Henry C. Clausen; Trial Lawyer, Pearl Harbor Investigator

Henry C. Clausen, 87, a trial lawyer and Pearl Harbor investigator. Then-Secretary of War Henry Stimson appointed Clausen in 1944 to run the Pearl Harbor inquiry. At the time, Clausen was a major in the judge advocate general’s Washington office. Before and after World War II, Clausen was an attorney in San Francisco, representing such clients as Golden Gate Bridge builder Joseph Strauss. With historian Bruce Lee he had just completed a book, “Pearl Harbor, Final Judgment.” Published in September, it states that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no prior knowledge of the attack. The book instead blames U.S. Army and Navy base commanders for Pearl Harbor’s lack of defense. Clausen used recently declassified material on the attack that he had uncovered during his two-year investigation almost 50 years ago. In San Francisco on Dec. 4.