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I've spent some time recently searching for material on both Husband E. Kimmel and Walter C. Short, coming away satisfied that there are no full biographies of either man, and none in prospect (for good reason). The ANB sketch of Kimmel (by Ed Miller) is useful, the one of Short less so. A search of the archives of the Washington Post and New York Times turns up quite a lot of material on both of them, including outlines of their pre-Pearl Harbor careers. The 33,000 pages of testimony compiled by the Congressional hearings in 1946 (including the complete transcripts of the prior investigations) reveals much of their characters, particularly in their own testimony. Almost all of it is now on line at www.archive.org/ . (These volumes are PDF images, so one is not at the mercy of transcription errors.) Almost everything that has been written since about their conduct in Hawaii before and during the attacks is distilled from these hearings. The debate over their guilt or innocence early became freighted with partisan politics, and this has not diminished significantly with time. So long as this is so it serves to muddy any objective inquiry. Inasmuch as their is little of intrinsic interest in the character of either man and that neither played any notable role beyond his part in the Pearl Harbor disaster, it seems unlikely that we will see a truly scholarly biography. Will O'Neil Falls Church, VA William D. O'Neil <w.d.oneil@pobox.com> ----- For subscription help, go to: http://www.h-net.org/lists/help/ To change your subscription settings, go to http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=h-war -----
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