by FDR
47. Harold L. Ickes, 3 The Secret Diaries of Harold L. Ickes 523 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955). After cabinet Stimson lamented, “because the President shows evidence of waiting for the accidental shot of some irresponsible captain on either side to be the occasion of his going to war.” Stimson diary (MS), May 23, 1941.
48. For a list of British ships lost in the American patrol zone, see WSC to FDR, May 23, 1941, 1 Churchill & Roosevelt 195.
49. WSC to FDR, May 3, 1941, ibid. 181–182.
50. FDR to WSC, May 10, 1941, ibid. 184–185.
51. Berle diaries (MS), May 26, 1941, FDRL.
52. “Fireside Chat Announcing Unlimited National Emergency,” May 27, 1941, 10 Public Papers and Addresses 181–194. The text of the president’s proclamation (No. 2487) is in ibid. 194–195.
53. FDR to WSC, May 27, 1941, 1 Churchill & Roosevelt 196–197. “Pray accept my heartfelt thanks,” Churchill replied. “It was very kind of you to let me know beforehand of the great advance you found it possible to make.” WSC to FDR, May 28, 1941, ibid. 198–199.
54. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins 298.
55. Gallup Poll, June 15, 1941 (polling dates June 9–14), The Gallup Poll 284. The opposition to war still ran strong. A similar Gallup Poll published on June 20 reported 56 percent of Americans still favored a national referendum before troops were sent overseas. Ibid. 285.
56. New York Herald Tribune, May 29, 1941.
57. Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait 256–258 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).
58. Amsterdam News, June 27, 1941.
59. Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time 242 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
60. Ibid. 245.
61. Last Will and Testament of Franklin D. Roosevelt, November 12, 1941, FDRL.
62. James Roosevelt, My Parents: A Differing View 108 (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1976).
63. Williamson Murray and Allan B. Millett, A War to Be Won 120–123 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
64. 6 Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 6427–6431, Robert Rhodes James, ed. (London: Chelsea House, 1974).
65. 3 Documents on American Foreign Relations 364–365 (New York: World Peace Foundation, 1942).
66. Press Conference 750, June 24, 1941, 17 Complete Presidential Press Conferences 408–411.
67. Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt 640.
68. Langer and Gleason, Undeclared War 537–543.
69. Quoted in Burns, Soldier of Freedom 115.
70. Gallup Poll, July 14, 1941, The Gallup Poll 288.
71. FDR to Lend-Lease Administrator, Lend-Lease to Russia, November 7, 1941, 10 Public Papers and Addresses 481. Also see Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman 37 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).
72. Burns, Soldier of Freedom 105.
73. Morgenthau diaries (MS), February 17, 1941, FDRL.
74. Churchill, Grand Alliance 429.
75. Theodore A. Wilson, The First Summit: Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay, 1941 61–67 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969).
76. Michael F. Reilly, as told to William J. Slocum, in Reilly of the White House 120 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1947).
77. Ibid. 120.
78. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It 25 (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946).
79. Geoffrey C. Ward, Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley 141 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995).
80. Churchill, Grand Alliance 663.
81. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins 363.
82. Ibid. 241.
83. Churchill, Grand Alliance 432.
84. Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt 653.
85. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It 33.
86. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 496; Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill 1173. Also see Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 285 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
87. War cabinet minutes, August 19, 1941, quoted in Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1931–1941 402 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976).
88. Wilson, First Summit 210–211. For text, see 1 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941 822–823 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948). Also see Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942 53–62 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953). For the joint message to Stalin, see 10 Public Papers and Addresses 317–319.
89. For the text of the Atlantic Charter, see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941 367–369. Also see 10 Public Papers and Addresses 314–317.
90. Churchill, Grand Alliance 444.
91. FDR, Message to Congress, July 21, 1941, “Extension of Selective Service,” 10 Public Papers and Addresses 272–277.
92. Gallup Poll, August 6, 1941, The Gallup Poll 291–292.
93. D. B. Hardeman and Donald C. Bacon, Rayburn: A Biography 262–270 (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987). For the House roll call, see The New York Times, August 13, 1941. The Senate roll calls are in ibid., August 8, August 15, 1941.
94. “Fireside Chat,” September 11, 1941, 10 Public Papers and Addresses 384–392.
95. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 497–498.
96. The advice of the Catholic prelates is in an August 25, 1941, letter from Sumner Welles to FDR. Also see Myron C. Taylor to FDR, August 30, 1941, FDRL.
97. FDR to Pius XII, September 3, 1941, in Wartime Correspondence Between President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII 61–62, Myron C. Taylor, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1947).
98. Pius XII to FDR, September 20, 1941, ibid. 63–64.
99. Paragraph 24, Divini redemptoris, Encyclical of Pope Pius XI on Atheistic Communism.
100. Langer and Gleason, Undeclared War 793–797.
101. Goodwin, No Ordinary Time 270–273.
102. Reilly and Slocum, Reilly of the White House 83–85.
103. Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt 5–9 (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
TWENTY-THREE | Day of Infamy
The epigraph is from FDR’s address to a Joint Session of Congress, December 8, 1941, requesting a declaration of war against Japan. 10 Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 514–515, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950).
1. Marshall, memorandum to the President, April 24, 1941, in U.S. Congress, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 15 Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack 1635 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946). In Marshall’s words, “[E]nemy carriers, naval escorts and transports will begin to come under attack at a distance of approximately 750 miles. This attack will increase in intensity until when within 200 miles of the objective, the enemy forces will be subject to attack by all types of bombardment closely supported by our most modern pursuit [planes].”
2. Grant to Adam Badeau, August 1, August 25, 1879, quoted in Badeau, Grant in Peace: From Appomattox to Mount McGregor 517–519 (Hartford, Conn.: Scranton, 1887). Grant’s reference to twelve years pertains to the overthrow of Japanese feudalism and the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
3. Ibid. 319–321. Also see Jean Edward Smith, Grant 612–615 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
4. David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 500–501 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
5. TR received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. For the text of the Treaty of Portsmouth, August 23, 1905, see 2 Major Peace Treaties in Modern History, 1648–1967 1149–1155, Fred L. Israel, ed. (New York: Chelsea House, 1967).
6. The Japanese protest note of May 9, 1913, pertaining to California’s land statute was summarily rejected by President Wilson, precipitating a brief war scare (see chapter 6). In 1920 California enacted additional legislation denying Japanese the right to lease agricultural land. More than a dozen states followed California’s exam
ple. The statutes were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Terrance v. Thompson, 263 U.S. 197 (1923).
Wilson’s action at Versailles is more shameful. When on April 11, 1919, the Japanese delegation sought to amend the preamble to the League of Nations Covenant to include a reference to racial equality, a majority of delegations voted in favor. Wilson, who was presiding, ruled the amendment out of order because of the strong opposition it faced. His dubious holding was not appealed by the Japanese. Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919 316–321. Also see David Hunter Miller, 2 Drafting of the Covenant 387–393 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928).
Section 26 of the Immigration Act of 1924, 43 U.S. Statutes at Large 153–169, which excluded “aliens not eligible for citizenship” from admission to the United States, was aimed exclusively at the Japanese, since all other Orientals had been excluded by prior legislation. The provision was enacted over the vigorous objection of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes.
7. Samuel Flagg Bemis, the late dean of American diplomatic historians, wrote that the Root-Takahira agreement “suggests President [Theodore] Roosevelt was preparing to give Japan a free hand in Manchuria as he had done already in Korea. He had already come to feel that the Philippines were the ‘Achilles heel’ of the United States, and that the United States could not fight Japan over Manchuria.” Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States 495–496 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963). Elihu Root was TR’s secretary of state; Kogoro Takahira was Japan’s ambassador in Washington. For the exchange of notes that constitute the agreement, November 30, 1908, see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1908 511–512 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1912). Also see Thomas A. Bailey, “The Root-Takahira Agreement,” 9 Pacific Historical Review 19–35 (1940).
8. Quoted in Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy: A History 540 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975).
9. Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism 214–215 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). I have converted yen to dollars at 3.5 to 1.
10. Raymond Moley, Seven Years After 95 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939).
11. Quoted in Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 501.
12. Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor 76–87 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950).
13. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 504.
14. Quoted in William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal 308 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).
15. Fred L. Israel, ed., The War Diary of Breckinridge Long 140 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966).
16. William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 20–21 (New York: Harper & Row, 1953). The text of the president’s order is in Foreign Relations of the United States 1940, 2 Japan 222 ff. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946).
17. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 506.
18. Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka made it explicit that the pact was aimed at the United States. “It is the United States that is encouraging the Chungking Government,” he told his cabinet colleagues. “Should a solid coalition come to exist between Japan, Germany, and Italy, it will become the most effective expedient to restrain the United States.” Tokyo War Crimes Documents, No. 1259. For the text of the Tripartite Pact, see 3 Documents on American Foreign Relations 304–305 (New York: World Peace Foundation, 1942).
19. WSC to FDR, October 4, 1940, 1 Roosevelt & Churchill: The Complete Correspondence 74–75, Warren F. Kimball, ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
20. Mark S. Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations 117 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950).
21. John Morton Blum, 2 From the Morgenthau Diaries 374–375 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965). Roosevelt named Senator James Byrnes of South Carolina to replace McReynolds.
22. Grew to Secretary of State, May 13, 1941, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941 4 The Far East 187–188 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956).
23. Cordell Hull, 1 Memoirs 723–725 (New York: Macmillan, 1948). Also see Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and America’s Entry into World War II 49–50 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
24. Joseph C. Grew, Ten Years in Japan 350–351 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944; Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Rendezvous with Destiny 380–381 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990).
25. Roosevelt and Nomura corresponded occasionally during the interwar period, the latter always congratulating FDR on his electoral victories and the president always responding. On April 6, 1937, Roosevelt wrote, “As I have often told you, I hope the day will come when I can visit Japan. I have much interest in the great accomplishments of the Japanese people and I should much like to see many of my Japanese friends again.” FDRL.
For Secretary Hull’s aide-mémoire of the Roosevelt-Nomura meeting, see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941, 2 Japan 387–389 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1955).
26. Hull, 2 Memoirs 987.
27. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 507.
28. Hosoya Chihiro, “The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact,” in J. W. Morley, ed., The Fateful Choice: Japan’s Advance into Southeast Asia, 1939–1941 97 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).
29. Langer and Gleason, Undeclared War 627 and the Tokyo War Crimes Documents cited therein.
30. Otto Preston Chaney, Jr., Zhukov 57 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971).
31. Japanese intelligence estimates counted thirty Russian divisions in the Far East versus the Kwantung Army’s twelve, and 2,800 planes versus Japan’s 800. Heinrichs, Threshold of War 120.
32. Harold L. Ickes, 3 The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes 567 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955).
33. “Konoye Memoirs,” in 20 Pearl Harbor Attack 4018–4019. Also see “Tojo Memorandum,” in Tokyo War Crimes Documents 36254–36258.
34. Blum, 2 Morgenthau Diaries 377. Stimson called FDR’s statement “the same old rot.” Handwritten notation on Robert Patterson’s memorandum of the cabinet meeting, cited in James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1940–1945 109–110 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970).
35. 5 Pearl Harbor Attack 2382–2384. Also see Herbert Feis, Road to Pearl Harbor 231–232.
36. Memo, Chief of Staff to Secretary of War, May 20, 1941, cited in Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Operations 347.
37. Ickes, 3 Secret Diary 588.
38. Blum, 2 Morgenthau Diaries 378–379. Also see Ickes, 3 Secret Diary 588.
39. FDR, Extemporaneous remarks to the Volunteer Participation Committee of the Office of Civilian Defense, July 24, 1941. 10 Public Papers and Addresses 277–281.
40. Executive Order 8832, July 21, 1941, ibid. 281–283.
41. Mark S. Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations 434–438; William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 188–189 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978); Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War 314–315 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1987); Frazier Hunt, The Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur 208 (New York: Devin-Adair, 1954); Forrest C. Pogue, 2 George C. Marshall 181, 466 (New York: Viking, 1965).
42. Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 300 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
43. Quoted in Scott D. Sagan, “The Origins of the Pacific War,” in The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars 336, Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
44. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department 26 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969). Robert L. Beisner’s well-researched Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) deals primarily with the postwar period. His brief treatment of Acheson as assistant secretary of state under FDR (especially pages 14–15
) is consistent with my presentation.
45. Hadley Cantril, “Gallup and Fortune Polls,” 5 Public Opinion Quarterly 687 (Winter 1941); Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 302.
46. Sagan, “Origins of the Pacific War” 336.
47. Quoted in Feis, Road to Pearl Harbor 248. Also see Jonathan G. Utley, Going to War with Japan, 1937–1941 95–101, 126–133, 151–156 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985).
48. Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War 245 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961).
49. Feis, Road to Pearl Harbor 266–267; Heinrichs, Threshold of War 184–185; Butow, Tojo 259; Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept 261 (New York: Penguin, 1981).
50. Joseph C. Grew, 2 Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904–1945 1324–1325 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952).
51. Joseph C. Grew, Ten Years in Japan 423–428 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944).
52. Ambassador Grew’s memorandum of his conversation with Prime Minister Konoye is reprinted in Grew, 2 Turbulent Era 1326–1329.
53. Ibid. 1327. Grew believed the potential intervention of the Emperor added great weight to Konoye’s proposal. It was the device used in 1945 to accomplish Japan’s surrender and was always the government’s ace in the hole in dealing with the military.
54. Ibid. 1333.
55. Waldo H. Heinrichs, American Ambassador: Joseph C. Grew and the Development of United States Diplomatic Tradition 347 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966).
56. Heinrichs, Threshold of War 186. In particular, see Grew’s September 29, 1941, cable from Tokyo. Foreign Relations of the United States, 2 Japan 645–650.
57. Conversation between Stimson and Morgenthau, September 18, 1941, in 442 Morgenthau Diaries (MS) 45 ff. For Ickes view, see 3 Secret Diary 610–611.
58. Memo to Hull, August 28, 1941, 20 Pearl Harbor Attack 4406 ff.
59. Hull, 2 Memoirs 1024.
60. Ibid. 1024–1025.
