In 1946, the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the events of December 7 described Pearl Harbor as “the greatest military and naval disaster in our Nation’s history.” It was an accurate assessment. In a matter of a few minutes, Japanese bombers sank or severely damaged eight battleships, three light cruisers, four destroyers, and 350 airplanes. The Americans suffered 3,566 casualties. Of the 2,388 killed, nearly half—1,177 men—died on the USS Arizona, where they remain entombed today. By comparison, Japan lost only 28 planes, five midget submarines, and fewer than 100 men.19
5
“Have you heard the news?”
AS JAPANESE planes circled above Pearl Harbor, navy officials in Hawaii informed Washington of the attack. Pearl Harbor was not the first crisis of the Roosevelt presidency, but it was the most unexpected and the most challenging. In the critical minutes that followed, FDR reached out to the people he needed and trusted most to develop an appropriate strategy to confront the crisis.
The Naval Station in San Francisco picked up the announcement of the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor. The message was relayed to Washington and handed to Frank Knox, who was meeting with Admiral Stark. “My God, this can’t be true, this must mean the Philippines,” Knox said after reading the bulletin. Stark looked at the message and recognized the origin code—CINCPAC—which made clear that it was accurate and authentic. “No, sir,” said Admiral Stark, “this is Pearl.” Knox realized that he needed to reach the president as quickly as possible.1
At 1:47 p.m., roughly twenty-seven minutes after the first Japanese planes began their bombing raids in Oahu, the White House operator informed Roosevelt, still in his study, that Knox was on the phone with an urgent message. “Mr. President,” Knox said, “they had picked up a radio from Honolulu from the Commander-in-Chief of our forces there advising all our stations that an air raid attack was on and that it was ‘no drill.’” It appeared, he said, “as if the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.” “NO!” Roosevelt shouted.
After he hung up with Knox, Roosevelt told Harry Hopkins the news. Hopkins was convinced the report was wrong. “I expressed the belief that there must be some mistake and that surely Japan would not attack in Honolulu,” he noted in a memorandum he wrote about the events that day. Roosevelt likely hoped that it was a false report, but his instincts told him otherwise. “The President thought the report was probably true and thought it was just the kind of unexpected thing the Japanese would do, and that at the very time they were discussing peace in the Pacific they were plotting to overthrow it,” Hopkins observed. But it is unlikely that Roosevelt anticipated the extent of the disaster that was unfolding in Hawaii. Like most military officials, FDR considered Pearl Harbor largely invulnerable to attack.2
FDR had only a skeleton crew on hand in the White House when he learned of the attacks. There were few aides, and no support staff, working on Sunday afternoon. With the exception of his war cabinet, most of the White House staff, and many other aides, were away.
Suddenly, the switchboard lit up, initially with calls from Hopkins and FDR trying to contact staff, and then with officials calling the White House for more information. Since it was a Sunday, and expected to be a slow day, there was only one operator on duty, a new recruit named Jesse Gill. The veteran, Louise (Hackie) Hackmeister, who had been the chief operator since 1933, was at home. Hopkins instructed Jesse to track down a handful of trusted aides and tell them to get to the White House. FDR insisted that she get in touch with his senior foreign policy advisers so he could speak with them. In addition to placing these calls, Jesse asked Hackie to come in and help. It was going to be a busy day at the White House switchboard. “I didn’t leave my position at the board from 2 pm until 11 that night,” Hackie told a reporter. “My legs almost collapsed me when I finally got up.”3
Roosevelt’s secretary Grace Tully was relaxing in her apartment at 3000 Connecticut Avenue when she received the call from the White House operator. “The President wants you right away,” she said. “There’s a car on the way to pick you up. The Japs have just bombed Pearl Harbor.” Tully reflected that she was “too stunned” to react to the news. “The President needed me. He had confidence in me. My only objective was to get to the White House as fast as I could.” She “dressed like a fireman” and “jumped to like a fireman.”4
The White House also contacted FDR’s son Captain James Roosevelt, who was taking an afternoon nap at his home in Washington. He was told only that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and that his father wanted to see him right away.
The first phone call the president made was to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. According to Hopkins, FDR made the call at 2:05 p.m. Stimson had been in his office that morning but had gone home for lunch. When he picked up the phone, he recognized Roosevelt’s voice. In “a rather excited voice,” FDR asked him, “Have you heard the news?” Stimson was not sure what news FDR was referring to. “Well, I have heard the telegrams which have been coming in about the Japanese advances in the Gulf of Siam.” FDR replied, “Oh, no. I don’t mean that. They have attacked Hawaii. They are now bombing Hawaii.” Stimson quickly finished his lunch and returned to his office.5
Given his hawkish stance, and his belief that war with Japan was inevitable, Stimson noted in his diary that he felt a sense of “relief ” when he learned of the assault on Pearl Harbor. His “first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people,” he wrote.6
After hanging up with Stimson, Roosevelt contacted Secretary of State Hull. The secretary was in his office, waiting to receive Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura and special “peace” envoy Saburo Kurusu. They had called the State Department at noon and requested a 1:00 p.m. meeting, but they were running late because Tokyo had insisted that only staff with high-level security clearance could translate the final message. Neither of the diplomats knew how to type. Realizing they would not make the 1:00 p.m. deadline, they rescheduled for 1:45 p.m., but showed up twenty minutes late, which gave FDR enough time to reach Hull.7
While the Japanese envoys sat in the diplomatic reception room, FDR told Hull about the attack on Pearl Harbor. In his testimony before the Roberts Commission, Hull claimed that there was at that point still some uncertainty about whether the original report was accurate. “There was a report that Pearl Harbor had been attacked,” he recalled FDR saying. Hull discussed with the president “whether I would accredit that report as the unquestioned truth of the situation and refuse to admit them or whether in view of the extremely delicate relations I would leave open the one chance in ten or more that the report was not correct.” Roosevelt instructed Hull to receive the representatives but not to mention that he knew about the attack. Hopkins recalled Roosevelt saying that Hull should “receive their reply formally and cooly and bow them out.”8
Hull made the ambassadors wait outside his office until 2:20 p.m. When they entered, Nomura stated that “he had been instructed to deliver at 1:00 p.m.” and apologized for being late. When the secretary asked why he had specified 1:00, the ambassador replied that he did not know why. Hull pretended to read the document, even though he had already seen it, and then, in clear violation of FDR’s instructions, issued a blistering rebuke. “In all my fifty years of public service,” he said, “I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions—infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any Government on this planet was capable of uttering them.” Before they could respond, Hull lifted his hand to silence them and then nodded toward the door. The two ambassadors “then took their leave without making any comment.”9
Hull assumed that the ambassadors knew of the assault and were part of the conspiracy. In reality, they had not been informed of the plan and learned the news only after they returned to the embassy. Nomura was shocked. For him, it meant that his peace mission had been a failure. And many others in the embassy were e
xtremely worried about the prospect of war between the United States and Japan and far less sanguine than the Japanese military planners about their prospects of victory. As one secretary told his wife, “Oh, it’s terrible! Why did they do such a terrible thing? Japan is doomed.”10
FDR realized that reporters would soon learn of the attack, and he wanted to control the flow of information. He had devoted a great deal of time developing close ties with the press, and he did more than any previous president to manage the news. His trusted partner in that effort was Steve Early, the first full-time White House press secretary.
The two men had met at the 1912 Democratic Convention in Baltimore. Early was working as a wire reporter for United Press International (UPI), and FDR was a Wilson supporter in the New York delegation. The two men struck up a friendship. In 1920, when FDR was running as vice president on Ohio governor James Cox’s ticket and needed to create a campaign staff, he hired Early to be his advance man. While Roosevelt spent most of the 1920s fighting to overcome polio, and reemerging as a political figure, Early took a job with Paramount Pictures, where he oversaw the production of Washington newsreels. After FDR won election to the presidency in 1932, Early joined the White House staff. He had planned to stay for only two weeks, but he was still on the job twelve years later when Roosevelt died.
Early had expected a slow news day. On Saturday, he met briefly with reporters, joking that “the President decided you fellows have been so busy lately and Christmas is coming so close that he would give you a day off to do some shopping.” A journalist, picking up on the light atmosphere, said, “I suppose he is over at the House writing a declaration of war, isn’t he.” Early admitted that he was at the White House, but said he was not writing, “he was shaving.” He told reporters to take the weekend off. FDR “will stay over the House this morning; and is not coming to the office. No appointments for today and none tomorrow; and I don’t assume there will be.”11
Early took Sunday off and planned to lounge around his house. He was still in his bathrobe, sitting in the second-floor study at his home on Morningside Drive in Northeast Washington, when the special line that connected him directly to the White House started ringing. There were no pleasantries this morning. The first words he heard were, “Have you got a pencil handy?” Early assumed that Roosevelt was playing a practical joke. “Do I need it?” Early replied. Roosevelt was all business. “Yes,” FDR responded. “I have a very important statement. It ought to go out verbatim.”12
The press secretary could tell from the tone of Roosevelt’s voice that he was serious. He called out to his wife, Helen, to help him record the message. “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor from the air and all naval and military activities on the island of Oahu, the principal American base in the Hawaiian Islands.” Oddly enough, after dictating the statement, Roosevelt asked Early, “Have you any news?” Early was shocked by the question. FDR had just dictated a message that amounted to a declaration of war, and he was asking Early if he had any information to report. He replied, “None to compare to what you have just given me, sir.”13
As soon as he hung up with Roosevelt, Early called the White House operator and asked her to connect him to the three wire services: the Associated Press (AP), United Press, and International News Service. At 2:22 p.m., Early addressed the three major wire services on a three-way hookup from his home. “This is Steve Early. I am calling from home. I have a statement here which the President has asked me to read.” After reading the president’s statement, he told them that he was on his way to the White House and would call them with more information as soon as he had it.
Before leaving his house, Early called the news agencies back to report, falsely it turned out, that the Japanese were also bombing Manila. “A second air attack is reported. This one has been made on army and navy bases in Manila.” It is unclear why he called back with the second report and where he received the information. The most likely source would have been FDR, but there was no evidence of an assault on Manila at the time or that the president had received such a report. It is likely that Washington officials had trouble reaching Manila in the minutes after learning about Pearl and assumed that the Philippines was also under attack. What was actually taking place in the Philippines would be a source of concern and confusion all day at the White House.14
Early then changed his clothes and drove to the White House for what would turn out to be one of the most stressful twenty-four hours of his life.
FDR made one more phone call in the minutes after learning of the assault on Hawaii. It went to the Chinese ambassador, Hu Shih, who had just left the White House a few hours earlier. “Hi Shih,” FDR said, “I just wanted to tell you that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor and Manila.” Shih recalled FDR sounding “very much excited and very angry and worked up.” He repeated, “It is terrible; simply terrible.” Roosevelt concluded the brief conversation by saying, “Since you were the last person I talked to before this happened, I thought I ought to call you up and tell you about it.”15
6
“I don’t know how secure this telephone is”
BY 3:00 P.M., as his team gathered in his cluttered Oval Study on the second floor of the White House, FDR had begun to receive the first official damage reports from Pearl. They made clear that the Japanese had delivered a devastating blow to the Pacific Fleet. More troubling was the evidence that American forces had offered little resistance and appeared to have been taken completely by surprise. FDR quizzed his secretaries of war and navy about how the Japanese could have pulled off such a brazen assault and have succeeded in destroying a military base that most Americans considered impregnable. No one had a good answer to that question. The next question on everyone’s mind was: Where would Japan strike next, and what could America do to stop it?
James Roosevelt hurried to the White House, arriving shortly before 2:30 p.m., where he noticed that his father was wearing one of his old sweaters. As he looked closer, he observed his father’s “extreme calmness—almost a sad, fatalistic, but courageous acceptance of something he had tried to avert but which he feared might be inevitable.” FDR was too busy to engage in conversation. “Hello, Jimmy,” FDR said. “It’s happened.” He instructed Jimmy to stand by in case he needed him.1
FDR’s main task was to collect as much information as possible. At 2:25 p.m., all he knew was that the Japanese had attacked. But what was the extent of the damage? Perhaps he hoped that some American aircraft had managed to get into the air and repel the invaders. Were some of the ships parked at Pearl Harbor able to respond with antiaircraft fire? Was the air attack the prelude to a land invasion? Roosevelt had many questions, but few answers.
The first official to arrive at the White House was Roosevelt’s naval aide Admiral John Beardall. He found Roosevelt and Hopkins together, both working the phones. “Take over the phone to the Navy Department,” FDR instructed him. Beardall used the phone in the lobby and started calling his contacts in the navy to find more information. Later, Roosevelt’s private secretary, Grace Tully, relieved him.2
The lack of a direct line between the White House and Pearl Harbor made communication difficult. Admiral Claude Bloch at Pearl Harbor had to contact Admiral Stark at the Navy Department, who then forwarded reports to the White House. The first full report came at 2:28 p.m., more than twenty minutes after the initial bulletin. At first, Bloch was vague about the extent of the damage, fearing that the Japanese were listening in on the call and would know what a crippling blow they had delivered. Finally, Stark pressed, “Claude, how about it?” “It’s pretty bad,” Bloch replied, but he was afraid to provide more details. “I don’t know how secure this telephone is,” he said. Stark told him to give the numbers anyway. “Go ahead and tell me,” Stark said. Bloch proceeded to report that the Japanese had inflicted extensive damage to the fleet and the United States had suffered a significant loss of life. “If any unauthorized person has heard the remarks I have just made to the Chief of
Naval Operations,” Bloch concluded, “I beg of you not to repeat them in any way. I call on your patriotic duty as an American citizen.”3
Stark relayed the information to the White House, providing FDR with the first glimpse of the disaster at Pearl. According to Hopkins, the president then instructed Stark to execute the orders that the army and navy had agreed to in the event of an outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific.4
A few minutes later, General Marshall called the White House and confirmed the report that Roosevelt had received from the navy. “Mr. President,” he said, “I have just talked to a staff Officer in Hawaii. An attack by air, apparently from a carrier, started at eight o’clock their time. It is still in progress. As far as they can tell at the moment at least 50 Japanese bombers involved.” Marshall reported that the “hanger [sic] at Nicholas and Wheeler Field are in flames.” He also mentioned that the Japanese “were machine gunning Hickam field,” although he could not confirm the report. “Communication seriously disrupted. Our planes are in the air and as far as they know Navy planes are in the air.”5
As Roosevelt continued to receive updates, his senior military officials began arriving for their 3:00 p.m. meeting. Stimson and Knox arrived around 3:05 p.m., followed shortly by General Marshall and Hull. Staff members were also filtering into the room: Grace Tully, Steve Early, and appointments secretary Marvin McIntyre. White House physician Ross McIntire rushed over to keep a careful eye on his patient. Naturally, Harry Hopkins remained as Roosevelt’s constant shadow.
The president’s team sat in soft leather sofas and brocade chairs, while Roosevelt sat at his desk, often answering the phone on the first ring. The day had gone gray; the sunshine that had warmed his bedroom that morning had disappeared, replaced by clouds and dropping temperatures.
Pearl Harbor Page 7
