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

“There was none of the usual cordial, personal greeting,” recalled Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, who had just arrived on a flight from New York City with the postmaster general and vice president. “This was one of the few occasions he couldn’t muster a smile.”
    “I’m thankful you all got here,” Roosevelt began, noting that this was the most important session of the cabinet since Abraham Lincoln met with his at the outbreak of the Civil War. “Of course, you all know what’s happened.”
    “Mr. President, several of us have just arrived by plane. We don’t know anything except a scare headline,” interrupted Attorney General Francis Biddle, who had rushed back to Washington from Detroit. “Could you tell us?”
    Roosevelt turned to Knox, who related the day’s events with occasional additions by Stimson, Hull, and the president. News that eight of the Pacific Fleet’s nine battleships had been damaged or destroyed shocked the cabinet. “The Secretary of the Navy had lost his air of bravado,” Agriculture Secretary Claude Wickard noted in his diary. “Secretary Stimson was very sober.” Even Roosevelt, who had a few hours to adjust to the devastating news, struggled to comprehend how the Pacific Fleet had been caught so off guard. “His pride in the Navy was so terrific that he was having actual physical difficulty in getting out thewords that bombs dropped on ships that were not in fighting shape and prepared to move, just tied up,” observed Perkins. Twice the president barked at Knox, “Find out, for God’s sake, why the ships were tied up in rows.”
    “That’s the way they berth them,” the Navy secretary replied.
    Roosevelt informed the cabinet that he planned to go before a joint session of Congress at noon the next day to deliver a speech and request a declaration of war. The president then read his remarks aloud. Afterward Hull interjected that the brief message was inadequate and again urged Roosevelt to deliver a more in-depth report. “The President disagreed,” Wickard recorded in his diary, “but Hull said he thought the most important war in 500 years deserved more than a short statement.”
    Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn of Texas accompanied by four congressmen and five senators joined the meeting at 9:45 p.m. Roosevelt again reviewed the latest damage reports. “The effect on the Congressmen was tremendous,” Stimson wrote in his diary. “They sat in dead silence and even after the recital was over they had very few words.” When the shock of the news faded, the search for blame began. While a few red-faced congressmen muttered profanities, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Tom Connally of Texas exploded. “How did it happen that our warships were caught like tame ducks in Pearl Harbor?” Connally demanded, his face turning purple as he banged his fist on the desk. “I am amazed at the attack by Japan, but I am still more astounded at what happened to our Navy. They were all asleep.”
    “I don’t know, Tom,” the president answered, his head bowed. “I just don’t know.”

CHAPTER 2

    To the enemy we answer—you have unsheathed the sword, and by it you shall die.
    —SENATOR ARTHUR VANDENBERG, DECEMBER 8, 1941
    PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT GATHERED IN the oval study with his advisers on the frigid afternoon of December 21, 1941, two weeks to the day after the Japanese pounded Pearl Harbor. The president had addressed Congress at 12:30 p.m. the day after the attack. Sixty-two million listeners—almost one out of every two Americans—tuned in to hear his 518-word speech, the largest daytime audience ever for a radio broadcast. Roosevelt followed those remarks a day later with a fireside chat designed to prepare the public for life at war, from the need for troops to fight on foreign shores to the material shortages, increased taxes, and long hours Americans would battle on the home front. “We are now in this war. We are all in it—all the way,”