Walter Short
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| 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. 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.
On December 17, 1941 General Short was removed from command of Pearl Harbor as a result of the attack. A 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” and was subsequently relieved of his command and demoted in rank. 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 defence, 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 action was taken by General Short in an effort to reduce the chance of sabotage, at the time considered the greater threat. Another charge was that he and Adm. Kimmel, did not take seriously enough earlier war warnings, and did not imagine that an air attack was possible. For the failure of the overall warning and defense systems he is considered by some to have been something of a scapegoat. He was ordered back to Washington, D.C. by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall in disgrace and demoted one grade in rank to major general (two stars).
General Short then retired from active duty in 1942. 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." (2)
