by FDR
To this day there is no satisfactory explanation of why Hull jettisoned the quest for a cooling-off period with Japan or why FDR supported him. Roosevelt had too much on his plate. There is no doubt he was under great pressure. He had just ordered the Navy to shoot enemy vessels on sight in the Atlantic; he had just finished a bruising battle with Congress over repeal of the Neutrality Act;* and the German Army was thirty miles from Moscow. To press his proposal for a modus vivendi may have been more than Roosevelt wanted to take on. Like the wrongheaded oil embargo in July, events got ahead of him. As for Hull, his official biographer, Julius Pratt, confesses to being baffled: “The President had given Hull a very free reign in dealing with Japan.… [I]t seems that his decision to ‘kick the whole thing over’ (as Stimson records him saying) was a petulant one by a tired and angry man.”99 Whatever the reason, the plan for a temporary truce was discarded, and, as Stanford historian David Kennedy recently observed, “the last flimsy hope of avoiding, or even delaying, war with Japan thus evaporated.”100
Nomura and Kurusu were dumbfounded at the severity of Hull’s ten-point memorandum. Tokyo’s reaction was similar. “We felt that clearly the United States had no hope or intention of reaching an agreement for a peaceful settlement,” said Foreign Minister Togo, one of the most moderate members of the government.101 On December 1, at a meeting of the privy council attended by the Emperor, the Japanese government opted for war. “It is now clear that Japan’s claims cannot be attained through diplomatic means,” said Prime Minister Tojo. The Emperor asked each member of the council for his opinion. The decision was unanimous. Hirohito nodded acceptance. “At this moment,” concluded Tojo, “our Empire stands on the threshold of glory or oblivion.”102
On the morning of December 2 the chiefs of staff of the army and navy went to the Imperial Palace to formally request the Emperor’s approval for a war order issued in his name setting the date for attack as December 8 (December 7 in Hawaii and Washington), 1941. That afternoon, following the Imperial assent, powerful radio transmitters in Tokyo flashed the message to the Japanese armed forces:
NIITAKAYAMA NOBORE 1208.
(CLIMB MOUNT NIITAKA ON DECEMBER 8.)103†
As was the case with all great powers at the time, the filing cabinets of the Japanese military bulged with war plans to fit any contingency. A drive to the south had been war-gamed repeatedly, and the consistent finding was that an attack on the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, or Malaya would be at risk so long as the U.S. Asiatic Fleet was intact in the Philippines and the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. The problem fell squarely into the lap of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet since 1939.
Yamamoto was at the summit of his distinguished naval career. Four years younger than MacArthur, Marshall, and Stark (all of whom were born in 1880), he had lost the fore and middle fingers on his left hand as a junior officer at Tsushima. No one in the Japanese Navy knew the United States better than Yamamoto, and no one had wanted war less than he. In the early twenties Yamamoto studied English as a graduate student at Harvard. He hitchhiked across America and understood the vast industrial and agricultural capacity of the country. From 1926 to 1928 he served as naval attaché in Washington. In the tense foreign policy debates in the 1930s he had been a voice of moderation, steeling the Navy against military adventurism and skeptical of the alliance with Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. His life had repeatedly been threatened by nationalist extremists.104*
Yamamoto’s experience provided a unique perspective on modern warfare. Though not a pilot, he was closely associated with naval aviation, having been executive officer of the Navy’s flight school in the mid-1920s, commander of the First Carrier Division in the early 1930s, director of the Aeronautical Department of the Navy from 1935 to 1936, and vice minister from 1936 to 1939. Like Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell in the United States, he was a champion of airpower; unlike Mitchell, Yamamoto possessed the rank, prestige, and administrative skill to do something about it. In the Navy he was known as a bold, original thinker and an inveterate gambler. He thrived on all-night poker games, testing his opponents’ nerves, endurance, and patience—just as he tested himself. “In all games Yamamoto loved to take chances just as he did in naval strategy,” explained his administrative aide, Captain Yasuji Watanabe. “He had a gambler’s heart.”105
The war plan Yamamoto inherited in 1939 envisaged a decisive naval battle with the American fleet near the home islands in which land-based planes and submarines would whittle down the U.S. armada until the Imperial Navy took it on in an old-fashioned line-of-battle slugfest. Yamamoto recognized that strategy was inadequate to support an all-out southward thrust against numerous objectives several thousand miles away. The U.S. Navy would have to be destroyed at the outset if the long, exposed Japanese flank were to be secured.106
When Yamamoto first thought of attacking Pearl Harbor is unclear. The British victory at Taranto on November 12, 1940, in which twelve carrier-based torpedo planes surprised the Italian fleet lying at anchor and sank three battleships, focused his attention on the possibility.107 In his own correspondence, Yamamoto suggests that planning began in December 1940, first as a concept, then a plan, finally as an exercise, including repeated mock attacks on a model of Pearl Harbor set up in Japan’s Kagoshima Bay. The logistical problems were enormous. To mass the necessary number of planes (Yamamoto estimated 300) would require a task force of at least six carriers, and the 3,500-mile attack route—well beyond the fleet’s cruising range—would require tricky refuelings at sea.* But the most difficult problems were tactical: first, to ensure complete surprise; then to launch a torpedo attack in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor. The Italian anchorage at Taranto, by contrast, was in deep water, and the general view in naval circles was that aerial torpedoes required a depth of at least 12 fathoms (72 feet), otherwise they would hit bottom, lodge in the mud, or explode prematurely. The American Navy was so convinced that was the case that it rejected the use of antitorpedo nets at Pearl Harbor as unnecessary.108 By October 1941 the Japanese had developed a finned torpedo that could run in 6 fathoms (36 feet), and by November had perfected a launch technique with pilots flying at 100 knots (roughly 115 mph) and an altitude of 60 feet that guaranteed an 83 percent success rate.109
As finally written, Yamamoto’s attack plan had eight interlocking components, of which the attack on Pearl Harbor was the centerpiece. Additional formations moved against the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines, against the British off Singapore, and the Dutch near Borneo. Invasion forces, some comprised of more than a hundred vessels, steamed independently toward Malaya, Guam, and Luzon, plus a small neutralization force toward Midway. Yamamoto kept the main body of the Combined Fleet—six battleships, two light carriers, two cruisers, and thirteen destroyers—under his personal command in the Inland Sea, ready to move wherever required. The principal task, the attack on Pearl Harbor, was assigned to the newly created First Air Fleet under Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, a battleship sailor who was president of the Naval Staff College in Tokyo when Yamamoto tapped him for the assignment. Described by friends as “a Japanese Bull Halsey”—jaunty, extroverted, supremely self-confident—Nagumo was the senior officer available for the post, and Yamamoto chose to go with rank and tradition rather than specialized carrier expertise.*
By November 29, 1941, each of the Japanese task forces had put to sea. Each was instructed that “in the event an agreement is reached with the United States, the task force will immediately return to Japan.” The First Air Fleet was also instructed to turn back if sighted by the enemy before X-Day minus one.110
Yamamoto’s decision to attack the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor not only was breathtakingly bold but involved a revolutionary, hitherto untried use of naval airpower—an experimental concept untested in the crucible of battle. Taranto had involved twelve planes from a single carrier 170 miles away. The First Air Fleet would assault what was considered the strongest naval bas
e in the world, halfway across the Pacific, with the largest air armada ever assembled at sea. “What a strange position I find myself in,” Yamamoto wrote to his friend Rear Admiral Teikichi Hori on the eve of the fleet’s departure, “—having to pursue with full determination a course of action which is diametrically opposed to my best judgment and firmest conviction. That, too, perhaps is fate.”111
When the attack order was given on December 2, 1941, the First Air Fleet had covered about half the distance to Oahu. Nagumo’s sprawling task force of nearly three dozen ships moved wedgelike in an easterly direction at a steady fourteen knots: six fast aircraft carriers jacketed by a protective screen of destroyers, cruisers, and battleships, with submarine lookouts fore and aft and a supply train of eight 20,000-ton tankers. On December 4, in heavy seas, First Air Fleet pivoted southeast, roughly nine hundred miles north of Hawaii. Two days later, at precisely 11:30 A.M., Nagumo completed his final refueling, released his slow-moving tankers, swung due south toward Oahu, and increased speed to twenty knots. After hoisting the historic “Z” flag Admiral Togo had flown at Tsushima, Nagumo flashed Yamamoto’s Nelson-like message to the fleet: “The rise and fall of the Empire depends upon this battle. Every man will do his duty.”112
At 5:50 the following morning, December 7, 1941, the First Air Fleet was 220 miles north of Oahu. Nagumo wheeled due east into a brisk wind and increased speed to twenty-four knots, essential for a successful launch. The flattops pitched violently, listing between twelve and fifteen degrees, making the first-light takeoffs all the more risky. “I have brought the task force successfully to the point of attack,” Nagumo told his air officer, Commander Minoru Genda. “From now on the burden is on your shoulders.”113
Weather delayed the takeoff twenty minutes. At 6:10 A.M. the launch began: first the fighters, then the horizontal bombers, dive-bombers, and torpedo planes—183 in all. By 6:20 they were in battle formation bound for Oahu. One hour later, Nagumo launched the second attack wave, mostly horizontal bombers and dive-bombers. Within ninety minutes of the first wave’s initial takeoff, a formidable fleet of 350 planes was homing in on its targets at Pearl Harbor, Hickam and Wheeler Fields, and Kaneohe Air Station.
Despite widespread knowledge of the worsening political situation in the Pacific and an explicit war warning from Washington, the Japanese attack caught the American military in Hawaii off guard.* In a sense, the defense of Pearl Harbor fell into the void between the Army and the Navy. The Army assumed that the Navy was conducting distant reconnaissance off the islands, as provided for in joint defense plans; the Navy, for its part, believed the Army was continuously manning Oahu’s early-warning radar, which was also provided for. Neither proved to be the case. And neither the Army nor the Navy placed their forces on alert.114 Perhaps it was overconfidence, perhaps sloth—peacetime laziness amid the comforts of Honolulu, perhaps simply a refusal to take Washington’s war warning seriously. “I never thought those little yellow sons-of-bitches could pull off such an attack, so far from Japan,” Kimmel confessed years later.115
General Marshall put the attack into perspective. Pearl Harbor, he said,
was the only installation we had anywhere that was reasonably well equipped. Therefore we were not worried about it. In our opinion the commanders had been alerted. In our opinion there was nothing more we could give them.… In our opinion it was the one place that had enough within itself to put up a reasonable defense. The only place we had any assurance about was Hawaii.116*
The Japanese attack lasted little more than two hours. When the last plane winged away at 10 A.M., eighteen U.S. vessels, including eight battleships, had been sunk or heavily damaged. More than 175 military aircraft were destroyed on the ground and another 159 crippled. In all, 2,403 servicemen were dead, 1,103 of them entombed on the battleship Arizona, which sank almost instantly when a bomb exploded in its forward magazine. Another 1,200 men were wounded. Japan lost twenty-nine planes, mostly dive-bombers, in the second attack wave. “If I am told to fight regardless of the circumstances,” Yamamoto had told Konoye the year before, “I shall run wild for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second or third years.”117
Roosevelt learned of the attack at 1:40 P.M. Washington time, roughly forty-five minutes after the first wave of Zeros began their strafing run. He was having a late lunch with Harry Hopkins at his desk in the upstairs study when Knox called from the Navy Department. “Mr. President, it looks like the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.”118 A flurry of phone calls followed. At 2:30 Stark called the president with confirmation. “I could hear the shocked unbelief in Admiral Stark’s voice,” said Grace Tully as she put him through to FDR.119 Stark said that it was a very severe attack, the fleet had been heavily damaged, and there was considerable loss of life. Roosevelt told Stark to execute the standing orders that were to go into effect in case of war in the Pacific.120 Official Washington was not surprised by the Japanese attack, but it was stunned that it had come at Pearl Harbor and appalled by the damage.
At three o’clock Roosevelt met his war council. Reports continued to come in, each more terrible than the last. The president handled the telephone personally. He ordered Hull to inform the Latin American governments and secure their cooperation; Knox and Stimson were instructed to draft the necessary orders to put the nation on a war footing. Roosevelt discussed troop deployments at length with General Marshall and ordered military protection for the Japanese Embassy and all Japanese consulates in the United States. His mood was businesslike with no sign of panic. As Sumner Welles reported, FDR was at the center of the action and completely in charge. Eleanor, who went briefly into the study, noted her husband’s steadiness.121
Churchill called from Chequers, his weekend estate. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?”
“It’s quite true,” Roosevelt replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat now.”
“That certainly simplifies things,” said Churchill. “God be with you.”122 Later Churchill wrote, “To have the United States on our side was to me the greatest joy. I thought of a remark [Sir] Edward Grey [the British foreign secretary] had made to me more than thirty years before—that the United States was like ‘a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.’ Being saturated and satiated with emotion I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”123
Shortly before 5 P.M. Roosevelt called Grace Tully to his study. He was alone, Tully remembered, and had just lit a cigarette. “Sit down, Grace. I’m going before Congress tomorrow. I’d like to dictate my message. It will be short.”
Roosevelt dictated in the same steady tone in which he answered his correspondence, only more slowly and precisely: “Yesterday comma December seventh comma 1941 dash a date which will live in infamy dash …” The entire message ran less than five hundred words—about twice as long as Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Every word was Roosevelt’s own, except for the next-to-last sentence, which was suggested by Hopkins.124 The president focused on Japanese treachery and catalogued the areas where the enemy had struck. Contrary to Stimson’s advice, he did not ask for a declaration of war against Germany. Contrary to Hull’s wishes, he kept it short.125
Dinner that evening was with Hopkins and Grace Tully in the upstairs study. At 8:30 FDR met the cabinet. He was grim as the members filed in, and there was no small talk.126 Roosevelt opened on a somber note: “This is the most serious meeting of the Cabinet that has taken place since 1861.” By coincidence they were meeting in the same Oval Study in which Lincoln’s cabinet had assembled after Fort Sumter.127 He then recounted what had happened. Frances Perkins recalled that FDR “could hardly bring himself to describe the devastation. His pride in the Navy was so terrific that he was having actual physical difficulty in getting out the words that put him on the record as knowing that the Navy was caught unawares.”
Twice FDR asked Knox, “Find out, for
God’s sake, why the ships were tied up in rows.” To Perkins it was obvious that Roosevelt “was having a dreadful time just accepting the idea that the Navy could be caught off guard.”128 As a former assistant secretary of the Navy, FDR never forgave Kimmel and Stark for the lack of readiness at Pearl Harbor. Kimmel was relieved of command, reduced in rank to rear admiral, and forced to retire. Stark was removed as chief of naval operations, shunted to England, and, after a suitable period, also pushed into retirement. Roosevelt chose Chester Nimitz to replace Kimmel and Admiral Ernest W. King, the hard-as-nails commander of the Atlantic Fleet, as chief of naval operations.
At ten the cabinet was joined by the congressional leadership. Roosevelt extended the invitations personally, including the Republican isolationist Hiram Johnson of California (whom he wanted to win over) and excluding the House Foreign Affairs ranking member Hamilton Fish (whom he detested). For all his many virtues FDR had a vindictive streak, and Fish was one of those who experienced it.129 When Roosevelt recounted what had happened at Pearl Harbor, the legislators were dumbfounded. “They sat in dead silence and even after the recital was over they had very few words,” wrote Stimson.130 Finally Tom Connally of Texas spoke up. “How did it happen that our warships were caught like sitting ducks at Pearl Harbor?” he bellowed. “How did they catch us with our pants down? Where were our patrols? They were all asleep!”131
FDR dipped his head. “I don’t know, Tom, I just don’t know.”132
Roosevelt asked the leaders when they would be ready to receive him, and it was agreed he would speak to a joint session of Congress at 12:30 the next day. FDR declined to say in advance whether he would ask for a declaration of war, determined to make the announcement to the country himself. “Republicans will go along with whatever is done,” said Senate minority leader Charles McNary. GOP House leader Joe Martin (of “Martin, Barton, and Fish”) told Roosevelt, “Where the integrity and honor of the Nation is involved there is only one party.”133 The meeting broke up shortly after eleven.
