Navy's Oracle

Tall Ellis M. Zacharias, a Navy captain with a flair for the unorthodox, was one of the first skippers to go after the Japs, ended up as an intelligence officer, making highly effective propaganda broadcasts in near-perfect Japanese. Last week he showed up in a particularly unorthodox light--the Pearl Harbor Committee discovered that here was one Navy man who had been 100% right about the time and place of the attack.

A memorandum was placed in evidence showing that Captain Zacharias had personally warned Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, in the summer of 1941, that the Japs would start war with a sneak air raid on Pearl Harbor on a weekend--"probably Sunday morning."

Even more remarkable: Zacharias had pointed out to the Admiral that there were then two Jap envoys in Washington, Nomura and Kurusu. "When the third one arrives," he said, "you can look for it to break immediately." The third Japanese diplomat, Tatsuyi Sakamoto, Ambassador to Peru, arrived in Washington on Dec. 2, 1941.

This eerily accurate prediction was one of the few nuggets of new information produced by the investigation in a week of prospecting old diggings: P: Admiral Harold R. Stark, 1941 Chief of Naval Operations, admitted that he did not believe Pearl Harbor would be attacked--but insisted in his testimony that Kimmel had received ample warning. But "Betty" Stark refused to criticize "Mustapha" Kimmel, one of his "closest and finest friends." P: In a statement to the Roberts Commission, made public for the first time, Major General Walter C. Short blamed his command's failures on the War Department and the Navy, which he accused of giving him insufficient information. P: A report by the late Navy Secretary Frank Knox, made soon after the disaster, was also made public. It contained the story of another sorry failure: after the attack, Army radar operators watched the Japanese planes scooting northward to their carriers; the Navy received this information two days after its futile searching to the south. P: Mined from deep in the layers of testimony was a memorandum from ex-Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, written shortly before Pearl Harbor, recommending that Japan be bought off. Morgenthau was willing to lend Japan $2 billion, give her an immigration quota and "most favored nation" status, reduce U.S. naval strength in the Pacific. The memo was passed on to Secretary of State Hull who, at about the same time, dictated a statement that too many misguided people were dabbling in U.S. foreign relations.

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