Pearl Harbor (13 page)

The network then reached its London correspondent, Robert Trout, hoping that he could provide the British perspective on the flash, but the news had not yet reached government officials. CBS managed to reach its Manila stringer, but it quickly lost the connection. CBS, however, was able to set up a telephone connection with KGMB, its Honolulu affiliate, which confirmed that the raid was still in progress.
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As soon as the story broke, reporters rushed to the White House for more information. The White House press office was small and informal, as there were only about a dozen full-time reporters assigned to the White House in 1941. The three wire services—the United Press, Associated Press, and International News Service—were the main sources of information. Reporters from the major New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington papers joined them.

Roosevelt had developed a personal relationship with many of the White House reporters. He called them by their first names, joked with them, and invited them for private teas. A few correspondents joined the family for holiday meals. Carrying over a tradition that he started as governor of New York, FDR held regular Sunday-evening dinners where the journalists felt like “neighbors invited in for potluck.” After dinner, they retreated to the second floor to watch a movie and the newsreels for the day.
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In the past, FDR had told the correspondents that he would not make news on Sunday, so they could plan on having the day off. Early had told the press corps the same thing the day before. And so on December 7, the press office was closed, and there were no reporters present when the flash came about Pearl Harbor.

Merriman Smith, the veteran UPI reporter assigned to the White House on December 7, was planning on spending a quiet day at home.
He was in the bathroom when his wife knocked on the door at 2:25 p.m. “You know what the radio just said.” “No,” he responded. “What?” “It said the Japanese bombed Hawaii.” Smith recalled that he “nearly knocked” his wife to the ground as he rushed from the bathroom to get to the telephone. He got to the receiver just as his office was calling him. His editor bellowed into the phone: “Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor. Get to the White House fastasyoucan.” He rushed outside, where he flagged down a motorcycle policeman who escorted him to the White House.
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Smith arrived in time for the first of many press briefings that day. There were only six reporters present at it. The others were still scrambling to get to the White House. After they gathered in the pressroom, a policeman stuck his head in and announced, “Mr. Early will see you.” The reporters pushed into Early's private office and found him sitting behind his desk. His secretary, Ruth Jane Rumelt, sat next to him with a notepad. “So far as is known now, the attacks on Hawaii and Manila were made wholly without warning—when both nations were at peace and were delivered within an hour or so of the time that the Japanese Ambassador and the special envoy, Mr. Kurusu, had gone to the State Department and handed to the Secretary of State Japan's reply to the Secretary's memorandum of Nov. 26.” He went on to say that the president “directed the Army and Navy to execute all previously prepared orders looking to the defense of the United States.” He closed by announcing that the president was meeting with military advisers and making efforts to inform congressional leaders.
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Smith recalled that for the rest of the day “there occurred the maddest scramble, the most rapid succession of world-shaking stories in the memory of the oldest old-timer in the newspaper business around Washington.” To put the day in some perspective, he noted that in four hours, he managed four flashes and eight bulletin stories. “Men spend an entire lifetime in press association work without ever handling one flash story. I had four in four hours.”
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Early provided reporters with regular updates as more journalists filed into the cramped pressroom. After each announcement, reporters who did not have direct lines dashed for the two telephone booths designated for their use. At 4:09 p.m., NBC had successfully installed a microphone and became the first network to broadcast live from the pressroom at the White House. CBS followed with its broadcast two hours later.

As reporters were about to leave his office following a 4:30 briefing, Early asked “if there is any one of you reporting for Japanese agencies.” If there was, he said, “I am giving you no information and I have asked the Secret Service to take up the credentials of Japanese correspondents.” Reporters asked him if their Japanese counterparts would be arrested. Early answered obliquely, “That is an activity of the Department of Justice.”
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By 5:00 there were nearly one hundred reporters, radiomen, and newsreel and still photographers in the pressroom. Newspapers, eager to feed the public's hunger for information, were printing extra editions. “The world wanted the news of Pearl Harbor and new details when they were available,” Smith recalled.
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Y
et despite the press corps' frenzy of activity—all the major radio stations reported news of the attack within thirty minutes—the information spread slowly. Twenty-three years later, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, 92 percent of the public knew what had happened within two hours of the shooting. Within five hours, nearly every American—99.8 percent—knew that Kennedy was assassinated. There were no comparable studies done in 1941 documenting how the news of Pearl Harbor spread, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it leaked out gradually over the course of the afternoon.
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Only a small number of Americans were listening to the radio when the first Pearl Harbor announcements were made. In the 1940s, it was typical for middle-class Americans to eat dinner around 1:00 p.m. on
Sunday. Many families living in the East and Midwest were gathered around the dinner table or relaxing after a big meal. Most of the nation was also experiencing nice weather on December 7. More people than usual were outside, going for afternoon drives in the country, walking in the park, attending football games, or catching a matinee at the local movie theater.

Despite the enormity of the news, many organizations chose not to release it. At Washington's Griffith Stadium, management chose not to make an announcement to the 27,102 fans attending the Redskins game with the Philadelphia Eagles. Among those in attendance was a young ensign named John F. Kennedy. The owner later explained, “No announcement of hostilities was made because it is against the policy of the Redskins management to broadcast non-sports news over the stadium's public address system.”
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But the crowd must have sensed that something important had happened by the succession of important people who were being summoned by the public address system. About halfway through the first quarter, the speakers blared, “Admiral W. H. P. Bland is asked to report to his office at once!” Bland was the chief of the Bureau of Ordnance of the navy. A few minutes later came another announcement: “The Resident Commissioner of the Philippines, Mr. Joaquim Elizalde, is urged to report to his office immediately!” The reports continued throughout the game, but most fans were focused on the goalposts, not the public address system. They stayed until the very end and watched the Redskins win in dramatic fashion. Not until after they left the stadium did most learn about the attack.
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In Chicago, the first flash came just as many locals were digesting their traditional dinner of roast beef and mashed potatoes. According to one reporter, the city “was just getting ready for a good after dinner belch when the war news came.” Those who were at home with the radio on canceled their afternoon plans and listened for updates. Others would learn about the news only later. Theater owners made the decision not to interrupt crowded matinee showings. Moviegoers learned
the news only when they stepped outside and heard the newsboys shouting inaccurately, “U.S. Declares War on Japan.”
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In Southern California, the thermometer climbed near eighty degrees, with bright sunshine overhead. Many people were taking advantage of the nice weather by spending time out of the house and away from the radio. Much of the conversation in coffee shops, in restaurants, and on the sidewalks that late morning was about how the UCLA Bruins had managed to play the superior USC Trojans to a 7–7 tie the day before. There was no dramatic moment when everyone heard the news. Instead, it spread over a series of hours. “There was no hue and cry on the public streets where the outdoor loving were bound for their Sunday pleasures,” noted reporter Sidney James. The news “moved through backyard gardens, across golf courses, into bars . . . and finally to the beaches of the fateful Pacific.”
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Radio broke the story, but it was the telephone that helped spread it over the course of the afternoon. Phone lines across the nation jammed as people called family members and friends to share the news. Because there were no direct-dial phones in 1941, every call had to be placed manually by switchboard operators. A deluge of calls quickly overwhelmed them. There were one-hour delays on all calls into Chicago. In San Francisco, the rush of calls crashed the phone system. No one was able to get calls through to Hawaii or the Philippines, although it was unclear on Sunday whether that was because of military censorship or overwhelming demand. Western Union reported a flood of cables to Honolulu and Manila.
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In addition to radio and telephone, the other major source of news was daily newspapers. Major newspapers called in reporters to cover the story and produce “extra” Sunday-afternoon editions. The
Atlanta Journal
came out with an extra at 4:40 p.m. The city's other leading paper, the
Constitution
, followed with its own “extra” a few minutes later. In Chicago, the
Herald American
hit the streets two hours after the news was announced on the radio. At the
Los Angeles Times
office, the AP reporter heard the flash warning at 11:30. It produced an afternoon edition
that rolled off the press at 2:10 p.m. with four-inch block letters crying “WAR.” On a Sunday, the typical
Times
circulation was 25,000 copies. By that evening, it had sold 150,000 papers.
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Newsboys standing on street corners hawking the “extras” made a small fortune on December 7. “We sold the three-cent paper for twenty-five cents and higher, whatever the market could handle,” recalled a precocious thirteen-year-old.
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Perhaps because most Americans were not aware of the extent of the damage inflicted, or the number of casualties, they seemed to take the attack in stride. Oddly enough, many radio networks reported that their phone lines were jammed with callers. Most of the calls, however, were not from people asking for more information about the attack on Pearl Harbor, about the potential for sabotage, or about the imminent declaration of war. Instead, they simply wanted to know when their favorite shows, which were now being preempted by news, would be rebroadcast.
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A reporter for the
Kansas City Times
reported that the city maintained “a business-as-usual calm” in the hours after the story broke. The main reason, he speculated, was that most people did not learn of the attack until the newspaper boys started shouting the headline on Sunday evening as they pushed late editions on street corners. “Although bulletins had been flashed on the radio, many persons apparently were engaged in Sunday afternoon pursuits that had prevented their learning previously of the news.” The custodian of the Liberty Memorial, dedicated to the fallen soldiers of World War I, reported a typical Sunday crowd of 3,000 visitors that day. He recalled only one person mentioning the attack. Local theaters made the announcement, but most people responded by settling in and watching the movie.
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The fairly calm public response was due in part to the prevailing belief that Japan represented little threat to America. Most Americans clung to widely held notions of Japan as a third-rate military power that was no match for the United States. Before the attack, Gallup asked if the United States would win a war with Japan, and 92 percent said yes.
Only 1 percent said no. When asked if the U.S. Navy was “strong enough to defeat the Japanese Navy,” 80 percent said yes, and only 4 percent said no.
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After surveying people on the street on the afternoon of December 7, one reporter noted, “Whether rightly or wrongly, people seem to believe all the so-called experts' claims that Japan has only two bath tubs in the navy, no money, no oil and all Japanese fliers are so cross-eyed they couldn't hit lake [
sic
] Michigan with a bomb.” A service-station attendant told the
Los Angeles Times
, “We should be able to clean up on those fellows in six weeks or less.”
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There was so little hard information available that most people reached their own conclusions about the extent of the damage. Given their views of Japanese inferiority, and the confidence in the impregnable Pearl Harbor, Americans remained optimistic. A restaurant chef told the
Los Angeles Times
, “The Japanese must know what they're up to. But from early reports it seems they didn't accomplish any major objective. Once we start fighting it won't last long.” An upholsterer agreed: “Lord help those Japanese when our planes begin dropping bombs on some of those paper and wood cities. They'll start an inferno that will spread over all Japan. It won't last long.”
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Most Americans did not make an immediate connection between the attack in Hawaii and the war in Europe. In most of the interviews conducted on Sunday, people spoke only about the likelihood and necessity of America's going to war against Japan. Few seemed to recognize that the attack made America part of a worldwide struggle that would involve war on two fronts. Some Americans assumed the story was a hoax. With Orson Welles's famous 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast of an invasion from Mars still fresh in their memories, many people were determined not to be fooled again. When a New Jersey reporter stopped a man walking his dog and asked him for his reaction to the news about Pearl Harbor, he responded, “Ha! You're not going to catch me on another of your pranks.” In Los Angeles, a reporter for the
Times
stopped at a local restaurant on his way to do a story from an army base
and found that no one had heard the news, and when told, they assumed it was a joke. Most pretended not to hear and went on eating. He noticed that most of the drivers on the road seemed equally oblivious to the news. “It's a peaceful Sunday drive for them, with nothing worse than a traffic snarl to worry about,” he observed. Even the guards who greeted him at the army post were unaware that the nation would soon be at war.
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