Admiral Kimmel's tour in Knoxville
by Jack Neely
When the sad-eyed admiral checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel for an extended stay in Knoxville, he was no longer Commander In Chief of the Pacific Fleet. The 65-year-old Husband E. Kimmel was here to work on a more modest body of water, First Creek. You could see it from the windows of the Andrew Johnson. It was still having problems with seasonal flooding. Former Admiral Kimmel, a trained engineer, was here to see what he could do to fix it up.
The Annapolis grad had been in the Navy since 1904, and advanced through the ranks. In early 1941 he was promoted to head the whole Pacific Fleet. Admiral Kimmel was in charge the December morning when hundreds of Japanese warplanes swarmed Oahu, destroying 18 U.S. warships and 188 aircraft, and killing 2,403 servicemen.
Ten days later, Washington fired Kimmel. An inquest led by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts had held that he was guilty of "dereliction of duty." The brass had accused him of being unprepared for the attack. Furthermore, he and General Walter C. Short, who was in charge of the Hawaiian department of the U.S. Army, had been working "in a state of joint oblivion."
Demoted to rear admiral, Kimmel took "early retirement" in 1942. He insisted on his innocence, claiming he acted appropriately considering what little information he was allowed. Some later military inquiries had backed off of the "dereliction of duty" onus, but still claimed Kimmel made errors of judgment which contributed to the disaster. By the end of the war, when Kimmel learned of the loss of his oldest son in action in the South Pacific, it was looking like the full exoneration he was hoping for would never happen.
Now Kimmel was in Knoxville, district manager for the Frederick R. Harris Engineering Corp. of New York. Kimmel's Knoxville office was in the Daylight Building on Union Ave., across the street from TVA headquarters. During wartime, Harris had been known for constructing dry docks for naval shipbuilding. Here, much of Kimmel's work had to do with encasing First Creek with concrete banks.
Jimmy Roberts, a retired concrete-company executive, is one of the few who remembers Kimmel here. "He was my mother's second cousin," he says. Their families came from Henderson, Ky. Roberts served as an officer in the war, himself, in a very different capacity from his cousin's. He was a pilot and squadron commander in the 82nd Airborne, flying C-47 troop carriers in both the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and dropping troops over Normandy in the early-morning darkness of June 6, 1944. Roberts didn't tarry in the army long after the war, but came back to Knoxville at Christmastime in '45.
He remembers meeting Kimmel only once, when the former admiral came to Sunday dinner at his house on Duncan Road in the Lyons Bend area. He lives in the same place today.
After 56 years, Roberts remembers only a couple of things about that dinner. Roberts' daughter, Dianne, was a toddler in 1947 when Kimmel visited. "He was so gracious, so good," he says. "He brought Dianne a doll."
"He said, 'Jimmy, there's one thing I'm gonna ask of you. Don't ask me anything about Pearl Harbor.' He felt like he was betrayed."
Roberts respected Kimmel's wishes, but doesn't remember what they did talk about, or what Kimmel thought about Knoxville. Roberts doesn't recall that the admiral actually lived here, but the 1947 City Directory does list Kimmel as a resident of the Andrew Johnson Hotel on Gay Street. It might have seemed a place where the dejected could feel at home. It was that year that popular author John Gunther called Knoxville the ugliest city in the United States. Kimmel retired in 1947 and moved to Groton, Conn.; the Knoxville gig may have been the last job of his career.
Kimmel's co-defendant, Gen. Short, died in 1949. In 1955, Kimmel published Admiral Kimmel's Story, protesting his innocence and blaming Washington authorities for withholding information that would have helped him prepare for the attack.
At 84, Kimmel told a reporter, "My principal occupation—what's kept me alive—is to expose the entire Pearl Harbor affair.... I cannot excuse those in authority for what they did, and I do not believe that thousands of mothers and fathers whose sons perished on that tragic 7th of December will excuse them. In my book, they must answer on the day of judgment like any other criminal."
Husband Kimmel died in 1968, at age 86. Questions about Pearl Harbor and whether the disaster could have been prevented can still provoke angry debate.
In 1999, the Senate voted narrowly to exonerate Kimmel and to restore his rank. So far, two presidential administrations have declined to confirm it. In the 2001 movie, Pearl Harbor, Kimmel is portrayed by Colm Feore, a much-younger man than Kimmel was at the time, as a capable but naive officer. That portrayal alone prompted some of the movie's abundant criticism.
It's still a bitter controversy, and learned opinions about Kimmel's culpability are all over the map. But here in Knoxville, First Creek doesn't flood like it used to.
December 4, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 49
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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