Washington DC — January 14, 1943 (Routers)

The OSS and military intelligence came under renewed attack in Congress today for failing to find Admiral Yamamoto, with the increasing certainty that he is still alive prompting senior Republican senators to brand the effort to dismantle the Japanese military as a failure.

A leading Republican senator charged that the Roosevelt administration had been distracted from the fight against Japan by the invasion of Northern Africa last month.

“They are so focused on Tunisia that they aren’t paying adequate attention to the war on Japan,” he said in an interview.

He said that American intelligence agencies had failed to determine the extent of the Japanese threat even as the country prepared for war on the other side of the globe. Island lookouts have been seeing increasing Japanese naval activity, indicating an imminent threat to US forces.

“Just because we destroyed much of their force at the Battle of Midway last June doesn’t mean that we’ve taken them out of action, and we still don’t have positive proof that we got Yamamoto. The Japanese continue to reconstitute and rebuild in their home islands.”

If Admiral Yamamoto is alive, he suggested, then the threat to the United States has increased. “If he is still alive and still in charge, that means the Japanese navy continues to have a highly capable and venomous leader.”

“We can’t find Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and we haven’t made real progress in destroying key elements of the Japanese army or their infrastructure. They continue to conquer territory, and to be as great a threat today as they were a year and a half ago. So by what measure can we claim to be successful so far?”

(Copyright 2002 by Rand Simberg)