Pearl Harbor

by Steven M. Gillon

  The speech’s reception in London was less enthusiastic. Churchill was hoping that Roosevelt would use his address to declare war on Germany and Italy. Now he worried that Lend-Lease shipments would be curtailed and that the United States would move resources from the war in the Atlantic to the Pacific. “America is fighting for her own life,” editorialized the Daily Express. “Arms workers of Britain and Russia must be ready to provide from their own factories some of the weapons they had expected from America.”33

  Congress moved with unprecedented speed to pass the war resolution. After Woodrow Wilson delivered his war message, a divided Congress debated the resolution for four days. It passed, but with 56 dissenting votes. The nation, however, had not been attacked in 1917. As soon as Roosevelt left the building, the Senate returned to their chamber to begin debate.

  Senator Connally introduced the resolution at 12:51 p.m. He made clear that he wanted no speeches, and he refrained from giving one. However, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican from Michigan, and leading isolationist, said he desired “to make the record clear.” He told the Senate that “when war comes to us,” partisan differences disappear and the nation unites behind the commander in chief. If Japan believed that it could exploit America’s differences, it was mistaken. “There can be no shadow of a doubt about America’s united and indomitable answer to the cruel and ruthless challenge of this tragic hour—the answer not only of the Congress but also of our people at their threatened hearthstones.”34

  Vandenberg’s rousing speech signaled the end of the foreign policy debate that had plagued the nation since the end of World War I. For twenty years, isolationists and pacifists had conspired to restrain American power, tying Roosevelt’s hands as he struggled to deal with the growing crisis in Europe. While Roosevelt had managed to nudge public opinion toward supporting efforts to aid Britain, the nation remained reluctant to embrace the cause of war. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, FDR’s key foreign policy aides were refining their arguments to convince him of the necessity of declaring war if Japan attacked British possessions in the Pacific. In one decisive move, Japan managed to erase those divisions and unite the nation.

  As soon as the Michigan senator finished his speech, the Senate began calling the roll. A succession of proud and defiant “ayes” filled the room. By 1:06 the roll had been called. The final tally was 82 to 0. There were 13 senators who missed the vote. A few were ill, but most were unable to make it back to Washington on such short notice. In the chamber were 5 members who had voted on the last war resolution in 1917. One, George Norris, an independent of Nebraska, voted no then, but supported this resolution.

  The process of passing the resolution was slower in the House. Majority Leader John McCormack presented the “unanimous consent” resolution and asked that the rules be suspended so that it could be considered immediately. When he made the request, Jeanette Rankin rose to object. Suffrage was what motivated her, but pacifism would define her career. Rankin had voted against America’s entry in the last war and now seemed poised to oppose this one as well. Speaker Rayburn ignored her. “There can be no objection,” he declared.

  With members shouting from the floor, “Vote, vote, vote,” House Republican leader Joseph Martin took the floor. “There can be no peace,” Martin declared, “until the enemy is made to pay in a full way for his dastardly deed. Let us show the world that we are a united nation.” With restless members shouting for a vote, Rayburn tried calming the crowd. “It won’t be long. Let us keep order,” he insisted. The cries, which had temporarily died down, picked up again when Martin yielded three minutes to Hamilton Fish (R–NY), who took the floor to renounce his isolationist views and support FDR’s call for war. “There is no sacrifice I will not make to annihilate these war-made Japanese devils,” he told his colleagues. When Fish concluded, Rankin was standing, seeking recognition from the Speaker. “Sit down, sister,” yelled John Dingell of Michigan. Rayburn continued to ignore her and recognized two more speakers.

  At 1:04 p.m., Rayburn ordered the roll call. Rankin tried to interrupt, but the Speaker again ignored her. The clerk of the House needed to read each name and register their vote on the resolution. Taking the roll call was often a slow and laborious process, complicated by the chaos on the floor. Irving Swanson, the twenty-nine-year-old clerk taking the roll call, remembered this day as different. “You could hear the drop of a pin,” he reflected. “Everybody was quiet. Very serious.”35

  As the roll call proceeded, Representative Everett Dirksen of Illinois sat next to Rankin, pleading with her to vote “present” rather than “no” to allow the vote to be unanimous. He failed. When the clerk called her name, Rankin declared in a firm soprano voice, “Nay.” Spectators in the gallery hissed as the clerk recorded her vote, forcing Rayburn to pound the gavel and restore order. Rankin was the only dissenting vote. At 1:26 p.m., the House passed the resolution with a vote of 388 to 1. A cheer followed Rayburn’s announcement that the resolution had passed.36

  Under parliamentary rules, one chamber must approve the resolution adopted by the other. Since the Senate acted first, Rayburn substituted its version, Senate Joint Resolution 116, which was identical to the House resolution. “Without objection, the joint resolution is read a third time and passed,” the Speaker announced. At 1:32 p.m., fifty-two minutes after FDR finished his address, Congress had voted for war against Japan.37

  Speaker Rayburn signed the resolution on behalf of the House at 3:14 p.m. The vice president, representing the Senate, placed his signature on the document at 3:25 p.m. The resolution was carried to the White House, where Roosevelt signed it at 4:10 p.m.—three hours and thirty-seven minutes from the time he started his address.

  Roosevelt’s finely tuned political instincts had proven correct. His short speech rallied the Congress and inspired the nation. Shortly after the final vote, FDR cabled Churchill in London. “Today all of us are in the same boat with you and the people of the Empire,” he wrote, “and it is a ship which will not and cannot be sunk.”38

  EPILOGUE

  The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor represented the single most significant event of the twentieth century. The Japanese mistakenly believed the assault would intimidate the American people, making them less willing to fight. Instead, it aroused the full fury of an angry nation, provided a decisive advantage to the Allies, and prevented Hitler’s plan for global domination.

  By the end of the day on December 7, it was clear to administration officials that Japan had launched a brilliant surprise attack that dealt a major blow to the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and left behind 3,566 American casualties.

  Although tactically brilliant, the attack was a strategic disaster. The United States managed to repair and restore all but two of the hundred ships in port that day. The two lost were both old battleships of limited capability: the Arizona, commissioned in 1913, and the Oklahoma, commissioned in 1914. The Utah was also destroyed, and while it has often been counted among the battleships sunk that day, it had long been considered obsolete and was being used as target practice for American aircraft. Of the 120 damaged planes, 80 percent were salvaged. (Many of the ones that were not were already out of commission at the time of the attacks.) In addition, the army sent 29 new B-17s from the mainland shortly after the attack. Within two weeks, the army had almost as many planes in Hawaii as before December 7. The Japanese failed to hit half of the light cruisers, 86 percent of the destroyers, or any of the heavy cruisers or submarines in the harbor. They failed to inflict any damage on the massive oil tanks. Most important, the three aircraft carriers were out of port that day, and they would prove to be the decisive weapons of the naval war.1

  Instead of demoralizing Americans, Japan stirred a patriotic fervor that would inspire the nation to fight. Thousands of young men packed recruiting stations across the country following Roosevelt’s message. In Chicago, around 2,000 men—more than ten times the normal number—turned up at recruiting stations. There were mor
e than 60 waiting outside the door of the army-recruiting center when the door opened at 8:00 a.m. on December 8. Army-recruitment centers in New York City reported three times as many enlistments following Roosevelt’s war address when compared to the response to Woodrow Wilson’s address in 1917.2

  American political divisions dissolved in the wake of the attack. While there had been domestic opposition to the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, support for America’s entry into World War II was nearly unanimous. Never before, and never again, would the nation experience such unity in time of war. Many isolationists either fell silent or publicly endorsed war. Aviator Charles Lindbergh released a statement saying, “Our country has been attacked by force of arms and by force of arms we must retaliate.” Herbert Hoover, the man FDR defeated in the 1932 presidential election, announced, “American soil has been treacherously attacked by Japan. Our decision is clear. It is forced upon us. We must fight with everything we have.” Hamilton Fish, a leading isolationist who despised Roosevelt, called upon the American people “to present a united front in support of the President.” The Pittsburgh Chapter of the America First Committee dissolved, passing a resolution declaring, “The war into which we have been plunged by Japanese treachery demands unity of effort by all Americans, as well as unity of support for our government in its prosecution of the war.”3

  Organized labor pledged its full support to the war effort. “Labor knows its duty,” William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, announced after the declaration of war. “It will do its duty, and more. No new laws are necessary to prevent strikes. Labor will see to that. American workers will now produce as the workers of no other country have ever produced.” In a radio address, Philip Murray, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, said his members “were ready and eager to defend our country against the outrageous aggression of Japanese imperialism, and to secure the final defeat of the forces of Hitler.”4

  The press was unanimous in praising FDR for his handling of the crisis. “All who have seen and talked with him during the last week testify that he has been magnificently calm and resolute,” observed Washington Post columnist Ernest Lindley. “All over Washington—and I suppose all over the country—people have been going around in a daze.... The President, all report, has gone about his job with clear-minded efficiency.” Lindley was one of the few contemporary journalists to speculate about the connection between Roosevelt’s struggle with polio and his response to Pearl Harbor. Although he never used the word “polio,” he mentioned that the “personal ordeal” that FDR endured two decades earlier had prepared him to deal with adversity. “From the shadow of death he emerged to be consigned to an invalid’s life,” he wrote in surprisingly stark language. “He determined to treat the disaster which had overtaken him as if it had never happened.” Over the next few years, he proved that there “was iron in him, and the fires of that personal ordeal tempered it into the hardest steel.”5

  Writing in the New York Times, Frank Kluckhohn observed a new burst of energy from Roosevelt and a strength that he had not previously displayed. “Before Japan moved, the lines—which years of responsibility had etched on his face—appeared to sag; now those lines have hardened and Mr. Roosevelt’s face appears to be carved of granite,” he wrote. “Gone is his almost happy-go-lucky air of early New Deal days; gone is the latter-day fatigue and occasional irritability. He stands more firmly than for some time, his head held higher, his chin thrust out.”6

  Germany followed Japan’s strategic blunder by declaring war on the United States four days after Pearl Harbor. In October 1943, FDR told Stalin that had it not been for the German declaration of war, he would not have been able to send vast numbers of American troops across the Atlantic.7

  Roosevelt’s major challenge in the days after December 7, however, was to convince the American people that Germany, with its Nazi ideology, military might, and industrial production, presented a far graver threat to America’s interest than tiny Japan.

  FDR had expected Hitler to declare war on the United States in response to America’s declaration of war against Japan. When Hitler failed to do so, FDR reminded Americans of the connection between the war in the Pacific and the battle for Europe. Unwilling to declare war on Germany first, FDR instead issued a statement a few hours after his address to Congress, laying blame for the Japanese attack on Hitler. “Obviously Germany did all it could to push Japan into war,” he said. “It was the German hope that if the United States and Japan could be pushed into war that such a conflict would put an end to the Lend-Lease Program.”8

  The next day, Tuesday, December 9, FDR gave a fireside chat at 10:00 p.m. on the East Coast. A radio audience estimated at 60 million listened to the address. Resisting the State Department’s effort to give a long recital of U.S.-Japanese relations, he instead chose to tie the attacks to the war in Europe. The “criminal attacks,” he said, represented the culmination of a course Japan had followed “for the past ten years in Asia” and that “paralleled the course of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe. Today it has become more than parallel. It is actual collaboration so well calculated that all continents of the world, and all the oceans, are now considered by the Axis strategists.” He wanted America to think globally, recognizing that the war against Japan was part of a larger struggle that was playing out in Europe. “We expect to eliminate the danger from Japan,” he concluded, “but it would serve us ill if we accomplished this and found that the rest of the world was dominated by Hitler and Mussolini.”9

  Hitler was not obligated under the terms of the treaty with Japan to go to war with the United States. His foreign minister advised him that the Tripartite Pact obligated Germany only in the event that Japan was attacked. His advisers were aware that Roosevelt would have had a difficult time getting Congress to declare war against Germany and that U.S. military leaders would prefer to avoid a two-front war. Hitler, blinded by his contempt for Roosevelt and his disdain for the United States, ignored the advice and opted for war. “I cannot be insulted by Roosevelt, for I consider him mad, just as Wilson was,” he declared. He claimed that Roosevelt wanted war to distract the American people from the failures of his New Deal programs. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States.10

  Roosevelt did not go before Congress to make another war address. Instead, he sent Congress a brief note, asking that it recognize a state of war with the Axis powers. Congress unanimously adopted the resolution, with Jeanette Rankin this time voting “present.”

  The attack on Pearl Harbor set in motion a series of changes that would transform the postwar world. The nation, mired in depression for the previous decade, experienced an unprecedented economic expansion. Unemployment, which stood at 17 percent when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, plummeted to nearly immeasurable levels by 1942. National income more than doubled, from $81 billion in 1940 to $181 billion five years later. The war also improved the distribution of income—an accomplishment that had eluded New Deal planners.

  The growing centralization of power in Washington, begun during the New Deal, accelerated enormously during World War II. Between 1940 and 1945, the number of civilian employees in government posts rose from 1 million to 3.8 million. Total spending for the war came to more than $251 billion, a sum greater than the total of all government spending in the history of the United States to that point.

  Bigger government meant more regulation and a pressing need to raise money to pay for the war effort. Most Americans had never filed an income tax return before World War II because the income tax, on the books since 1913, had been a small tax on upper-income families. Beginning in 1942, anyone earning $600 or more annually had to file a return. Income-tax withholding from paychecks went into effect in 1943.

  FDR’s response to the Depression and World War II fundamentally changed the institution of the presidency. On issues of both international diplomacy and domestic government, the people
and Congress now looked to the president for leadership. The entire twelve years that Roosevelt spent in the White House were a time of crisis. Whether solving the problems of the Depression or rallying the nation to global war, Roosevelt made the presidency the focus of the public’s hopes and expectations. Recognizing the growing power of the office, Congress delegated enormous power to the president, who in turn delegated it to the sprawling bureaucracy he controlled.

  The struggle forced Americans to rethink their relationship with the rest of the world. The American victory in the fight against Germany and Japan shattered the myth of isolationism that had dominated thinking during the 1930s and introduced a new consensus in favor of internationalism. Many leaders, including former isolationists, came to believe that appeasement had been a tragic mistake that allowed Hitler’s war machine to thrive. By the end of World War II, they were arguing that the United States needed to play a more active role in world affairs. “No more Munichs!” declared former isolationist leader Senator Arthur Vandenberg in 1945. “America must behave like the number one world power which she is.” The rhetoric of economic as well as military internationalism echoed through the halls of Congress and down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

  America emerged from the struggle as the leading economic and military power in the world. Flush from victory, the United States prepared to launch a new crusade against communism, armed with enormous military might and confidence in the universal relevance of American values. The experience of total war against absolute evil, however, did little to prepare Americans for the prospect of limited war or for the moral ambiguity of conflicts in third world countries such as Vietnam.