by Ian W. Toll
At about nine o’clock, when all had arrived, Roosevelt began to speak. He remarked that the cabinet was meeting under circumstances more dire than at any time since 1861, at the outset of the Civil War. The president’s face, according to Perkins, was drawn and gray, with the muscles around his mouth showing tension and anger. Uncharacteristically, he did not offer so much as a quip or a halfhearted smile. Several of the secretaries, particularly those whose departments did not touch upon defense or foreign affairs, were not entirely sure what had happened in Hawaii. “We just got scraps of information, an episode here and there,” wrote Perkins. “We got a picture of total confusion. Still, nobody knew exactly what had happened. Nobody knew where the planes had come from. This young naval aide had said they were from a carrier, but he was only assuming.”
Several times, in response to telephoned updates confirming the extent of damage to the fleet, Roosevelt groaned audibly. His anguish left a deep impression on the cabinet members. Whatever the commander in chief thought of the army, the Army Air Forces, or the marines, he was a navy man in his bones. The feeling could be traced back to his childhood, when he had watched his distant and much-admired cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, champion a major naval building program. He had read the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan diligently and cited them in debates and term papers at Groton and Harvard. He had learned to sail in the fog-shrouded waters off Maine and New Brunswick, and was by far the most proficient yachtsman ever to occupy the White House. He had personally amassed one of the world’s largest collections of early American naval prints, paintings, documents, and ship models. He had served for eight years as assistant secretary of the navy in the Woodrow Wilson administration (his longest tenure in any job other than the presidency itself) and had taken direct responsibility for getting the navy on a war footing in 1917–18. As president, he had signed major naval expansion bills in 1938 and 1940, aimed at building a navy capable of fighting and winning simultaneous wars in the Atlantic and Pacific. “It was obvious to me that Roosevelt was having a dreadful time just accepting the idea that the navy could be caught off guard,” Frances Perkins recalled. “His pride in the navy was so terrific that he was having actual physical difficulty in getting out the words that bombs had dropped on ships that were not in fighting shape and prepared to move, just tied up. I remember that he said twice to Knox, ‘Find out, for God’s sake, why the ships were tied up in rows.’ Knox replied, ‘That’s the way they berth them.’”
As the cabinet listened in rapt silence, Roosevelt read aloud the short speech he had dictated earlier that afternoon, which he planned to deliver to a joint session of Congress the following day. When he had finished, Hull and Stimson immediately raised objections to the limited scope of the speech, which (in Stimson’s words) “represented only the just indignation of the country at Japan’s treachery in this surprise attack and not the full measure of the grievances we have against her as a confirmed law breaker and aggressor.” Nor did it connect Germany with the attack. Hull, wrote Harold Ickes in his diary, “pressed his point so hard that the president finally became a little impatient.” Roosevelt was firm: he preferred the short version. He wanted to channel the full force of the American people’s fury, which would tend to unite them and put the bitter debates of the isolationists and interventionists behind them. Nor did the president want to mention Germany, since (as the isolationists would surely point out) there was no hard evidence of collusion between Hitler and Japan. Roosevelt’s draft was accepted as written.
At about ten, congressional leaders joined the group. The cabinet members surrendered their chairs and stood against the walls, so that the study was now very crowded. To the congressmen and senators, the president gave a short summary of what was known about the attack. In response to a congressman who asked how the Japanese could have achieved such complete surprise, Roosevelt revealed his keen understanding of naval tactics by explaining that enemy carriers could have approached to within several hundred miles of Oahu under cover of darkness, foiling any American air patrols, and launched the airstrike before dawn. He admitted that it was not yet clear how seriously the American fleet had been damaged, but concluded, “the principal defense of the whole west coast of this country and the whole west coast of the Americas has been very seriously damaged today.”
“The effect on the Congress was tremendous,” Stimson wrote in his diary. “They sat in dead silence and even after the recital was over they had very few words.” Someone asked if the president would be requesting a declaration of war, but Roosevelt would not reply directly, indicating that he had not yet made up his mind. (He had, but did not want the news leaked in advance.) Several congressmen flared up in anger that the U.S. Navy had been caught so badly off guard. Senator Tom Connolly of Texas asked, “How did it happen that our warships were caught like tame ducks in Pearl Harbor? How did they catch us with our pants down? Where were our patrols?” Roosevelt replied, “I don’t know, Tom. I don’t know.”
As the congressmen filed out at 10:45 p.m., Roosevelt left them with an unsettling thought. While they slept that night, it would be daytime in Japan, the Philippines, and throughout East Asia. “They are doing things and saying things during the daytime out there, while we are all in bed.” One of the congressmen remarked, “We are in bed too much.” As they left the White House, the congressional leaders were intercepted in the stone portico by a crowd of reporters. They all avowed total, bipartisan unity. Congressman Joseph Martin, the House minority leader, told a New York Times reporter, “There is no politics here. There is only one party when it comes to the integrity and honor of the country.”
The lights on the second floor of the White House burned well past midnight, as the president refined drafts of his message. He was helped into bed by his son James, at about one in the morning.
FIVE TIME ZONES TO THE WEST, darkness fell over Pearl Harbor. A soft rain was falling. A bugler sounded evening colors. Throughout the base, men stopped whatever they were doing, stood to attention, and saluted the flag as it came down. Strict blackout conditions had been ordered and no lights were permitted to show from buildings, ships, cars, or even flashlights. But the East Loch was illuminated by the orange glow of the still-burning West Virginia and Arizona, and by the intense white light of the acetylene torches cutting into the upturned hull of the Oklahoma, where survivors had been heard tapping. A gibbous yellow moon rose in the east, bright enough to cast shadows. Searchlights probed for enemy aircraft; flares and red rockets shot up here and there; and intermittent bursts of tracer fire drew geometric patterns across the sky.
Night brought with it a heavy sense of foreboding. Rumors circulated quickly, and evolved through repeated retellings—there were said to be enemy submarines in the harbor; there had been troop landings at Barbers Point, Diamond Head, or Kaneohe Bay; spies and saboteurs were operating within the base itself. One of the most persistent reports, not conclusively refuted until Monday, was that enemy paratroopers had landed in the mountainous interior of Oahu. They were said to be wearing blue coveralls with red “Rising Sun” patches on their shoulders. Americans wearing blue uniforms stripped them off to avoid being mistaken for the enemy. In the darkness, imaginations ran wild and every sound seemed grotesquely amplified. Marine Lieutenant Cornelius C. Smith, stationed at the Marine Barracks, recalled that his men were even spooked by noises that were recognizable and familiar. “A laundry cart rumbles across the asphalt patch out behind the bakery. With all of that weight and those tiny skate wheels, it sounds just like a machine gun. A messman drops a bench end on the concrete deck. A rifle shot. The short wave set crackles with static. More machine guns.”
Everywhere, constantly, all night long, men fired their weapons. The target might be a noise, a struck match, a lit cigarette, the headlights of a distant car. Conscientious sentries, when they heard or saw a movement, would shout: “Halt! Who goes there? Advance and be recognized!” Others simply aimed and pulled the trigger. Guards opened fire on the men who
had arrived to relieve them. “You couldn’t go five feet because somebody would start shooting,” said Radioman Ryan, who was assigned to run messages that night. “You wore your whites so that you could be seen in the dark, and you whistled the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ so you’d be known as an American. Boy, it was risky; I could easily have been shot.” Antiaircraft batteries opened fire on lights in the sky, then fell silent as the gunners realized they were shooting at stars. Much of the shooting was merely cathartic, a way to soothe the nerves. At the Navy Yard tank farm, a large complex of steel tanks which held the navy’s main fuel reserves in the Pacific, someone accidentally threw the main switch that turned on the floodlights. A voice cried, “Shoot those lights out!” Dozens of weapons opened fire. Across the fence, in Hickam Field, the army guards thought they were under attack and fired back. It was not just a few stray shots, Army Lieutenant Charles Davis recalled, but “a genuine firefight with a good amount of volume to it.” Surprisingly, no casualties were reported.
The Enterprise and her screening ships (together they were designated Task Force 8, under the command of Vice Admiral William F. Halsey) had made a long, fruitless search to the south. Having found no enemy ships, the Enterprise aircraft turned back, their fuel reserves running low. Most of these planes tracked the blacked-out Enterprise by picking up and following her long phosphorescent wake, and landed safely (a fine accomplishment, as the pilots had not been trained for night landings). But Halsey ordered a squadron of six F4F Wildcat fighter planes, under the command of Lieutenant (jg) Fritz Hebel, to return directly to the naval air station on Ford Island.
The squadron approached Oahu from the south at 10:45 p.m. Hebel radioed the Ford Island control tower and requested landing instructions. The tower gave him clearance to land and specified that the six planes should approach the base with their running lights fully illuminated. It was perfectly obvious to everyone on the ground that the antiaircraft batteries were manned by nervous (and in some cases inexperienced) gunners, and the risk of a friendly fire incident was very great. The Ford Island tower broadcast a notice to “all ships present and army antiaircraft units,” advising them of the approach of American planes. The broadcast was repeated a second time—an unusual step, showing the tower’s anxiety for the safety of the planes—and the word was passed haphazardly through the antiaircraft batteries to hold fire.
From the ground, the six Wildcats were plainly visible as they made their slow approach, losing altitude gradually, their green and red running lights shining brightly. Commander Allen Quynn of the Argonne understood that those were American planes—what sort of enemy pilot would fly over the base at night with his aircraft running lights on?—but he also feared for them, given the number of itchy trigger fingers at Pearl Harbor. “Will anyone smack them?” he wondered.
The firing began as the first plane made its final turn to line up with the runway, at an altitude of about 1,000 feet. One of the aft antiaircraft batteries on the battleship Pennsylvania, flagship of the battle force, opened fire; an instant later, hundreds of guns were blazing away. “It looked like the Fourth of July, with everybody shooting up there,” said Gunner’s Mate Curtis Schulze of the Downes. “They had tracers. Mostly, it was small arms fire.” From the control tower radio came frantic cries to hold fire, but there were too many guns in too many places. The men on the ground were exultant. “By God,” said Seaman Mason of the California, “this time we were going to shoot back! . . . We took aim at the lights and opened fire with a fierce kind of joy. . . . We were striking back the foe who had so humiliated us.” The notion that the planes were American seemed never to enter their minds. “We had gotten addicted to shooting at everything that flew during the day, and I guess that it was automatic what we did,” said Seaman Fomby.
Lieutenant Hebel, over the radio, was heard to cry: “My God, what’s happened?” Two planes were hit immediately, crashing into the channel west of Ford Island and into a tavern named the Palm Inn in Pearl City. Ensign Eric Allen bailed out successfully but was machine-gunned while floating down in his parachute. A fourth pilot, James Daniels, dove low, swooped over the floodlights near the southern edge of the runway, then cut hard left toward Barbers Point. Hebel’s plane was hit several times—he pulled away and tried an emergency landing at Wheeler, but his plane skidded into a cane field near Aiea. He was badly injured, and died the following morning. Two other pilots crashed or bailed out, both surviving with minor injuries. Only Daniels managed to land his plane without injury to himself or damage to his aircraft.
There was so much antiaircraft fire, so many bright red tracer patterns in the sky, that men on the ground were momentarily blinded. As the guns fell silent and the shell bursts faded, Seaman Carl Schmitz of the USS Castor recalled, “the sky turned so dark you had a hard time seeing ten feet in front of you.”
Chapter Two
NEW SENTRY BOXES WERE ERECTED OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE THAT night, and at dawn the grounds were swarming with plainclothes Secret Service agents and soldiers wearing trench helmets. The president rose early on Monday, having taken just four hours of sleep. He drank his coffee and ate his breakfast while reading the latest dispatches. He dressed, with the help of his valet, in a dark suit and his old blue naval cape. At about eight that morning, news was carried over the radio that Britain had declared war on Japan. “We can only feel that Hitler’s madness has infected the Japanese mind,” Churchill had told the British people in a BBC broadcast, “and that the root of the evil and its branch must be extirpated together.”
A few minutes after noon, Roosevelt was wheeled out the main entrance of the White House and lifted into his limousine. A ten-car motorcade, which included three cars identical to the one carrying the president, roared down Pennsylvania Avenue at twice the speed limit. Men armed with Tommy guns crouched on the running boards. At 12:20 p.m., the convoy pulled up at the south entrance to the Capitol. Roosevelt emerged, unsmiling. In the car he had put on the heavy steel braces that enabled him to stand erect on his ruined legs, and he was able to walk, arduously, on the arm of his son James, a marine captain. The president barely acknowledged the crowd, described by the Washington Evening Star as “a tense, grim throng.” The building had not been so heavily guarded since the Civil War. “Marines with bayonets on their rifles were posted at entrances,” the Star reported, “and the Capitol police, out in full force, formed a secondary line. Cables were stretched along the sidewalks around the House and to hold back the crowd waiting for a glimpse of the president.” One congressman, having forgotten his identification, pushed his way through a phalanx of soldiers and was very nearly shot.
The cabinet, as “solemn as owls,” filed into the House chamber. They were followed by the entire Senate and the nine members of the Supreme Court. The galleries were packed with reporters, photographers, and cameramen. At 12:29 p.m., Speaker Sam Rayburn brought his gavel down on the rostrum and shouted: “The President of the United States!” BBC correspondent Alistair Cooke, observing the scene from the press gallery, described a long, nervous interval as Roosevelt made his way to the dais. The clicking of the president’s leg braces could be plainly heard as he edged up the ramp to the podium, with “one arm locked in his son’s, the other hand feeling every inch of the long sloping rail.” The cameras would not roll until the president was safely behind the podium, his disability primly hidden away—but every soul in the crowded chamber had seen his pained exertions, and the metaphor was too palpable to be missed. Cooke wrote: “Before we heard his confident tenor and listened to the sincere automatic applause, we saw him walk and thought of the wounded battleships slumped over in Pearl Harbor.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, dressed in black with a silver fox fur, sat in the galleries near Edith Wilson, who had sat in this chamber twenty-three years earlier to hear her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, ask for a declaration of war against Germany. “Now the president of the United States was my husband,” wrote Eleanor, “and for the second time in my life I heard
the president tell the Congress that this nation was engaged in a war. I was deeply unhappy. I remembered my anxiety about my husband and brother when World War I began; now I had four sons of military age.”
The president stood at the podium, leg braces locked, and gripped the sides of the rostrum for support. He put on his glasses, opened a black looseleaf notebook, and began to speak: “Yesterday, December seventh, nineteen forty-one—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” The timing of the raid, Roosevelt declared, left no doubt that it had been planned and executed while the Japanese and American governments were engaged in recent diplomatic negotiations, and that Japan had thus “deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.” He detailed all of the attacks Japan had launched in the previous twenty-four hours—Midway, Wake, Guam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya—and concluded, “Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. . . . No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”
Congress, the Evening Star reported, was “solemn and angered” as the president delivered his address; but several lines were punctuated by thunderclaps of powerful applause and foot-stamping. With his concluding words, “we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God,” the entire chamber rose to their feet and presented a deafening ovation. Roosevelt raised a hand and left the podium, escorted once again by his son. The speech had lasted a mere five minutes, and the phrase “a date which will live in infamy” was the only line that most Americans would ever remember; but it had attracted the largest audience in the history of radio: 60 million, according to the ratings. He had written it entirely himself, without contribution from his speechwriters. The playwright and presidential aide Robert Sherwood remarked of Roosevelt, “I do not think there was another occasion in his life when he was so completely representative of the whole people.”
