Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor Read Online Free PDF Page A

victory. “To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy,” Churchill later wrote. “Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.”
    “This certainly simplifies things,” Churchill told Roosevelt. “God be with you.”
    Reports continued to arrive in Washington, framing a portrait of the destruction in the Pacific that would take shape in the hours and days ahead.
    “The Oklahoma has capsized in Pearl Harbor,” stated one. “The Tennessee is on fire with a bad list.”
    “Three battleships sunk,” read another. “All others variously damaged.”
    “Heavy losses sustained Hawaii.”
    With each update, Roosevelt sank farther. “My God, how did it happen,” he muttered at one point. “I will go down in disgrace.”
    Still unaware of the war’s outbreak, many Americans were enjoying a few final moments of peace that Sunday afternoon, including 27,102 football fans crowded into the stands at Griffith Stadium to watch the Washington Redskins battle the Philadelphia Eagles.
    Up in the press box a Morse telegrapher passed Associated Press reporter Pat O’Brien a message from his office late in the first quarter.
    “Keep it short,” the note read.
    A second message followed minutes later, explaining why the wire service didn’t need much game coverage: “The Japanese have kicked off. War now!”
    The stadium loudspeaker began paging important military and civilian officials. “Admiral W. H. P. Bland is asked to report to his office at once!” demanded one announcement, summoning the chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance.
    “The Resident Commissioner of the Philippines, Mr. Joaquim Elizalde, is urged to report to his office immediately.”
    Other announcements followed, summoning federal agents, army officers, and newspaper reporters and editors. Fans began to buzz, though no general announcement of the war’s outbreak was made, because it would have violated the Redskins’ policy against broadcastingnonsports news over the address system. The mass exodus left only a single news photographer to cover the Redskins’ 20–14 victory.
    Similar scenes played out around the country. Crowds in Times Square read the bulletins in shock while the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra burst into “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the audience of 2,200 sang. A man showed up at a recruiting station in Norfolk, Virginia. “I want to beat them Japs,” he declared, “with my own bare hands.” At the Majestic Theater in Dallas, when Sergeant York ended and news of the attack was announced, the crowd fell silent then broke out in a roaring applause. A steelworker captured the sentiment: “We’ll stamp their front teeth in.”
    Inside the White House, Roosevelt adjourned the conference with his advisers around 4:30 p.m. and summoned Tully. The secretary entered to find the president seated alone at his desk, the telephone close at hand and with several piles of afternoon notes stacked before him. Roosevelt lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
    “Sit down, Grace,” he said. “I’m going before Congress tomorrow. I’d like to dictate my message. It will be short.”
    Tully took a seat. Roosevelt normally depended on a team of several writers to help him draft major speeches, a process that could typically take up to ten days. Not only were two of those writers now in New York, but the president could spare at best just a few hours—if that—to craft what would prove to be one of the most important speeches of his career. Secretary of State Hull had pressed Roosevelt to deliver a long and detailed speech, examining the history of American and Japanese relations, but the president disagreed. The American people did not need a history lesson, but a rundown of the facts. Roosevelt took another long drag of his cigarette and began.
    “Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in world history,” he dictated,