The Mantle of Command

by Nigel Hamilton

  Hundreds were already gathering in the dusk beyond the White House gates—incredulous at the news being put out by radio stations. Some were singing patriotic songs. Others held candles, in prayer.

  “Sit down, Grace. I’m going before Congress tomorrow. I’d like to dictate my message,” the President said. “It will be short.”61

  It was short: barely 390 words. “Yesterday December 7, 1941,” he began, “a day which will live in world history, the United States was simultaneously and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan . . .”62

  “As soon as I transcribed it, the President called Hull back to the White House,” and the two men “went over the draft,” Ms. Tully remembered.63

  Hull was now seventy years old, and easily unnerved or irritated. With his white hair and courtly demeanor, the handsome former senator from Tennessee had been secretary of state since 1933, but the news that, after so many months of mounting tension and decrypted warnings of Japanese perfidy, the army, navy, and air forces of the United States had all been caught completely unawares, infuriated him. Magic decrypts had indicated throughout the year not only that Japan was preparing for war with the United States, but was doing everything possible to determine the “total strength of the U.S.” and train fifth-columnists in America to work on anti-Semites, labor union members, blacks, Communists, and “all persons or organizations which either openly or secretly oppose the war.”64 To his staff, in his office, Mr. Hull had therefore expressed “with great emphasis his disappointment that the armed forces in Hawaii had been taken so completely by surprise,” as well as his “bitter feelings” over the invidious way Ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu had behaved. The secretary had thus already prepared his own statement to the press, which duly went out at 6:00 P.M., denouncing the Japanese for their “infamously false and fraudulent” professions of desire for peace, while preparing for “new aggressions upon nations and peoples with which Japan was professedly at peace, including the United States.”65

  With the latest information coming in to the State Department that Japan had formally announced it was at war with the United States, Hull now begged the President to give the American people the whole history of Japan’s treachery, not merely a 390-word request to Congress to declare war. As Grace Tully recalled, “The Secretary brought with him an alternative message drafted by Sumner Welles, longer and more comprehensive in its review of the circumstances leading to the state of war.”66 As Hopkins noted that night, Hull’s draft was certainly a “a strong document,” but one “that might take half an hour to read.”67

  The President didn’t like it. What more justification did Congress need in order to declare war? Would such a review not simply lead people to question the administration’s past efforts? Japan had openly announced that hostilities existed with the United States. It would be enough for the President to say, on record and before Congress, that the nation had been attacked, without warning, at the very moment Japanese diplomats were bringing their response to the latest American peace proposal. In other words, a briefer address would give no member of Congress the excuse to criticize the President or his administration, including Secretary Hull, for not having done yet more to appease or dissuade the Japanese government from going to war.

  Hull was unconvinced, but the President was sure in his own mind. The fact of the Japanese sneak attack spoke for itself. The President’s own longwinded speech before the governing board of the Pan American Union earlier that year, May 27, 1941, was a case in point. Intended as a refutation of the claims of Colonel Lindbergh and other America First isolationists, it had been a methodical account of the growing threat facing the United States from the Third Reich. It had failed completely. Isolationist sentiment in America had actually increased in the aftermath of the President’s exhaustive state of emergency proclamation that day, not diminished. Accusations of warmongering had refused to die down, making it even harder for the President to draw up his contingency plans for war. Only three days before the Japanese attack, Colonel Robert McCormick, the virulently right-wing opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal policy, had published the guts of the President’s top-secret “Victory Program,” under the headline “FDR’S WAR PLANS,” in his newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. The article had called the President’s plan “a blueprint for total war on a scale unprecedented in at least two oceans and three continents, Europe, Africa and Asia”—a revelation so inflammatory that the President, while denying the existence of such a plan, had called J. Edgar Hoover to ask him to instigate an immediate FBI investigation into the source of the leak.

  No, Roosevelt felt, better to let the plain fact of Japanese aggression speak for itself: thus ending the reign of isolationist loudmouths in the country forever. Especially as reports of the sheer scale of the American military disaster multiplied.

  That evening, more than a hundred journalists, photographers, radio reporters, and technicians crowded into the small White House press room—the normal capacity of which was twelve—desperate for more information.

  By 5:58 P.M. Steve Early, the White House press secretary, confirmed “the report of heavy damages and loss of life” in the sneak attack.68 “The telegraph boys fairly came out of the cracks, the floor was tangled with a black spaghetti of wires, the motion picture lights were on, cameras were busy, men were telephoning, a radio receiver blared,” wrote one White House correspondent. “Men with chattering hand motion-picture machines climbed over and under desks . . . and they were followed by others carrying glaring lamps on black cords.”69

  The Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, had already doubled the size of the small Secret Service detail at the White House. When he sought permission for half a battalion of troops, along with tanks, to be stationed around the Executive Mansion, however, the President told Morgenthau to drop the idea. The Japanese might possibly invade Hawaii, 2,676 miles away, but it would take them longer to get to Pennsylvania Avenue, he argued.70 Instead, the President ordered that U.S. troops be sent to protect the Japanese Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, and gave instructions for all the White House lights to be turned on as darkness fell.

  The White House should be seen, still, as a beacon of democratic hope, not as a military barracks, the President explained—and he asked that the members of his full cabinet assemble with him in his study at 8:30 P.M., to be followed then by the leaders of Congress at 9:00.

  As the terrible afternoon and early evening of December 7, 1941, had worn on, Eleanor Roosevelt had “stayed in my sitting room and did my mail and wrote letters.” Nevertheless, she recalled, “one ear was alert to the people coming and going to and from my husband’s study. He went down in the late afternoon to have his nose treated, and at seven o’clock [Solicitor General] Charles Fahy came to see him for a short time,” to discuss the legal terms required of the declaration of war, and the status of Japanese diplomats in the interim. “Again in the evening he had supper in his study, with James [Roosevelt], who was then a captain in the Marines, Harry Hopkins, and Grace Tully.”71

  Hopkins, Grace Tully recalled later, was in a state of sustained shock, indeed “looked just like a walking cadaver, just skin and bones.”72 The “phone was ringing constantly,” Hopkins noted, for his part. Admiral Stark “continued to get further and always more dismal news about the attack on Hawaii. We went over the speech again briefly and the President made a few corrections”—including the change from “world history” to “infamy.”73

  “The Cabinet met promptly at 8.30,” in Roosevelt’s study, or Blue Room, over the South Portico—the members summoned from across the Washington area and the nation. “All members were present. They formed a ring completely around the President, who sat at his desk. The President was in a very solemn mood and told the group this was the most serious Cabinet session since Lincoln met with the Cabinet at the outbreak of the Civil War.”74

  It was an apt analogy. The members of the war council already knew the worst. “The news coming fr
om Hawaii is very bad,” Secretary Stimson had by then noted in his diary. “It has been staggering to see our people there, who have been warned long ago and were standing on the alert, should have been so caught by surprise.”75 Secretary Hull, by contrast, blamed Stimson and Knox. He had told his staff at the State Department that he had, “time after time” in recent months, “warned our military and naval men,” with all the vigor at his command, “that there was constant danger of attack by Japan”—and how “deeply” he regretted his “warnings had not been taken more seriously.” As the note-taker recorded, the initial reaction at the State Department had been that the Japanese attack had been “exceedingly stupid,” for it would “instantaneously and completely” unite the American people. “However, after it became evident that our armed forces had suffered tremendous damage in Hawaii, there was less feeling that the Japanese had been stupid.”76 Worse still, reports were coming in of a massive Japanese air raid on the Philippines—with the destruction of pretty much all of General MacArthur’s air force at Clark Field, despite nine hours of prior warning.

  Other cabinet members, however, were still in the literal as well as proverbial dark. “I’m just off the plane from Cleveland. For God’s sake, what happened?” asked the attorney general, Francis Biddle. “Mr. President, several of us have just arrived by plane. We don’t know anything except a scare headline ‘Japs Attack Pearl Harbor.’ Could you tell us?” asked another.77

  As best he currently knew, the President brought the full cabinet—including Vice President Wallace—up to date, recounting the final hours of negotiation. “And finally while we were alert—at eight o’clock,” he recounted, “a great fleet of Japanese bombers bombed our ships in Pearl Harbor, and bombed all our airfields.” He confided that the “casualties, I am sorry to say, were extremely heavy. . . . It looks as if out of eight battleships, three have been sunk, and possibly a fourth. Two destroyers were blown up while they were in drydock. Two of the battleships are badly damaged. Several other smaller vessels have been sunk or destroyed. The drydock itself has been damaged. Other portions of the fleet are at sea, moving towards what is believed to be two plane carriers, with adequate naval escort.”78

  The President’s summary of U.S. naval losses was all too accurate. His belief that Admiral Kimmel’s remaining naval forces—his carriers—were moving toward battle with the Japanese Navy, however, was overly optimistic.

  In truth, neither the Japanese nor the American fleet commanders were anxious to join battle at sea. Enough, for the moment, was enough.

  The same held true for the President’s plans for his appearance before Congress the following day. Rocked by the disaster at Pearl Harbor, the President was reluctant to ask Congress for a declaration of war on Nazi Germany in addition to Japan. Thus when, in his study, the President read out to the cabinet members the draft of his proposed speech to Congress, Secretary Stimson objected that the declaration only covered war with Japan. It was, Stimson wrote in his diary that night, too simple, “based wholly upon the treachery of the present attack.” Although in that respect it was “very effective,” Stimson allowed, it did not “attempt to cover the long standing indictment of Japan’s lawless conduct in the past. Neither did it connect her in any way with Germany,” as he and Secretary Hull felt it should—in fact Stimson claimed “we know from the interceptions and other evidence that Germany had pushed Japan into this.”79

  Hitler as Hirohito’s éminence grise? The President was unimpressed, and “stuck to his guns,” in Hopkins’s words, that night80—as if more determined than ever to avoid the moniker “warmonger.” There was no evidence of collusion between Germany and Japan, Roosevelt countered—despite the suspicions voiced by his military team, such as Admiral Stark’s remark to Rear Admiral Bloch in Hawaii, asking about an enemy submarine reported to have been sunk in the harbor: “is it German?”81 As President he would continue to take one step at a time.

  No sooner was his meeting with the cabinet over than the ten invited leaders of Congress—interventionists and former isolationists alike—now herded into the Blue Room.

  It was 9:00 P.M.—with yet more bad news streaming in from the Far East. Word had come from Britain that Malaya had been invaded. Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Singapore had also been bombed. The American Pacific islands of Guam and Midway were under attack. Japanese carrier planes were confirmed as having bombed the Philippines—in fact, they seemed to have annihilated General MacArthur’s air force at Clark airfield. If anything, the picture was worsening.

  Labor Secretary Frances Perkins later recalled how, when she arrived in haste from the airport, the President did not even look up. “He was living off in another area. He wasn’t noticing what went on on the other side of the desk. . . . His face and lips were pulled down, looking quite gray. . . . It was obvious to me that Roosevelt was having a dreadful time just accepting the idea that the Navy could be caught off guard. His pride in the Navy was so terrific that he was having actual physical difficulty in getting out the words that put him on record as knowing that the Navy was caught unawares, that bombs dropped on ships that were not in fighting shape and not prepared to move, but were just tied up.”82 And on top of that, the destruction of Hawaii’s army air forces.

  The mood began with collective shock, but soon gave way to congressional fury, as the President repeated the account that he had already given the cabinet, and then took questions.

  Asked about losses suffered by the Japanese, the President was evasive. “It’s a little difficult. We think we got some of their submarines, but we don’t know,” he responded lamely but truthfully. “We know some Japanese planes were shot down.” Quoting his own experience in World War I, he cautioned against premature assumptions, or wishful thinking. “One fellow says he got fifteen of their planes and somebody else says five. . . . I should say that by far the greater loss has been sustained by us, although we have accounted for some Japanese.” About the rumor that a Japanese carrier had been sunk off the Panama Canal Zone, he was dismissive—“Don’t believe it,” he warned; the U.S. forces there were “on the alert, but very quiet.”83 It had been, in short, an unmitigated naval and air disaster for the United States in the Pacific.

  Unconfirmed reports had come in that the Japanese government had already proclaimed a state of hostilities with America, the President went on. With this in mind, he wished to ask the members of the Senate and House for authority to address Congress the next day, at 12:30 P.M.—though he did not read out his proposed speech, mindful that it would only spur more discussion, and leak within minutes.84 Assured he would be invited to speak to a joint assembly of Congress, he now had to field more questions from the senators and congressmen about how the fleet and garrison at Pearl Harbor had been so unprepared.

  “Hell’s fire, we didn’t do anything!” asserted Senator Tom Connally, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee from Texas, banging his fist on FDR’s desk.

  “That’s about it,” responded the President glumly.

  “Well, what did we do?” Connally asked the navy secretary, Frank Knox, directly. “Didn’t you say last month that we could lick the Japs in two weeks? Didn’t you say that our navy was so well prepared and located that the Japanese couldn’t hope to hurt us at all? When you made those public statements, weren’t you just trying to say what an efficient secretary of the navy you were?”

  Poor Knox knew not how to answer. Nor did the President help him out—he merely listened to the verbal attack with “a blank expression on his face.”

  Connally kept up his assault on the navy secretary—asking why “all the ships at Pearl Harbor” were so “crowded” together, and wanting to know about the log chain he’d heard had been pulled across the harbor entrance, so they could not get out.

  “To protect us against Japanese submarines,” Knox explained.

  “Then you weren’t thinking of an air attack?”

  “No,” the secretary admitted.

  Connally was almost
apoplectic by this time. “I am amazed by the attack by Japan, but I am still more astounded at what happened to our Navy. They were all asleep. Where were our patrols? They knew these negotiations were going on.”

  Knox fell silent. Attempting vainly to calm the temper of his meeting, the Chief Executive confided it was “a terrible disappointment to be President” in such “circumstances,” in the aftermath of an attack that had “come most unexpectedly.”85

  The meeting went on for two long hours: accusations and disbelief at U.S. military incompetence leaving the President not only weary, but concerned lest the nation now descend into a witch-hunt as to whom to blame.

  Fortunately Roosevelt was rescued by one of the legislators. “Well, Mr. President, this nation has a job ahead of it,” a member of the delegation summed up, “and what we have to do is roll up our sleeves and win this war.”86

  Most, however, left the White House with unresolved feelings of guilt, anger, disappointment. And anxiety over the country’s next steps.

  After walking back to the Treasury, next door, at 11:25 P.M., Secretary Morgenthau railed, like Secretary Hull, against the ineptitude of the professional armed forces—epitomized by the security at the White House, where he still counted only three men guarding the side of the mansion! He had then gone straight back to the Blue Room, and told the President in person that the “whole back of the White House—only three men. Anybody could take a five ton truck with 20 men and they could take the White House without any trouble.”87 It seemed endemic—Pearl Harbor merely the symbol of America’s wider complacency. Inside the Treasury, Secretary Morgenthau was accosted by one of his senior staff. “Has there been negligence,” the staffer asked, “or is it just the fortunes of war?”88