The next morning two adjacent buildings on Constitution Avenue were the center of activity. These were the outmoded barracks-like Munitions and Navy Buildings, which had housed military and naval headquarters during World War I. Stimson walked from his office on the second floor of the Munitions Building along the corridor to the connecting bridge to the Navy Building and on to Knox’s office. He did so “just to show that I was not going to be one of those who attack the Navy when it is down. I took as an excuse a paper that I wanted him to sign but he appreciated my call very much.” Secretly Stimson was seething at the unconscionable neglect and inefficiency of Admiral Kimmel, whom he blamed primarily for the disaster.
Yesterday scarcely a uniform was in sight but today any serviceman who possessed one wore it with pride. Tailors all over the city were busy making uniforms for officers who had been borrowing a friend’s for special occasions.
Tin Pan Alley was also in operation and patriotic songs such as “You’re a Sap, Mister Jap,” were being prepared for popular consumption. By dawn Max Lerner had composed a more thoughtful one, “The Sun Will Soon Be Setting on the Land of the Rising Sun.”
Behind the nation’s bravado was a nagging question: How could tiny, backward Japan with pilots who wore glasses and flew inferior planes bring such a crushing defeat? Why were the Army and Navy caught napping? Who were to blame? Public officials as well as private citizens were asking the same questions. That morning it was reported in the New York Times that Senator Tom Connally, a Democrat, apparently had already given Knox “uncharted hell” for Pearl Harbor. Connally made no comment, except to wonder where American planes and patrols had been during the attack.
The White House had a new look that morning, with military police and sentry boxes set up at intervals inside and outside the picket fence. The White House police were already being reinforced by the metropolitan police, and the Secret Service was rushing extra men from field stations. On both the office and house blackout curtains were being put up.
By late morning the last changes had been made on the President’s speech to Congress. He delivered it to a joint session of Congress in the chamber of the House of Representatives at 12:30 P.M., beginning with words that would be long remembered: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.…” Then he called for a declaration of war for this “unprovoked and dastardly attack.” Ordinarily plaudits for the President at such appearances came only from the Democrats but not today. “The applause, the spirit of cooperation,” recalled Samuel Rosenman, who helped write Roosevelt’s speeches, “came equally from both sides of the chamber.”
Thirty-three minutes later Congress passed a resolution declaring that a state of war existed between the United States and Japan.
Roosevelt cabled the news to Churchill:
…TODAY ALL OF US ARE IN THE SAME BOAT WITH YOU AND THE PEOPLE OF THE EMPIRE AND IT IS A SHIP WHICH WILL NOT AND CANNOT BE SUNK.
The night before Churchill had gone to bed “and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.” Today when someone at the War Cabinet meeting suggested continuing the same gentle approach to America used before Pearl Harbor, he replied, “Oh! that is the way we talked to her while we were wooing her; now that she is in the harem, we talk to her quite differently.” After all, the Americans were amateurs of war and had to be shown how to wage it.
Rumors were multiplying in Hawaii. Paratroopers had landed and twenty-one Japanese transports were offshore, waiting to sneak in. Many Navy officers were still in shock. When Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of a division of five cruisers, entered Pearl Harbor that Monday morning to see the shattered wrecks of beloved battleships he was stunned. Years of study had not prepared him for such a sight. He found Kimmel’s staff unshaven, still wearing their mud-splattered white Sunday uniforms. He was heartbroken to see Kimmel, a man he had always admired, dazed and disheveled. Others sat numbed and stunned.
Noted for his own coolness, Spruance’s self-control collapsed by the time he reached home. Choked with emotion, tears running down his cheeks, he tried to tell his shocked wife and daughter what he had seen and felt. It was the most shattering experience of his life.
In his office Kimmel was telling two of his staff, “If I were in charge in Washington I would relieve Kimmel at once. It doesn’t make any difference why a man fails in the Navy, he has failed.” The two captains protested; nothing like that would happen. But Kimmel knew he was right.
On the West Coast there was understandable panic because of the large Japanese-American population. False rumors of enemy air attacks were followed by widespread fear of a Japanese landing although it would have taken a force many times the size and strength of the Imperial Navy to land a single division on the American mainland.
In Washington, Knox had already asked the President for permission to leave Washington. Where was he going? “Pearl Harbor,” said Knox, “with your permission.” Somewhat reluctant to let him go, Roosevelt wondered what he thought he would accomplish. “I can find out a great deal more than here.” Knox was deeply concerned by the rumors of dereliction of duty at Pearl Harbor and feared the thought of “a nasty congressional investigation.”
By Tuesday evening the Knox party was in El Paso in time to hear the President’s fireside chat. “The sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific,” Roosevelt began, “provide the climax of a decade of international immorality. Powerful and resourceful gangsters have banded together to make war on the whole human race.” Every single man, woman and child in America was now a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of its history. “We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories—the changing fortunes of war. So far, the news has been bad. We have suffered a serious setback in Hawaii.” The Philippines were being attacked and it seemed likely that Guam, Wake and Midway islands would be seized. He urged the people to ignore rumors, and the newspapers and radio stations to cease dealing out “unconfirmed reports in such a way as to make people believe they are gospel truth.”
The road ahead, he said, was going to be difficult. “We must be set to face a long war against crafty and powerful bandits.” But America “can accept no result save victory final and complete. Not only must the shame of Japanese treachery be wiped out, but the sources of international brutality, wherever they exist, must be absolutely and finally broken.”
Despite the favorable public reception to Roosevelt’s speech, there were stirrings of discontent in Congress. The next day a Republican representative complained that the President gave no details of the losses at Pearl Harbor and then quoted a damning dispatch from news correspondent Leland Stowe in Chungking:
…It seems incomprehensible here how the Japs were able to get the Army’s big airfields in Oahu, losing a few planes, and without large numbers of American fighters getting in the air promptly.… On Sunday evening [Chungking time], at least one hour before the Jap blitz on Hawaii, an official of the United States gunboat Tulitz [Tutuila] warned your correspondent: “It is going to happen tonight.”
Before dawn of December 11, battle stations were sounded aboard the Knox plane, a Navy flying boat, as it neared the Hawaiian Islands. The passengers donned life preservers and parachutes. Machine guns were manned. They were prepared for the worst. They broke radio silence, got a fix and soon were landing at Kaneohe Bay. Knox was appalled. The air station hangars were hulks and wreckage of seaplanes could be seen on the ramps and in the water. The party was driven to the Royal Hawaiian, a grim contrast to the holiday hotel of peacetime. Kimmel met them there and escorted them to his headquarters.
From the submarine base Knox got his first view of what was once Battleship Row. It was a shambles. Smoke was still pouring from the wreckage of the Arizona. “Did you receive our dispatch the night before the attack?” Knox asked. Kimmel had not. “Well, we sent you one.…”
That day Adolf Hitler solved another of Roosevelt’s problems by declaring war on America. If the President had been forced to act first, he would have risked opposition from a substantial segment of the country.
On Capitol Hill, the debate in Congress over responsibility for Pearl Harbor resumed. Republican Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire expressed disappointment at the President’s failure in his speech to make “a definite statement as to the losses suffered in the debacle at Pearl Harbor.”
A Democrat instantly came to the Administration’s defense. The Japanese undoubtedly still didn’t know how much damage they had done. The public should be told the truth “but I think as this struggle proceeds we must all realize that sometimes it is better Americanism not to withhold the truth when it can be told, but to withhold it when it aids our enemies more than it serves our own people.” There was a burst of applause from the galleries.
Unabashed, Tobey then began attacking Knox and quoted an article in the Christian Science Monitor entitled “Why, Mr. Secretary—why?” criticizing Knox for not taking proper precautions. Where were the patrols that were supposed to protect the fleet?
It was obvious that the unity brought by Pearl Harbor had abruptly ended in Congress and the battle between interventionists and isolationists, however subterranean, would be resumed.
“Now, all that I feared would happen has happened,” wrote isolationist leader Charles Lindbergh in his diary. “We are at war all over the world, and we are unprepared for it from either a spiritual or a material standpoint.” It probably would be the bloodiest and most devastating war of all history. “And then what? We haven’t even a clear idea of what we are fighting to attain.”
During the day Stimson held his first press conference since the disaster. With Marshall’s help he jotted down brief notes and then talked effectively to the newsmen. “Altogether,” Stimson wrote in his diary, “much is brewing. We are doing our best to keep from having a row with the Navy. There is bitterness on both sides over the failure at Hawaii and the younger and less responsible—and some of the irresponsible older men—are all trying to throw the burden off on the other Department.”
On his own initiative, Stimson had already sent two of his own people to Hawaii to investigate the Army side of the attack, a major general and a colonel, the former to relieve General Short. On the afternoon of the twelfth their B-18 took off from Phoenix, Arizona, destination Hamilton Field, California. It crashed into the snow and ice of the high Sierras.1
Unaware that Army investigators had been sent to join Knox in Hawaii, the President was dodging questions about the attack at his own press conference. There was no need to be uneasy about being scooped, he assured the White House press corps. He told them that Knox had arrived in Hawaii the night before and warned those who planned to “tell all, and publish all” they had better wait until the Secretary of the Navy made his report.
On Sunday, December 14, Stimson finally had time for his first relaxation in a week. But after a good horseback ride with his military aide he found a new crisis: two urgent telegrams from MacArthur in the Philippines asking for help. “He was instigated to do so by a conference he had had with Admiral Hart who took the usual Navy defeatist position and had virtually told MacArthur that the Philippines were doomed, instead of doing his best to keep MacArthur’s lifeline open.”
That afternoon he showed the President the two telegrams. “He read them most carefully with tremendous interest, if not excitement. To my great joy he took the position which Marshall and I took and against the Navy.” Stimson had brought along a memorandum of his plans for reinforcing MacArthur. “I read this to the President and it all fitted into the same plan so that by the end he had fully made up his mind to side with us against the Navy.” Stimson was delighted at his success in “upsetting the Navy’s defeatist plan.” That evening he exulted on having apparently gotten the President firmly on his side: “… and so tonight I went to bed with a feeling we had probably gotten over the hump, so to speak, and were going to embark on an aggressive constructive policy which will bring the end of the war just that much nearer.”
He did not know that Knox was already at the White House. He had returned from Hawaii and at ten o’clock personally delivered a typed report to Roosevelt. The Japanese attack, he said, came as a complete surprise to both Kimmel and Short. “Its initial success, which included almost all the damage done, was due to a lack of a state of readiness against such an air attack, by both branches of the service.”
Knox did not accuse either Kimmel or Short of dereliction of duty and pointed out that neither had been privy to the Magic intercepts. He also reported that Kimmel and his staff had been convinced that the principal danger to the fleet was a submarine attack for which they had taken the necessary precautions. As for Short, he feared sabotage and bunched his planes so they could be more easily protected; but this, of course, made them easy air targets for the Japanese. Knox also pointed out that several factors were beyond the responsibility of the two commanders: Japanese fifth columnists and inadequate fighter planes and anti-aircraft guns.
Clearly displeased with a report practically exonerating Kimmel and Short, Roosevelt next morning summoned Knox, Stimson, Hull and other high officials. He instructed the War and Navy secretaries to hold separate press conferences and cover only the parts listed on a piece of paper he handed Knox. Nothing else, Roosevelt said, repeat, nothing else in the Knox report was to be made public at this time. It was to be admitted that neither military nor naval forces had been prepared for the air attack but that, once engaged, the defense was heroic. The burden of blame, by inference, was to fall on Kimmel and Short.
At the press conference later that day, Knox held his audience spellbound as he graphically revealed the story of the gallant actions after the sneak attack. “You could have heard a tiny pin drop on the carpet of the room,” recalled a Navy public relations officer. “Hardened veteran war correspondents present were visibly moved.”
Knox’s formal statement was almost a verbatim version of the President’s notes. “The United States services were not on the alert against the surprise air attack on Hawaii. This fact calls for a formal investigation which will be initiated immediately by the President. Further action is, of course, dependent on the facts and recommendations made by this investigating board. We are entitled to know if (a) there was any error of judgment which contributed to the surprise, (b) if there was any dereliction of duty prior to the attack.” He then read off Roosevelt’s list of those ships lost: the battleship Arizona; the target ship Utah; an old minelayer; and three destroyers.
The reaction to the drastically revised Knox report was enthusiastic. The Nation called it “as fairly extensive and unvarnished” as was possible until after the war. The New York Times, satisfied that some information about the attack had been disclosed, noted that “it was almost possible to hear the immense sigh of relief that arose yesterday when news of [Knox’s] statement reached the American public.” The sigh of relief would not have been so immense if Knox had revealed that the actual losses were far greater than those on Roosevelt’s list.
The most important difference between the original Knox report and the one released was the omission of the fact that Kimmel and Short had not been privy to the decoded Japanese message indicating a surprise move was imminent. If it had been made public, the Japanese would have known the United States was decrypting their top secret diplomatic code. This necessary suppression, however, misled the American people into placing the burden of blame on the two local commanders; nor was the public informed that there were insufficient fighter planes, anti-aircraft artillery and radar on Oahu. And so the truth about Pearl Harbor was kept from the public. The question was how long could the cover-up last.
Late in the afternoon Knox called Stimson. He had just seen the President, who wanted to appoint a commission of two Army and two Navy officers and one civilian to investigate the responsibility for the losses at Pearl Harbor and to make recommendations. The Secretary of the Navy was going to recommend two former commanders of the fleet, Admirals Joseph Reeves and William Standley—and a federal judge in Chicago named Sullivan. What did Stimson think of these choices?
“I’ll get right busy on it and let you know later,” he said, and took the problem home to Woodley. That evening he queried friends about Judge Sullivan but no one knew him well. The Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy, suggested Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts. McCloy had been active in the Black Tom explosion case which had been tried before Justice Roberts. Stimson also had been impressed by Roberts’ investigation of the Teapot Dome scandal and he was inclined to recommend him.
That evening Mrs. Charles Hamlin dined with the Roosevelts. “Our pièce de résistance were two pheasants from Hyde Park,” she recalled, and the President, looking well and in fine spirits, carved them. He said he was going to appoint Owen Roberts to head the Pearl Harbor inquiry. The justice, he remarked, “seemed very friendly lately.” As Roosevelt was being wheeled off to his study he said with a twinkle, his cigarette tipped at its usual angle, “Hungary, Roumania and Czecho-Slovakia have all declared war against us. I told Cordell to take no notice of them and I will not inform Congress.”
Later Knox arrived. At the press conference he had assured the reporters that there would be no reassignments until after the investigation. But now he felt Kimmel should be relieved immediately since his name was inescapably associated with disaster. Roosevelt concurred, and they both agreed that Admiral Ernest J. King should be appointed to a new, independent post as head of the Navy. They would sleep on who should replace Kimmel.
By early morning Stimson had made up his mind on the military members of the commission. Before 8 A.M. he telephoned Marshall to say he had definitely decided on Frank McCoy, a trusted friend for thirty years,2 and they should pick an airman for the second. Marshall agreed and returned his call a little later. Joseph McNarney, he thought, was the best man. Recently promoted to brigadier general, he was Marshall’s trustworthy right hand.
Stimson now telephoned Knox at his apartment just as he was getting up. How about Justice Roberts for the civilian? he asked. Knox agreed and said he would back Roberts.
Stimson immediately wrote the President his suggestions, adding a paragraph which was the first disclosure outside the War Department that the Hawaiian top commanders were to be fired before the investigation. “Most confidentially we are sending to Hawaii two men to relieve Short and [F. L.] Martin, the present Army Commander and Air Commander and I think nothing should be said about it until they arrive to take command.”
In a rather informal postscript Stimson wrote, “My opinion is that the housecleaning which I describe in the last paragraph should be synchronised with a similar housecleaning in the Naval Command, and all announced at the same time.”
Knox was already at the White House discussing Kimmel’s replacement. It took little time for them to agree on Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation. “Tell Nimitz to get the hell out to Pearl and stay there till the war is won,” said Roosevelt.
Nimitz was startled to be selected. Upon learning that he was going to be the new commander in the Pacific, his wife said, “You always wanted the Pacific Fleet. You always thought that would be the height of glory.”
“Darling, the fleet’s at the bottom of the sea. Nobody must know that here, but I’ve got to tell you.”
That afternoon the President summoned Knox and Stimson. After a long wait, they were informed that their recommendations for Army and Navy members of the investigating commission had been accepted. Then Supreme Court Justice Roberts was brought in. He agreed to head the commission and promised to turn up at Stimson’s office next morning for instructions.
The two secretaries were pleased. All their selections had been accepted and the crucial investigation was now in hand. With the wrong members the unity of the nation might have been jeopardized. Both Knox and Stimson were Republicans, appointed for their agreement with Roosevelt’s interventionist policy. Both were men of positive views, confident that theirs was the right way.
But of the two Stimson was the stronger. He was now convinced that both Short and Kimmel had been derelict in their duties and he resented any suggestion that they had not. The fault was in Hawaii, not in Washington. He was particularly unsympathetic to Kimmel, who he felt was most to blame. In fact, Stimson was suspicious of admirals in general. Most of them were defeatists like Hart.
A graduate of Yale University, Henry L. Stimson still took seriously its motto, “For God, for country, and for Yale.” He carried this messianic message through life, staunchly convinced that the principles of his class and country were best for all the world. An ardent believer in exercise, he rode horseback, chopped wood and participated in active games, particularly deck tennis, played by tossing a quoit over the net. Only close friends knew he was blind in one eye; and his aide was careful to pick opponents. Vice-President Henry Wallace, for instance, was never invited after an aggressive first match. His idol was Theodore Roosevelt, whose motto he also took seriously: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Stimson had carried his big stick in service to Taft as Secretary of War, to Coolidge as governor of the Philippines, and to Hoover as Secretary of State. Despite all these titles, the one he chose for personal use was “Colonel.” He had earned this in the Great War and still sentimentalized over his Army service. To him the greatest virtues were soldierly. He had never looked upon war as evil but as a necessary fact of international life.
His firm lips and set jaw were indicative of a one-track mind, and once he had made it up would stick tenaciously to his decision. This was proven in his persistent hatred and fear of Japan. It had begun, while he was Hoover’s Secretary of State, with the Japanese conquest of Manchuria in 1932. Stimson took this as a personal affront, and the bombings of Shanghai further ignited his hot temper. His solution was to apply against the Japanese drastic economic pressure and, if necessary, military and naval force. Hoover was equally offended by Japan’s aggression but with him it was a moral and legal protest. He would not tolerate force.
In 1940 Stimson found a President more to his taste, albeit a Democratic one. He agreed to serve as Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, and in the next months consistently pressed him to get tougher with both Nazi Germany and Japan. It was Stimson, above all, who convinced the President to freeze Japanese assets in July 1941. Since America had been Japan’s major source of oil imports, this left Japan in an untenable position. To the New York Times it was “the most drastic blow short of war.” To Japan’s leaders it was even more. This freezing was the last step in the encirclement of their empire by the ABCD (American, British, Chinese, Dutch) powers, a challenge to their nation’s very existence.
Throughout the fall of 1941 Stimson kept pressure on Roosevelt to take a stronger stand against the Japanese. The President was reluctant to provoke a war in the East when the real danger was in Europe. But Stimson, seething with moral indignation at Japanese depredations, persisted. For a while Roosevelt was tempted to make a compromise reply to the final Japanese offer of settlement in late November since Stark and Marshall had urged conciliation, both arguing that America would not be ready for war until the following spring. But Stimson and his adherents won out, and on November 26 Hull sent the strong reply to Tokyo that had resulted in Pearl Harbor.
Now Stimson’s task was to beat both the Nazis and Japanese and save the world. To do this the Pearl Harbor controversy had to be quelled. If the Administration and George Marshall could not be completely exonerated of all culpability, the war effort would be seriously impeded. And, in his opinion, this was unthinkable to any true patriot. Therefore, Kimmel and Short had to take the blame.
1The wreckage was not found until early May 1942, two miles northwest of Burch Mountain at an altitude of 11,000 feet.
2As Secretary of State in Hoover’s administration, Stimson had been unable to bring the President around to his anti-Japanese views. So he persuaded the League of Nations to appoint General McCoy to the committee investigating Japanese actions in Manchuria. McCoy was so successful in pressing Stimson’s ideas that Japan withdrew from the League.