CHAPTER 10

THE TENTH OF DECEMBER

“US Warships in Battle Off Manila, Berlin Says”

Sun

“Roosevelt Sees a Long, World-Wide War;
Japanese Invade Luzon, Fight in Manila;
2 Big British Warships Sunk, Tokyo Says”

New York Times

“Japs Sink Two British Dreadnaughts”

Birmingham News

Franklin Roosevelt appeared in good spirits and good health to the reporters who filed into the Oval Office. FDR was dressed in a grey suit, white shirt, black tie, and black armband for his mother, Sara, who’d died the previous September. “He was smoking a cigarete [sic] in an ivory holder . . . and he chatted smilingly with correspondents.”¹ “He looks fine,” one reporter whispered to another and it was noted “there were no haggard lines in his face. His color was good. There was about him a calm confidence.” Another was heard to say, “He thrives on activity—and he has plenty of it now.”²

He’d been confined to a wheelchair for years, only occasionally using the painful leg braces when in public. In all of his years in the presidency, he’d only been photographed in the wheelchair maybe three times. Secret Service men routinely confiscated photographs and negatives, and the White House press corps was in on the cover-up, berating new members not to photograph the crippled and confined president.³

The security around FDR had increased appreciably, as reporters were asked repeatedly to show their press credentials before being allowed into the briefing with the president.⁴ Yet by that evening during a long radio broadcast, the wear and burden of the war and the long day showed in his face. The stress of the war years with its never-ending long days and long nights, combined with his endless smoking of Camel cigarettes, contributed mightily to FDR’s decline in health. Several years into the war, a young reporter assigned to the White House beat was appalled during his first day on the job when he realized the haggard, sallow-skinned decrepit man sitting before him was the president of the United States.⁵

But at the dawn of the war, and flexing his new powers, FDR issued a proclamation saying that “all alien enemies are enjoined to preserve the peace . . . and to refrain from crime against the public safety and from violating the laws . . . and to refrain from actual hostility or giving aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States.” It was also noted that “violators [would] be interned.”⁶ Japanese subjects were prohibited from leaving Hawaii, and local military commanders in the battle zones were given wide latitude to imprison those they deemed a threat.⁷ Nationals from all three countries who were in America were “liable” as far as the government was concerned, especially Japanese because “an invasion had been perpetrated upon the territory of the United States by the Empire of Japan.”⁸

The edict put a halt to the process for nearly 500,000 Japanese, German, and Italians wanting to live or stay in the United States. J. Edgar Hoover was keeping FDR apprised of the FBI’s efforts, via Maj. Gen. Edwin M. Watson. “I thought it might be of interest to the President and you to have the inclosed [sic] charts before you, which show the number of Japanese, German and Italian aliens taken into custody by the FBI as of December 9. This gives the exact location of the number apprehended and places at which they were apprehended.” The memo was accompanied by a detailed chart of the forty-eight states, denoting pickups.⁹

The administration was also getting ready to ask Congress for virtually unrestricted powers, including the ability to send arms and other support materiel to any country fighting the Axis powers and not just against Japan.¹⁰ The White House was seeking nothing less than authoritarian powers in the conduct of war. It went even further.

With the help of the Federal Communications Commission and the War Department, the White House in essence nationalized the nation’s radio industry. “President Roosevelt signed an executive order late today . . . to designate radio facilities for use, control or closure by the War or Navy Departments. . . . The effect of the order is to give the Government freedom to step in and supervise directly or make use of all radio facilities of the Nation.”¹¹ The order also allowed “other agencies of the government” to step in and take control of private radio broadcasting facilities.¹²

FDR was drawing broad support from many corners. Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, America’s only five-star general, still on the active duty roster at the age of eighty-one, sent the president a letter, offering his services. FDR responded kindly, calling him “magnificent. I am deeply grateful to you . . . under a wise law, you have never been placed on the retired list.”¹³

A dispute among constitutional scholars broke out over exactly when America went to war with Japan, fueled by FDR’s language proclaiming “a state of war has existed” even though Congress had not formally declared war on Japan at the time. Most agreed that a state of war did not come into actual existence until 4:10 p.m. on the eighth, when the president actually signed the proclamation of war. Whatever the variances, all agreed that the president’s powers were now vastly expanded. “Statutes which operate in such periods authorize the President to take over transportation systems, industrial plants, radio stations, power facilities and ships, and place some controls on communications systems,” reported the New York Times.¹⁴

The mobilization of the political and business class to fight a highly industrialized global war, combined with the concentration of power into the hands of the commander in chief, was profoundly changing what had once been Fortress America. It marked the beginning of what would later be known as the Imperial Presidency. The expansion of presidential powers in response to Pearl Harbor also presaged the postwar National Security State, in which civil liberties were sometimes curtailed. This was all to come. But in December 1941, it was already clear to ordinary and powerful citizens alike that a major shift in American society was under way and that the republic as originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers was giving way to something different.

A quote from Alexander Hamilton from Federalist 74 was bandied about to support the contention that wartime conditions allowed for the expansion of executive powers: “The direction of war implies the direction of common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength forms an unusual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.”¹⁵

Most believed President Roosevelt now had enhanced and broaden powers not only over the military but the citizenry, the economy, and labor as well. One euphemistic new example: “The Secretary of War may rent any building in the District of Columbia.”¹⁶ In other words, the federal government now had the right to commandeer private property. Indeed, in his press conference, FDR suggested that a seven-day workweek in the war industries might be necessary and proposed convening a conference of business and labor to discuss the matter. The word parley was used, but in fact there would be little to discuss.¹⁷ He also floated the idea of a “Conference on the Defense of [the] Western Hemisphere.”¹⁸ Also proposed was the notion of “enforced savings” of the average worker that would automatically deduct “10 to 15 percent of all income and wages.”¹⁹

The issue of who exactly was an American also came up in debate. The law said Japanese could not become naturalized citizens “under provisions of the act of Feb 18, 1875 amending the act of July 14, 1870 limiting naturalization to white persons or those of African descent.” Open to question was whether a child born in America, of Japanese parentage—called “Nisei”—was considered a naturalized American.²⁰

The government was now monitoring or restricting the movements of over 1 million individuals, virtually all of Japanese, German, and Italian heritage. As of the tenth, the attorney general’s office said they had now picked up over one thousand foreign nationals. FDR’s proclamation instituting prohibitions on those still roaming free, including the ability to possess a firearm, “ammunition, bombs, explosives or material used in the manufacture of explosives; shortwave radio receiving sets; transmitting sets; signal devices; codes or ciphers; cameras; papers; documents or books in which there may be invisible writing; photograph, sketch, picture, drawing, map or graphical representation of any military or naval installations.” The directive went on with even more specifics and restrictions.²¹ Arrests continued. “A Japanese was seized near Oakland Airport and another was arrested near the scene of an early morning fire in Oakland.”²²

Hawaii had the same concerns, only magnified. The territorial governor, Joseph Poindexter, who’d been appointed by FDR, worried about “the conduct of Hawaii’s 37,000 Japanese aliens and 100,000 American-born Japanese.”²³

Also open to question was how to deal with approximately fifty Japanese diplomats still in the country. Cordell Hull made an appeal to a neutral European country to act as the go-between involving the two warring countries.

American diplomats were still in Tokyo as well, including Ambassador Joseph Grew. There was also the matter of approximately five thousand Americans on Japanese soil. But there were only a few neutral countries in the world now, including Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden.²⁴

Tokyo meanwhile announced there were 1,270 Americans, British, Canadians, and Australian citizens in Japan.

In reply, the Japanese announced they would abide by the Geneva Convention and allow U.S., British, and Canadian diplomats safe passage to a neutral port of call.²⁵ But the Japanese government also announced it had arrested one hundred American and British nationals.²⁶ Thousands of other noncombatant Americans were spread throughout the War Zone, and the British government reminded the Japanese government of the Conventions and the Geneva Protocol of 1925 strictures against the use of chemical weapons.

Allies rounded up initially 25,000 Japanese in Davao in the Philippines and another 100,000 at Bilibid prison in Manila. In Davao, Japanese “have submitted peaceably. Some appeared voluntarily at concentration centers.”²⁷ Also worrisome for Washington was that while few of her naval officers spoke Japanese, “a vast number of [Japan’s] military officers . . . speak English. This is bound to give Nippon an edge in questioning war prisoners, translating intercepted messages and in obtaining information from material found on men fallen in action.”²⁸

The questions were why did it happen and how did it happen? Pearl Harbor had often been referred to by the navy as “the Gibraltar of the Pacific.”²⁹ Just one day before the attack, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox had issued a statement saying the navy was ready.³⁰ It was more than just being “back-stabbers-in-the-dark,” as the Los Angeles Times described the new enemy.³¹ Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana said the Japanese “must have gone crazy.”³² Winston Churchill had warned for more than a month that the Pacific was a powder keg waiting to explode.

Pearl Harbor was a vitally important outpost for the American military and thus a direct threat to Japan’s designs on an empire stretching up and down the Asian east coast and spreading into the Philippines and the Pacific. This answered some of the why, although it was far more complicated. After all, the Japanese had already invaded China, Manchuria, and French-Indo China, and many presumed America would also tolerate the invasion of Thailand. Deeper issues were involved.

Why did the Japanese attack America and Great Britain? One answer was the character of the military men running Japan. “These men are the most reactionary school. They have long been practically at grips with Emperor Hirohito, trying to divest him of actual state authority, reduce him to helpless isolation in the palace, and to restore an aristocratic regime tantamount to the old-time Shogunate under which for 250 years, ending around 1870, Japan was locked away from the outside world.”³³

The biggest fascist of all, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, was the majordomo in all military and political affairs in his country. As a fascist, militarist, and overtly nationalistic, Tojo wasn’t hard to figure out, as his defense for keeping troops in China was the positive affect it had on Japanese military morale. His nickname was “The Razor.” When he became prime minister in October 1941, he was assigned the task of evaluating the negotiations with the United States to see if peace was possible but within a matter of days signed off on the audacious plan to launch a sneak attack against America.

Why did the American military fail to see the threat posed? Why did American diplomats and politicians fail to remember that Japan, in her long history, had never actually declared war on an opponent before attacking that opponent? Why did American politicians and diplomats fail to recognize just who and what was running the show in Tokyo? “The real rulers of Japan have been a clique of army and navy officers whose thought processes, fanatical, mystical, belong in another age. They are a direct throwback to the Shoguns, Diamyos, and Samurai who ruled in ancient and medieval times. . . . They were Fascists before Mussolini, National Socialists before Hitler.”³⁴

But the Japanese people were also a proud and courageous race. They were unyielding and Tokyologists knew that, for the Japanese, “national suicide would be preferable to yielding.”³⁵ The word fanatical to describe the Japanese was cropping up in more and more articles. The Japanese had often been poorly and cruelly portrayed in the political cartoons of American newspapers, but now it took an uglier, racist turn. A hated caricature was emerging of the average Japanese citizen and certainly the Japanese military. The president of Tufts University, Leonard Carmichael, accused the Japanese race of being “infected with madness.”³⁶ Political cartoons routinely depicted the Japanese in the most vicious possible manner. Short, “bifocals and bamboo,” squinty-eyed, often with a knife in the back of Uncle Sam, egged on by caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini.

Still, the bigger question on the minds of Americans and official Washington was how were the Japanese so successful in sneaking up on Hawaii? Sure, it was a big ocean, but it was also a big armada and should, some thought, have been spotted by navy or civilian ships or planes. Pan American flights over the Pacific were routine, and the military on Oahu did have planes and ships dedicated to be on the lookout for potential threats from the sea. Indeed, one that had landed in the middle of the battle over Oahu made its way safely back to San Francisco while another, along with twenty airline personnel, successfully escaped from Guam.

One expert said the navy suffered from “Scapa Flow.” Scapa Flow was where the Germans surprised and sank the British Royal Oak in early October of 1939, at a time when the Brits should have known better. The Christian Science Monitor acidly wrote, “Why the American Navy permitted itself to be surprised in the Pacific will take some major explaining from a command which almost at the same moment was declaring its marine forces ‘second to none’ in the world.”³⁷

The army, along with the navy, seemed confused as to its next step. The army oddly announced that it was not planning any type of offensive operations against the Japanese any time soon.³⁸ A White House source elaborated, saying nothing on the scale of the 2 million doughboys sent to Europe in 1917 was being contemplated. And while it was the Japanese who had attacked America, “the most formidable enemy still is Germany.”³⁹ Stories circulated that Germany was planning on aiding the Japanese with military hardware. Adm. William D. Leahy supposedly told a journalist four years earlier that Japan needed to be corralled. In 1937, isolationists labeled him a “warmonger.”⁴⁰

The blame game and the “I knew it all along” parlor room nonsense were only beginning to gain a head of steam. Some of the headlines: “While Japan caught the United States Navy napping at Hawaii,” “U.S. Learns Lesson in Attack,”⁴¹ “U.S. Navy Caught Off Guard,”⁴² and “Preparedness of Defenses is Questioned in Washington: Capital Hears Queries About Functions of Hawaii Off-Shore Patrol,”⁴³ Conclusions were being jumped to all over the place, and the navy was increasingly under attack by American politicians and editorialists and not just Japanese militarists. “Also heard in the rising uproar were proposals for a housecleaning of the Navy Department, beginning with the Secretary, Frank Knox.”⁴⁴

FDR was asked at his press conference the day before who was to blame and he bristled at the offending reporter. A reporter also complained that it seemed to him the War Department had clamped down on all information, but Roosevelt smiled and “told the correspondent his toes hadn’t been stepped on.”⁴⁵ “Asked if it would be the policy to make public no bad news, the President answered in the negative, but added that the rule of accuracy and determination not to aid the enemy would be the standard of measure.” He also shot down the notion that some papers were unhappy with the policy, noting that he’d also “heard other reports where the shoe was on the other foot.”⁴⁶

Along with the finger-pointing, conspiracy theorists started coming out of the woodwork. Senator Guy Gillette, Democrat of Iowa, claimed he’d been told by a source that the State Department had been told by another source that the Japanese would attack America in either December 1941 or January of 1942.⁴⁷ No doubt there had been formal and informal warning about the Japanese, and the War Department’s Enigma machine had decoded transmissions between Tokyo and their embassy in Washington, but nowhere in those transmissions was it explicit that Japan was going to war with the United States. The War Department had issued “war warnings” to the field commanders, including Admiral Kimmel and General Short, but none of those ever mentioned Hawaii.⁴⁸ Roosevelt himself had been given several top secret memos alerting him to the possibility the Japanese could attack the Philippines or Hawaii, but in the end, everybody just could not fathom it. All thought the Japanese’s next target was Thailand. It was one of the greatest bait and switches in world history.

Experts on the Far East weighed in, saying the attack was to break up a suspected blockade of Japan, before the Allies and the United States could get it going in earnest. Others, including Kimmel, thought FDR was being deliberately provocative, when the president personally ordered the fleet moved from San Diego to Oahu early in 1941.⁴⁹ He also complained of being kept in the dark about the increasing diplomatic difficulties between Washington and Tokyo and implied that had he known, he would have taken steps to protect the fleet.

With perfect 20/20 hindsight, the Washington Post opened its lead editorial of December 8 saying, “The Japanese attack on Hawaii began precisely as many Navy and Army officers predicted it would.” The editorial did not name these visionary individuals, and there was no reporting before December 7 in the Post or any paper in America for that matter about their warnings of a possible attack in the Pacific by Japan.⁵⁰ The paper, however, being located in the nation’s capital, was marinated in the “as I said before” tuchas-covering culture of the town.

The Post also had an aggressively pro-Roosevelt, pro-interventionist editorial policy with a habit of patting itself on the back. “This paper has gone on that assumption since Hitler and the Italians leagued themselves with the Japanese” that war was inevitable and it would not be confined to the European powers. In arguing for a swift entry into the war, it said, “This is our rendezvous with destiny.”⁵¹ Their crosstown rival, the Washington Times-Herald, was a vicious and bitter opponent of FDR, the New Deal, Lend-Lease, and internationalism. The paper was owned by newspaper mogul Col. Robert McCormick, whose opposition to FDR was reflected deeply in all his papers.

Adding to Americans’ doubts about the world situation was the fact that while their government was telling them one thing, other sources were telling them something quite different. Network radio correspondents were reporting in great detail about destruction in Manila while the War Department was saying the Philippine base in question was operational—or saying nothing at all. “Continuing as it did, the silence created a growing possibility that the public would simply begin to believe all rumors, simply because no facts were made available to controvert them.”⁵² The Japanese were dropping propaganda leaflets by day and flares at night, to illuminate bombing targets. There was constant chatter going around that German pilots were participating in the attack, flying Japanese warplanes.⁵³

Americans did not know of the six separate military targets successfully hit in Oahu by the Japanese, or of the near-complete destruction or disabling of twenty-one vessels in the American fleet, or that over three hundred first-line Air Corps and navy planes had been destroyed, or that three thousand of the fellow countrymen had been brutally killed only because they wore a uniform and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There was no news coming out of Hawaii about the extent to which the Japanese had succeeded, including the murder of 1,177 sailors and marines assigned to the Arizona, which having taken a bomb into her magazine, exploded in a earth-shattering fireball and sank to the bottom of the harbor. Nearly the entire crew was lost.

Hawaii was under martial law, and retail stores were ordered closed so the civilian government could order an inventory of available food supplies. The White House said repairs on the damaged ships and planes were in effect and replacement planes were being “rushed” to Hawaii, but the fact was Pearl Harbor, Ford Island, and Hickam Field were only beginning to pick up the pieces. Dead and missing soldiers and sailors were still unaccounted for, and investigations hadn’t even gotten underway. A sad epilogue to December 7 was that a squadron of six planes from the Enterprise was on approach to Pearl Harbor after a vain search for the Japanese ships, and despite being told repeatedly they were “friendlies,” they were shot down by panicked U.S. sailors. Only one of the six planes landed safely.⁵⁴

Honolulu wasn’t completely caught unawares of Japanese intentions. For some time, residents of Oahu had been warned what to do in case of attack, to “lay in emergency food supplies,” and warned they might have to evacuate to the mountains should war come to their island. “It is safe to say that no other American community was as well prepared for war as was Hawaii.”⁵⁵ Ironic.

The risk was great after December 7 of another Japanese attack on Hawaii, so Americans thought. “Unless the naval patrol around Hawaii, and indeed around the fringe of American islands farther west can be made more effective, periodic harassing attacks on Hawaii are practically certain.”⁵⁶ Secretary Hull said publicly he expected more surprise attacks on the part of the Japanese. And fresh claims by the Japanese included the sinking of a “mother ship” and the downing of an American plane near Hawaii.⁵⁷

The Japanese were crowing now; what was left of the American fleet was no match for their intact fleet in the Pacific. “This force would be regarded as utterly inadequate to accomplish any successful outcome in an encounter with the thus-far-intact Japanese Fleet.”⁵⁸

As of the tenth, the war news only became more depressing. The Japanese sunk two huge British battleships, the thirty-five thousand ton Prince of Wales and the thirty-two thousand ton Repulse, in the same Pacific battle. Hundreds of men were lost, and the Repulse went down immediately after the torpedo and dive bomber planes had attacked. The ships, without air cover, were simply sitting ducks to air attack. Winston Churchill was truly stunned at the news. “In all the war, I never received a more direct shock.” Churchill wrote in The Grand Alliance.⁵⁹

He was down to only nineteen battleships. The Japanese claimed they’d also sunk the King George V battleship.⁶⁰ It was learned that two British islands in the Pacific, Nauru and Ocean, were under attack by the Japanese.⁶¹ Both were small, but both were strategically important, as part of the Gilbert Island chain halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines. The Japanese had also apparently seized a British airfield located in the northern Malaya Peninsula area.

Japanese troops stormed ashore at Luzon in the Philippines. They were also “in force in Malaya,” as reported from Singapore.⁶² “Bitter fighting continued throughout the night and today.”⁶³ The Japanese claimed they bombed Clark Field and Nichols in the Philippines again and shelled Midway Island again, as well as shooting down nine American planes over Wake Island. The Japanese navy had also captured over two hundred commercial ships of all countries, all in the waters off the China Coast and southward.

American fighters were off the ground in Manila and finally engaging the enemy, however there was respect for the Japanese fighters. One American flyer described the opposing planes as “plenty good and heavily armored.”⁶⁴

The Japanese took possession of the President Harrison, with a compliment of U.S. Marines on board.⁶⁵ They were tightening their grip on Thailand, sending in more troops, and tightening their grip on Bangkok.⁶⁶ Shanghai was also now safely in Japanese hands.⁶⁷

FDR received classified daily reports from London on the situation in the rest of the world. The reports were frank and disheartening. In all world sectors, the Axis powers were on offense and the Allies were on defense. “Heavy air attacks . . . A small enemy force landed . . . German progress . . . Battle casualties . . . German . . . long range bombing force on Eastern Front is still being vigorously pursued . . . seriously damaged by bombs.”⁶⁸

New causality reports were coming in from Hawaii. Leading the latest list was Sergeant Walter R. French, twenty-nine, of Delphos, Ohio. He was in the Medical Corps. The War Department acknowledged a mistake, in that Wilbur Carr, nineteen, of Franklin, Ohio, was not dead as his parents had previously been told. Young Carr was alive and well.⁶⁹

In New York, for the first time in thirty-five years, the huge lighted clock at the top of the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet building was darkened as a precaution. Handbooks were issued to all the schools in New York City, outlining air-raid procedures for the children, teachers, and administrators.⁷⁰ The U.S. Capitol was darkened for the duration of the war and the flood lights, which had illuminated the great building for years, were turned off.⁷¹

In the face of depressing news came more depressing news. The thirty-first president had taken to the airwaves the night before from the Oval Room of the White House to give his fellow countrymen a more fulsome report on the attack on Pearl, the situation regarding the Japanese, and to generally buck up morale, but also to let the American media have it right between the eyes.

He might have started out looking crisp and alive that morning, but Roosevelt looked fatigued at the end of December 10, with dark circles under his eyes. He was still attired in a grey pinstripe suit but now looked baggy and loose. His remarks could be heard over most of the free world and parts of the non-free world, except Vichy France, which jammed the NBC transmission. The American radio audience was estimated to be 90 million citizens. In 1941, the population of the United States was 130 million.⁷²

He opened, blasting Tokyo, saying, “The sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific provide the climax of a decade of international immorality.” Early in his remarks, he made a compelling case that the Japanese, Germans, and Italians were all the common enemy of the United States and that each of them was a threat. “It is all of a pattern,” he said.⁷³

Then, “We are now in this war. So far, the news has been all bad. We have suffered a serious setback in Hawaii. Our forces in the Philippines . . . are taking punishment but are defending themselves vigorously. The reports from Guan and Wake and Midway Islands are still confused, but we must be prepared for the announcement that all these three outposts have been seized. The casualty lists of these first few days will undoubtedly be large.”⁷⁴

He assured loved ones that the dead of family members would be made known to them as judiciously as possible and that “they will get news just as quickly as possible.” Roosevelt turned his attention to all the disinformation being spread around. “Most urgently, I urge my countrymen to reject all rumors. These ugly little hints of complete disaster fly thick and fast in wartime. They have to be examined and appraised. As an example, I can tell you frankly that until further surveys are made, I have not sufficient information to state the exact damage which has been done to our naval vessels at Pearl Harbor. Admittedly the damage is serious.”⁷⁵

“I cite as another example a statement made on Sunday night that a Japanese carrier had been located and sunk off the Canal Zone. And when you hear statements that are attributed to what they call ‘an authoritative source,’ you can be reasonably sure from now on that under these war circumstance the ‘authority source’ is not any person in authority.” Clearly, Roosevelt had become angry with all the innuendo and false information over the past several days and warned that a lot of the disinformation could be coming from the Japanese as a means of sapping American morale. “This is an old trick of propaganda which has been used innumerable times by the Nazis.”⁷⁶ And then he took on the national media.

“To all newspapers and radio stations—all those who reach the eyes and ears of the American people—I say this: You have a most grave responsibility to the nation now and for the duration of this war. If you feel that your government is not disclosing enough of the truth, you have every right to say so.” And then he dropped his anvil. “But—in the absence of all the facts, as revealed by official sources—you have no right in the ethics of patriotism to deal out unconfirmed reports in such a way as to make people believe they are the gospel truth. The lives of our soldiers and sailors—the whole future of this nation—depend upon the manner in which each and every one of us fulfills his obligation to our country.”⁷⁷

Then he swung into an impassioned defense of Lend-Lease, contending the program had bought the Allies time against the Axis powers. “Precious months were gained by sending vast quantities of our war materiel to the nations of the world still able to resist Axis aggression.” FDR moved to the heart of his remarks, telling Americans what they had learned and what they must do. “I repeat that the United States can accept no result save victory, final and complete. We have learned that our ocean-girth hemisphere is not immune from severe attack.” And finally, “We are now in the midst of a war, not for conquest, not for vengeance, but for a world in which this nation, all that this nation represents, will be safe for our children.” He made no bones of his intentions, saying, “We expect to eliminate the danger of Japan, but it would serve us ill if we accomplished that and found that the rest of the world was dominated by Hitler and Mussolini.”⁷⁸

Concluding, Roosevelt said, “So we are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows. And in the difficult hours of this day—and through dark days that may be yet to come—we will know that the vast majority of the members of the human race are on our side. Many of them are fighting with us. All of them are praying for us. For in representing our cause, we represent theirs as well—our hope and their hope for liberty under God.”⁷⁹ The White House was flooded with letters and telegrams praising FDR, supporting his efforts. Many volunteered to do what they could do for the war effort.⁸⁰

That evening FDR dined alone, went for a swim, and “went back to his desk, the war dispatches, phone and radio communiqués.”⁸¹

Despite FDR’s plea, the country was overrun with rumors. The day after the president lectured Americans about not engaging in unfounded gossip, it became clear the East Coast scare of planes about to bomb New York, Boston, and Washington of the day before was indeed a rumor that had raced out of control and was passed along by radio, government, and military sources. “The story grew from mouth to mouth. Newspapers and radio stations could not deny it. They could get no authentic information one way or another. The War Department’s statement that it had not originated the report could not be interpreted as a denial.”⁸²

What began as an innocent phone call to Mitchel Field turned into confusion. A man had called the First Army Office in New York, innocently asking about “any truth in a report that bombers had been sighted. He said he had heard it in a radio broadcast from Washington.” From there it went to the airfield commander to whom it was somehow announced that the War Department had an “enemy plane approaching the coast.”⁸³

This quickly metastasized into a “phony tip,” which then set off a panic of wailing sirens and general confusion that affected millions along the East Coast, for no reason whatsoever. Panicky housewives called husbands at work, pleading for them to come home. Others called newspapers wanting to know where bomb shelters were located. Three hundred planes stationed at Mitchel Field on Long Island took to the air, looking for nonexistent enemy planes. On the fears of eminent attack, the stock market declined deeply. The War Department did not apologize for causing so much of the problem, but newspapers did print notices telling readers how to react in the future to air-raid warnings.⁸⁴

The whole thing “at noon yesterday threw the Atlantic Coast from Portland, Maine to Norfolk into a confusion which, in some places, bordered on hysteria. Somehow somewhere—so the story went—an unidentified enemy airplane had been sighted over the sea. It was all an extraordinary comedy of errors superimposed on a people stunned by the events of the last two days into an exceptional state of suggestibility.”⁸⁵

The fallout over the supposed sighting of enemy planes over San Francisco continued. The army denied it was a dress rehearsal or a hoax, as those in New York, Boston, and Washington found out. In San Francisco, they stuck by their story.⁸⁶

There, Gen. John J. Dewitt emphatically, loudly, and scarily berated the civilian population for not reacting sooner and with more alacrity to the warnings and air-raid sirens, going so far as to say that it would have been “a good thing” if some bombs had indeed dropped, as a way to awaken the populace. “He denounced as ‘inane, idiotic and foolish’ those who refused to believe there was real danger.” He warned of “death and destruction.” He told people to “get the hell out” if they didn’t start to take things more seriously. He said he hoped for enemy bombings. “It might have awakened some of the fools in this community who refuse to realize this is a war.” He said a bombing was “imminent.” He told FDR the fact that there had been no sabotage by Japanese in San Francisco was evidence that it was coming soon. He favored the forced internment of all Japanese living in America.⁸⁷ Dewitt was widely praised. Dewitt was also a nutcase.

Congress was actively engaged in the war now. On the ninth, the Senate had passed a number of war-related bills and then adjourned at 2:08 that afternoon. But the House had their nose to the grindstone, passing bills and holding hearings until they adjourned at 4:47.⁸⁸ The Senate Naval Affairs committee met for over an hour behind closed doors where they learned more details about the coordinated attacks. Opinions, however, were out in the open. “Members left this session saying that they were ‘stunned’ by what they had heard. Though some committeemen had indicated that they went to the meeting prepared to criticize, they left pledging full cooperation in meeting new Navy demands.⁸⁹ Others were panicky, though. One senator advocated seizing every questionable piece of property in the Western Hemisphere such as French Guiana from which airplanes could be launched to bomb America.⁹⁰

The House committee with oversight of the navy held a closed-door meeting but was scheduled to hold a hearing the next day as well. They were still trying to pin down Secretary Knox and Admiral Stark on a mutually agreeable time to testify.⁹¹

The issue of secrecy arose. Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, who three days earlier had been an isolationist and a Republican and who was now an internationalist and a Republican, shocked his colleagues when he said, “But when a thing is a fait accompli, and when, as reported on the floor of the Senate in conversation today, a large part of the Pacific fleet is wiped out—and that is a fait accompli, the enemy certainly knows that—the American people and their representatives in Congress ought to know it.” A colleague attempted to shush him, but Tobey kept flapping his gums.⁹² Other members of Congress were just downright mad. Congressman Emanuel Celler lost his temper so badly, the House actually went into a brief recess until he cooled down. Celler was angrily calling for all isolationists to apologize to Roosevelt.⁹³

With America’s eyes on the Pacific, across the Atlantic, the Nazis were only beginning to employ their politics of hate. The pawn Vichy government, at the direction of Berlin, rounded up some eleven thousand communists and “Jews who entered France since January, 1936.” The reason being, according to Vichy head Marshall Petain, they were to blame for the attacks on German officers in Paris. “Attacks against officers and soldiers of the armies of occupation constitute a national danger for France.” Petain said investigations “have proven Jews, Communists and foreigners to be responsible.” Petain went so far as to send Adolf Hitler a telegram, offering his “condolences” over the attacks on German officers by Parisians.⁹⁴

But the real target was France’s Jewish population. “The announcement also says that all Jews who have entered France . . . are to be either incorporated in working formations or confined in concentration camps. The measure is described as applying Jews in the occupied and unoccupied zones alike.”⁹⁵

This dispatch in the New York Times ended hopefully. “Despite the severity of these measures there is a strong feeling here tonight that the execution of hostages will not resume.”⁹⁶

The situation in Berlin continued to disintegrate rapidly. American journalists, some of whom the Third Reich had successfully feted over the past several years, convincing them of the superiority of the “Thousand Year Reich” and that National Socialism was the only way forward, now ordered these same scribes confined to their homes.

Throughout the 1930s and up to 1941, American journalists stationed in Paris and Berlin fed their newspapers back home a steady diet of stories, many of them puff pieces, about the fascist celebrities in their midst. The American public couldn’t get enough “Hitlerania” from these reporters. Many of them were lazy and besotted hedonists, a little too enamored of café society. Others, such as William J. Shirer in Berlin, would go on to chronicle the rise and fall of Nazi Germany with brilliant distinction. But now, neither the hacks nor the professionals were allowed to go to their offices. German officials claimed it was a retaliatory strike because supposedly German reporters had been arrested in the United States.

Berlin also wasn’t too fond of FDR’s remarks of the previous evening.⁹⁷

There had been no slackening or shortage of young men wanting to enlist, and in many areas even more young men turned out day after day. “All recruiting records of the nation’s armed forces were shattered . . . as thousands of men attempted to enlist for combat duty in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps or Coast Guard.”⁹⁸ It appeared that America would need every man possible for all the battles coming down the road.

Not just in the Pacific either but maybe in North Africa and Europe. It was reported that the American embassy in Rome was burning papers “in preparation for severance of American diplomatic relations with the Axis.”⁹⁹