Short, Walter Campbell, 1880-1949

On December 17, 1941, General Short was removed from command of the U.S. Army's Hawaiian Department as a result of the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian Islands. Short was ordered back to Washington, D.C. by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. In disgrace, he was reduced in rank from his temporary rank of lieutenant general to his permanent rank of major general, since his temporary rank was contingent on his command.

The Roberts Commission, headed by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts, was formed soon after the attack on the Hawaiian Islands. General Short, along with Navy Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet and Pacific Fleet, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, was accused of being unprepared and charged with dereliction of duty. The report charged that Short and Kimmel did not take seriously enough an earlier war warning and did not prepare for an air attack at Pearl Harbor.

On February 28, 1942, he retired from the Army and then headed the traffic department at a Ford Motor Company plant in Dallas, Texas. He briefly returned to active duty from October 3, 1945 to February 28, 1946. He retired in 1946 and died in 1949 in Dallas of a chronic heart ailment.