The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  When general plans fail, lesser plans, miscalculations, technical procedures, and blind chance have a wider play. During the evening of December 6 the Japanese carriers reached the meridian of Oahu, turned south, and amid mounting seas sped toward Pearl Harbor with relentless accuracy. In Tokyo a military censor routinely held up the message from Roosevelt to Hirohito. If it had been in plain English he would not have dared hold up such an awesome communication; if it had been in top-priority code he would not have known enough to; but Roosevelt had sent it in gray code to save time, and it finally arrived too late. In the Japanese Embassy in Washington a many-part message began to come in from Tokyo; the parts were sent down to the coding room, but the cipher staff drifted off to a party, the fourteenth section was delayed, and the embassy closed down for the night. At the War and Navy Departments, signals experts received the first thirteen parts through their MAGIC intercept and swiftly decoded them; copies were rushed to the White House and to Knox and Navy chiefs, but not to Admiral Stark, who was at the theater, nor—inexplicably—to General Marshall, who was understood to be in his quarters.

  At 9:30 P.M. a young Navy officer brought the thirteen parts to the oval study. The President was going over stamps, meanwhile chatting with Hopkins, who was sitting on the sofa. The President read rapidly through the papers. All day he had been receiving reports of Japanese convoy and ship movements in the Southwest Pacific.

  “This means war,” the President said as he handed the sheaf to Hopkins.

  For a few moments the two men talked about likely Japanese troop movements out of Indochina. It was too bad, Hopkins said, that the Japanese could pick their own time and America could not strike the first blow.

  “No, we can’t do that,” Roosevelt said. “We are a democracy and a peaceful people.” Then he raised his voice a bit.

  “But we have a good record.”

  RENDEZVOUS AT PEARL

  In the dark early-morning hours scores of torpedo planes, bombers, and fighters soared off the pitching flight decks of their carriers to the sound of “Banzai!” Soon 183 planes were circling the carriers and moving into formation. At about 6:30 they started south. Emerging from the clouds over Oahu an hour later, the lead pilots saw that everything was as it should be—Honolulu and Pearl Harbor bathed in sunlight, quiet and serene, the orderly rows of barracks and aircraft, the white highway wriggling through the hills—and the great battlewagons anchored two by two along the mooring quays of Pearl Harbor. It was a little after 7:30 A.M., December 7, 1941. It was the time for war.

  On the American ships this Sunday morning sailors were sleeping, eating breakfast, lounging on deck. Some could hear the sound of church bells. A bosun’s mate noticed a flight of planes orbiting in the distance but dismissed it as an air-raid drill. Then the dive bombers screamed down, and the torpedo bombers glided in. Explosions shattered the air; klaxons squalled general quarters; a few antiaircraft guns began firing; colors were raised. Bombs and torpedoes hit the West Virginia, instantly knocking out power and light, disemboweling her captain, and soon sinking the ship to the shallow bottom. The Tennessee, protected by the West Virginia against torpedoes, took two bombs, each on a gun turret. The Arizona had hardly sounded general quarters when a heavy bomb plunged through the deck and burst in a forward magazine; more bombs rained down on the ship, one hurtling right down the stack; a thousand men burned to death or drowned as the ship exploded and listed. A torpedo tore a hole as big as a house in the Nevada, which nonetheless got under way to sortie, but then, under heavy bombardment, ran aground. Three torpedoes struck the Oklahoma; men scrambled over her starboard side as she rolled, only to be strafed and bombed. By now Japanese planes were attacking at will, pouring bombs and machine-gun fire on destroyers, seaplane tenders, minelayers, dry docks, ranging up and down the coast attacking airfields and infantry barracks.

  The flash was received in Washington, AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR—THIS IS NO DRILL. “My God!” Knox exclaimed. “This can’t be true, this must mean the Philippines!” He telephoned the President, who was sitting at his desk in the oval study talking with Hopkins about matters far removed from the war. There must be some mistake, Hopkins said; surely the Japanese would not attack Honolulu. The report probably was true, Roosevelt said; it was just the kind of unexpected thing the Japanese would do. The President was calm, almost relaxed; he seemed like a man who had just got rid of a heavy burden. He had hoped to keep the country out of war, he remarked to Hopkins, but if the report was true, Japan had taken the matter out of his hands. Then, just after 2:00 P.M., he telephoned the news to Hull.

  The Secretary had been at his office all morning reading intercepts of Tokyo’s message. Nomura and Kurusu, whose embassy was still struggling with the translation, were due in around two. Just as they arrived, Hull received Roosevelt’s telephone call. In a steady, clipped voice the President advised Hull to receive the envoys, look at their statement as though he had not already seen it, and bow them out. Hull kept the Japanese standing while he pretended to read their note. Was Nomura, he asked, presenting this document under instructions from his government? Nomura said he was. Hull fixed him in the eye. “I must say that in all my conversations with you during the last nine months I have never uttered one word of untruth.…In all my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions—infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any Government on this planet was capable of uttering them.” Nomura seemed to struggle for words. Hull cut him off with a nod toward the door.

  By now the President was getting first reports on losses, calling in the War Cabinet, dictating a news release to Early. Later Churchill telephoned. The Prime Minister had been sitting with Harriman and Winant at Chequers when a vague report came in over the wireless about Japanese attacks in the Pacific. A moment later his butler, Sawyers, had confirmed the news: “It’s quite true. We heard it ourselves outside….” It took two or three minutes to reach the White House. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” Yes, it was true. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat now.”

  For Churchill it was a moment of pure joy. So he had won, after all, he exulted. Yes, after Dunkirk, the fall of France, the threat of invasion, the U-boat struggle—after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of his own hard responsibility—the war was won. England would live; the Commonwealth and the Empire would live. The war would be long, but all the rest would be merely the proper application of overwhelming force. People had said the Americans were soft, divided, talkative, affluent, distant, averse to bloodshed. But he knew better; he had studied the Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch; American blood flowed in his veins….Churchill set his office to work calling Speaker and whips to summon Parliament to meet next day. Then, saturated with emotion, he turned in and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

  In Washington the shattering specifics were now coming in. So noisy and confused was the President’s study that Grace Tully moved into his bedroom, where she took the calls from an anguished Admiral Stark, typed each item while Pa Watson and the others looked over her shoulder, and rushed them to her boss. She would long remember the agony and near-hysteria of that afternoon. Roosevelt’s early mood of relief was giving way to solemnity and anger. He was tense, excited, shaken. Stimson and Knox were incredulous; they could not understand why Pearl Harbor was sustaining such losses. During the evening, as reports of landings in Oahu came in, Marshall said the rumors reminded him of the last war. “We’re now in the fog of battle.”

  The President found relief in action. He went over troop dispositions with Marshall; ordered Stimson and Knox to mount guards around defense plants; asked Hull to keep Latin-American republics informed and in line; ordered the Japanese Embassy protected and put under surveillance. When the room cleared he called in Grace Tully and began dictating a terse war message. He was calm but tire
d.

  At 8:40 Cabinet members gathered in the study. Roosevelt nodded to them as they came in, but without his usual cheery greetings. He seemed solemn, his mind wholly concentrated on the crisis; he spoke to his military aides in a low voice, as if saving his energy. The group formed a small horseshoe around their chief.

  It was the most serious such session, the President began, since Lincoln met with his Cabinet at the outbreak of the Civil War. He reviewed the losses at Pearl Harbor, which by now were becoming exaggerated in the shocked Navy reports. He read aloud a draft of his message to Congress. Hull urged that the message include a full review of Japanese-American relations, and Stimson and others wanted a declaration of war against Germany as well as Japan. The President rejected both ideas.

  By now congressional leaders were crowding into the study: Speaker Sam Rayburn, Republican Leader Joseph Martin, Democrats Connally, Barkley, Bloom, Republicans McNary, Hiram Johnson, and others (but not Hamilton Fish, whom even at this juncture Roosevelt would not have in the White House). The newcomers gathered around the President’s desk while the Cabinet members moved into outer seats. They sat in dead silence as the President went over the long story of negotiations with Japan. He mentioned the last Japanese note, full of “falsehoods.”

  “And finally while we were on the alert—at eight o’clock—half-past seven—about a quarter past—half past one [here]—a great fleet of Japanese bombers bombed our ships in Pearl Harbor, and bombed all of our airfields….The casualties, I am sorry to say, were extremely heavy.” Guam and Wake and perhaps Manila had been attacked, he went on. “I do not know what is happening at the present time, whether a night attack is on or not. It isn’t quite dark yet in Hawaii….The fact remains that we have lost the majority of the battleships there.”

  “Didn’t we do anything to get—nothing about casualties on their side?” someone asked.

  “It’s a little difficult—we think we got some of their submarines but we don’t know.”

  “Well, planes—aircraft?”

  The President could offer no comfort. He seemed to Attorney General Francis Biddle still shaken, his assurance at low ebb.

  The Navy was supposed to be on the alert, Connally burst out. “They were all asleep! Where were our patrols? They knew these negotiations were going on.” The President did not know. But it was no time for recriminations. The fact was, he said again, that a shooting war was going on in the Pacific. When someone finally said, “Well, Mr. President, this nation has got a job ahead of it, and what we have got to do is roll up our sleeves and win the war,” Roosevelt quickly seized on the remark. He arranged to appear before Congress the next day, without revealing what he would say.

  People had been gathering around the White House all day, pressing against the tall iron fence in front, milling along the narrow street to the west, clustering on the steps of the old State Department Building and behind the green-bronze Revolutionary War cannon and anchor. They peered at the White House, incredulous, anxious, waiting for some sign or movement. Evening came, and a misty, ragged moon. People were now five deep behind the iron railings, their faces reflecting the glow of the brightly lighted mansion; trolleys ran back and forth on Pennsylvania Avenue behind them. Reporters at the front portico watched Cabinet members and Congressmen arrive. To correspondent Richard Strout they looked grim going in, glum coming out. He watched Hiram Johnson, stern, immaculate, stalk across the little stone stage of the portico, and all the ghosts of isolationism seemed to stalk with him. By now the moon was high and the crowd was thinning. From across the White House fountain and grounds a few high, cracked voices could be heard singing “God Bless America.”

  Inside, in his study on the second floor, Roosevelt was gray with fatigue when he finished his emergency conferences late that night. Edward R. Murrow had won an appointment long before and expected it to be canceled, but Roosevelt called for him to share sandwiches and beer. The President was still aroused, almost stunned, by the surprise attack. He poured out to Murrow the information he had on losses. Pounding his fist on the table, he exclaimed that American planes had been destroyed “on the ground, by God, on the ground!”

  Next day, round after round of applause greeted the President as he slowly made his way to the rostrum of the House of Representatives.

  “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

  “The United States was at peace with that Nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American Island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.”

  The chamber was dead quiet. The President was speaking with great emphasis and deliberateness.

  “It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

  “The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

  “Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.

  “Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

  “Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

  “Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

  “Lask night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.

  “And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.”

  A long pause. The chamber was still quiet.

  “Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and will understand the implications to the very life and safety of our Nation.

  “As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

  “But always will our whole Nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.”

  Applause broke out and quickly died away.

  “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion”—the President’s voice was rising with indignation—“the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”

  At last the chamber exploded in a storm of cheers and applause.

  “I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but we will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

  “Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

  “With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

  “I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”

  PART 2

  Defeat

  FIVE “The Massed Forces of Humanity”

  FOR FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT THERE had been the shock of Pearl Harbor, then the sense of relief that the uncertainty was over at last, then the growing alarm and agony about the extent of the losses. Al
l this had been followed by a calm acceptance of the fact of war. Congress voted for war thirty-three minutes after the President finished his address: only one Representative voted Nay. The Great Debate was adjourned, the isolationists suddenly stilled, the domestic strife seemingly over—as was the struggle within Roosevelt’s mind and soul. No need now for misgivings or recriminations. Only one fact mattered: the United States was at war. Yet it was only half a war. What would Germany do? The President would not take the initiative; here, too, he wanted the American people to be presented with the fact of war. But Berlin, aside from exultation in the press over the devastating Japanese blow, remained ominously quiet. Was it possible, after all Washington’s elaborate efforts to fight first in Europe, with only a holding action in the Pacific, that the United States would be left with only a war in the Far East?

  The answer lay mainly with one man: Adolf Hitler. He had hoped that Japan would join his war against Russia; failing that, he was eager that Japan go to war against the Anglo-Americans in the Pacific—in which event he would join that war, too. The crucial strategic question now was whether Japan in turn would attack the Soviet Union; otherwise Germany’s mortal enemy, Russia, and Axis ally, Japan, would be left without a second front. For a quarter-century Hitler had warned against a two-front war; would he take on the most powerful democracy in the world and increase his own two-front gamble without pressuring Tokyo to help out against Russia? And if Tokyo resisted the idea, would Hitler honor his promise to intervene?