The White House had passed a quiet morning on this crisp, cold Sunday, December 7. At about 1000 Beardall delivered the fourteenth part of Japan’s famous message breaking off the Hull-Nomura talks. Having done so, he went to his office in the Navy Department because he wanted to be available for courier duty to the White House if necessary. He also had a natural curiosity about the situation and wanted to see what was going on.1
Following Beardall’s departure, Rear Admiral Ross T. McIntire, the President’s personal physician, sat with him from 1000 to 1200. Roosevelt was “deeply concerned over the unsatisfactory nature of Nomura and Kurusu’s conversations with Secretary Hull.” But he was firmly convinced that “Japan’s military masters would not risk a war with the United States.” They might “take advantage of Great Britain’s extremity and strike at Singapore or some other point in the Far East, but an attack on any American possession did not enter his thought.”2
After meeting with Chinese Ambassador Dr. Hu Shih for about forty minutes, the President lunched in his Oval Room study with Harry Hopkins, talking “about things far removed from war. . . .” Then at about 1340, Knox phoned to inform Roosevelt of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hopkins thought “there must be some mistake . . . that surely Japan would not attack in Honolulu.” But Roosevelt believed “the report was probably true.” This was “just the kind of unexpected thing the Japanese would do and that at the very time they were discussing peace in the Pacific they were plotting to overthrow it.”
At about 1405 Roosevelt called Hull and told him about the message from Hawaii. He also “advised Hull to receive Nomura and Kurusu” but to mention nothing about Pearl Harbor. He was merely “to receive their reply formally and coolly and bow them out.”3
Hull’s first thought was to refuse to see the envoys, who had reached the State Department at 1405 and scarcely seated themselves in the diplomatic waiting room. But on the “one chance out of a hundred” that the report was not true, Hull decided to observe the amenities. At 1420, in the company of Joseph W. Ballantine, a State Department expert on the Far East who had sat in on many of the conversations, he “received them coldly and did not ask them to sit down.”
Handing Hull the note, Nomura explained “that he had been instructed to deliver at 1:00 P.M.” and apologized for the delay. Hull asked “why he had specified one o’clock.” Nomura replied “that he did not know but that that was his instruction.” To this Hull remarked “that anyway he was receiving the message at two o’clock.” Obviously he wanted to drill the time into the minds of the two envoys.
The secretary of state went through the motions of examining the document. Then he transfixed Nomura with a chilly eye. The cold contempt in his words cut more painfully than any blast of fury:
I must say that in all my conversations with you during the last nine months, I have never uttered one word of untruth. This is borne out absolutely by the record. In all my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions—infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any Government on this planet was capable of uttering them.
Lifting his hand to cut off any protest Nomura might have made, Hull nodded toward his door. When the envoys walked out, heads down, Nomura, at least, was obviously “under great emotional strain.”4
Always reticent in his diary, Nomura wrote nothing about the hurt bewilderment which filled his kindly heart. The very brevity of his entry for December 7 was significant:
The day on which diplomatic relations between Japan and America were severed. . . .
The report of our surprise attack against Hawaii reached my ears when I returned home from the state department; this might have reached Hull’s ears during our conversation [Nomura’s italics].
Indeed it had, as Nomura learned sometime later. He had not expected war to break out so suddenly, and the attack both surprised and stunned him.5
Stimson was having a late lunch at Woodley when the President phoned him the news. Stimson recorded his reaction in low key: “Well, that was an excitement indeed.” Later in the day he sorted out his major thoughts:
When the news first came that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people. This continued to be my dominant feeling in spite of the news of catastrophes which quickly developed. For I feel that this country united has practically nothing to fear while the apathy and divisions stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging.6
Shortly after noon Marshall summoned Colonel John R. Deane, secretary of the General Staff, and informed him that he expected to see the President at about 1500. He instructed Deane “to keep the office open and have some of the commissioned and civilian personnel report for duty.” Thereupon Marshall drove to his quarters for lunch. About 1330 a Navy enlisted man rushed into Deane’s office with the searing message that Pearl Harbor was under attack. Deane immediately phoned Marshall, who directed him “to contact Hawaii if possible and verify the message.” Before Deane would do so, a confirming dispatch came in. Within ten minutes Marshall reached his office, where he remained until his appointment at the White House.7
Of all the men in Washington whom one might expect to make a beeline for the office that afternoon, Safford was noteworthy by his absence. Being “completely exhausted after two months of worry and almost sleepless nights,” he had “slept the clock around—with 4 extra hours to boot. . . .” He was eating a belated breakfast when a Navy wife telephoned him “that the Japs were bombing Pearl Harbor and was her husband in danger?”
Convinced that a “winds execute” message had been received and almost maddened with frustration over the warning messages which had died aborning in Washington, Safford decided to stay home. He kept “a detective-model .38 and shoulder holster” in his desk and feared that with his weapon in reach he “would have murdered Noyes and tried to murder Stark also.”8
Hull had left the State Department shortly after 1500.9 He and Marshall arrived at the White House soon thereafter. Roosevelt’s advisers gathered with strained intensity, aware that any additional reports from Oahu would be bad. Most of the information concerning Hawaii came by telephone from Stark in the Navy Department. His voice revealed his “shocked unbelief.” It was the unhappy task of Grace Tully, Roosevelt’s devoted secretary, “to take these fragmentary and shocking reports from him by shorthand, type them up and relay them to the Boss.” The confusion and noise proved so distracting that she had to use the phone in the President’s bedroom.
McIntire, Beardall, and others anxiously read over her shoulder as she transcribed. Reaction among them moved from initial incredulity to “angry acceptance as new messages supported and amplified the previous ones. The Boss maintained greater outward calm than anybody else but there was rage in his very calmness,” Miss Tully wrote. “With each new message he shook his head grimly and tightened the expression of his mouth.” Of course, Beardall had a particular cause for worry and distress—his son aboard the light cruiser Raleigh in Pearl Harbor.
During the afternoon Roosevelt telephoned Governor Poindexter on Oahu. While they were talking, suddenly the governor “almost shrieked into the phone.” Roosevelt relayed the message to the men clustered around him. “My God, there’s another wave of Jap planes over Hawaii right this minute.”
When Hull arrived at the White House, his face was “as white as his hair.” In the bitter knowledge that he and his country had been thoroughly tricked, he told the President about his encounter with the Japanese envoys. Stimson and Knox “were cross-examined closely on what had happened, on why they believed it could have happened. . . . It was easy to speculate that a Jap invasion force might be following their air strike at Hawaii—or that the West Coast itself might be marked for similar assault.”10
The incoming reports distressed Stimson exceedingly. “The news coming from Hawaii is very bad. . . . It has been staggering to see [that] our people there, who have been warned long ago and were standing on the alert, should have been so caught by surprise,” he noted in his diary that day.
The President discussed troop and air force dispositions with Marshall, who assured him that he had ordered MacArthur to execute “all the necessary movement required in event of an outbreak of hostilities with Japan.” Roosevelt also urged Hull to keep the South American republics informed and to maintain rapport with them. He directed Stimson and Knox to place guards around arsenals, munition factories, and bridges. But he did not want a military guard around the White House.
Marshall obviously wished to get on with his duties, and so did Stimson. Accordingly the latter did not remain long at the White House. He returned to the War Department, where he “started matters going in all directions to warn against sabotage and to get punch into the defense move.”11
At 1600 Hull presided over a conference at State during which a press report came in announcing that Japan had declared war on the United States. Hull was “calm and maintained his characteristic poise in the face of this new and great emergency.” But that did not prevent him from expressing “with great emphasis his disappointment that the armed forces in Hawaii had been taken so completely by surprise.” The recorder of this meeting recalled that “time after time during recent months” Hull “had warned our military and naval men with all the vigor at his command that there was constant danger of a treacherous attack by Japan. He deeply regretted that these warnings had not been taken more seriously.” The initial reaction of the State Department men at this conference was this:
. . . that the Japanese, in their own interest, were exceedingly stupid in attacking Hawaii and thereby instantaneously and completely uniting the American people. However, after it became evident that our armed forces had suffered tremendous damage in Hawaii, there was less feeling that the Japanese had been stupid.12
At about 1600 several hundred men, women, and children—“mostly men with angry faces”—had gathered outside the executive offices. Some held children perched on their shoulders. Like most Americans, these people had believed deeply in the power and greatness of their country. How could a horrible thing like this happen to the United States?
Within the hour Stephen T. Early, Roosevelt’s Press secretary, informed waiting newsmen that the President had begun dictating the first draft of his message to Congress asking for a declaration of war. With a few minor alterations this was the historic speech he made the next afternoon. Early next “released to the hushed reporters the most dread news of the day. . . .” Admiral Bloch had reported “heavy damage” and “heavy loss of life.”
Slowly the sun sank behind the White House. Squirrels frisked through the bare branches of the trees dotting the lawn. Lights winked on in the windows of the executive offices. Passing cars slowed to a crawl as drivers and passengers craned their necks toward this combined home and powerhouse of government uniquely their own. Periodically White House police urged the spectators to move on, but some were always there, staring in almost total silence toward the lighted windows as if to penetrate the minds of those laboring inside.13
That evening the President dined in his study with his son James, Hopkins, and Miss Tully. “Harry looked just like a walking cadaver, just skin and bones.” During the meal the President “did not talk about Pearl Harbor and he did not complain. It was an hour when he wanted to relax a bit,” said his faithful secretary.14
Roosevelt’s official family gathered at 2030 in the Oval Room, Hopkins being the only nonmember present. The President opened by stating that “this was the most serious meeting of the Cabinet that had taken place since 1861.”15 He continued, “You all know what’s happened. . . . We don’t know very much yet.” Someone asked, “Mr. President, several of us have just arrived by plane. We don’t know anything except a scare headline ‘Japs Attack Pearl Harbor.’ Could you tell us?”16 The President then related the story as he knew it:
And finally while we were on the alert—at eight o’clock . . . a great fleet of Japanese bombers bombed our ships in Pearl Harbor, and bombed all of our airfields. . . . The casualties, I am sorry to say, were extremely heavy. . . . It looks as if out of eight battleships, three have been sunk, and possibly a fourth. Two destroyers were blown up while they were in drydock. Two of the battleships are badly damaged. Several other smaller vessels have been sunk or destroyed. The drydock itself has been damaged. Other portions of the fleet are at sea, moving towards what is believed to be two plane carriers, with adequate naval escort.17
Aware of the awesome historic forces the attack had unleased, Roosevelt was concerned about the address he wished to deliver to Congress the next day. So he slowly read the draft he had recently dictated. Stimson thought it superficial, being “based wholly upon the treachery of the present attack. . . . For that line of thought it was very effective but it did not attempt to cover the long standing indictment of Japan’s lawless conduct in the past. Neither did it connect her in any way with Germany . . .,” as Stimson and Hull believed it should. The latter in particular wanted the President to make a long presentation covering the course of the negotiations, but the rest preferred the shorter message.
Stimson urged in addition that the President “ask for a declaration of war against Germany also,” pointing out that “we know from the interceptions and other evidence that Germany had pushed Japan into this. . . .”18 But the others preferred to wait. Those with access to Magic knew that Ribbentrop had given Hitler’s word—for whatever that might be worth—that if war broke out between Japan and the United States, Germany would declare war.19
One seeks in vain for anything in Magic which could have given Stimson the notion that Berlin called the tune for Tokyo. Yet his reasoning grew from fertile soil and was consistent with the national propensity to underestimate Japan. It was difficult for these men in Washington to accept the fact that a military operation so swift, so ruthless, so painfully successful—in a word, so blitzkrieg—in nature did not originate with Hitler. During the day, when Bloch telephoned Stark, the CNO asked, “The submarine sunk in the harbor, is it German?”20
After the Cabinet meeting the leaders of the Senate entered: Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley, and Charles L. McNary, his Republican opposite; Thomas T. Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and his colleague Hiram W. Johnson; Warren R. Austin of the Military Affairs Committee. From the House came Speaker Sam Rayburn and Acting Majority Leader Jere Cooper; Minority Leader Joseph W. Martin; Sol Bloom, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and committee member Charles A. Eaton.21
To the assembled lawmakers the President landed his punches straight from the shoulder. “The effect on the Congressmen was tremendous. They sat in dead silence and even after the recital was over they had very few words.”22 Someone asked about Japanese casualties. “It’s a little difficult,” answered the President. “We think we got some of their submarines, but we don’t know. . . . We know some Japanese planes were shot down.” But, he pointed out, he had seen that sort of thing in the last war. “One fellow says he got fifteen of their planes and . . . somebody else says five. . . . I should say that by far the greater loss has been sustained by us, although we have accounted for some of the Japanese.” A rumor had cropped up of a Japanese carrier sunk off the Panama Canal. Roosevelt did not credit it, although he wished he could. The Canal Zone had reported being “on the alert, but very quiet.”
The President had received unconfirmed reports that Japan had either declared war on the United States or proclaimed that a state of hostilities existed. Actually, at 1600 EST on December 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Headquarters proclaimed that a state of war existed between Japan and the United States and the British Empire.
Roosevelt added, “. . . the principal defense of the whole west coast of this country and the whole west coast of the Americas has been very seriously damaged today.” He asked for and received authority for a concurrent resolution requesting him to address Congress at 1230 the next day. “Well, it is an awfully serious situation,” he continued. “There is a rumor that two of the planes . . . were seen with swastikas on them. Now whether that is true or not, I don’t know.” So he did not automatically discount German participation in the air strike. He then proceeded to give a quite accurate outline of how the Japanese began the attack. He pointed out: “In other words, at dark, last night, they might very well have been four hundred or five hundred miles away from the Island, and therefore out of what might be called a good patrol distance. . . .”23
But Senator Connally was in no mood for anything that smacked of excuses. He had been slowly coming to a boil during the briefing. Now he burst out: “Hell’s fire, didn’t we do anything!”
“That’s about it,” answered Roosevelt.
Then Connally swung on Knox. “Well, what did we do?” he demanded.
Knox had started to answer when the irate senator interrupted him. “Didn’t you say last month that we could lick the Japs in two weeks? Didn’t you say that our navy was so well prepared and located that the Japanese couldn’t hope to hurt us at all? When you made those public statements, weren’t you just trying to tell the country what an efficient secretary of the navy you were?”
The unhappy Knox, “the most disturbed man present,” fumbled for an adequate reply. Roosevelt said not a word; he simply sat with “a blank expression on his face.” But Connally had by no means finished with the secretary of the navy.
“Why did you have all the ships at Pearl Harbor crowded in the way you did?” he prodded. “And why did you have a log chain across the mouth of the entrance to Pearl Harbor, so that our ships could not get out?” Possibly Connally had some idea of the antisubmarine net. Of course, no mechanical device hindered the sortie of any ship from Pearl Harbor.
“To protect us against Japanese submarines,” Knox answered in a shaky voice.
“Then you weren’t thinking of an air attack?” Connally asked.
“No,” Knox admitted.24
“Well, they were supposed to be on the alert,” Connally said, “and if they had been on the alert . . .* I am amazed by the attack by Japan, but I am still more astounded at what happened to our Navy. They were all asleep. Where were our patrols? They knew these negotiations were going on.” This was the question everyone wanted answered. Knox did not attempt a rebuttal. As yet he had no facts upon which to base a reply.25
Not until almost 2300 did the congressional delegation and many of the Cabinet leave the White House. Some of the dignitaries had a word for the waiting reporters as they emerged. Everyone agreed that the country could anticipate, in Austin’s phrase, “a vacation from politics.” “Republicans will go along with whatever is done, in my opinion,” promised McNary. And Martin stated, “Where the integrity and honor of the Nation is involved there is only one party.”26
Back at the Treasury, Morgenthau foregathered with key members of his Department. Toward the end of the meeting Harry Dexter White, director of monetary research, asked, “Has there been negligence or is it just the fortunes of war?”
“Harry, how the thing could happen—to me it is just unexplainable,” answered Morgenthau. “They walked in just as easily as they did in Norway. And they didn’t do it in the Philippines. Let Stimson take credit for that. . . . But I just—the Navy is supposed to be on the alert, and how this thing could have happened—all the explanations I have heard just don’t make sense. . . .”
The secretary could not get over what had happened. “We have always been led to believe that the Navy was our first line of defense and Hawaii was impregnable. I mean that has been sold to us.” Throughout the conference he harked back to the blow.
“They haven’t learned anything here. They have the whole Fleet in one place—the whole Fleet was in this little Pearl Harbor base.” He repeated like a record with the needle stuck: “The whole Fleet was there.” He expressed his wonder how the Japanese could sneak in there because U.S. forces formerly “patrolled for 5 to 600 miles.” And he proclaimed, “They never can explain this. They will never be able to explain it.”27 But all the lamentations and puzzlement could not turn back the clock.