Bloch said that all available planes, along with two task forces, had “gone out to look for these fellows” who had attacked Pearl. But he cautioned that the army had lost a lot of pursuit planes. “They lost one squadron, I heard.” He noted that Guam was under attack by two squadrons of Japanese fighters, and there were unconfirmed reports of parachute troops landing on the island. When he told Stark that the United States had sunk three enemy submarines, including one inside the harbor, Stark responded, “The submarine sunk in the harbor, is it German?” Block responded that he did not “know what it is as yet.”
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Both men seemed to believe that the Japanese ships were still off the coast of Hawaii and possibly preparing for a land invasion the following morning. “I prophesized that there might be a raid in the morning,” Stark said. Bloch, who was “expecting attacks on Wake and Midway,” summed up the situation: “It's a pretty bad mess here. Of course they came in with no warning at all. They did their job very efficiently.”
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It is likely that Roosevelt also received an update on the Philippines at some point during his dinner. The army finally got General MacArthur on the line at 7:00 p.m. in Washington (about 8:00 a.m., December 8, in Manila). The general acknowledged receiving the reports that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. In Washington, General Leonard Gerow, calling on behalf of Marshall, warned MacArthur of the possibility of an imminent Japanese offensive. “Report immediately any Japanese operations or any indications,” he said. “I wouldn't be surprised if you got an attack there in the near future.” To underscore the point, Gerow repeated the last sentence. MacArthur assured the general that he was prepared and asked him to pass along a message to Marshall that “our tails are up in the air.”
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Although it must have been reassuring that Manila had not been attacked, there was little doubt in Washington that the islands were going to be targeted at some point. (Indeed, although they did not know it at the time, the Japanese had been planning a dawn attack that morning but had been stymied by heavy fog on Formosa, from which the planes
were to have been launched.) MacArthur's air force commander had placed his forces on alert as soon as he learned about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he requested permission to launch a preemptive strike against Japanese positions in Formosa. MacArthur, however, vetoed the idea, saying, “We couldn't attack until we were attacked.”
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Shortly after 10:00 a.m. on the morning of December 8, the skies over Formosa cleared, allowing Japan's military commanders to launch their force of 108 bombers and 84 Zeros. By 11:30 a.m., radar crews in the Philippines started tracking a large echo approaching Luzon from the north. Before noon, MacArthur received the first reports that Japanese bombers had assaulted Baguio in northern Luzon, along with Iba, Tuguegarao, and Tarlac. Finally, a stunned and apparently disoriented MacArthur gave permission to attack Formosa. But the order came too late. At 12:20 p.m., while crews were fueling the planes and loading them with bombs, a fleet of Japanese fighters and bombers appeared overhead.
Over the next hour, Japanese fighters strafed buildings and planes while bombers dropped their deadly cargo. When the attack ended, nearly 100 American aircraft had been destroyed, including a dozen B-17 bombers. More than 80 men were killed and another 150 wounded. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Japan found another surprised and unprepared American military outpost ripe for destruction.
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Reports of a Japanese move against the Philippines would start trickling into the White House late on Sunday evening, but FDR would not learn the full extent of the military disaster until the following morning.
In addition to getting information from military officials around the world, White House staff were listening to reports on the radio and checking with other news sources. At 6:11 p.m., the Associated Press, citing a source in Tokyo, stated there was one Japanese aircraft carrier near Hawaii. That was followed by repeated claims of invading Japanese troops. At 8:35 p.m., the army stated that troops were landing on the west coast of Oahu. There were also claims that two enemy aircraft
carriers had been sunk: one in the Pacific, the other off the coast of an unspecified Latin American country.
These stories were mixed with accurate accounts of Japanese planes over Wake Island and Guam, along with a 5:20 p.m. announcement that Japan declared that a state of war existed with the United States and Great Britain. At 8:06, military intelligence confirmed the assault on Singapore and heavy fighting at Kota Bharu near British Malay. Later that evening, Roosevelt complained about the conflicting information that he was receiving and how difficult it was to sort fact from fiction.
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oosevelt liked telling the story about the time the poet Carl Sandburg came to visit him. Sandburg, who was writing his magisterial biography of Abraham Lincoln, asked FDR what window Lincoln had looked out to see the smoke of Confederate cannons across the Potomac. Roosevelt did not know, but he invited Sandburg to tour the second floor and decide for himself. Sandburg stopped at the center window of the Oval Study and, according to FDR, “stood there silently for about ten minutes.” FDR, not wanting to disturb him, shuffled some papers. “Yes,” Sandburg finally said, “that's the oneâthe center window.” When Roosevelt asked how he knew for sure, the poet responded, “I felt it.”
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If Roosevelt looked out the three large windows of his study, he would have seen the same sweep of the Potomac that Abraham Lincoln saw on the eve of the Civil War and that Woodrow Wilson stared out at in the days leading up to World War I. FDR seemed mindful of the lessons of both wars in the months leading up to December 7. Like Lincoln, while viewing war as inevitable, he understood the moral and psychological advantage of having the enemy fire the first shot. He had not anticipated that the first shot would cripple the Pacific Fleet, but he now planned to mold public outrage to his war goals. He was determined to avoid the mistake that Wilson made, turning his war into a
crusade for democracy, only to have the initial idealism and enthusiasm turn to despair and disillusion when the realities of battle settled in.
FDR walked a delicate line in the hours after Pearl Harbor: He needed to use the attack to justify declaring war against Japan, but he wanted to avoid providing the public with details of the devastation. Perhaps Roosevelt worried that the specifics would demoralize the nation, allowing his enemies to blame his administration for the glaring security lapse. It is also likely that FDR feared that arousing too much passion would undermine his larger strategic goals. He wanted to transform anger at Japan's actions in the Pacific into a mandate to enter the war against Germany in Europe.
Whatever steps he decided to take, the president realized that he needed to remain mindful of public opinion. FDR, who possessed an instinctive feel for the national mood, probably appreciated the crosscurrents that engulfed the nation that evening.
While strong undercurrents of anxiety and fear gripped Hawaii and the West Coast, the hundreds of telegrams that poured into the White House that evening revealed the outrage and resolve of a nation prepared to follow his leadership. Governors, mayors, local city councils, civic organizations, and ordinary citizens took the time to send telegrams to the White House expressing their outrage at the attacks and their unqualified support for any response he ordered. For the first time since the early days of the New Deal, FDR confronted a unified nation devoid of political differences and desperately looking for him to take charge.
The governors, Democrats and Republicans, of nearly every state sent messages of support to the White House. “There is imperative need for courageous unified action by the American people,” wrote his vanquished 1936 election opponent, Alf Landon. “Please command me in any way I can be of service.” Kentucky governor Keen Johnson wrote that the people of his state believed it was an “outrage” that Japan responded to the president's peace overtures by launching a brutal surprise attack. “As governor of Kentucky I assure you people of this state
are prepared to follow your leadership and make any sacrifice you regard necessary to meet emergency.” The governor of Alabama, Frank M. Dixon, echoed the sentiment of most elected officials when he wrote, “In this crisis you can be assured that the people of Alabama are behind you and that you will have their united support in whatever decisions you may reach for the good of the nation.”
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Touching letters from private citizens also flooded into the White House. A mother from Lancaster, California, told the president of the great sacrifice she was willing to offer to the war effort. “I have very little to offer,” she wrote, but she was willing to part with “the only thing I have on this earth . . . one son, whom I love excessively.” She noted that as war seemed imminent, he now “belongs to America.”
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Many people living in the Washington, D.C., area chose a more visible demonstration of their support. By the evening of December 7, a large crowd had gathered outside the White House. “The night was chilly and a cold damp wind swept in from the Potomac,” observed Merriman Smith, “but the shivering crowds remained.” They broke into a spontaneous rendition of “God Bless America” and “My Country 'Tis of Thee.” “The words and music were faltering at first,” Smith noted, “but swelled up strong.” Smith wondered if FDR “could hear those unrehearsed songs coming spontaneously and from the hearts of the little people across his back lawn.”
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“Deadly calm”
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T 6:30 ON Sunday evening, as FDR was being wheeled up from his doctor's appointment back to his study for dinner, Eleanor Roosevelt was entering the NBC studios in Washington. Two months earlier, in October 1941, Eleanor had agreed to host a regular Sunday-evening radio show sponsored by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau. The show provided her with a forum to discuss issues impacting American women. The first lady could have used the attack on Pearl Harbor as an excuse to cancel her scheduled appearance on December 7. Instead, she decided to use the occasion to speak to the American public. She crafted her own remarks, and there is no evidence that she cleared them with her husband, or with anyone else in the White House.
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n the day of the Pearl Harbor attacks, Eleanor Roosevelt had resolutely gone about her schedule. She had organized a large lunch party with thirty-one guests in the White House Blue Room for 1:00 p.m. One of the guests, Mrs. Charles Hamlin, recalled that “Eleanor was quite a little late in joining us and she seemed a bit flustered as she told us she was so sorry but the news from Japan was very bad” and that her husband would not be able to join them. “It was while we were at that luncheon that the bombardment of Pearl Harbour took place,” she reflected, although no one was aware of it at the time.
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At 2:40 p.m., after saying good-bye to her guests, Eleanor made her way back upstairs to her sitting room on the second floor. As she passed by Franklin's study, she saw all of the commotion and knew that something awful had happened. “All the secretaries were there, two telephones were in use, the senior military aides were on their way with messages. I said nothing because the words I heard over the telephone were quite sufficient to tell me that finally the blow had fallen and we had been attacked.” Realizing that FDR was too busy, she decided not to interrupt him.
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Later that afternoon when she peeked into his office, she noticed his “deadly calm.” It was a calm she had witnessed before, a part of his character that had developed over years of struggle against a body that had betrayed him. The roots of Roosevelt's emotional strength trace back to his childhood, but his struggle to return to public life after being diagnosed with polio added a new dimension to his character. It is impossible to appreciate FDR's calm and deliberate leadership on December 7, 1941, without understanding how his background shaped his temperament. Polio would also transform the relationship between Franklin and Eleanor, allowing them to forge a unique private and public partnership that would shape the times in which they lived.
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y December 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt had emerged as an independent and strong-minded player in the White House. Since the days of Martha Washington, first ladies were expected to limit themselves to social and ceremonial affairs. “The President's wife must be a silent partner,” stated the
New York Times Magazine
in 1932. “The unwritten law is that the First Lady gives no interviews, makes no public statements.”
That was before Eleanor Roosevelt. She became the first presidential spouse to write a regular newspaper column, to serve as a radio commentator, to hold regular press conferences, and to testify before Congress. Because FDR had limited mobility, he sent Eleanor out to serve as his eyes and ears. She investigated the horrible living conditions of
West Virginia coal miners and examined the impact of segregation on blacks in the South. When she returned from her trips, she would brief her husband on what she had witnessed and prod him to action.
In 1940, FDR was seeking an unprecedented third term, but he was reluctant to go before the Democratic Convention in Chicago and ask for it. Instead, he asked Eleanor to go. Despite her reluctance, she agreed and delivered one of the most memorable convention speeches in history. “This is no ordinary time,” she said. The angry, sometimes belligerent crowd, which was threatening to reject FDR's selection of liberal Henry Wallace as vice president, turned quiet. “No time for weighing anything except what we can best do for the country as a whole.” The crowd burst into applause and overwhelmingly supported FDR and his choice of Wallace as his running mate. One newspaper headline read, “Mrs. Roosevelt Stills the Tumult of 50,000.”
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