Word: shortly
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ordnance "did not want to issue any of the clean ammunition, let it out and get dirty, have to take it back in later on and renovate it." General Short supported Ordnance in this tidy attitude. As a result, said Burgin, it would take "from a few minutes to six hours before all the guns could be got in position and firing." On the morning of Dec. 7 only half the anti-aircraft guns had ammunition at hand...
Keep Calm. Short's greatest concern at the time was not the possibility of an attack from the sea but of sabotage by Japanese on the island; 37% of Hawaii's population were of Japanese origin. Short thought one way to avoid stirring up the population was to betray no anxiety, which alerts and maneuvers might have done. This, in spite of the fact that Honolulu newspapers at the time were screaming: "JAPANESE MAY STRIKE, OVER WEEKEND"-"U.S. ARMY ALERTED IN MANILA, SINGAPORE MOBILIZING AS WAR TENSION GROWS"-"PACIFIC ZERO HOUR NEAR...
...Short decided that an anti-sabotage alert was enough. This was the position in which the Jap carrier planes found him, with his planes parked wing-to-wing on the airstrips and his guards on the qui vive for saboteurs...
...Marshall "clearly indicated to Short that he should change his alert plan (there was no proof that he ever did) and only use the Air Force for guard during the last stage when the Air Force as such had been destroyed and a hostile landing effected...
...Offensive. Short arrived in Hawaii with specific instructions from Marshall to get along with the Navy. Marshall, grieved to find "old Army and Navy feuds" still persisting, wrote Short: "We must be completely impersonal in these matters, at least so far as our own nerves and irritations are concerned...