Pearl Harbor (23 page)

Oddly enough, Eleanor was never suspicious of Missy. When FDR was governor, Eleanor gave her the larger bedroom next to her husband's, while she took a smaller room down the hall. She realized that Missy freed FDR from the routines of daily life so he could concentrate on the world of politics. Those were the tasks Eleanor was unwilling to perform.
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After FDR became president, LeHand carried the formal job title of secretary. Informally, she was his surrogate wife, living in an apartment on the third floor of the White House. She was forty-three years old and had spent half of her life at FDR's side. The work and strain took their toll, however. “The president would work night after night, and she was always there working with him,” a friend recalled. “He could take it, but I think her strength just didn't hold out.” She collapsed after dinner on June 4, 1941. Two weeks later, at the age of forty-three, she suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed her left side and rendered her unable to speak coherently.
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Missy was transferred from the White House to a hospital in Georgetown, where Eleanor and Franklin visited with her often. According to historian Dories Kearns Goodwin, the visits were painful for FDR. “All his life, he had steeled himself to ignore illness and unpleasantness of any kind.” For now, he could not ignore Missy's suffering.
FDR ordered that she be provided with round-the-clock care. He paid every expense, talked with doctors about her condition, and made provisions for her to be taken care of in the event of his death. Five months after Missy's stroke, FDR rewrote his will, leaving half of his estate “for the account of my friend Marguerite LeHand” to cover all expenses for “medical care and treatment during her lifetime.” “I owed her that much,” Franklin told his son James. “She served me so well for so long and asked for so little in return.”
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A few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR had Missy transferred to Warm Springs, where he hoped she would benefit from the therapeutic baths and careful supervision. She was showing signs of recovery in the weeks before Pearl Harbor. On November 14, her physician wrote Admiral McIntire that “she is steadily improving. She is up daily in a wheelchair and goes out into the sun. She seems to be enjoying it a great deal.” McIntire also noticed a “definite improvement” in her most recent electrocardiograph.
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Tully, who had in LeHand's absence assumed the role of the president's secretary, wrote a note to FDR, informing him of Missy's call. “Missy telephoned and wanted to talk with you. She is thinking about you and much disturbed about the news. She would like you to call her tonight. I told her you would if the conference broke up at a reasonable hour—otherwise you would call her in the morning.”
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FDR did not return the phone call that evening, or the next day. Missy sat in her wheelchair in Warm Springs waiting for the call and was devastated when it never came. She had once complained that the man she loved and devoted her life to “was really incapable of a personal friendship with anyone.” His indifference now marked the end of her brief recovery and coincided with a downward spiral in her spirits and physical condition. Two weeks later, over the Christmas holidays, Missy tried to commit suicide. She survived, and over the next few years she and FDR exchanged messages and arranged a few brief phone conversations. But they would never see each other again. Missy's two-decade relationship with FDR was another casualty of Pearl Harbor.

14

“Where were our forces—asleep?”

T
OM CONNALLY, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seemed cast for the role of southern statesman. A colleague once said that the two-hundred-pound white-haired senator was “the only man in the United States Senate who could wear a Roman Toga and not look like a fat man in a nightgown.” Although an early supporter of FDR's New Deal, Connally broke with the president in 1937, following his aborted scheme to pack the Supreme Court. His outspoken opposition to FDR's plan made him persona non grata at the White House for years afterward, even though he remained an internationalist who championed greater aid to the Allies. Connally's banishment from the White House was about to end, but not in the way that he had hoped.
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The Texas senator was taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather on Sunday afternoon. After having lunch at the home of Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, Connally decided to go for a relaxing drive around Maryland. When he reached Rockville, he turned on the car radio and heard the ominous report: “Japanese bombers have attacked Pearl Harbor.... Heavy casualties are reported at Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor has been attacked by the Japanese without warning.” Connally rushed home, where he found a message from the White House, summoning him to an urgent meeting with the president at 9:00 p.m.
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He arrived at the White House a few minutes early and was ushered to the Red Room on the second floor. An odd collection of congressional leaders had already assembled there—a mix of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, internationalists and isolationists whom FDR had handpicked for the meeting. Connally noticed Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky, along with most of the ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including California Republican senator and isolationist leader Hiram Johnson, Oregon Republican Charles McNary, and Republican Warren R. Austin of Vermont, ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Fellow Texan and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn led the House delegation, which included most key leaders. House Majority Leader John McCormack could not get to Washington in time, so Tennessee Democrat Jere Cooper took his place. The others from the House included House Minority Leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts; Sol Bloom, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Majority Whip Lister Hill of Alabama.

Also missing from the assembled leaders was the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Hamilton Fish, an outspoken isolationist Republican who had angrily condemned FDR's Lend-Lease proposal. Roosevelt detested the man, and, according to Hopkins, “the President will not have him in the White House.” Although he was a logical choice for the meeting, Hopkins and Roosevelt had drawn up a list that managed to exclude Fish. In his place, they invited the next most senior member of the committee, Charles Eaton of New Jersey.
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The cabinet meeting was not yet over, so the congressmen waited outside the doors and held what one reporter called “an indignation meeting.” They discussed the many rumors floating around Washington: parachute troops landing in Hawaii, battleships sunk, the Japanese “capture” of Wake and Midway islands. The “Japs” would pay for the attack, Connally proclaimed between puffs on a thick cigar. After a few minutes, a buzzer sounded signaling the end of the cabinet meeting,
the door opened, and Grace Tully emerged, announcing that the congressmen could enter. As some of the cabinet members left the room, Connally noted their “shocked expressions.” The congressional leaders filled the cabinet's freshly vacated chairs, still arranged in a semicircle around FDR. Seated near the president were Hopkins, Knox, Stimson, and Vice President Wallace.
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The president was deadly serious, his tone grave. Numerous dispatches had formed a small pile on his desk. According to one report, Roosevelt passed out fine Cuban cigars. Roosevelt provided the leaders with background on the negotiations with Japan that continued until a few hours before the attack. He expressed outrage over the Japanese ambassador's decision to deliver the final part of their answer after the attack on Pearl Harbor had commenced. Indignantly, Roosevelt called it “an act which is almost without parallel in relationships between nations.”
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Roosevelt created the impression that he was bringing the congressional leaders into his confidence by sharing secret information. In reality, he was being deceptive. FDR knew that anything he said to the assembled lawmakers would quickly make it into the press. He insisted on maintaining tight control of the information coming from Hawaii, and, at this point, he did not want members of Congress shocking the nation with details of the destruction at Pearl.

FDR overstated the navy's preparedness and slightly understated the damage, but overall he painted a fair picture of the devastation. He told the congressional leaders that the navy had been on alert when the Japanese bombers attacked. Admiral Bloch had given him a detailed, though incomplete, breakdown of the damage reports a few hours earlier. Roosevelt, however, did not want to get into specifics with the congressional leaders. “It looks as if out of eight battleships, three have been sunk, and possibly a fourth,” he said. “Two destroyers were blown up while they were in drydock. Two of the battleships are badly damaged. Several other smaller vessels have been sunk or destroyed.” He honestly confessed to have “no word” on the navy casualties, but
warned they “will undoubtedly be very heavy.” He also estimated that the army suffered three hundred casualties. He asked that the congressional leaders not discuss the details with the press. “Now I think that is all there is in the way of information, but it has been suggested that the Army and Navy losses, and the . . . rather definite statements that I have made about these ships, could not be spoken outside, because we must remember that detailed military information is of value to an enemy. I think that is a matter of discretion, which all of you will accept.”
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After outlining the damage in Hawaii, Roosevelt told his audience that the Japanese navy was still on the move. Guam was being bombed and had probably fallen to the Japanese. Wake Island had been attacked, and there were reports that ports in the Philippines were being bombed. But he seemed skeptical about the information coming from the Philippines. “Those are merely reports,” he said, making clear they had not been confirmed. The Japanese had likely taken possession of the Chinese city of Shanghai, where two hundred marines were stationed. Japan had demanded that the marines surrender, but Roosevelt was still unclear about their status. “We are not certain yet whether they have been gotten out or not. Probably not,” FDR remarked.
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Even though Roosevelt placed the best possible spin on the day's tragic events, the congressmen were still stunned. “The effect on the Congressmen was tremendous,” noted Stimson. “They sat in dead silence and even after the recital was over they had very few words.”
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According to Connally, when Roosevelt finished discussing the day's tragic events, he looked down toward the floor, crushed his cigarette in the ashtray on his desk, and said, “I guess that's all.” But Connally, stunned and angry, wanted some answers to obvious questions: How could it have happened? What damage did we inflict on the Japanese? “The President indicated he didn't know but went on to say we had no information to indicate that we had severely damaged the japs,” Connally recalled FDR saying. “We think we got some of their submarines, but we don't know” was all the president could offer.
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Connally persisted, asking if the United States shot down any of their planes. “We did get, we think, a number of their Japanese planes,” FDR said. Roosevelt, however, had been receiving conflicting and often contradictory reports all day, and he was unwilling to get into specifics until he had some hard evidence. Perhaps he also did not want the congressmen to know just how feeble the American response had been. “We know some Japanese planes were shot down, but there again—I have seen so much of this in the other war. One fellow says he has got fifteen of their planes, and you pick up the telephone and somebody else says five. So I don't know what the report on that is, except that somewhere Japanese planes have been knocked down on the Island.” By pointing out the rumors that two of the planes used in the raid had swastikas on them, Roosevelt apparently tried to deflect anger away from the military's failure to anticipate and respond to the attacks. “There is a rumor that two of the planes—Japanese planes have a rising sun painted on them—but two of the planes were seen with swastikas on them,” he said. At this point, Connally exploded: “Where were our forces—asleep? Where were our patrols?”
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At that moment, a new dispatch arrived on Roosevelt's desk, sent from General MacArthur twenty minutes earlier. In it, he announced that Japan had attacked the Philippines. “All possible action being taken here to speed defense,” MacArthur assured the president in the minutes before his bomber force was about to be wiped out.

Roosevelt received an update on the two hundred American marines in China. The news was not good. Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, the marines had been forced to surrender. Roosevelt did not dwell on the report. Instead, he moved to end the discussion. “That takes care of that,” FDR said. “You have got the rest of it.”
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The congressional leaders were clearly shocked by the news about Pearl Harbor, but for FDR the real purpose of the meeting was to ask them to invite him to address a joint session of Congress the next day. Congressional leaders wanted to know what he was going to say, and if he would be asking for a declaration of war. If there was a declaration,
would it be against Japan or include Germany and Italy as well? Roosevelt had already written his speech and read a draft to the cabinet a few minutes earlier, but he did not want to share his speech with the congressional leaders. He claimed that he had not yet prepared his remarks and had not decided what to say. As Hopkins noted, Roosevelt “knew that he was going to ask for a declaration of war but he also knew that if he stated it to the conference that it would be all over town in five minutes, because it is perfectly foolish ever to ask a large group of congressmen or senators to keep a secret.” FDR asked if Congress would be ready to receive him at 12:30 p.m. the following day—twenty-three hours after he first received word of the attack. They agreed.
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