Walter Short

Walter Campbell Short
30 March, 1880 – 9 March, 1949
Lieutenant General Walter C. Short
Place of birth	Fillmore, Illinois, USA
Place of death	Dallas, Texas, USA
Allegiance	United States Army
Rank	Lieutenant General
Unit	Pearl Harbor United States Army garrison
Commands	United States Army

Walter Campbell Short (March 30, 1880–March 9, 1949) was a Lieutenant General in the United States Army and the U.S. military Commander responsible for the defense of U.S. military installations in Hawaii at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Early

He was born in 1880 in Fillmore, Illinois. A graduate of the University of Illinois, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1901 and moved up through the ranks until assuming the Hawaiian command in February, 1941.

Pearl and After

It is generally agreed now that Short was poorly informed about the exact state of the breakdown in relations between the US and Japan in the final months before the attack and had no access to vital intelligence available to his superiors in Washington. Some view him and his Navy equivalent, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel as scapegoats for failures above them. On December 17, 1941 General Short was removed from command of Pearl Harbor as a result of the attack. A hastily- formed commission headed by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts, known as the Roberts Commission was held immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor. General Short, along with Navy commander, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, was accused of being unprepared and charged with “dereliction of duty”. The Roberts Commission was not a typical court martial proceeding because it allowed no sworn testimony, no due process, no witnesses to be called by either man in their own defense, and no right for either to cross-examine other witnesses. Admiral William Harrison Standley, who served as a member of the Roberts Commission that accused Admiral Kimmel and Lieutenant General Short of “dereliction of duty”, later disavowed the report maintaining that “these two officers were martyred” and “if they had been brought to trial, both would have been cleared of the charge” (1). The primary criticism made against General Short was ordering the Army's fighter aircraft to be parked very close together, thus making it easy for the Japanese to bomb them. This is a spurious criticism, however, because this action was taken by General Short in an effort to reduce the chance of sabotage, at the time considered by everyone the only real threat at Pearl Harbor. Another charge was that he and Adm. Kimmel, did not take seriously enough an earlier "war warning" and did not imagine that an air attack at Pearl was possible -- whereas in fact the war warning listed only threats in the Far East and indeed the entire US military high command was focused on the threat to MacArthur in the Philippines and to attacks on British and Dutch holdings 4000 or 5000 miles further west from Pearl. Short was ordered back to Washington, D.C. by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall in disgrace and lost his temporary Lieutenant Generalcy, reverting to Major General.

Later

General Short then retired from active duty in 1942 with the permanent rank of Major General. He then worked for the Ford Motor Company and died in 1949 in Dallas, Texas. On May 25, 1999, the United States Senate passed a resolution exonerating Kimmel and Short. "They were denied vital intelligence that was available in Washington," said Senator William V. Roth Jr. (R-DE), noting that they had been made scapegoats by the Pentagon. Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) called Kimmel and Short "the two final victims of Pearl Harbor."

Portrayals

Short was portrayed by actor and World War Two veteran Jason Robards in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! , which was made by American and Japanese filmmakers. In that film, the story balances out his fighter arrangement blunder with his prudent efforts installing radar stations that could have warned the base of the attack had it been heeded.