Charles R. Anderson was a historian who left us too soon, dying of cancer in 2003 before the completion of a long-overdue biography on a general who got showered not in praise like, say,  George S. Patton Jr. or Omar Bradley, but in condemnation as harsh as that which has been poured over George Armstrong Custer.  His name: Walter Campbell Short.  A man whose military career would have taken a far different turn had General George C. Marshall not appointed him command of the Hawaiian Department late in 1940 with the command formally assumed by Short with appropriate pomp and circumstance on February 7^th, 1941.

Anderson’s biography reveals a man not incompetent or inflexible but an officer who rose to his position by merit starting after his switching from a teaching career at Western Military Academy in Upper Alton, Illinois for the Army itself when he was awarded an Army officer’s commission in 1902 without having set foot in the grounds of the US Military Academy thanks to strong interest shown in the military which manifested itself in grades of 100 while taking classes in the Military Department at the University of Illinois when he studied to be a teacher.

Anderson depicts in crisp, matter-of-fact prose Short’s rise from that point up and up through the US Army acquiring many good marks from his superiors along the way.  A time in which he also won a good woman’s heart, and which saw a son enter their lives whom would be their pride and joy; a son who chose to follow his dad into the Army, launching his own military career when he donned the “cadet grey” of West Point. 

Then we get to Short’s fateful appointment to Hawaii, the Japanese attack, Short’s subsequent relief and retirement from the Army,  the slew of investigations he appeared before, and then his untimely death in September of 1949.

Anderson argues with effect that Short was not alone in his concerns about sabotage in the Hawaiian islands from local Japanese and that while the “war warning” message sent to the US Navy was direct and to the point, the message sent by the Army to Short was not.   He also levels blame where it is due on Short’s superiors without letting Short himself off the hook for his own errors.

The only complaints I would have about the book is that Anderson devoted too little text to Short’s experiences during the attack itself (two pages) and the footnotes for information derived from the transcripts from the 1945 US Senate investigation into Pearl Harbor sometimes do not match, apparently due to poor editing work on whoever edited Anderson’s work after his untimely death.

Nevertheless, this book is a must for those interested in the attack on Pearl Harbor.