December 1941 (26 page)

MacArthur told reporters there would be no censorship in the Philippines, as was instituted in Hawaii, and announced he would hold press conferences every half hour. He told reporters that his commanders were already making preparations for the internment of Japanese nationals and captured Japanese soldiers. “We are calm and confident,” the general said.
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During the Japanese attack on Manila, Don Bell broadcast live from a bunker crammed with army personnel. Calmly, Bell said, “Perhaps ladies and gentlemen, you can hear the sound of those Japanese bombers again. Apparently the raid is not over yet.”
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In meetings with FDR were Henry Stimson, Cordell Hull, other members of the cabinet and Congress, as well as Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. “The president reviewed for them all information received . . . and gave them also other information not yet verified and which at the time had to be classified as rumor. The President told them of doubtless very heavy losses sustained by the Navy and also large losses sustained by the Army on the Island of Oahu.”
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At 9:15, the navy issued a press release, announcing it had no information on casualties in the Pacific.
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Roosevelt took a break from the afternoon meetings and began dictating his remarks to Grace Tully, his personal secretary, to deliver to Congress the next day.

In his landmark book
White House Ghosts
, Robert Schlesinger described the scene. “Shortly before 5 pm
.
. . Roosevelt summoned Grace Tully to his study. Reports had been coming in from a smoldering Pearl Harbor all afternoon and the president finally had a moment to reflect on the speech he would give the next day to Congress and the nation. Tully found him behind his desk. Two or three piles of notes were neatly stacked in front of him and he was lighting a cigarette. ‘Sit down Grace. I'm going before Congress tomorrow. I'd like to dictate my message. It will be short.' He took a long drag from his cigarette.”
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The president had dinner at around 7:30 that evening.
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His son, James, dined with him. At 8:30, he met once again with high government officials “in the second-floor red-room study”
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and gave it to them right between the eyes. “FDR told the Cabinet and congressional leaders the full scope of the disaster—battleships sunk, planes destroyed. . . . He said it would be very difficult to mount a retaliatory attack on Japan and that the way ahead was long. He said it was very unpleasant to be a war president, according to a diary account of the meeting written that evening by Agriculture Secretary Claude Wickard.”
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Wickard noted, “The Secretary of the Navy has lost his air of bravado. Secretary Stimson was very sober.” FDR also indicated that while he did want to speak to Congress the next day, he was not sure he would ask for a declaration of war. At one point, Senator Tom Connally “exploded,” storming, “Where were our forces—asleep?”
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When they departed, FDR took a nap and then awoke to work again on his remarks. Then, “in the small hours, he went to bed, slept for five hours.”
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As the officials left the White House, Richard Strout said, “They won't talk. They went in grim, they came out glum.”

It was announced that evening the president would speak to a joint session of Congress and the American people the next day, the eighth, at 12:30 (EST). Eleanor Roosevelt was surprised at how “serene” her husband was. “I think it was steadying to know finally that the die had been cast.”
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One of the last persons to see Roosevelt that evening was William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who led the Office of Strategic Services. He'd become a late and trusted advisor to the president, and not part of the original “Brain Trust” around Roosevelt. Donovan was respected, in part, for having won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Great War.
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Roosevelt also saw Edward R. Murrow late that evening, shortly after midnight before he retired for the evening at 12:30 a.m.
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The lights of the Navy Department glared all night, burning the midnight oil, and one officer said the reports on the commercial airwaves were “surprisingly close” to the official reports. Like other military men, naval officers had not worked in uniform for a long time, preferring to blend into the culture of Washington by dressing like ordinary civilians. Now, one quipped of uniforms coming out of storage, “There'll be the worst smell of mothballs around here tomorrow.”
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Cots were brought into the Munitions Building, where the army was also working all night, including Secretary of War Stimson. They, too, were deluged with phone calls asking about loved ones in Hawaii and around the Pacific. The army, like everyone else in the government, had no answers to give them. The Munitions Building was surrounded by machine guns.

The crowd in Lafayette Park remained late into the night of December 7 and began singing “God Bless America.”
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Wickard memorialized how calm FDR was and how impressed he was of the president. “As I drive home, I could not refrain from wondering at the fates that caused me to be present at one of the most important conferences in the history of this nation.”
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Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo went on state radio and told the Japanese people, “I hereby promise you that Japan will win final victory” and reminded them that in 2,600 years, they had never lost a war.
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On the other hand, they had never actually declared war on an enemy before engaging in an attack on them either.

The Japanese propaganda agency, Domei, announced at 6:00 a.m., Tokyo time, that “naval operations are progressing off Hawaii, with at least one Japanese aircraft carrier in action against Pearl Harbor.”
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Tojo met with the Japanese cabinet one hour later, and after that short meeting, U.S. ambassador Joseph Grew and British ambassador Sir Robert Leslie Craigie were “summoned” to an audience with the foreign minister, Shigenori, to give them Japan's formal reply to Cordell Hull's missive of November 26. The reply rejected Hull's four points for peace in the Pacific.
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Over at the Japanese embassy at 2514 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington, reporters and curious onlookers watched the bonfire on the back lawn, as diplomats and officials burned thousands of documents. “Members of the Embassy staff . . . burned their code books in an outside fire behind the Embassy. . . . Newspaper men watched while the Japanese secrets were fed into the crackling flames.”
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A crowd of about a thousand watched from the sidewalk, occasionally booing or taunting Japanese officials as they entered the compound, but no violence took place as some in the White House feared. Several young men yelled, “That's democracy for you! They kill us and we protect them.” Another screamed, “We ought to kill them instead of guarding them.”
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Several deliverymen knocked on the door in vain. Finally, a note was posted on the door to the embassy, though it was in Japanese. It said, “If you have business here, please use the side entrance.”
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But no one was allowed to leave, including the Irish maid, who wept to police that she had six children and a husband at home to feed. “With a noticeable brogue,” she implored the Secret Service agents to let her go, but to no avail.
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“Police were assigned to guard the Japanese, German and Italian Embassies,” but the Japanese had already taken precautions and hired “30 private detectives for the same job.”
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The State Department was already making plans for the safe passage of Japanese embassy officials to Tokyo, but it was not clear yet if the Japanese government was making the same provisions for their American counterparts.

Nomura and Kurusu glumly watched the blaze from inside the legation. All reports said they were truly shocked over the attack on Pearl Harbor. “If several sources of information can be believed, they knew nothing of what their army and navy were preparing while they were conducting diplomatic negotiations.”
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Embassy Row was a hubbub of activity with all the tourists, cars, reporters, police, Secret Service, and a few actual residents of the palatial buildings that lined the northwest end of Massachusetts Avenue. Lord Halifax was working in his library at the British embassy when he learned of the attack. He immediately called Churchill by radio-telephone, and this was how the British learned of the attack on them by the Japanese.
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The British prime minister had already given a stirring speech to the Parliament. Prior, he and FDR spoke by transatlantic phone. “They discussed a synchronized declaration of war on Japan.”
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The FBI straightaway arrested a Japanese national, the first of many, Kiyoshi K. Kawakami, at his home on 3729 Morrison Street NW. “Officials later declined to reveal what had become of him.” The provost marshal general of the West Coast, Alaska, the Canal Zone, and Hawaii, Allen Gullion, ordered “a general roundup of all ‘previously known suspicious aliens.'”
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But this was only the start.

In Baltimore, a group of boys hung “an effigy of a Japanese bearing the sign, ‘This Jap Tried to Invade the U.S.”
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Sometime during Sunday, a Clipper plane coming in from San Francisco with twenty-eight passengers and eleven crew members landed safely “at an unnamed airport in the Hawaiian Islands.” Still unknown was the status of a Japanese ocean liner in the middle of the Pacific with many Americans on board.
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No one expected war like this. On December 7, Gen. H. H. “Hap” Arnold, chief of the Air Corps, was quail hunting in California, accompanied by Donald Douglas, president of Douglas Aircraft. The pair was so remote that a local sheriff had planes drop notes on the two men, alerting them to the new war.
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If Arnold was caught unawares, so was the beautiful city of Honolulu. “Honolulu isn't built for war,” wrote Elizabeth Henney in the
Washington Post
. “White, gleaming, tropical buildings in the heart of the city (perfect targets) give an impression that joy and beauty are important, even more so than business.” Sure, the harbor was right there, but the locals also celebrated “Boat Day,” and when employers were informed that someone was coming in via a liner or a Clipper plane, Henney said, “One is given time off to meet them and welcome them with fresh flowers leis. Friendship is that important. There are no ragged beggars on the streets of Honolulu, but there are flower venders, selling leis, gardenia ones with two dozen or more blossoms for a quarter. And now, when the great black drops hurtle from the sky, ripping the gay red and blue tiles from the buildings, stilling songs and laughter, blasting soft bodies to shreds, what is the answer to Honolulu's question: ‘Why this to us?' We have welcomed the Japanese race with the others that came. Our creed has been that of friendship.”
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The Japanese attacked the Philippines. They attacked Wake Island. They attacked Thailand. They attacked Hong Kong. They attacked Malaya and British troops in Singapore. They attacked U.S. Marines stationed in China. They attacked Guam. They attacked Midway Island. They attacked Shanghai. They attacked Pearl Harbor.

“The purpose of the Japanese in striking at Pearl Harbor is obvious. The vast area of the naval base, 1,735 acres, with 250 buildings and 15,000 linear feet of berthing space, is a natural target, as it is the most complete naval base owned by this country, the center of Pacific Fleet operations, and possesses many vulnerable features which are well and easily recognized.”
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It was all so obvious as the day closed. But no one saw it coming the day before.

A White House memo had been quickly prepared for FDR telling him what he already knew about the attack, but this memo had some with inaccuracies. “At least two aircraft were known to have a swastika sign on them.”
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On balance, though, the memorandum was pretty accurate. Another fascinating memo was a transcription of a conversation at 6:40 p.m. between the president and Henry Morganthau. Morganthau routinely had all his phone conversations transcribed, and though FDR had prohibited him from doing so with their phone calls, he did record on this day, memorialized for history. The secretary of the treasury informed Roosevelt that he'd frozen all Japanese funds, had secured the border, and had doubled the guard at the White House while closing off adjoining streets. “We are not going to let any Japanese leave the country or to carry out any communications,” Morganthau said and FDR only said, “I see” to that.
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FDR got a bit heated about making the White House look like an armed camp.

As Admiral Kimmel watched from a window in his office which overlooked the harbor, the horrific butchery of the men and ships of the navy, a round of ammunition came crashing through the window and exhausted itself after tearing a hole in his white dress uniform.

Kimmel muttered, “It would have been merciful had it killed me.”
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CHAPTER 8
THE EIGHTH OF DECEMBER

“U.S. Declares War on Japan”

Birmingham News

“Japan Wars on U.S. and Britain;
Makes Sudden Attack on Hawaii;
Heavy Fighting at Sea Reported”