Pearl Harbor Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  ALSO BY STEVEN M. GILLON

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Chapter 1 - “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”

  Chapter 2 - “Do not let the talks deteriorate”

  Chapter 3 - “This means war”

  Chapter 4 - “This is no drill!”

  Chapter 5 - “Have you heard the news?”

  Chapter 6 - “I don’t know how secure this telephone is”

  Chapter 7 - “Infamy”

  Chapter 8 - “Get to the White House fastasyoucan”

  Chapter 9 - “Do you think we ought to have soldiers around the White House?”

  Chapter 10 - “We are all in the same boat now”

  Chapter 11 - “I will go down in disgrace”

  Chapter 12 - “Deadly calm”

  Chapter 13 - “1861”

  Chapter 14 - “Where were our forces—asleep?”

  Chapter 15 - “I hope Mr. Capone doesn’t mind”

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgments

  NOTES

  INDEX

  Copyright Page

  More Advance Praise for Pearl Harbor

  “Steve Gillon begins his dramatic tale after the final bombs exploded on December 7, 1941. As President Roosevelt gathered information, he began preparing for his greatest moment, when with one speech he would have to unify the Americans and take them into war. We know what happened. But as Gillon demonstrates, we don’t know the whole story. In a book that reads like the best fictional political thriller, he takes the reader on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour hell of a ride.”

  —Randy Roberts, author of A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game that Rallied a Nation

  “In this compelling account of the day that will live in infamy, Steven Gillon brilliantly evokes the peaceable White House and unprepared nation that were thrown into chaos and confusion on 7 December 1941. Gillon highlights the ‘deadly calm’ with which Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to one of the most significant events of the twentieth century and set the United States on course to be a military and economic superpower.”

  —Tony Badger, Paul Mellon Professor of American History, Cambridge University

  “In this fascinating account of the first 24 hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Steven Gillon manages to capture not only the essence of perhaps the most critical day in twentieth century American history; but also the essence of the man who stood at the center of it all—Franklin D. Roosevelt. A brilliant piece of investigative history, Pearl Harbor tells us a great deal about the character of the President who, though unable to walk unaided, brought the United States safely through the two great crises of the modern era, the Great Depression and World War Two. This is a must read for anyone who wishes to gain a complete understanding of FDR and the nation he led.”

  —David B. Woolner, Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, and Associate Professor of History, Marist College

  “In Pearl Harbor Steve Gillon combines impeccable research and historical authority with a narrative so gripping that the book reads like a thriller. This blow-by-blow account of the first 24 hours after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor presents not only a new and detailed version of the reaction to the event but also a new and up-close vision of FDR’s leadership.”

  —Neal Gabler, Senior Fellow, Lear Center, USC

  ALSO BY STEVEN M. GILLON

  The Kennedy Assassination—24 Hours After

  The Pact

  10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America

  Boomer Nation

  The American Paradox

  That’s Not What We Meant to Do

  The Democrats’ Dilemma

  Politics and Vision

  This book is dedicated to Abbe Raven

  PREFACE

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at 1:47 p.m. on December 7, 1941. By that time the following day, FDR had finished delivering his war message to a joint session of Congress. It is hard to think of any other twenty-four-hour period that so radically transformed America and its role in the world. Japan’s assault on a quiet Sunday morning transformed a precarious peace into a total war. In this incredibly short frame of time, one era ended and a new one began. Pearl Harbor was the defining event of the twentieth century—it changed the global balance of power, set the stage for the Cold War, and allowed the United States to emerge as a global superpower.

  There is no shortage of books about Pearl Harbor or about Franklin Roosevelt, but there is surprisingly little written about how FDR responded in the hours immediately after the attack. The standard accounts of Pearl Harbor focus on the broad diplomatic, military, and political forces that conspired to produce the worst military failure in American history. They explain why the attack took place, trace the failure of American intelligence, and depict the nature of the carnage in Hawaii. But because they are painted on such a broad canvas, many of these panoramic accounts have little room to offer an intimate glimpse into the nature of Roosevelt’s leadership in the hours that followed.

  Even the finest Roosevelt biographers move quickly from the moment that FDR learned of the bombing to his war message the following day. In FDR: The War President, Kenneth Davis fills 804 pages with details of the Roosevelt presidency between the years 1940 and 1943, but he devotes only 5 pages to the twenty-four hours following the attack. Likewise, Doris Kearns Goodwin dedicates only a few paragraphs to the day’s events in her Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time.

  Focusing on the first twenty-four hours of crisis allows me to tell familiar stories in an unfamiliar way and provide a new perspective on the inner workings of the presidency. It is based on the belief that the first twenty-four hours are critical to understanding the nature of leadership. It is during those first few hours that the die is cast. Those hours represent a test of presidential character. Dependable information is scarce. Situations are fluid, changing by the minute. A president has little time for reflection. Decisions need to be made. Process is abandoned. It all comes down to the judgment and instincts of one man, forced by circumstance to make momentous decisions that can alter the course of history.

  Writing about “great men” has fallen out of favor among many professional historians, but events like Pearl Harbor remind us of the centrality of presidential leadership. While there are impersonal forces that shape the tide of history, there are also defining moments when individuals matter. Pearl Harbor was one of those defining moments.

  History in macrocosm often appears more coherent than it actually is; in microcosm, contingency, uncertainty, and luck—both good and bad—play much larger roles than we might like to acknowledge. We think of the commander in chief as presiding over a vast and sophisticated communications system. But on the afternoon of December 7, 1941, intelligence was scarce and difficult to obtain. How big was the Japanese force? How much damage did it inflict? Did the U.S. Navy, which FDR believed was on full alert, anticipate the attack and manage to repel the invaders? Initially, military officials in Hawaii were reluctant to give details of the damage assessment, even to the president, because they could not find a secure line and worried about Japanese eavesdropping. Much of the information they did provide—that some of the planes had swastikas painted on them, for example—would later be proved false.

  It is against this backdrop of confusion and chaos that FDR’s leadership must be judged. FDR was forced to make every major decision based on instinct and his own strategic sense of right and wrong. There were no instant surveys to guide his actions, no twenty-four-hour television coverage offering him a glimpse into the natio
nal mood. Making matters worse, the president’s advisers were anxious and divided.

  Although he lacked accurate information, Roosevelt exercised enormous power in the hours and days that followed the attack. While the entire nation looked to the White House for leadership, partisan differences disappeared, and former isolationists began clamoring for war. Roosevelt exercised nearly complete control over the flow of information. With the exception of a few radio reports that made it to the mainland, there was little or no independent information about events in Hawaii. All the major news outlets rushed to the White House to find out what had happened. As Newsweek reported that week, “The White House was the only funnel for information.”1

  One of the extraordinary aspects of the hours after Pearl Harbor was Roosevelt’s ability to manage the news in the wake of the attack. Unlike the Kennedy assassination, or the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when television spread the word around the country and the globe within minutes, news about Pearl Harbor spread slowly, trickling out over the radio in the afternoon. The attack took place during the traditional Sunday dinner hour on the East Coast and in the Midwest, which meant that most people did not have their radios on. The unseasonably warm weather across the nation drove many people outside, and away from their radios, for picnics and other activities. It was not until later in the afternoon, when the “extra” editions of daily newspapers hit the streets with their screaming headlines, that the entire nation learned of the assault.

  Nonetheless, FDR was still able to deceive the public and Congress about the extent of the carnage. Although the president had detailed damage and casualty reports by the end of the day, he refused to release them—not only to the press but also to lawmakers in Washington. He deliberately downplayed the effectiveness of the Japanese attack when he met with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders on the evening of December 7.

  There were good reasons for FDR to be deceptive: He worried that if the Japanese realized what a devastating blow they had delivered, they would launch a land assault against Hawaii. He also needed to maintain public morale and feared details of the devastation could panic the American people. Based on comments he made that evening, it seems that FDR also worried that the public would blame him for the disaster, undermining his authority when he needed it most to rally the nation behind him. It is revealing that Roosevelt’s successful leadership depended on a level of deception that would be unacceptable by today’s standards.

  There is, however, no evidence that FDR deceived lawmakers or the American public about a critical and much-contested point surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack: the fact that it came as a surprise. The public’s fascination with conspiracy theories has distorted much of the writing about Pearl Harbor. The conspiracy theories popped up even before the war was over, with the appearance of John Flynn’s self-published The Truth About Pearl Harbor, and they have continued up to the present, with the 1999 release of Robert B. Stinnett’s Day of Deceit. Most of these books focus on a single question: Did FDR use the attack on Pearl Harbor as a “back door” to war? In other words, was FDR the mastermind behind a massive government conspiracy to push a reluctant nation into battle? Over the years, conservative critics of Roosevelt and a few historians have promoted the so-called backdoor theory, but it has failed to gain much credibility. All the evidence shows that FDR and the men around him were genuinely shocked when they learned of the attack. They may have been naive and gravely misjudged Japanese intentions and capability, but they were not guilty of deliberate deception.2

  Having secured an unprecedented third term in 1940, FDR had served as president for 3,200 days (8 years, 9 months, and 3 days, or 76,800 hours) when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. His entire presidency had been engulfed in crisis. His presidency began amid a worldwide economic depression, with millions of Americans out of work and underemployed, the financial system in crisis, and the political establishment in paralysis. By 1939, the conflagration in Europe, and the growing threat of Hitler’s armies, threatened the global balance of power and seemed destined to pull a reluctant nation into another European war.

  Despite the length of his presidency, and the great crises that he confronted, FDR remains an elusive figure. “I am a juggler,” Roosevelt once said about his approach to governing. “I never let my right hand know what my left hand does.” His administrative style was often chaotic. He refused to establish clear lines of authority, allowed aides to fight each other for his attention, and frequently turned to outside advisers for advice. After nearly three years of working with Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote, “The President is the poorest administrator I have ever worked under.... He is not a good chooser of men and does not know how to use them in coordination.” Vice President Henry A. Wallace, even before he was dumped in 1944, noted that Roosevelt “looks in one direction and rows the other with utmost skill.”3

  Critics complained that Roosevelt’s style was deceptive and manipulative, while supporters defended his deviousness, claiming it was necessary to navigate the conflicting currents of American public opinion. Either way, his style makes it hard to pin him down. Because he had the habit of telling people what they wanted to hear, it is not always easy to divine what he was really thinking. Henry Morgenthau, a Dutchess County neighbor who served as secretary of the Treasury, described Roosevelt as “weary as well as buoyant, frivolous as well as grave, evasive as well as frank . . . a man of bewildering complexity of moods and motives.”4

  Roosevelt, for all his outward charm and warmth, remained distant and elusive even to those who knew him best. He formed few real friendships. He used people, and when they no longer served a purpose, he discarded them. Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, who loved FDR and served him loyally for many years, once observed that he “was really incapable of a personal friendship with anyone.”5

  A relatively thin paper trail complicates the task of understanding FDR’s inner motives. Because he died in office in 1945, he left no memoirs. The office of the presidency was far less bureaucratic in Roosevelt’s day than it is now. Most business was conducted informally. In fact, FDR was the first chief executive to conduct much of the nation’s business by phone. He also discouraged note taking at meetings, fearing that it would prevent people from being open and candid. As a result, the Roosevelt administration produced fewer documents than the “modern” presidencies that followed. For example, the Clinton presidential library houses 80 million pages of documents. John F. Kennedy served less than three years, but his library houses more than 48 million pages. The FDR Library, by comparison, contains only 17 million pages of documents, despite his much longer presidency.

  December 7, however, may be the most well-documented day of the Roosevelt presidency. Perhaps understanding the momentous events that were taking place, Roosevelt defied his own policy and allowed a stenographer to take detailed notes of his conference with congressional leaders that evening. As a result, we have a full transcript of the meeting. A few of the president’s advisers also left detailed notes of their actions that day. For example, Treasury head Morgenthau continued his practice of having a secretary listen to his phone calls, writing a transcript of all conversations. Secretary of War Stimson kept a detailed diary of all his White House activities.6

  Most valuable are the volumes of testimony produced by a series of government investigations into the Pearl Harbor disaster. Less than two weeks after the attack, FDR signed an executive order establishing a commission, headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, to determine why the United States was so unprepared. The commission interviewed 127 witnesses before laying blame at the feet of Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short, the local commanders in Hawaii.

  The commission, however, failed to silence critics who claimed that important evidence had been omitted. To settle the matter, numerous federal agencies conducted their own separate investigations—six in all—during the war, each one reaching different conclusions about who was responsible. Aft
er the war, Congress tried to settle the questions by establishing a joint committee to investigate the disaster. In 1946, the committee released forty volumes of testimony. By the end of the series of investigations, every major player close to the president testified, often more than once. Taken together, testimony by FDR’s advisers runs thousands of pages. While most of the questioning focused on the events that led up to the attack, the testimony also sheds a great deal of light on Roosevelt’s thinking and actions on December 7.7

  By the evening of December 7, fear and uncertainty had gripped the capital. No one knew what would happen next. Would the Japanese invade Hawaii? During dinner on the evening of December 7, a White House butler overheard FDR speculating about the possibility of a Japanese invasion on the West Coast that could advance as far east as Chicago. That fear would later lead to one of the greatest mistakes of his presidency: the internment of Japanese Americans living in the West.

  FDR can also be blamed for failing to pay close attention to the growing crisis in the Pacific in the months leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack. Roosevelt liked to act as his own secretary of state, but he was unusually passive in dealing with the Japanese threat. Distracted by events in Europe, he delegated responsibility to Secretary of State Cordell Hull and other lower-level officials. The result was a policy of drift and indecision.

  But in the hours and days after the attack, he reassured a shaken government and inspired a nervous nation. Despite the enormity of the defeat at Pearl Harbor, and its potential consequences, Roosevelt remained steady and sure-minded. “Through it all the President was calm and deliberate,” a cabinet member observed. “I don’t know anybody in the United States who can come close to measuring up to his foresight and acumen in this critical hour.” Eleanor Roosevelt, who peeked in on the president a few hours after the attack, observed her husband’s “deadly calm” composure.