an impending attack. Kimmel was given orders to burn all confi dential documents on outlying Pacifi c islands. Moreover, his chief intelligence offi cer reported that the location of Japan’s aircraft carriers was unknown, since for several days it had been impossible to intercept their radio signals. This information convinced him that they were about to attack: the question was where . . . his staff offi cers reassured him, arguing that the Japanese had not suffi cient strength left over from their operations in the Asiatic area to attack Pearl Harbor. Five hours before the Japanese attack, two American mine sweepers saw a submarine which they assumed to be Japanese just outside Pearl Harbor. Because there was no full alert, this was not reported, but one hour before the attack, a Japanese submarine was sunk near the harbour entrance. The offi cer of the watch reported it to all the relevant naval offi cers he could contact and the message reached Admiral Kimmel. Instead of taking immediate action, he decided to wait for confi rmation that the submarine really had been Japanese. The destruction of the American fl eet followed. As for Admiral Kimmel, he was court-martialled and demoted. (Sutherland, 1992, pp. 131–3)