Evening star., 1945-08-31
Writer Doubts Report
Backs Single Defense
Opposite Conclusion Possible on
Pearl Harbor, He Adds
By David Laurence

BY David Laurence
Any conclusions chat the Pearl Har-
Dor report indicates the need for a
single department of national defense
might be characterized as hasty. For
the very opposite conclusion may also
be reached, namely, that the War De-
partment and the Navy Department are
each so big that what was apparently
everybodys business in the week pre-
ceding December T. 1941, was nobody's
business
Mergers and consultations in private
Industry are not as popular as they we're
a couple decades ago. For it has been
proved that efficiency can usually be
better achieved whs1 each organization
Is self-contained and is not dependent
too much on other units.
II Gen. Short had been in overall
command at Hawaii he would not have
known Admiral Kimmers job and the
same would have been true in reverse.
To assume that by creation of a ma
tlonal department of defense Army
men can become thoroughly familiar
With Navy operations or vice versa Is to
assume that mere merging of functions
also means merging of experience and
specialized abilities
Some day when Army officers gradu-
ate from West Point and after 10 years
in the Army transfer to the Navy and
spend 10 years or more learning how to
operate ships and weapons of the sea
maybe an all-around individual will be
turned out who is the ideal now sought
with the paper plan of national de-
partment of defense.
Navy Has Better Plan.
In sense the Navy has better pls.
nowadays than the Army because a
naval officer may start with submarine
duty, then go to aviation and perhaps
later to gunnery on a destroyer, cruiser
and battleShip. Indeed the Navy men
go from one speciality TO another until
they are ready for high commands. If
the Army did the same thing and
allowed its officers to become conversant
with infantry, artillery, aviation and
all the other branches of the service and
insisted that certain number OF years
be spent in each field Of military ac-
tivlty it would tend toward the same
result the Navy has achieved.
The theory that the single depart
ment OF defense and the wearing of the
same uniform will create competence
and ability where the separate branches
have lacked it heretofore is of course,
falaclous. 1t is just one of those easy
solutions which the American people
are frequently asked to accept when a
complex subject arises and some one
comes along with a slogan or a pattern
that does not require too much mental
energy to understand or penetrate.
The relations between Admiral KIM
mel and Gen. Short were intimate. Re-
ports of their conferences show they
| thoroughly understood what they had
TO DO. But while in one breath they
were told to be alert to any possible at
tack, they were told in the next not to
commit any overt act which might give
the japanese an excuse to declare war
on us. 1t was an impossible instruction
to follow. So the two commanders erred
on the side of doing nothing.
1t Is well worth conjecturing what
would have happened to any naval
commander if he had put out to sea,
encountered the Japanese feet, opened
fire and told the Navy Department he
had a hunch the japanese were COM
Ing to Pearl Harbor to attack. The
overt act had to be committed by the
enemy first
Land Defenses Inadequate.
AS for possible resistance against at
tack once the enemy swooped down on
Hawaii, the land defenses were made
quate. There were not enough land
based planes or carrier planes available
TO meet effectively the japanese ex-
pedltion. About 400 planes were launched
from the Japanese carriers More than
300 were in the air at one time.
The United States had In the Pa
ciflc two carriers which could muster
total of 1so planes. Our battleships
were prey for the carriers of the enemy
whether the big ships were in port or
at sea. America simply hadn't devel-
oped her naval or land aviation by De.
cember 7. 1941, to the point where We
could put 300 planes in the air and 60
scouting for enemy carriers prowlinr
around Hawaii We had built a few
thousand planes In 1910 and ls4l. but
they were sent to Europe.
1t Is unfortunate that so many mis-.
takes were made, both at Washington
and at Pearl Harbor, but the biggest
mistake was the failure of this great
industrial Nation-which had billions
to spend on leaf-raking between 1888
and 1939-to build an adequate Nayv
or big enough force of land-based
planes to protect the territories of tn.
United States in the Pacific.
And the responsibility for that rests
squarely on the men in Congress IN
those years as well as on the Amer.
lean people who listened to the mis-.
guided orators who assured us we wer.
protected by two oceans and couldn,t
be attacked.
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