The Daily Alaska empire., 1950-06-30
I H E.SE D A Y s
 - B r GEORGE x. SOKCLSKY
BURIED REPORTS

doldrums of summer news, I went back to a document: "Investiga- tion of the Pearl Harbor attack; minority views"
 Although Pearl Harbor occurred on December T, l941, and there have been several investigations in- to the subject, there is no clarifica- tion of the facts even to this day. As with the Amerasia case, the Fuchs thefts, and other matters of similar nature, such as the escape of Arthur Adams and the self-deportation of J. Peters, the facts are hidden under a mountain of apologia.
 Much that the minority wrote fn 1946 applies also to current invest igations. For instance, when all the testimony, papers, documnets, exhibits, and other evidence duly laid before the committee are re- viewed, it becomes apparent that the record is far from complete The committee did not have an opportunity to croSs-examine ahy of the high civil executive rrin- cipals in the Pearl Harbor affair"
 They also said:
 Tt is extremely unfortunate that the Roberts commission report was so nasty, inconclusive, and in complete. Some witnesses were ex- amined under oath others were not. Much testimony was not even recorded. The commission knew that Japanese messages had been intercepted and were available, prior to the attack, to the high command in Washington"
 The commission did not inquire about what information these in- tercepts contained, who received them, or what was done about them, although the failure of Washington to inform the com manders in Hawaii of this vital intelligence bears directly on the question of whether those com- manders performed their full du- ties. MT. Justice Roberts testified before this committee:
 CT would not have bothered to read it (the intercepted Japanese traffic. if it had been shown to us
 One major difficulty is that in- vestigations occur so long after the acts that memory becomes dimmed and records disappear. Why rec ords disappear from government files is not quite understandable but they do On this subject, the minority had this to say:
 "It should be noted, however, that Justice Roberts had sufficient legal experience to know the proper method of collecting and preserving evidence which in this case in- volved the highest interests of the nation. The facts were then fresh in the minds of key witnesses in Washington. They could not then have been ignorant of their where about at important times or have forgotten the details of events and operations. No files would have been lost and no information would have been distorted by the passage of time. The failure to observe these obvious necessities is almost as tragic to the cause of truth as the attack on Pearl Harbor itself was a tragedy for the nation.
 It was in relationship with the Pearl Harbor investigation that President Truman closed govern ment files. It was also on this committee that the majority mem- bers (the Democrats) rejected the right of the minority members (the Republicans to do any investigat- ing.
 On this subject, the minority had this to say:
 The plain fact that an invest igation could not be an ~investiga- tion if committee members remain ed mere spectators, persuaded some members that restraints on their freedom were not justified. The iIimsiness of the argument for re- strictions became even more evi- dent when permission to search files and other records was denied by majority vote to the individual members even when accompanied by committee counsel. Rightly or wrongly it was inferred from this that there was deliberate design to block the search for the truth.
 Of course, had such a course been followed by Calvin Coolidge there would have been no success full teapot dome investigation, a fact to which Senator Burton K Wheeler fully testified. Senator Wheeler commented:
 ". know of my own personal knowledge that he Senator Walsh) got from the department, and from officials in the department, infor- nation which he afterward used and if he had not been permitted to do that, and if I had not beer