Pearl Harbor: From Infamy To Greatness

by Craig Nelson

  “What’s that thing, Mike”: Michael F. Reilly, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947).

  “His uppermost thought”: Roosevelt, My Parents.

  “Our country has been attacked,” “American soil has been treacherously”: Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Advisory Board, December 8, 1941, America First Committee, Hoover Institution.

  “Today all of us are in the same boat”: FDR to “For the Former Naval Person,” December 8, 1941, Map Room Papers, FDR papers.

  “Even the children were pin-drop”: Ramsey.

  “Since the war, I have confiscated,” “Cowboy, a sailor from Texas”: Travers.

  “God have mercy on us”: PBS.org.

  “In all the war I never received”: Churchill.

  “The fruits of victory are tumbling”: Keene.

  “What’s going to happen at war”: Editors, “Remembering Pearl Harbor,” National Geographic.

  “Remember December eighth!”: Keene.

  “It is almost certain that”: Carroll V. Glines, Doolittle’s Tokyo Raider (Princeton, NJ: C. Van Nostrand, 1964).

  Chapter 10: Resurrection

  “trying to salvage something”: PHA.

  “In the Navy’s gravest hour”: Ibid.

  “[First] there was a curfew”: Richardson, Reflections.

  “their physical characteristics,” “they were tracked out”: PHA.

  “the effective causes”: PHA.

  “immediate evacuation of all,” “If it is a question of the safety”: Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City (New York: Scribner, 2015).

  “I’d just turned five years old”: Jon Stewart.

  “When we had to leave”: Travers.

  “it was God’s mercy that our fleet”: Wallin.

  “because of the floating oil”: Raymer.

  “we gathered on the barge”: Ibid.

  “All the vacationers had seen,” “The U-boat attack was”: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear.

  Chapter 11: Vengeance

  “a deep, powerful thirst”: PHA.

  “I got a call from Major Ski York”: Hasdorff, “Interview with York”; a detailed version of this story is in The First Heroes.

  “The reason Eglin was chosen”: Ibid.

  “Special five-hundred-pound demolition”: AFHRA.

  “was fairly well convinced that none,” “Within five minutes”: Hasdorff, “Schultz.”

  “one of the most even-tempered”: Larrabee.

  “I don’t know what the hell this logistics is”: Spector.

  “the antithesis of cooperation”: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear.

  “the whole organization belongs”: Costello.

  “a rough bunch”: Hasdorff, “Macia.”

  “What we have got to do, Henry”: Hull papers.

  “find ways and means of carrying home”: Reynolds.

  “If the army has some plane”: Ibid.

  “Go see General Arnold”: Hasdorff, “Schultz.”

  “the marine personnel in particular”: Hasdorff, “Crouch.”

  “The sailors I saw were jumping up”: Merrill.

  “Personally, I know exactly what I’m”: Author interview.

  “This was zero weather conditions”: Author interview.

  “You knew how long it would take them”: Steven Jurika interview, United States Naval Institute, March 17, 1976.

  “It’d be a pretty bad feeling”: Author interview.

  “We watched him like hawks”: Lawson.

  “At last”: Author interview.

  “The general has asked me to tell you”: Emmens.

  “Doc stepped away and walked”: Lawson.

  “There was this Chinese band”: Author interview.

  “You remember the novel of James Hilton”: Samuel Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (New York: Harper and Row, 1952).

  “Headquarters spokesmen sarcastically pooh-poohed,” Fuchida and Okumiya.

  “We fed the Americans”: The Reverend Charles Meeus, “China Letter,” Reader’s Digest, May 1944.

  “The raid had three advantages”: Doolittle.

  “I was given what they call”: Author interview.

  “Sight what appears to be ten,” “We had by this time undergone”: Larrabee.

  “curved white slashes”: Reminisces of Vice Admiral James E. Thach, US Naval Historical Center.

  “I saw this glint in the sun”: Ibid.

  “the plump silhouettes of the”: Larrabee.

  “for reasons that will always”: Willmott.

  Chapter 12: Triumph

  “contrary to international law”: International Military Tribunal, Far East papers, NA.

  “At night we would hear this beautiful”: Author interview.

  “The tribunal, acting under the law”: International Military Tribunal, Far East papers, NA.

  “If the Americans win”: Hasdorff.

  “I take full responsibility”: Prange papers.

  “Being ready to defend,” “Isn’t there some place where”: Bix.

  “We thought, ‘Well’ ”: Hasdorff, “Hite.”

  “Lord, though I am far”: Watson.

  “one morning he opened the slot”: Ibid.

  “Long may the tale be,” “Hirohito eats shit!”: Manchester.

  “There was nothing macho”: Terkel.

  “Do you have any bones”: Charles Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970).

  “the primitive days of fighting Indians,” “when you have to deal with a beast”: Peter Wyden, Day One (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).

  “People of the Philippines, I have returned”: PBS.org.

  “I can never again see”: Manchester.

  “Hell is on us”: Bix.

  “I heard the huzzle-huzzle”: George Martin, “Black Snow and Leaping Tigers,” Harper’s, February 1946.

  “The bombs were falling like”: Webb.

  “LeMay said if we’d lost the war”: Morris, The Fog of War.

  “Duty is a heavy burden”: Dunnigan and Nofi.

  “The geographical advantages of the homeland”: Frank.

  “I got out of bed”: Hasdorff, “DeShazer.”

  “Despite the fact that it was”: Laurence.

  “I was told that even Tokyo”: Bix.

  “the war is over”: Dower, Embracing Defeat.

  “It is my earnest hope”: PBS.org.

  “Here is the victor announcing the verdict to the prostrate enemy”: Toshikazu Kase, Journey to the Missouri (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950).

  “our people . . . knew how to advance”: Dower, Embracing Defeat.

  “I must say to myself that I ruined myself”: Kato.

  “A flatbed truck with six Japanese”: Author interview.

  “After the war ended”: Author interview.

  “One thing I’ve noticed”: Dr. Gerald Levine, Veterans Administration Hospital, East Orange, NJ, Jimmy Doolittle and Me, http://www.tankbooks.com/ptsd.htm.

  “Give me bread or give me bullets”: PBS.org.

  “I am very sorry it is taking me so long to die”: International Military Tribunal, Far East papers, NA.

  Chapter 13: Legacy

  “I had a job to do and I didn’t give”: Wu.

  “I saw the Oklahoma roll over”: McKinley.

  “I was pretty shook up”: Jasper et al.

  “You really never get the smell”: Cross.

  “We went to the Japanese church”: Richardson.

  “sags in the middle”: M. Miller, “Pearl Harbor 30 Years Later.”

  “I’ve never dared to go near”: Jasper et al.

  “For them this was a great victory”: Blakeman.

  “Even though it was an unavoidable war,” “The most impressive place”: Gallicchio.

  “I thought we would win”: Flint.

  “In the last years of his life”: Author interview.

  “It was a damned good movie”
: Goldstein, “John Finn.”

  “I seen the Arizona blow up”: Editors, “Remembering Pearl Harbor,” National Geographic.

  “I have no rancor”: Robert Reinhold, “Pearl Harbor Remembered,” New York Times, December 8, 1991.

  “Don’t talk about that”: McKinley.

  “Of course the military had much”: Sanger.

  “There is no need now”: Associated Press, “Japan Declines to State Regret at Pearl Harbor.”

  “relates to the mentality of”: Kristof.

  “The world starts moving”: French, “ ‘Pearl Harbor’ in Japan.”

  “Fifty years of pain”: Reinhold.

  “We did not invite the Japanese”: Ibid.

  “It was . . . like having the sun”: Prange, God’s Samurai.

  “Fuchida had two women”: Author interview.

  “was shocked and mortified”: Schmidt.

  “thirty-six straight days”: Blakeman.

  “I am so sorry”: Ibid.

  “This marks the first time”: Cook 3rd Class Doris Miller, USN, at Naval History & Heritage Command.

  “This was a very courageous young man”: Editors, “Remembering Pearl Harbor,” National Geographic.

  “the greatest honor that could be paid”: Chester.

  “When Dorie Miller took gun in hand”: Ibid.

  “In their most cited paper”: Michael Lewis, “The King of Human Error,” Vanity Fair, December 2011.

  “In retrospect Pearl Harbor seemed”: Life’s Picture History of World War II (New York: Time, 1950).

  “Our borders are unfortified,” “that oceans are no longer moats”: Editors, “The Imprints of Pearl Harbor,” New York Times, December 1, 1991.

  “if there had been something like coordination”: “The Impact of Pearl Harbor,” Intelligence throughout History, US Central Intelligence Agency Archives.

  “My answer is in affirmative,” “It is logical that”: Weintraub, “The Conscript.”

  “For all of our warts”: Jeffrey Goldberg. “The Obama Doctrine.” The Atlantic, April 2016.

  “a mirror of the world”: Cordell Hull, Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: Macmillan, 1948).

  “the one person in all the world”: Vandenbosch.

  “What kind of peace”: John F. Kennedy, “Peace Speech,” American University, June 10, 1963.

  Appendix 1: Judgment and Controversy

  “The Commission examined 127”: PHA.

  “This is to my mind a very important part of the message”: PHA.

  “That we could defeat the enemy at the outbreak of the war”: Weintraub, Pearl Harbor Christmas.

  “There was no relevant intelligence communications”: Clausen and Lee.

  “that immediate action be taken”: Ibid.

  “Even if one admits . . . that President Roosevelt wanted”: Prange papers.

  “instead of the British mystery where”: Wallace-Wells.

  “The country was not ready for preparedness”: Lutton.

  SOURCES

  Administrative History Section, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. The United States Navy Medical Department at War, 1941–1945. Washington, DC: The Bureau, 1946.

  Agawa, Hiroyuki. The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy. New York: Kodansha International, 1969.

  Alcott, Caroll D. “Why Remember Pearl Harbor?” Antioch Review, 1942.

  Allen, Thomas B. Remember Pearl Harbor: American and Japanese Survivors Tell Their Stories. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2001.

  Anastas, Benjamin. “Atrocity Exhibition.” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 24, 2014.

  Anderson, Charles R. Days of Lightning, Years of Scorn: Walter C. Short and the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005.

  Armstrong, Alan. Preemptive Strike: The Secret Plan That Would Have Prevented the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2006.

  Arnold, Henry H. “8.2, Doolittle Raid.” Murray Green Donation, Air Force Archives.

  ———. Global Mission. New York: Harper and Row, 1949.

  Asada, Sadao. From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006.

  Associated Press. “Adm. Husband E. Kimmel Dies; Pearl Harbor Navy Commander.” New York Times, May 15, 1968.

  ———. “Japan Declines to State Regret at Pearl Harbor.” New York Times, December 7, 1991.

  Baker, Kevin. “The Guilt Dogging the Greatest Generation.” New York Times, November 12, 2000.

  Baker, Lieutenant Colonel Sue. “Remembering Granddad Doolittle.” AFMC Public Affairs, February 1998.

  Baldwin, Hanson W. “160 Ships Berthed at Pearl Harbor.” New York Times, May 27, 1935.

  Barr, George. “Rough draft of a story by Captain George Barr, pertinent to the trials in Shanghai of those Japanese officials held responsible for the execution of three Doolittle fliers who participated in the raid on Tokyo.” March 30, 1946. In the papers of James Harold Doolittle, Library of Congress.

  Bartsch, William H. December 8, 1941: MacArthur’s Pearl Harbor. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003.

  Batty, Peter, writer and director. “Episode 6: Banzai! Japan, 1931–1942.” The World at War. Thames Television, 1973.

  Beinart, Peter. “Trump Is Right about 9/11.” Atlantic, October 19, 2015.

  Bell, Joseph N. “Mystery of Magazine Ads Hinting of Pearl Harbor Attack Lingers 48 Years Later.” Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1989.

  Bernard, Tom. “Japs Were Jumpy after Tokyo Raid,” Stars and Stripes, April 27, 1943.

  Biers, Dan. “Japanese Fighter Pilot Recalls Pearl Harbor.” Associated Press, December 7, 1991.

  Bigelow, Michael E. “A Short History of Army Intelligence.” Military Intelligence, April 2009.

  bin Laden, Osama. “Dispatch to Terror Agents on the Eve of 9/11.” http://wwwamericanrhetoric.com/speeches/binladdendispatch.htm.

  Bix, Herbert P. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

  Blakeman, Karen. “R. I. Fiske, Pearl Harbor Survivor, Dead at 82.” Honolulu Advertiser, April 5, 2004.

  Bodnar, John. The “Good War” in American Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

  Borch, Frederic L. “Comparing Pearl Harbor and 9/11: Intelligence Failure? American Unpreparedness? Military Responsibility?” Journal of Military History 67, no. 3 (July 2003).

  Borg, Dorothy, Shumpei Okamoto, and Dale K. A. Finlayson, eds. Pearl Harbor as History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.

  Brinkley, David, narrator. Pearl Harbor: Two Hours That Changed the World. NHK/ABC News Productions, May 26, 2001.

  Bruck, Connie. “The Inside War: To Expose Torture, Dianne Feinstein Fought the C.I.A.—and the White House.” New Yorker, June 22, 2015.

  Bryant, Arthur. Triumph in the West, 1943–1946. London: Macmillan, 1959.

  Lieutenant Colonel Burch, Major Fogelman, and Captain Tate. “Interview: Gen. James H. Doolittle.” USAF Oral History Program, September 26, 1971.

  Burns, Ken, director. The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. PBS, September 14, 2014.

  Carter, K. C., and R. Mueller. “Combat Chronology, Army Air Forces in World War II.” September 15, 1945. Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center and the Office of Air Force History. Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL.

  Carter, Shan, and Amanda Cox. “One 9/11 Tally: $3.3 Trillion.” New York Times, September 8, 2011.

  Castle, Terry. “Stockhausen, Karlheinz: The Unsettling Question of the Sublime.” New York, August 27, 2011.

  Central Intelligence Agency. Intelligence throughout History: The Impact of Pearl Harbor. December 2010. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2010-featured-story-archive/pearl-harbor.html.

  Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking. New York: Basic Books, 1997.

  Chester, Robert K. “ ‘Negroes’ Number One Hero: Doris Miller, Pearl Harbor, and Retroactive M
ulticulturalism in World War II Remembrance.” American Quarterly 65, no. 1 (March 2013).

  Churchill, Winston. The Second World War. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

  Clarke, Thurston. Pearl Harbor Ghosts. New York: William Morrow, 1991.

  Clausen, Henry C., and Bruce Lee. Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement. New York: Da Capo, 1992.

  Congress of the United States. Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack. “Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, pursuant of S. Con. Res. 27, 79th Congress, a concurrent resolution to investigate the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and events and circumstances relating thereto, and additional views of Mr. Keefe, together with Minority views of Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Brewster.” 79th Congress, 39 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946. Nicknamed PHA by scholars, this Center for Legislative Archives collection includes the documents of the federal government’s prior investigations: Roberts, Army Board, Navy Court, Clarke, Hewitt, and Clausen.

  Cook, Haruko Taya, and Theodore F. Cook. Japan at War: An Oral History. New York: New Press, 1992.

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  Craig, William. The Fall of Japan. New York: Dial, 1967.

  Cressman, Robert J., and J. Michael Wenger. “Infamous Day: Marines at Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941.” World War II Commemorative Series. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1992.

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