IT WAS JUST SUNSET when Ensign Ed Jacoby trudged ashore after losing the fight against the West Virginia’s fires. As he started toward the Ford Island BOQ for a sandwich, a bugle sounded evening colors. He snapped to attention, and the simple ceremony — taking place as always, despite the day’s disasters — reminded him that the country lived on … that it had survived blows in the past and could do so again.
Nurse Valera Vaubel stood at attention, too, as the flag was lowered at the Navy Hospital. Then she joined some others in a spontaneous cheer. At least this sundown she was still free.
But how much longer no one knew. Certainly not Ensign Cleo Dobson, as he sat on the veranda of the old BOQ, talking over the future with some of the other Enterprise pilots. About all they could decide: they were in a real shooting war and right on the front line. Somebody suggested food, and that seemed a good idea, for they had eaten nothing since leaving the Enterprise at 6:00 A.M. They raided the deserted kitchen and found some steaks in the refrigerator. The salt and utensils had all disappeared, but they cooked the steaks anyhow on the big range and ate them sitting on the veranda. It was dark now, but they could see well enough by the flickering light of the flames on the Arizona.
Farther down Battleship Row, acetylene torches flared on the upturned hull of the Oklahoma, but the rest of the harbor was dark. Within the blacked-out ships, men had their first chance to rest … and worry. On the Raleigh everything had happened so fast during the day that Yeoman Charles Knapp didn’t have a chance to be scared. But now he was off watch, and as he lay on a desk for a few minutes’ rest, his mind flooded with questions. Would he ever see his mother and sister again, or watch a football game or love a girl or drink a beer or drive a car?
Certainly the outlook wasn’t encouraging. Knapp heard that paratroopers were now dropping on Waikiki … that more landings were in progress on the north shore … and as if the Japanese weren’t enough, that Germans were flying the planes. There was no doubt about it — one seaman swore that he had seen one of the captured pilots … a big, blond-headed Prussian … even heard him talking German.
On the gunboat Sacramento, word also spread that one of the pilots was blond, but he was apparently some kind of blond Japanese. Others spoke of huge six-footers, quite different from the Japanese everyone was used to.
Even more terrifying were the stories that the pilots were Hawaiian-born or American-educated. Seaman Frank Lewis of the Dobbin heard that the Japanese who crashed on the Curtiss was wearing a University of Oregon ring. At the Marine Barracks Private E. H. Robison heard that he was a University of Southern California man — Class of ’37 or ’39, people weren’t quite sure which. At Fort Shaffer, Lieutenant William Keogh heard that the pilots were wearing McKinley High School sweaters (they were all apparently letter-men). The cards seemed stacked against the defenders. The men at Fort Shafter could well believe the story that a Japanese admiral boasted he would dine at the Royal Hawaiian next Sunday.
And what was to stop him? Rumors spread that the ships at sea had also suffered. Quartermaster Handler of the Helm heard that the whole Enterprise task force was sunk; on the Tangier, Boatswain’s Mate William Land heard that the Lexington was gone too. Not just the Lexington but the Saratoga as well, according to a story picked up by Signalman Walter Grabanski of the California.
Nor would there be any help from home, judging from another raft of rumors. The Panama Canal was bombed and blocked, someone told Chief Jack Haley of the Nevada, and this of course cut off the Atlantic Fleet. But worst of all, California itself was said to be under attack. On the Helena men heard that San Francisco was bombed … on the Tennessee that an invasion fleet lay off the city … on the Rigel that the city had been taken and a beachhead established. It might even be a two-prong attack, because word reached the Pennsylvania that a Japanese landing force had occupied Long Beach and was working its way toward Los Angeles.
True, there were a few encouraging reports. California seamen heard that the Russians had bombed Tokyo, and among the West Virginia men word spread that the Japanese had so little steel, they had filled some of the bombs with oyster shells. Perhaps the best news of all circulated among men from the Oklahoma: survivors of the attack would get 30 days’ leave.
Also, the Maryland PA system announced that two Japanese carriers had been sunk, and a more lurid version of this story spread through the Navy Hospital: the Pennsylvania had captured two carriers and was towing them back to Pearl. But how could a man believe the good news when even a quick check showed the Pennsylvania still sitting in drydock?
About the best that could be believed was the report, spread on the Nevada, that the Japanese had landed on Oahu, but the Army was holding its own. The men on the ship were told to be doubly alert for any movement in the cane that ran down to the shore where the ship lay beached. No one remembered to tell them that the ship’s own Marine detachment was patrolling the same area. As Private Payton McDaniel crunched through the cane, a man on the ship shouted he saw something move. A spotlight flicked on, and McDaniel froze, praying it wouldn’t find him. Other Marines grasped the situation and passed word to the Nevada gunners to hold their fire. But it was a terrifying moment, for McDaniel knew that this was a night when men were inclined to fire and ask questions later.
At the sub base, one sentry fired so often at his relief that he ended up with the duty all night. In the Navy Yard, a fusillade of shots erased a small spotlight that was snapped on briefly by the men installing the San Francisco’s antiaircraft batteries. Every time such shots were fired, they would set off other guns, until the whole harbor echoed with the shots of men who had no idea what they were shooting at. “You want to get in on this?” yelled a Marine sentry as Pfc. Billy Kerslake dozed off duty in the front seat of a sedan parked near Landing Charley. Kerslake nodded, reached his arm out the window, fired five pistol shots into the air, and fell back to sleep.
The firing quickly spread to nearby Hickam and added to the misery of the B-17 flight crews. It had been a tough day — first the long 14-hour trip from San Francisco … then getting the planes in shape … bivouacking out in the boondocks … fighting mosquitoes … trying to keep dry in the drizzle that began after dark … and now this. But the firing couldn’t be ignored. During one outburst someone shouted, “The Japs are making a landing!” Tired men poured from their cots as the sky blazed with tracers. Sergeant Nick Kahlefent added to the din when he jumped out of bed on some thorns.
It was an equally sleepless night at Wheeler. Everybody had been evacuated from the barracks area, and no one found a very satisfactory alternative. Private Rae Drenner of the base fire department tossed and turned with 20 other men on the floor of the fire chiefs living room. Every time shooting broke out, the men would dash off in their fire truck, dodging the hail of bullets aimed at them by jittery sentries. On the eastern edge of the field the 98th Coast Artillery let go a covering barrage … kept it up until the 97th at Schofield telephoned to complain that the shrapnel was ripping their tents.
Schofield got even when the 27th Infantry took pot shots at the 98th’s guard detail. Two other Schofield units engaged in a pitched battle across a gully — it ended when one of the GIs, nicked by a ricochet, exploded into language which the other side knew could come from no Japanese. Down near the pack-train corral a sentry challenged three times (showing remarkable forbearance for this night), got no answer, and shot one of his own mules.
The guard at Aliamanu Command Post bagged a deer, and Mess Attendant Walter Simmons figures that in the fields around Kaneohe more mongooses died than on any other night in history. About 1:30 A.M. a small flare burst above Kaneohe — no one yet knows where it came from — and men all over the base began shooting at “parachutists.” It made no difference that no one could see them or even hear a plane. A more tangible target was millionaire Chris Holmes’ island in the middle of the bay. The story spread first that paratroopers had landed there; later it was only that the Japanese servants had revolted. In any case, a group of men chugged out in one of the few planes that could still taxi arid sprayed the place with machine guns.
At Ewa a sentry saw a match flicker and almost shot his base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Larkin, who — against his own orders — was absentmindedly lighting a cigarette.
As the shooting crackled all over Oahu, sooner or later someone was bound to get hurt. An elderly Japanese fisherman, Sutematsu Kida, his son Kiichi, and two others were killed by a patrol plane as their sampan passed Barbers Point, returning with the day’s catch. They had gone out before the attack and probably never knew there was a war. In Pearl Harbor itself, a machine gun on the California accidentally cut down two Utah survivors while they stood on the deck of the Argonne during one of the false alarms.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Fritz Hebel sensed this kind of thing might happen, as he led six Enterprise fighters toward Ford Island around 7:30 P.M. They had been searching for a Japanese carrier, arrived back over the Enterprise when it was too dark to land, were told to go on to Oahu. Now at last they were coming in.
Cautiously Hebel asked Ford Island for landing instructions. He was told to turn his lights on, “come on over the field and break up for landing.” Down in the harbor, Marine Sergeant Joseph Fleck on the New Orleans heard the word passed to hold fire —friendly planes coming in. Ensign Leon Grabowski was told too at his 1.1 gun station on the Maryland; so was Radioman Fred Glaeser on Ford Island. So, probably, were others.
The planes moved in across the south channel and swung toward the mountains. Somewhere a BAR opened up … then two … then just about every ship in Pearl Harbor. Tracers crisscrossed the sky — 30s … 50s … 1.1s … everything that could shoot. On Ford Island an officer desperately ran up and down the sandbags by Utility Squadron One’s position: “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Those are our planes!”
In the air, Lieutenant Hebel yelled over his radio: “My God, what’s happened?” Ensign James Daniels dived for the floodlights at the southwest edge of the field, hoping to blind the gunners. The stunt worked and he swooped off toward Barbers Point. The others weren’t as quick or lucky. Ensign Herb Menges plunged down out of control, crashing into a Pearl City tavern called the Palm Inn. Ensign Eric Allen fell near Pearl City too; he managed to bail out, but was riddled by gunfire as he floated down. Lieutenant Hebel tried to land his damaged plane at Wheeler, crashed, and was killed. Ensign Gayle Hermann spun his smashed plane 1200 feet down onto Ford Island, survived. Ensign D. R. Flynn bailed out over Barbers Point, was picked up alive days later by the Army.
Daniels hovered alone off Barbers Point. After about ten minutes the firing died down, and he blandly asked the tower for landing instructions. They were different this time — come in as low and as fast as possible, show no lights. Since he couldn’t come in as a friend, he would have to try it like an enemy. He did and landed safely.
On the destroyer tender Whitney, crewman Waldo Rathman felt a good deal better: they really showed the Japanese this time. The gunnery was excellent, and it was a thrill to see those planes fall in flames. It made the drubbing of the morning seem a thing of the past.
Watching from her home near Makalapa, Navy wife Jeanne Gardiner couldn’t judge the gunnery, but she prayed the antiaircraft fire would get the enemy. As Mrs. Mitta Townsend, another Navy wife, looked on from her home on the “Punchbowl,” the moon emerged briefly, bathing Oahu in soft but revealing light. She prayed it would go behind a cloud.
Mrs. Joseph Galloway prayed too, pacing the floor at a friend’s house in Honolulu. She had no idea what had happened since her husband left for his ship in the morning. Her portable radio blared occasional alerts about planes, but most of the time it was dead. In the background a distant station faded on and off with dance music from Salt Lake City.
In their desperate search for news other wives made the mistake of tuning in Japanese stations. Mrs. W. G. Beecher heard that her husband’s destroyer Flusser had been sunk with the entire Lexington task force.
Mrs. Arthur Fahrner, wife of Hickam’s mess supervisor, didn’t need to fish for news. She knew all too well. Someone had told her of the bomb that hit the Hickam mess hall, said no one escaped alive. She took it for granted that Sergeant Fahrner died at his post, and now her job was to get the five children back to the mainland, into school, and find a way to support them.
The Fahrners had been evacuated to the University of Hawaii auditorium, and while the Red Cross performed miracles, there still weren’t enough cots for the scores of families that sprawled on the floor. Sunday night Mrs. Fahrner and three other mothers formed a “hollow square” of adults and dumped their ten children in the middle. This at least kept them in one spot, but it still was a night of whimpering … of restless tossing … of endless trips to the bathroom over and around sleeping people.
Just when everything quieted down, some new disturbance would break out. One little girl lost a kitty with a bell around its neck. Soon it was hard to tell which caused the most commotion — the cat roaming and ringing its bell or the child calling and searching in the dark. The little girl had a way of turning up wherever the kitty had just left.
Slowly the hours dragged by. The children gradually dozed off, but the mothers were wide-eyed all night. Sometimes they talked together; other times they just lay quietly holding one another’s hands, waiting for daylight.
The mothers were busier in the Navy storage tunnel at Red Hill, where other families were evacuated. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed down the air vents, and the women spent most of the night shooing them off so their children could sleep. Then, an unexpected crisis arose. One young mother forgot to bring any bottles for her month-old baby. Cups were tried, but of course the baby was too young. Someone suggested a sugar shaker, but the spout was too large. Finally Mrs. Alexander Rowell came up with the solution — she soaked a clean rag in milk and let the baby suck on it. That was what the pioneers did, she explained; she had read all about it in Drums Along the Mohawk.
Generous people opened up their homes to other evacuees. One Navy commander’s wife at Waipahu took in 20 or 30 women and children, including Don and Jerry Morton and their mother, Mrs. Croft. Everyone made a point of being cheerful, but the rumors were frightening — it was said resistance was weak against the enemy advance from Kaneohe. Some of the mothers talked as though they were already prisoners, but Don and Jerry vowed to take to the hills and fight to the end.
Here and there a few families stubbornly refused to evacuate. Mrs. Arthur Gardiner had no great faith in the construction of the junior officers’ duplex quarters near Makalapa, but it was home, and she wanted to be there when Lieutenant Gardiner returned. She pushed the dining room table against a wall, dragged four mattresses downstairs with the help of five-year-old Keith. She placed them strategically around the shelter and crawled in with Keith and two-year-old Susan. Keith was sick with worry and excitement but tried wonderfully to cooperate; Susan was in open rebellion and went along only when convinced it was part of a new game.
Mrs. Paul Spangler thought it might help to read to her four children as they sat in their blacked-out living room on Alewa Heights. So she rigged her coat over a floor lamp, gathered everybody around her, and picked up a book. Instantly a man was pounding on the door, shouting: “Put out that light!” She gave up and they all went to bed. Navy wife Lorraine Campbell dealt more successfully with the blackout at her home near Pearl Harbor — she turned off all the lights and put a Band-Aid on the radio dial.
Some blackout problems were insurmountable. As Allen Mau, a 12-year-old Hawaiian, tried to make cocoa for the evacuees at his home, he found he couldn’t get the milk out of the refrigerator without turning on the automatic light inside. He could get his hand in all right, but not out with the milk bottle too. Finally he went ahead anyhow … and almost lost his arm when the whole family dived at the door to shut the light off.
In the darkness many turned their thoughts to the men who had rushed off in the morning. Days would pass before most of the families heard of them again. On Tuesday Mrs. Arthur Fahrner learned that a box of chocolate bars had mysteriously appeared at a friend’s house — usually a sure sign that Sergeant Fahrner had been around. Yet she scarcely dared to hope. The following day she found out — the sergeant had been in the bakery getting bread when the Hickam mess hall was hit; he escaped without a scratch. On Wednesday Nurse Monica Conter still had no word of Lieutenant Benning, but she was doing her best to carry on. As she walked down the third-floor corridor of the Hickam Hospital, the elevator door opened and there he was in full combat uniform — looking even dirtier than any soldier she had seen in the movies.
It was Thursday morning when Mrs. Joseph Cote heard the chaplain call her name at the university auditorium. She slipped into the ladies’ room and prayed for the strength to bear the bad news. When she emerged, the chaplain told her Chief Cote was fine. Later that day Mrs. W. C. Wallace was back on her civilian job at Pearl Harbor, trying not to look out the window at the charred ships that depressed her so. But a familiar shadow passed the window, and she instinctively looked up — it was her husband, Ensign Wallace, last seen Sunday morning. She threw herself across the desk, halfway through the window and into his arms. Then they slipped into the first-aid shack, where no one could see them, and cried.
It wasn’t until Sunday, December 14, that Don and Jerry Morton learned their stepfather had been killed on the seaplane ramp at Ford Island by one of the first bombs to fall.
But the waiting, the gnawing uncertainty, all lay ahead. This black Sunday night the families on Oahu had other worries. In the eerie darkness, Japanese seemed to lurk behind every bush. Betty and Margo Spangler, two teenage sisters, normally slept out on the lanai, but this night they took over their mother’s bed. Mrs. W. G. Beecher got her children to sleep, lay awake herself, listening uneasily as the palm trees brushed against the side of the house. Navy wife Reiba Wallace took in a frightened single girl who insisted she heard someone on the roof. Mrs. Wallace spied a rifle in the corner, promised to shoot both the girl and herself if the Japanese came in. This was somehow reassuring; the girl calmed down, and Mrs. Wallace kept it to herself that the gun wasn’t loaded. Mrs. Patrick Gillis, a young Army wife, was sure she saw someone skulking outside her apartment house; so did the other five wives who had joined her. The police combed the grounds in vain.
About 4:00 A.M. another alarm went direct to Colonel Fielder in the intelligence office at Fort Shafter: Someone was signaling with a blue light up behind the base. Fielder grabbed a pistol, a helmet, and a sentry. Sure enough, a light was flashing up the mountain. He called for reinforcements, and the squad deployed through buffalo grass … crossed a stream … surrounded the area … and moved in. Two elderly farmers were milking a cow, using a blue light as instructed. A palm frond, swaying in the breeze, occasionally hid the light and made it look like secret code.
Colonel Fielder couldn’t know it, but the danger was all over. Oahu was perfectly safe this gusty, squally night.
The Islands’ 160,000 people of Japanese blood pulled no sabotage, probably no important espionage. Even Dr. Mori’s phone call to Tokyo Friday night — when he talked so mysteriously of poinsettias, hibiscuses, and chrysanthemums — may have been aboveboard. He always claimed it was just an atmosphere piece for the Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun, and certainly the interview did appear in the paper the following morning — complete with reference to flowers. Actually, Consul General Kita didn’t need outside intelligence help — he had more than 200 consular agents, and he himself could get a perfect view of the fleet any time he chose to take a ten-minute drive.
Nor was there any danger from the great Japanese task force north of Oahu. Admiral Nagumo’s ships were 500 miles away … pounding silently home … steaming through heavy mist, slightly south of their outbound course. The crews were strangely quiet. Down in the Akagi’s engine room, Commander Tanbo’s men didn’t even take a ceremonial drink of sake. He later learned this was typical — the men whooped it up only over the small, insignificant victories; the big ones always left them sober and reflective.
The Japanese submarines south of Oahu were no threat either. Most of them had lapsed into the role of observers. Comander Katsuji Watanabe casually studied Pearl Harbor from the conning tower of the I-69, lying several miles off shore. He watched the flames still licking the Arizona and at 9: 01 P.M. noted a heavy explosion aboard her. This respite was welcome, for the commander had spent a hard day dodging destroyers. Some of them probably thought they had sunk him, for Watanabe was a master at deception. He would pump out made-to-order oil slicks; and as final, conclusive evidence of his destruction, he liked to jettison Japanese sandals into the sea.
Lieutenant Hashimoto aboard the I-24 reflected on the change one day had made in the shoreline. The twinkling lights were all gone; Oahu was now just a gloomy shadow. The I-24 turned east and hurried off for her rendezvous with Ensign Sakamaki’s midget. The whole Special Attack Unit was to reassemble at a point seven miles southwest of Lanai, and one by one the mother subs arrived. All night long they waited, riding gently up and down in the ocean swell within easy sight of each other. No midgets ever appeared.
On the I-24 it was discovered that Sakamaki never expected to come back. His belongings were neatly rolled up; his farewell note (with the fingernail and lock of hair) lay ready to be mailed. There were complete instructions what to do, including some yen for the postage.
But Sakamaki was not dead. After his collapse at dusk, the midget cruised lazily eastward by itself. At some point he must have recovered long enough to surface and open the hatch. In any case, when he finally came to around midnight, he noticed first the moonlight, then a soothing breeze that filtered down from above. He poked his head out the hatch and gulped the cool night air.
Seaman Inagaki woke up and also took a few deep breaths. But he was still groggy and soon fell back to sleep. Sakamaki stayed awake, drinking in the night, letting the sub go where it wanted. The sea wasn’t rough, but an occasional wave washed his face. Stars twinkled through the drifting clouds, and moonlight danced off the water. He began having dangerous thoughts for a man on a suicide mission: he got to thinking it was good to be alive.
About dawn the motor stopped, and the midget just drifted. As the light grew brighter, Sakamaki saw a small island to the left. He decided it was Lanai — a remarkable display of faith in the sub’s ability to steer itself. Actually, the boat had drifted far off course, rounded the eastern end of Oahu, and was now heading northwest along the windward side of the island.
Sakamaki shook Inagaki awake and pointed out the land — they might still be in time for the rendezvous. He ordered full speed ahead. The sub started and stopped … started and stopped again. White smoke poured from the batteries; they were just about shot. Sakamaki waited a few minutes (like a man attempting to start a car on a low battery) and tried again. Nothing happened. Once more. The motor caught, and the midget bolted ahead. Almost instantly there was another jolt … a frightful scraping … a shuddering stop. They had run her onto a reef again.
This time they were stuck for good. There was nothing to do but scuttle the sub. It carried explosives for just this emergency, and Sakamaki quickly lit the fuse. For a few seconds he and Inagaki watched it sputter, to make sure it didn’t go out. Then they scrambled up the hatch.
They climbed out on the cigar-shaped hull, wearing only G-string and loincloth. The moon was sinking in the west, a new day lighting up the eastern sky. Around them the surf foamed and pounded. About 200 yards ahead they could just make out a dark, empty beach. Sakamaki had a final pang of conscience — shouldn’t he stay with the midget … was this the way of a naval officer? Then he thought, why not try to live; he was not a weapon but a human being. He bade the sub good-bye, almost as though it were a person: “We’re leaving now — explode gloriously.”
He dived into, the sea about 6:40 A.M. — his watch, which he had loyally kept on Tokyo time, stopped at 2:10. The water was colder than he expected, the waves higher than they looked. They spun him helplessly about as he struck out for shore. Inagaki had jumped with him but was nowhere to be seen. Sakamaki hailed him, and a voice called back, “Sir, I’m over here.” Sakamaki finally spied a head bobbing up and down in the combers. He yelled a few words of encouragement, but no one knows whether Inagaki heard. His drowned body later washed up on the beach.
As Sakamaki struggled through the surf, he realized that the charge had not gone off in the sub. Five … ten minutes passed. The hideous truth dawned — on this too he had failed. He wanted to swim back but just couldn’t make it. He had lost all his strength. He no longer swam at all. He just swirled about — coughing, swallowing, spitting up salt water. He was utterly helpless. Everything went blank.
When he came to, he was lying on the beach near Bellows Field, apparently cast up on the sand by a breaker. He glanced up into the curious eyes of an American soldier standing beside him. Sergeant David M. Akui was on guard, packing a pistol at his hip. The war that was just beginning for so many men had just ended for Prisoner of War Kazuo Sakamaki.
At this moment it was 12:20 P.M. in Washington, D.C., and ten highly polished black limousines were just entering the Capitol grounds. The first was convoyed by three huge touring cars, nicknamed Leviathan, Queen Mary, and Normandie. These were filled with Secret Service men guarding President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was on his way to ask Congress to declare war on the Japanese Empire.
The cars stopped at the south entrance of the Capitol, and the President got out, assisted by his son Jimmy. Roosevelt wore his familiar Navy cape, Jimmy the uniform of a Marine captain. Applause rippled from a crowd that stood behind sawhorse barricades in the pale noonday sun. The President paused, smiled, and waved back. It was not his campaign wave — this was no time for that — but it wasn’t funereal either. He seemed trying to strike a balance between gravity and optimism.
The Presidential party moved into the Capitol, and the crowd lapsed back into silence. Here and there little knots clustered about the portable radios which the more enterprising remembered to bring. All were facing the Capitol, although they couldn’t possibly see what was going on inside. They seemed to feel that by studying the building itself, a little history might somehow rub off onto them.
Like the President, the people were neither boisterous nor depressed. They had seen movies of the cheering multitudes that are supposed to gather outside chancelleries whenever war is declared, but they didn’t feel that way at all. Occasionally someone made an awkward, halfhearted attempt to follow the script. “Gee,” said a teenage girl, clinging to a bespectacled, rather unbelligerent-looking sailor, “ain’t there some way a woman can get into this thing?”
It was almost painful, yet it was typical. Like the men at Pearl, who kept linking their experiences to football and the movies, the people had nothing better to go by. A nation brought up on peace was going to war and didn’t know how.
Ever since the news broke early Sunday afternoon, they had groped none too successfully for the right note to strike. “Happy Landings!” cried a man who phoned a Detroit paper for confirmation — and the editor detected the tone of false gaiety. “Gotta whip those Japs!” a Kansas City newsboy chanted self-consciously as he passed out extras. And at Herbert’s Drive-Inn Bar in the San Fernando Valley, a customer pulled one of a thousand forced, flat jokes: “You guys with Japanese gardeners — how do you feel now?”
Along with the awkwardness went a naïveté which must have seemed strange to the more sophisticated warring nations of the world. The Vassar faculty passed a resolution formally offering its “special training” to the service of the country. A Washington cab-driver phoned the White House, offering to carry any government worker to his job free — a proposal likely to astonish any official who did time in Washington during the ensuing years. Members of the Pilgrim Congregational Church in St. Louis debated whether to bomb Tokyo, decided not to — “we’re a people of higher ideals.” A man in Atlanta wired Secretary of Navy Frank Knox to hold Japanese envoy Kurusu until all Navy officers on Wake were released, and ex-Ambassador to Russia Joseph Davies seriously discussed the possibilities of using Vladivostok as a base.
But most people didn’t worry about bases; they were sure the United States could defeat Japan with absurd case. The country at large still regarded the Japanese as ineffectual little brown men who were good at imitating Occidentals but couldn’t do much on their own. “I didn’t think the Japs had the nerve,” said Sergeant Robert McCallum when interviewed on a Louisville street corner. As reports spread of disquietingly heavy damage at Pearl Harbor, many agreed with Professor Roland G. Usher, a German authority and head of the History Department at Washington University in St. Louis-Hitler’s Luftwaffe may have helped the Japanese out.
But rising above the awkwardness, the naïveté, and the over-confidence ran one surging emotion — fury. The day might come when formal declarations of war would seem old-fashioned, when the surprise move would become a stock weapon in any country’s arsenal, but not yet. In December, 1941, Americans expected an enemy to announce its intentions before it fought, and Japan’s move — coming while her envoys were still negotiating in Washington — outraged the people far beyond the concept of any worldly-wise policymaker in Tokyo.
Later, Americans would argue bitterly about Pearl Harbor — they would even hurl dark charges of incompetence and conspiracy at one another — but on this day there was no argument whatsoever.
Young Senator Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts had been an ardent “neutralist” (just a month earlier he had voted against allowing U.S. merchant ships to enter Allied ports), but right after he learned of Pearl Harbor from a filling-station attendant, he was on the air … urging all Americans, no matter how isolationist they might have been, to unite against the attack. Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, leader of the isolationist bloc, had heard the news in his bedroom, where he was pasting up clippings about his long, hard fight against U.S. involvement in the war. He immediately phoned the White House, assuring President Roosevelt that whatever their differences, he would support the President in his answer to Japan.
It was the same with the press. The isolationist, rabidly anti-Roosevelt Los Angeles Times bannered its lead editorial, “Death Sentence of a Mad Dog.” Some papers tried to prod isolationist leaders into controversial statements, but none were coming. Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana, for instance, snapped back, “The only thing now is to do our best to lick hell out of them.”
And the sooner the better. There was an overwhelming urge to get going, even though no one knew where the road might lead. At Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Brigadier General Dwight D. Eisenhower got the word as he tried to catch up on his sleep after weeks of long, tough field maneuvers. He was dead tired, had left orders not to be disturbed, but the phone rang and his wife heard him say, “Yes? … When? … I’ll be right down.” As he rushed off to duty, he told Mrs. Eisenhower the news, said he was going to headquarters, and added that he had no idea when he would be back.
The Capitol swelled with the same spirit of angry unity and urgency as the Senators filed into the House Chamber to hear the President’s war message. Democratic leader Alben Barkley arrived arm in arm with GOP leader Charles McNary; Democrat Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma linked arms with the old isolationist Senator Hiram Johnson of California.
Next the Supreme Court marched in, wearing their black robes, and then the members of the Cabinet. Down front sat the top military leaders, General Marshall and Admiral Stark. Farther back, five Congressmen held children in their laps, lending the curious touch of a family gathering. In the gallery Mrs. Roosevelt, wearing black with a silver fox fur, peeked from behind a girder — she had one of the worst seats in the House. Not far away sat an important link with the past — Mrs. Woodrow Wilson.
At 12:29 P.M. President Roosevelt entered, still on Jimmy’s arm. There was applause … a brief introduction by Speaker Sam Rayburn … and the President, dressed in formal morning attire, stood alone at the rostrum. He opened a black loose leaf notebook — the sort a child uses at school — and the Chamber gave him a resounding ovation. For the first time in nine years Republicans joined in, and Roosevelt seemed to sense the electric anger that swept the country, as he grasped the rostrum and began:
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked ….
The speech was over in six minutes and war voted in less than an hour, but the real job was done in the first ten seconds. “Infamy” was the note that struck home, the word that welded the country together until the war was won.