The congressional leaders were clearly shocked by the news about Pearl Harbor, but for FDR the real purpose of the meeting was to ask them to invite him to address a joint session of Congress the next day. Congressional leaders wanted to know what he was going to say, and if he would be asking for a declaration of war. If there was a declaration, would it be against Japan or include Germany and Italy as well? Roosevelt had already written his speech and read a draft to the cabinet a few minutes earlier, but he did not want to share his speech with the congressional leaders. He claimed that he had not yet prepared his remarks and had not decided what to say. As Hopkins noted, Roosevelt “knew that he was going to ask for a declaration of war but he also knew that if he stated it to the conference that it would be all over town in five minutes, because it is perfectly foolish ever to ask a large group of congressmen or senators to keep a secret.” FDR asked if Congress would be ready to receive him at 12:30 p.m. the following day—twenty-three hours after he first received word of the attack. They agreed.12
The discussion then switched back to the situation in the Pacific. Roosevelt needed to harness the outrage over the attack at Pearl to unify the nation for total war. Yet he was always mindful that the first priority was to defeat Germany, not Japan. There were some intelligence reports suggesting that Hitler would quickly declare war against the United States, and the announcement could come before he gave his address to Congress the next day. Regardless, FDR wanted to prepare congressional leaders, and the nation itself, for the prospect of a two-front war, with the Pacific theater playing a secondary role until the Allies achieved victory in Europe. In discussing war strategy, Roosevelt stressed that the struggle for the Pacific would not be determined by decisive battles. Instead, it would be a long, drawn-out struggle designed to strangle the Japanese war machine. The war with Japan, he said, “would be won primarily by the starvation and exhaustion of Japan—starvation and exhaustion.” He pointed out that Japan had no naval bases. “And the old axiom used to be that a fleet loses five percent of its efficiency for every thousand miles it gets away from base,” he noted. “That is a rule of thumb.” As Wickard recalled, FDR “pointed out that it would be necessary to strangle Japan rather than whip her and that it took longer. He once spoke about two or three years being required.”13
The conference ran until 11:00 p.m. After the congressional leaders left, Secretary of State Cordell Hull lingered for a few minutes. Although Roosevelt had twice rejected Hull’s advice about giving a longer speech to Congress, the secretary refused to drop the argument. For reinforcement, he asked Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles to accompany him. Hull knew that FDR respected Welles and often turned to him for advice. Perhaps he thought that by bringing him along, he could help sway FDR to his position.
The strategy failed. According to Hopkins, who witnessed the scene, Roosevelt had no intention of accepting Hull’s advice, but he was also tired of listening to him. So Roosevelt did what he did best: He pretended to accept the recommendations if only to mollify the secretary of state and get him out of the room. “Hull’s message was a long-winded dissertation on the history of Japanese relations leading up to the blow this morning,” Hopkins recorded. “The President was very patient with them and I think in order to get them out of the room perhaps led them to believe he would give serious consideration to their draft.”14
When the congressional leaders left the room, Roosevelt dictated a short message for the press, stating that he would address a joint session of the House and Senate at 12:30 p.m. the next day. “It should be emphasized that the message to Congress has not yet been written and its tenor will, of course, depend on further information received between 11 o’clock tonight and noon tomorrow. Further news is coming in all the time.”
Reporters confronted the congressional leaders as they left the meeting. Standing on the White House steps, Connally said, “The President will address a joint session of Congress at 12:30 pm tomorrow. That is all I can say.” Speaker Rayburn, when asked whether the president would request a declaration of war, responded, “I don’t know. He didn’t say.” He added, however, that Congress would fully support such a move. “I think that is one thing on which there would be unity.” Reporters asked Joseph Martin if there was any discussion about abandoning partisanship. “This is a serious moment,” he said. “We were not talking about politics. Of course there will be none.”15
Even Republicans and former isolationists realized there would be little opposition to granting Roosevelt the powers he needed to wage war. “It doesn’t make much difference what he asks,” a Republican leader of the House told the Wall Street Journal. “If it’s even remotely connected with the war, we’ll have to give it to him. And if it isn’t properly connected with the war, he’ll find a way to connect it anyway.” “The Republicans,” said Senator McNary, the Senate minority leader, “will all go along, in my opinion, with whatever is done.”16
On Sunday night, reporters had little concrete information about what the president was going to say about the attack, though a declaration of war seemed inevitable to most. The question was whether it would include Germany and Italy along with Japan. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette noted, “It was evident tonight that a resolution recognizing war between the United States and Japan would be ratified overwhelmingly. Whether Congress would follow as readily in a declaration of war on Germany and Italy was not clear.”17
Later that evening, FDR met privately with legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow, who had just returned to the United States after three years stationed in London. Since becoming the chief of CBS’s news staff abroad in 1937, Murrow had reported twice every day from England. His reports of the nightly bombings, and of the resilience of the British people, helped bridge the gap between the two nations and allowed Roosevelt to build support for aid to the Allies. Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish later told Murrow, “You have destroyed the superstition that what is done beyond 3,000 miles of water is not really done at all.”18
Murrow and his wife were in Washington on Sunday to attend a private dinner with FDR and Eleanor at the White House that evening. After learning of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Murrow assumed that the dinner would be canceled, but Eleanor insisted that they come anyway. The president was busy, so the Murrows dined with Eleanor, who served her standard Sunday dinner of scrambled eggs. When the dinner ended, an aide asked Murrow to wait; the president still wanted to see him. While his wife returned to their hotel room, Murrow sat on a bench in the hallway outside the president’s study, chain-smoking, watching top officials scurry in and out of meetings with FDR.
Years later, when charges first surfaced that the president’s men had been part of a vast conspiracy to precipitate the attacks, Murrow recalled the expressions on the faces that night as evidence of genuine shock and surprise. If Hull, Stimson, and Knox were not surprised, he said, “then that group of elderly men were putting on a performance which would have excited the admiration of any experienced actor. I cannot believe that their expressions, bearing and conversation were designed merely to impress a correspondent who was sitting outside in the hallway.”19
At one point, a ghostly looking Harry Hopkins came out and saw Murrow sitting alone on the bench. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. Hopkins invited Murrow to join him in his room two doors down. As they talked, Hopkins prepared for bed by putting on a pair of striped pajamas that seemed too big for his thin, gaunt physique. “His body was frail,” Murrow recalled, “and he looked like a death’s-head.” Just before he climbed into bed, Hopkins spoke, in a very low tone: “Oh God—If I only had the strength.”20
FDR summoned Murrow to his study shortly after midnight. Over beer and sandwiches, Roosevelt asked him about the morale in England and how they were standing up to the bombing in London. While Murrow talked about the resolve and the sacrifices of the British people, FDR was clearly still privately fuming about the day’s events. Without prompting, FDR shared with Murrow the detailed d
amage reports that he had refrained from giving to members of Congress. According to Murrow, FDR pounded the table with his fist when repeating the figures of planes destroyed on the ground. “On the ground, by God, on the ground!”21
According to the White House log, Murrow was never alone with the president. He was joined by Colonel William “Wild Bill” Donovan, soon to be director of the Office of Strategic Services. Murrow, however, recalled that Donovan joined them later in the conversation. When he did, the topic changed to discussing the Philippines. At 12:30, the president cleared everybody out and announced that he was going to bed.22
Murrow left his meeting realizing that he had been given the scoop of the century. Roosevelt had not instructed him to keep the information confidential. At no point had he stated that the meeting was off the record. Murrow returned to the CBS offices, where everyone looked at him, wondering what he had learned. Murrow kept silent. All he said was, “It’s pretty bad.”23
Later that night, he returned to his hotel room and paced back and forth for hours. Should he report the information, or should he keep quiet? “The biggest story of my life,” he repeated. “I can’t make up my mind whether it’s my duty to tell it, or to forget it.” He concluded that the conversation should be kept confidential. The president was using him as a sounding board, and although he did not specifically say it was off the record, Murrow felt that he was bound to protect the president’s confidentiality.24
After Murrow and Donovan left, James Roosevelt entered the room and prepared his father for bed. FDR would soon be a wartime president. War was more than an abstraction to him. All four of his sons were in the service. FDR’s son Franklin served in the naval reserve. John was an ensign in the navy, and Elliott was in the army air force. James, a marine, was stationed in Washington, working as a liaison between the marine headquarters and what would become the Office of War Information. To this day, only one other president, Abraham Lincoln, had a son serving in the military while he was commander in chief during war.25
James recalled that as he lifted his father into bed that evening, they “talked of the long, dark tunnel we had entered, one which had no end in sight at that time.” James told his father that he wanted to be transferred to combat duty. “Although I did not say it to him, I felt that as the son of the president I had to seek combat.” His father worried about his son’s health. James had survived major surgery for an ulcer a few years earlier that had removed two-thirds of his stomach. James, however, would soon get his wish. Within a year, he, along with his brothers, would see combat. In the Map Room at the White House, FDR would have a special pin designated for the ship on which Franklin Jr. served. FDR always looked at that pin first when he came into the room.26
15
“I hope Mr. Capone doesn’t mind”
A WHITE HOUSE switchboard operator woke FDR at 7:00 a.m. on Monday morning with an urgent call from Grace Tully. The American ambassador in Britain, Gil Winant, had contacted her to let her know that Churchill was planning to go before Parliament and ask for a declaration of war against Japan. Winant asked “if the President might wish to request a delay in London to allow our own declaration to come first.” Realizing the political sensitivity of the issue, Tully called the White House switchboard and told them to wake up the president to give him the message. “In a few minutes he was on the wire to me and dictated a message to Churchill suggesting the British declaration be deferred long enough to permit him to go before the Congress.”1
Roosevelt understood that in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Americans were likely to be far more enthusiastic about fighting a war in the Pacific than they were about joining forces in the European effort. For now, he wanted to avoid tying the two wars together, hoping that Hitler would solve the problem for him by declaring war on the United States. “I think it best on account of psychology here that Britain’s declaration of war be withheld until after my speech at 12:30 Washington Time,” he wrote, adding, “Any time after that would be wholly satisfactory.”2
Unfortunately, Roosevelt’s message arrived too late. Early in the afternoon in Britain, Churchill stood before a packed House of Parliament to deliver his speech, announcing Britain’s declaration of war against Japan. With typical eloquence, the British leader said that “a state of war” existed between England and Japan. “It only remains now for the two great democracies to face their tasks with whatever strength God may give them.” The House erupted with applause.3
For the next few hours, Roosevelt scanned the morning newspapers and the latest dispatches from the Pacific. “The news continued very bad,” Stimson wrote in his diary. Japanese troops had attacked Hong Kong, Wake Island, and Midway Island. Naval aide Admiral Beardall arrived shortly after 8:00 a.m. to brief the president and to show him the most recent cables. The reports the previous day had contained only fragments of information, some of it false. By Monday morning, military officials had pieced together the snippets of evidence, weeded out some of the misinformation, and presented FDR with a more accurate narrative of what had taken place.
The information was uniformly depressing. The cables from Pearl Harbor pointed out that the raid on American aircraft on the ground was so effective that “practically none” were able to respond except for ten planes that had already been airborne at the time of the attack. “Dive bombing and torpedoing were most effective,” stated a cable that Beardall handed to FDR at 8:45, “and in spite of magnificent and courageous work by gun crews, not more than a dozen of the enemy were shot down.” The reports described the damage as “great,” but the full extent was still unknown. FDR read that the Japanese had sunk three battleships, all the others had suffered some damage, and a large number of planes had been destroyed on ground. The cable estimated 2,800 casualties at Pearl Harbor, about half of those fatalities. The number must have been shocking to Roosevelt, who was learning for the first time about the deadly blast that had destroyed the Arizona. “The Arizona blew up and most of her officers and men including rear admiral Kidd were lost,” the report said. In addition to the Pearl update, FDR was briefed on the other Japanese offensives. “Wake reports heaving damage from bombing by 30 planes. Guam reported air attack.”4
The reports from Pearl Harbor were shocking, but the news from the Philippines must have been infuriating to Roosevelt. He was getting his full account of the destruction that had taken place during the overnight hours. He likely was shown a report based on a phone call from MacArthur about conditions in the Philippines. “Heavy damage was sustained at Clark Field with 23 dead and 200 wounded,” MacArthur stated. “Our air losses here were heavy, while enemy air losses were light or medium.”5
It was hard enough to understand why the navy and army in Hawaii were caught off guard, but how could MacArthur, who had been informed about Pearl Harbor and warned of an imminent attack, have been so unprepared? For now, Roosevelt kept his anger under control and simply updated his speech, jotting down additions to provide the nation with the most up-to-date information on Japanese movements in the Pacific.
Scanning the papers, Roosevelt likely noticed the mood of the nation had shifted overnight from fear and uncertainty to anger and determination. “What was the silence of shock last night, today was the cold, determined hatred of an outraged people,” observed wire service reporter Jerry Greene, describing the mood in Washington on December 8. Arthur Krock, writing in the New York Times, said that “national unity was an instant consequence” of the Japanese attack. “You could almost hear it click into place in Washington today,” he observed. “The lives, armament and property lost in Hawaii are a heavy price to pay for anything,” Krock wrote. “But they were not spent in vain, for national unity—which has been a distant and unattained goal since and before Hitler invaded Poland in 1939—seemed visibly to arise from the wreckage at Honolulu.”6
The attack on Pearl Harbor indeed forged unprecedented unity in America. “Probably never in all American history was there provided such a spectacle of unity of
purpose as stamped the dramatic sequence of events today,” observed the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “In the flash of a few bombs dropped without warning on territory under the American flag, isolationism puffed out in thin air. Republicans and Democrats dropped their differences. It was quickly apparent that President Roosevelt would have a vigorously united government behind him in the epochal days ahead.”7
Overnight the battle cry “Remember Pearl Harbor!” had taken its place alongside other great battle slogans, such as “Remember the Maine,” which came into existence shortly after the USS Maine sank in Havana Harbor in 1898, and “Remember the Alamo,” voiced by General Sam Houston before the battle of San Jacinto against Mexico in 1836. Hundreds of telegrams continued pouring into the White House, expressing outrage and demanding retribution against Japan. “Today,” announced the head of the Aplington, Iowa, Baptist Church, “we are no longer a divided people, but a united one.”8
But amid the calls for unity were subtle reminders of the deep divisions that could not be glossed over with patriotic fervor. Capp Jefferson, an African American living in Oklahoma City, wrote the president on December 8 to “pledge the loyalty of every Negro in the United States and its allied possessions to the protection of our flag and the policies of our government.” But his pledge of support came with a request. He asked that the president, along with the governors and mayors throughout the United States, proclaim an end to discrimination, poor housing, and poor transportation and “grant us the full rights of any and all American citizens.”9
For any president giving a speech before a joint session of Congress, knowing that millions of Americans would be huddled next to their radios listening to every word would be stressful enough. Roosevelt had the added physical burden of strapping on his metal braces, traveling to the Capitol, and navigating the path to the rostrum in full glare of the newsreels.
Pearl Harbor Page 18
