Pearl Harbor (18 page)

Later that evening, Churchill recalled what the British foreign secretary had told him about the United States during World War I. He had compared the United States to a giant boiler. “Once the fire is
lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.” The British leader said that night he “slept the sleep of the saved and the thankful.”
¹⁵

Despite his optimistic statements, Churchill still worried that Roosevelt would choose to fight only in the Pacific. If the Americans moved in this direction, it would pull essential resources away from the Atlantic theater, denying Churchill the men that he needed both to stop Hitler's planned invasion and to start an offensive operation to retake Europe.
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American reporters in London were surprised that the British public showed little reaction to the news that evening. “Regarding the Jap war, I feel sure London reaction is much less intense than you'd imagine,” Jeffrey Mark cabled his editors in New York late on December 7. “It is important to realize that to Britishers, Hawaii is not a naval base but a South Sea island with a Hollywood ukulele and hula hula trimmings.” While the British thought it was good that the Americans were finally part of the conflict, that feeling was “qualified by the thought that America will now attend to her own defense needs frantically and tend to neglect British and Russian lease-lend.” They also worried that the U.S. Navy would abandon its Atlantic patrols and relocate to the Pacific.
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Despite the underlying anxiety about how America would respond to the attack, Churchill and the British people could take considerable comfort from knowing that they now had a powerful ally in their once lonely struggle against fascism.

 

 

A
dolf Hitler was at the Wolf's Lair, an underground bunker nestled in the forest about 450 miles northeast of Berlin, when he heard the news of the Pearl Harbor attack. After a late dinner, he gathered with a handful of minions. Although he refused to acknowledge it, his troops were stymied on the eastern front, bogged down by unexpectedly strong Russian resistance and a typically brutal Russian winter. The previous summer, Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa—his assault on his
former ally, the Soviet Union. By the beginning of December 1941, German troops had advanced to Istra, a suburb only 15 miles west of Moscow. But the frigid temperatures and Stalin's patriotic appeals to a shell-shocked nation had slowed the German advance. Fighting the killing cold and the stiffening Russian resistance, the invaders' losses mounted. On December 5, as the Japanese sailed toward Pearl Harbor, the Soviet army launched a massive counterattack along a 560-mile front.

For the past few years, the Nazis had encouraged Japan to attack British and Dutch possessions in Asia, while trying to avoid a direct confrontation with the United States. Hitler's strategy was to keep the United States neutral for as long as possible. He calculated that Roosevelt would not be able to convince the American public to enter the war unless they were attacked. By late November, however, as it became clear that negotiations between Japan and the United States were dead-locked, Germany switched positions. A few days before the attack, the German foreign minister assured Japan that Germany would intervene on its side if it decided to declare war on the United States. He prepared a draft of an agreement that was still unsigned when the bombs started falling on Pearl Harbor.
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While Hitler expected a Japanese move against the United States, he did not know the place or the time. Around midnight on December 7, the German leader was discussing the eastern front and how the German people were supporting the troops by contributing warm clothing to the cause. Suddenly, his press officer burst into the room with a bulletin. They had picked up an American broadcast indicating that the Japanese had attacked at Pearl Harbor. Hitler was elated by the news. Leaping to his feet, he shouted, “The turning point!” As he rushed from the room, he told an aide, “We can't lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in three thousand years.” He called for champagne and invited all the officers for the celebration.
¹⁹

Hitler was elated because he believed that a U.S. war with Japan would relieve pressure on him in the Atlantic. America's policy of providing escorts to British ships while clinging to a policy of neutrality
had made life difficult for German U-boat commanders. “How can a commander know when he should fire his torpedoes and when he shouldn't?” He added that it was impossible for a U-boat commander to “read through a whole book before he fires a torpedo in order to discover if the ship is a British or an American one!”
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The successful Japanese attack, Hitler believed, would destroy “the myth of American superiority.” American military capability, he declared, was overrated. Shortly after the attack, Hitler said he did not “see much future for the Americans.” He dismissed the nation as a “decayed country,” for which he felt nothing but “hatred and deep repugnance.” America, he claimed, was “half Judaized” and half “Negrified.” “How can one expect a state like that to hold together—a country where everything is built on the dollar?”
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Italian leader and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini also welcomed the Japanese attack that brought the Americans into the war. Like Hitler, “Il Duce” believed that Roosevelt was too weak, and the Americans too soft, to wage a successful war. He too doubted that “a country of Negros and Jews” could create an effective fighting force. He also believed that American industrial capabilities were overstated. Most of all, he simply could not understand how a man incapable of walking could lead a nation during war. “Never in history has a people been ruled by a paralytic,” he contemptuously said of FDR. “There have been bald kings, fat kings, handsome kings, and even stupid ones, but never a king who when he wants to go to the toilet or to dinner must be assisted by other men.”
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T
hough for different reasons, both Churchill and Hitler were elated by the news of the Japanese attack. The reception was less enthusiastic among some of Roosevelt's critics at home. There was a large “America First” rally scheduled in Pittsburgh that afternoon at 3:00 p.m. at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall. The committee, formed by a group of students at Yale University in the fall of 1940, was the largest,
most powerful isolationist group in the country. “Our first duty is to keep America out of foreign wars,” its founding document stated. “Our entry would only destroy democracy, not save it.” The group held large rallies, organized letter-writing campaigns, and attracted the support of such luminaries as aviator Charles Lindbergh and dozens of elected officials. By December 7, 1941, there were 450 chapters with around 800,000 members, mostly based in the Midwest.
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Organizers billed the gathering as the “greatest mass rally” of those opposed to the administration's policies and bragged about the featured speaker, North Dakota senator Gerald P. Nye. The organization issued a press release saying that Nye's appearance “is our answer to the local war-mongers who would send other men's sons to die on foreign battlefields.” By 3:00 p.m., a crowd of 1,500 had gathered in a hall decorated with red-white-and-blue bunting and dozens of “Defend America First” signs. Before Nye was scheduled to speak, a local reporter, Robert Hagy, had seen the AP wire announcing the strikes on Pearl. Wanting to get Nye's reaction, Hagy found the senator backstage and shoved the Teletype describing the Japanese attack at him. “It sounds fishy to me,” Nye said. “Can't we have some details? Is it sabotage or is it open attack? I'm amazed that the President should announce an attack without giving details.” He compared the announcement with the way Roosevelt described the USS
Greer
incident, suggesting that it was just another FDR deception.
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The news had already been broadcast over the radio, but apparently few in the audience had heard it. A series of speakers rose to the podium to denounce Roosevelt. Among them, a state senator called Roosevelt “the chief warmonger in the U.S.” Sitting in the back row was a plainclothes member of the Pittsburgh Reserve, Colonel Enrique Urrutia Jr. He knew of the attack and grew increasingly agitated by the partisan jabs. At one point, he stood up and asked whether this was the appropriate time to be making these comments. “Can this meeting be called after what has happened in the last few hours?” he shouted. “Do you know that Japan has attacked Manila, that Japan has attacked Hawaii?”
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The head of the America First chapter claimed that Urrutia was “speaking in broken English” and that it “was very difficult to understand what he was trying to say.” Many in the crowd, however, seemed to understand him perfectly. They booed him, called him a “warmonger,” and shouted, “Throw him out!” Some started to get physical. When an angry group of men moved toward Urrutia, the police intervened and rescued him. “I came to listen,” Urrutia told a reporter afterward. “I thought this was a patriots meeting, but this is a traitors meeting.”
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After the incident, Nye strutted to the platform as if nothing had happened. For nearly forty-five minutes he gave his standard isolationist speech. “Whose war is this?” he asked. The crowd chanted, “Roosevelt's.” During his speech, Hagy received word from his editor that Japan had declared war on the United States. He wanted to get Nye's reaction, so he wrote on a piece of paper, “The Japanese Imperial Government at Tokyo today at 4 p.m. announced a state of war with the U.S. and Great Britain.” He walked onto the platform and handed it to Nye. The senator paused to look at it and then proceeded with his rant for another thirty minutes.
²⁷

Finally, at 5:45 p.m., Nye reluctantly acknowledged the news. “I have before me the worst news that I have encountered in the last 20 years.” He then proceeded to read the note to the crowd. “I can't somehow believe this,” he concluded.

Later that night a defeated and dejected Nye spoke before a crowd of six hundred people at the First Baptist Church. He reviewed the events that led to the war while accusing Roosevelt of “doing his utmost to promote trouble with Japan.” Resigned to the reality of war, he could not resist taking one more swipe at Roosevelt. “We have been maneuvered into this by the President,” he insisted, “but the only thing now is to declare war and to jump into it with everything we have and bring it to a victorious conclusion.”
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11

“I will go down in disgrace”

A
T 6:40, FDR returned to his study, where he tried to enjoy a quiet dinner with Harry Hopkins and Grace Tully. The White House kitchen set up trays of food. The president ate at his desk, and Tully and Hopkins sat on the leather sofas, resting their trays on folding card tables. Roosevelt did not want to talk about Pearl Harbor, but it was difficult to ignore. “For the life of me I can't remember what we ate but I do remember the Boss was happy to have a few quiet minutes before the evening meetings,” Tully recalled.
¹

The attack on Pearl Harbor represented the opening salvo in a breathtaking Japanese offensive. Three hours after the assault on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes appeared in the skies above the island of Guam. Attacks on Thailand followed. At 3:00 p.m., Japan launched its first attacks against Singapore. Forty minutes later, Japanese planes bombed Khota Baru in British Malaya. Before the day was over, Japanese forces would assault Hong Kong, the Midway Islands, Wake Island, and the Philippines.
²

By early evening, Roosevelt still did not have a full picture of the breadth of Japanese aggression. It is difficult to know precisely when FDR learned about the various offensives, but in the original draft of his speech, which he dictated around 5:00 p.m., FDR referenced only the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Malaya. Right after returning from his medical treatment with McIntire, FDR received a report from the Navy Department that Guam was under attack.
³

More bad news was coming, but for now FDR seemed overwhelmed by the potential consequences of Pearl Harbor. Over dinner, FDR shared his private fears about the day's events with Tully and Hopkins. With the Pearl Harbor fleet destroyed, there was nothing stopping Japan's navy from invading and capturing the Hawaiian Islands. Perhaps more frightening, he acknowledged that Japan could invade Los Angeles or San Francisco. Given the poor state of American readiness, he speculated that an invading army could advance as far east as Chicago.

It was also not clear to Roosevelt that evening how the attack would play out politically. He planned to keep tight control of information about the destruction and casualties, but eventually this information would leak. Would the nation blame him for the disaster? White House butler Alonzo Fields recalled overhearing Roosevelt say, “My God, how did it happen? I will go down in disgrace.”
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While reports of other Japanese offensives were coming in, FDR was most interested in getting updates from Admiral Stark about Pearl Harbor. According to Hopkins, “Stark continued to get further and always more dismal news about the attack on Hawaii.”
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It seems likely that Stark passed along information that he received during a 7:10 update from Admiral Bloch. “Here in the harbor, as nearly as I can ascertain there are six battleships out of business,” Bloch said as a stenographer took careful notes. “Six battleships, and three of them, at least, look like they are salvage jobs.” Bloch provided a detailed description of the damage suffered by each of the ships. “The
Nevada
was hit by a torpedo and set on fire.... The
Oklahoma
was hit by three torpedoes . . . and she was capsized.” The
Tennessee
was “partially capsized.” The
California
“was set on fire and she is burning.” The
Arizona
“was hit by torpedoes or aerial bombs and she . . . is capsized.” The
West Virginia
“is still afloat and all right, but pretty badly damaged by fire.” The
Helena
had “a crack under her water line and her fire rooms are flooded.” Crews pumped so much water into the
Raleigh
to put out a fire that “she is in bad shape.”
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