The Roberts Commission in early 1942 found “dereliction of duty” on the part of Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short at Pearl Harbor, while an official inquiry 53 years later concluded that the commanders made “errors of judgment.”

The events of Dec. 7, 1941, were examined no fewer than 10 times by the U.S. government, reflecting the passion that was generated as well as shifting blame for unpreparedness in the two-hour attack that launched America into World War II.

The Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, originated in 1945 to explore the “contradictions and inconsistencies” of preceding reports, was among the inquiries broadening that blame.

It still faulted Kimmel and Short, the Pacific Fleet and Army Hawaiian Department commanders, for errors of judgment, but also cited intelligence and preparedness shortcomings by the Army and Navy departments.

A minority report found President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Stark and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall culpable for the disaster.

With family members taking up the cause after their deaths, Kimmel and Short never fully escaped blame. Defenders maintain they were scapegoats for the larger mishandling of Oahu’s defense, while some history revisionists claim that Roosevelt went so far as to secretly maneuver the United States into war.

It’s clear that the two Hawaii officers, who were relieved of command and retired at their former lower, two-star rank, were vilified by an incensed American public. They received hate mail and death threats.

“The Japanese attack was a complete surprise to the commanders and they failed to make suitable dispositions to meet such an attack. Each failed properly to evaluate the seriousness of the situation,” found the Roberts Commission, so called because its chairman was Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts.

The chances of war with Japan were growing, and the Oahu defense plan envisioned the possibility of an air attack. A war warning message on Nov. 27, 1941, to Short said negotiations with Japan appeared to be terminated and that hostile action was “possible at any moment.” The United States desired that Japan “commit the first overt act.”

A similar message to Kimmel warned that “an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days” but suggested the target could be the Philippines, Thailand, Malaya or Borneo.

The Oahu joint coastal defense plan required Army inshore airplane patrols to 20 miles and Navy air reconnaissance 700 to 800 miles from the island. But no such patrols were undertaken, except during drills.

The two top commanders did not discuss the war warnings. No one in Hawaii or Washington, D.C., really thought Japan would attack the American territory. Kimmel later noted a “critical shortage” of long-range reconnaissance planes. Using the planes he had for reconnaissance would limit training for combat expected elsewhere, he reasoned.

Short, meanwhile, focused on training and the threat of sabotage.

American cryptologists had been reading Japanese diplomatic messages decrypted from the Japanese “Purple” machine and code-named “Magic,” but the information was closely guarded in Washington, D.C.

Among the intercepts not shared with the two Hawaii commanders was what became known as the “bomb plot message.” On Sept. 24, 1941, Japan’s Foreign Ministry told the Honolulu Consulate it wanted a grid showing the precise locations of ships in Pearl Harbor.

The message was routed to top military officials in Washington, D.C., without much interest.

“Numerous investigations following the attack on Pearl Harbor have documented that Adm. Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Short were not provided necessary and critical intelligence that was available, that foretold of war with Japan, that warned of imminent attack,” Congress would say later.

To what degree the intelligence predicted an attack on Pearl Harbor is still hotly debated.

Kimmel and Short complained “that everything would have been much different had Washington supplied them with all the information at hand,” Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon wrote in “The Verdict of History.”

“However, Kimmel’s and Short’s defense rests upon the premise that they would have read into these messages all the implications that escaped the authorities in Washington,” the authors said.

Short overlooked the fact that a large military contingent was in Hawaii precisely because of the threat from Japan, they wrote. Goldstein argued in a separate publication that “Kimmel and Short may not have been able to defeat the Japanese, but they could have inflicted more damage had they been ready.”

Short died in 1949 and Kimmel in 1968. The families of both men sought unsuccessfully to have their former ranks restored. In 1995, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, after meeting with Kimmel family members, obtained a Defense Department review of the issue.

The Dorn report, named after Edwin Dorn, an undersecretary of defense, found that responsibility for Pearl Harbor “should not fall solely on the shoulders of Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short. It should be broadly shared.”

The review also reiterated that Kimmel and Short “made errors of judgment.” The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2001 called for a restoration of their wartime ranks, but no president since has done so.