Youngstown Vindicator (September 5, 1945)
Lawrence: Pearl Harbor to be probed
Asserts ‘hush’ is tried, but expects Congress to dissent
By David Lawrence
WASHINGTON – Full investigation of the Pearl Harbor tragedy by Congress would seem to be assured.
Such an inquiry becomes more than ever necessary because of the peculiar attitude which has been exhibited by various officials of the present administration toward the Army board whose report is one of the most courageous ever filed by a governmental tribunal.
So accustomed are some of our public officials to resent criticism or to have their mistakes hushed up that it is amazing to read suggestions that the Army board had no right to discuss the part played by Secretary of State Hull and should have confined itself solely to Army officials.
Here was an instance in which the Army and Navy pleaded with the civilian branch of the government to delay steps that would bring a crisis in relations with Japan till they had time to prepare for war and yet it is being seriously argued that the communications between the State Department and the Navy and War Departments or the action taken by the State Department was not a proper subject of investigation.
‘Hush-hush policy’
This method of passing the buck or of restricting criticism to rigid compartments of the government is one of the reasons why the people so often do not get the facts about their own government. The State Department is the most notorious offender on the hush-hush side.
Thus, for instance, although it has been insisted publicly again and again that there were no secret agreements or commitments at Yalta except those announced before the San Francisco Conference, it turns out now that the American government actually agreed to support Russia’s claim to the Kuriles in the event Russia entered the war. Presumably such secret agreements were called ‘‘military” and the quibble arises from the fact that the official statement said everything but military agreements had been made public. This is not candor but a clever piece of camouflage.
It will be recalled also that in the instructions given Justice Roberts concerning Pearl Harbor in 1941 the administration insisted that he and his associates were to investigate only the circumstances of the attack and not what happened in Washington. Subsequently, under the plea of military secrecy and the possible harm that might come to sources of information, it was insisted that, all other phases of the Pearl Harbor investigation be delayed.
Board criticized
Now when an Army board shows that Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short were not the only ones at fault, there is a hue and cry to the effect that the board stepped beyond its authority or jurisdiction.
Any board of inquiry has a right to fill in the background and establish the premise on which it builds its conclusions. For the Army board to have circumscribed itself and failed to comment on what was happening in the State Department would have been to deny the truth to the public.
One need not agree at all with the comments of the Army board. This correspondent, for instance, believes the points made about Gen. Marshall were picayunish. But the right of the Army board to criticize or express itself about anybody is a right inherent in any board of investigation. Justices of our courts have never been inhibited in their comments about anything or everything that pertains to the subject matter of their decisions or court opinions and it is an American tradition that any inquiry should not be hamstrung by censorship in advance.
Although Congress is at fault in failing to appropriate adequate sums for armament between 1933 and 1939, it is pertinent to learn what the War and Navy Departments actually requested within that period and what arrangements were made by the State Department to advise the War and Navy Departments of the evolution of our foreign policies. Congress can do this by a searching inquiry. Maybe it will be found that we need a single department combing the State Department and the War and Navy portfolios into one, though that overall function is supposedly exercised by the President, to whom all departments are responsible.