The Road to War (1989) s01e04 Episode Script

Another war, not for me.
This time America should keep out and l know l will.
lf war breaks out in Europe, l think this country should heed the advice of its first president and avoid all foreign entanglements.
l haven't the slightest idea of European affairs.
A surprise attack brought a reluctant America into the war in 1941 .
For most of the previous 20 years the United States had been an island, cut off by choice from the world's affairs, ln 191 7 the United States joined the First World War.
ln the following year, with fresh troops and new tactics, the Americans came to the rescue of the French and the British, who were exhausted by a long and bloody conflict and on the verge of defeat.
America's intervention turned the tide.
ln November Germany abandoned the war and sued for peace.
We take our hats off to you, Mr Wilson President Woodrow Wilson had dictated the terms of the armistice and promised the Germans a magnanimous peace, ln December, in France, ecstatic crowds welcomed Wilson as the peacemaker, You're the right kind of man in the right kind of place But at the Versailles peace conference, France and Britain demanded retribution, At their insistence, the treaty imposed on the Germans was punitive, Wilson had given in, But he feared that the treaty contained the seeds of another war, There were Americans who had a deep, abiding sense of isolationism, of distrust of Europe, and that distrust festered during World War l and was exacerbated by the terms of the peace.
lt was said that all Americans had gotten out of the war was the flu, the terrible influenza epidemic that took so many lives.
The war had brought prosperity to American industry, supplying arms to the Allies, ln peacetime, mass production fuelled domestic demand and brought riches to many.
But America's wealth in the '20s was anything but evenly spread.
Worst off were the farmers, a quarter of America's population.
ln the 1920s and again in the '30s, demand and prices fell drastically.
There was a prolonged slump in the farming states, made worse by the drought.
Millions of families were destitute.
ln 1929 the stock market collapsed.
America and much of the rest of the world sank into the Great Depression, The tremendous crowds gathered outside the Stock Exchange are due to the greatest crash in the history of the New York Stock Exchange and market prices.
The economy had tilted out of balance.
During the 1920s, wages had lagged far behind productivity and profits.
Too many Americans could not afford to buy the goods they were producing.
ln 1932, the cruellest year of the Depression, wages of those who were in work dropped to as little as twenty, ten and even five cents an hour.
That winter, according to an estimate by the magazine''Fortune'', a third of the population was without any income whatever, and the welfare system, such as it was, began to collapse.
The US, in the '30s, had the most serious depression this country had ever had.
lt started in 1929, of course, and it was steadily downhill until the spring of 1933.
And it's hard to describe the situation where plants that were producing, say, radios, were closed down, where workers who wanted to work had no jobs, where people who'd love to have had a radio had no means to buy one.
lt was just a complete stagnation, it was a paralysis.
lt wasn'tjust that the economy created this.
There was terrible hardship People that had been well off committed suicide because of the losses They lost everything they had, Others sold apples in the street The despair until the New Deal came was just profound and deep and seemingly hopeless.
lt was on everyone's mind constantly, how to make a living, how to earn an extra nickel.
The fear of losing yourjob, the difficulty of getting another one.
l remember tramping the streets of Minneapolis trying to get odd jobs.
Movie usher, shirt salesman.
So you couldn't escape this.
We were struggling to survive in the richest country on earth.
lt didn't make any sense.
1932 was election year, and in Franklin D Roosevelt and his concern for the man at the bottom of the economic pyramid, the Democrats found a leader and a theme.
lt looks, my friends, like a real landslide this time.
Hoover leaves the White House for the last time as president to share the car of the president-elect in the ride down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and inauguration ceremony, There was a less than cordial personal relationship between the outgoing and incoming presidents, The ride from the White House to the Capitol was almost entirely in silence, with the incoming president bowing and waving his hat and his hand to people and the outgoing president looking as if he'd swallowed a banana.
The outstanding thing that one would remember out of it was the serious and anxious look upon people's faces as you rode to the Capitol for the ceremony, and the realisation that we lived in a country that could make this kind of fundamental change in a peaceful atmosphere and that when we were required to exert leadership, leadership was present and a programme was forthcoming which did result in overcoming the main difficulties that we'd encountered.
lt is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.
Nor need we shrink from honestly Unlike his predecessor in office, Roosevelt had ideas.
''The country,'' he said,''demands bold, persistent experimentation ''in an emergency at least equal to war itself,'' So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
To take 4 million men from the breadlines and give them jobs, which was provided for their families Roosevelt has allotted $400 million to the Civil Works Administration, headed by Harry L Hopkins.
President Roosevelt has organised the Civil Works Administration.
He has instructed me to put 4 million men to work in 30 days.
These men will not receive charity, but regular work, thereby becoming self-sustaining American citizens.
Americans wanted leadership and change, Roosevelt gave them both, His New Deal, an all-out attack on the Depression, was the most intensive period of reform in American history.
For every man who gets a job, a family of four will become self-supporting, removing the spectre of hunger from 4 million American homes.
The key to unemployment was a huge public works programme, for example the Grand Coulee Dam.
Well, the world has seven wonders, as travellers always tell Some gardens and some flowers, l guess you know them well But now the greatest wonder in Uncle Sam's fair land lt's the King Columbia river and the big Grand Coulee Dam She heads up the Canadian mountains where the rippling waters glide Comin' a-rollin' down the canyon just to meet the salty tide From the wild Pacific Ocean where the sun sets in the west Down to the big Grand Coulee country in the land l love the best There was a monstrous big hole here.
Bigger than you could imagine because everybody looked like flies in the hole.
Every direction you looked there was somebody working, but they were so small.
You couldn't imagine how big it is today.
At that time it didn't look like it'd be anything of this magnitude.
the biggest thing that's built by human hands On the King Columbia river it's the big Grand Coulee Dam What Roosevelt actually done in the New Deal was put new lifeblood into everybody.
You know, that there was something worth living for again.
We weren't gonna die.
All we had to do was get off our butt and get on our feet and go to work.
The New Deal, with its 30,000 projects, preoccupied Roosevelt to the exclusion of foreign affairs, ln the Far East, Japan had invaded Manchuria, and in Germany, Hitler came to power, But for Roosevelt, pulling America out of the Depression took priority over everything else, During the '30s, Roosevelt, with his background and knowledge of the rest of the world, he himself, l think, was convinced that his problems were domestic and he shouldn't concern himself with the rest of the world.
And actually, when one looks back, it's hard to picture, except the emergence of Hitler and what he kept saying and doing.
it's hard to picture places that demanded America's attention to the degree that America's domestic problems demanded attention.
lt wasn't only that America had pressing concerns of its own.
This was a nation of immigrants, and in the heartland of America, the Midwest, isolationism was a way of life.
These people that l knew and grew up with in the Upper Mississippi Valley, they'd come to get away from Europe, to get more land and be free of obligatory military service, be free of the endless quarrels of Europe.
There isn't a province of Europe that hadn't been soaked in blood one time or another.
They wanted to build a new life.
This looked like the promised land.
ln any case, physically, the Mississippi Valley surely must have seemed the safest place on earth from the quarrels of nations, and l guess it was.
lt's not stupidity, it's not ignorance.
lt's a new way of trying to live.
And l grew up in that.
The isolationist movement grew naturally out of that.
A powerful stimulus was the memory of the First World War, Americans believed that they, alone among the belligerents, had gone to war for altruistic reasons.
ln the end they felt they had been betrayed, by the peace settlement, by the refusal of the Allies to pay their war debts and by the Great Depression, for which many Americans vaguely blamed the Europeans.
These ideas gave rise to strong emotions, reflected in Hollywood films.
l remember going to a movie as a boy, early teens, seeing''All Quiet On The Western Front'' and having a dreadful sense of the carnage of World War l, the hopelessness on the soldiers' faces.
And a deep feeling of resolve, that never again would this country engage in such a terrible kind of event.
The revulsion against foreign entanglements attracted 12 million Americans to the peace movement.
An alliance of isolationists and pacifists became a coherent political force, with a spokesman in Congress.
We want no war.
We'll have no war, save in defence of our own people or our own honour.
There is but one war that l would like to see this world engage in.
That is a war which would find civilisation making war against the private munitions makers the world over.
And now, my dear Hollywood spread the notion that America had been tricked into the war by an unholy alliance of politicians, bankers and munitions manufacturers, l don't like evasions.
There's too much of that stuff going on.
All right, let's get down to business.
Munitions is our business and it's up to us to make it America's business.
What good are steel and shrapnel if there's nothing to shoot at? There's too much sentimental talk about the last war.
What did it really cost us? 400,000 casualties.
Nothing.
lt gave us the greatest year of prosperity any nation's ever had.
But that war is worn out.
There's another one in Europe now.
Every minute we delay getting into it costs a million dollars.
All we need is a good slogan.
''The country's honour.
'' There's your perfect slogan.
- Gigantic.
- Just what we need.
- Superb.
- Lifeblood of America.
- Save your country's honour.
- Save our industries.
ln 1934 the Senate set up an investigation of the entire munitions industry, Day after day the merchants of death trooped into public hearings to answer charges that they had fomented war to boost their profits, l believe it was the peace movement that stimulated the forming of that committee, The interest in munition makers came about when revelations of how they had operated during World War l came out and it was felt that they were a really evil influence.
The hearings led Congress to pass a series of laws compelling the United States to remain neutral in other nations' wars.
Roosevelt signed the Neutrality Acts, But to his dismay they explicitly prevented him from discriminating between aggressors and victims.
lt sent the message that the isolationist sentiment in this country was very strong, that we had emerged from one great war and we didn't want to get involved in another.
The idea was to let the world know that if there's another war in Europe, we expect to stay out of it.
Overseas the world order was collapsing.
When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1935, the Neutrality Act was applied to both sides, ln the following year, Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in flat defiance of the peace treaties.
ln China, Japanese forces had overrun Manchuria and were attacking Shanghai, where America had important commercial interests.
Newsreel pictures of the bombing horrified Americans, but the Roosevelt administration took no action against the Japanese.
l think all of us who were in China and saw what was going on were outraged.
What should be done? Obviously we felt it was wrong for us to not impose some sort of sanctions.
We were supplying most of Japan's petroleum.
We were supplying Japan with raw materials of war, scrap iron and so on.
We were selling them aircraft engines and various things like that.
We thought the least we should do would be to stop supporting Japan in that way.
ln October 1937 in Chicago, the heartland of isolationism.
Roosevelt tried to change course to awaken America and warn aggressors.
His message came to be known as the Quarantine Speech.
War is a contagion, whether it be declared or undeclared.
lt can engulf states and peoples remote from the original scene of hostilities.
And mark this well.
When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients.
America hopes for peace, therefore America actively engages in the search for peace.
One thing about the country was that it was isolationist.
l think my father knew this and knew the dangers of it and felt the time had come to exert leadership through a speech, and this was the occasion that was chosen to make that speech, to make sure the sentiment was changed and redirected and based upon a solid base.
After he had made the speech, l think he wondered whether he had judged his timing.
Roosevelt's supporters kept their heads down, lsolationist congressmen threatened to impeach him, He was too far ahead of public opinion.
Only two months later, on the Yangtze river in China.
Japanese aircraft attacked the American gunboat Panay.
Roosevelt took no action.
The first thing l knew was a big explosion.
Three heavy bombers flew over and dropped their entire load on us.
There were a lot of injured lying around and several of the men who would have manned the machine-guns could not make it.
l tried to load one of the machine-guns myself and as l did l was hit in both hands.
The captain was badly injured, broken hip, so l went on the bridge to take over command.
The Japs had no reason to say they didn't know what they were doing.
We had two large horizontal flags, one forward and one aft.
They couldn't help but see who we were.
Commander Anders was rescued after the attack, but two men had died in the bombing.
Nevertheless, America accepted Japan's apology and its assurance that the attack was a mistake.
More probably it was a test of America's nerve.
Commanding 70,000 First Army troops.
General Drum denounces an arms shortage, that forces have wooden weapons, but says that Germany, before rearming, trained millions with pasteboard cannons and make-believe machines.
During these international crises, America began to look at its sadly neglected defences.
The army was smaller than Romania's.
lt numbered 227,000 men, but there was equipment for only a third of them.
There is far to go.
And with each non-firing of the non-loaded trench mortar guns, there is explosive appeal for speed in making this nation strong.
When Chamberlain visited Hitler during the Czechoslovak crisis of 1938, America remained firmly on the sidelines.
The Prime Minister on that visit without precedent, his desperate attempt to avert the catastrophe.
Hitler demanding the Sudeten portions of Czechoslovakia.
Chamberlain seeking an arrangement.
Eight months before, Chamberlain had rejected a proposal by Roosevelt for an international conference to save the peace, Chamberlain said it would cut across his plan for appeasement of Germany and ltaly, Roosevelt had deep misgivings about appeasement, but though he wanted to influence events, he was not prepared to make commitments, Public opposition to foreign entanglements was still too strong in America, What transfixed Americans in 1939 was not the prospect of war but the World's Fair in New York.
l remember the World's Fair vividly.
l was a 16-year-old high-school boy and went to the fair, which was only about two or three miles from my home, l am a smart fellow as l have a very fine brain.
There was a keen sense of exuberance about the fair, a promise of the world of tomorrow.
The particular exhibit that probably caught attention as much as anybody else's was the Futurama of General Motors.
There was a sense of a utopian urban civilisation, And now we have arrived in this wonderworld of 1960, The World's Fair exhibit modelled with such artistry and skill that we must continually remind ourselves the world we are now seeing is a vision, l would suppose that a good deal of that sense of hope and exuberance came from the fact that the United States was protected, it thought, by 3,000 miles of ocean from the troubles of Europe, lt could look toward what kind of a tomorrow it wanted in this land, free of foreign concerns.
l wonder if the years ahead will be as bright as this.
We haven't seen anything yet, darling.
Well, this is merely a sample of the real world of tomorrow.
By the outbreak of war in September 1939, public support for absolute neutrality was already waning.
Now, on the day Britain and France declared war on Germany, Roosevelt spoke to what he called the whole of America.
This nation will remain a neutral nation, but l cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.
Even a neutral has a right to take account of facts.
Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or to close his conscience.
Of course his sympathies from the beginning were clearly with Britain and France and the Allies, And then when the war started, he began quietly, yet rather persistently, to help Britain and France as fast as he thought he could, taking into account the isolationist sentiment in the US.
Warplane shipments begin immediately, and many military aircraft ordered before the war are ready for their journey to Great Britain.
One month after the Germans had overrun Poland, Roosevelt had the votes in Congress he needed to repeal the arms embargo, Under the so-called Cash And Carry Law, Britain and the Allies could buy American arms if they were carried in non-American ships, The Allies have an inexhaustible supply of planes and other war materials.
The isolationists fought on against direct involvement in Europe, Like so many Americans.
l too am wishing for victory for one side engaged in Europe.
But l am wishing more than for that.
For the avoidance, for my country, of the waste, the cost, the debt, the futility, the deaths, the cripples and the heartbreak that can be America's only reward for participation in another European mess.
lf they feel like a war on some foreign shore Let them keep it over there lf some fools want to fight and think might makes right Let them keep it over there From coast to coast you'll hear a million mothers pray Whatever happens, please don't send my boy away Wherefore you, Uncle Sam, but stay out of thatjam? Let them keep it all for them ln the summer of 1940, Britain stood alone against Germany, The British public's demand for action brings into power Winston Churchill, man of action, Churchill appealed to Roosevelt for immediate aid for Britain's ill-equipped armed forces, Roosevelt temporized.
He was running for re-election and feared support for Britain would lose him votes.
But Churchill cultivated Roosevelt in an exchange of letters, much to the frustration of the isolationists.
Churchill was, of course, a great orator and he played Roosevelt like a violin because he knew exactly how to appeal to FDR.
He did a beautiful job with his correspondence and he was a great leader.
We understood what his objective was.
His objective, as he'd hoped for and now would come to pass, was to get the US in at England's side, which is what a British leader should indeed want.
To buttress their rearguard action, the isolationists formed a new movement, America First.
Just as dictatorship rules in nations at war, the US would be a dictatorship the day we got involved.
And lost, perhaps beyond recovery, would be the historic and hard-won liberties of our American ways.
Shall we again fight for dubious democracy abroad or stay out and save genuine democracy at home? War's madness abroad or payrolls, peace and progress at home? That is our choice.
Nor is it a selfish choice.
Congress is a servant of the people and must answer to our bidding, Millions of letters to our congressmen must demand they pass no measure which would involve us in Europe's or Asia's wars.
Drive it home that a people has risen in revolt against any force which would send our men or money into Europe's wars.
Let every train to Washington every section from all the nation carry our no-war command to Congress.
The information we had about England's ability to survive led us to believe there was a good chance England was not going to survive.
The basic thing l know in my mind was we're going to be on hand to help pick up the pieces.
We are strong.
We hope we will be a strong, aloof country that can help reorganise the world.
That was very basic in my thinking.
ln New York, Lindbergh, who has since resigned as colonel in the army air corps, speaks to a rally of the America First Committee, France has now been defeated and despite the propaganda and confusion of recent months, it is now obvious that England is losing the war.
- l believe - .
.
and l have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England regardless of how much assistance we send.
That is why the America First Committee has been formed.
lt was a short-sightedness, selfishness, if l may say so, failure to observe what was really involved, how our interests would be endangered.
We couldn't afford to let Hitler win.
With Europe behind him, with Europe at his back, he could fight us all over the world for a generation.
lt was the course the war was taking, more than the appeals of politicians, that defeated the isolationists, With the bombing of Britain, a wave of sympathy spread across America.
l'm speaking from London, lt is late afternoon and the people of London are preparing for the night.
Everyone is anxious to get home before darkness falls, before our nightly visitors arrive.
Here they come.
These are not Hollywood sound effects.
This is the music they play every night in London, the symphony of war.
The Blitz changed American opinion.
The polls showed a majority prepared to aid Britain even if it drew the United States into war.
The British are heartened by news from America, 50 destroyers are added to their fleet.
ln September 1940 Roosevelt bypassed congressional opposition to an appeal from Churchill for 50 destroyers.
They were exchanged for British bases.
But 1940 was Roosevelt's re-election year, Campaigning in Boston for a third term of office, he was careful not to move too far ahead of public opinion again.
What he said was, and l'll never forget it.
''And while l am talking to you mothers and fathers, ''l give you one more assurance.
''l have said this before, but l shall say it again and again and again.
''Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.
'' There was no ''except in case of attack'', no ''but if'' Period.
l remember hearing it on the radio, and the applause, and saying,''By gosh, he must mean it.
How's he going to get out of it?'' He did have a devious side and that came out at no point more clearly than in these months of 1940 and 1941 , ln good part, l think, because he faced a situation where, even if he never admitted this to himself, he was leading the nation toward war and he couldn't say this.
Shortly before election day, Roosevelt took a gamble that voters would accept the introduction of conscription, The first number drawn by the Secretary of War is serial number 158.
The first number and a scream flash across the nation.
ln every walk of life the muster begins.
And as the lottery goes on for 1 7 hours, a mighty manpower is created.
Number 158 in Oakland, California, laundry worker Kwang Kwong Fu, San Francisco and senior class president William Bernard Barriman, San Lorenzo and American-born Toshio Okado.
At Palo Alto, John Kennedy, the ambassador's son, got the 18th number drawn.
Soon after Roosevelt's victory, Britain's plight became desperate, Churchill wrote to Roosevelt to say Britain was stripped to the bone, running out of supplies and, even worse, out of money to pay for more.
She could not hold out much longer, Roosevelt was cruising with the navy in the Caribbean.
For two days, without consulting advisors, he applied his fertile mind to Britain's problem.
He pondered this question at some length and finally came up with this very ingenious solution.
He said to newsmen when he returned, ''Let's forget the silly old dollar sign.
''When a neighbour has a fire and you have a garden hose that will help him put it out, ''obviously it's in your interest to let that person borrow your hose, ''Let's think about this problem that way, ''America has the goods.
''America needs the protection and security that a fighting Britain can provide, ''and we lend Britain the goods and they fight the battle in our behalf as well.
'' The result, the Lend-Lease Bill, touched off a final epic battle between the interventionists and the isolationists, who accused Roosevelt of warmongering and exceeding his presidential powers.
The president's supporters fought back.
Senator Pepper was Roosevelt's man in the Congress.
The time has come when the decent, god-fearing nations of the earth must rise up and put down international brigandage and piracy, which have today made ours a lawless world.
When l introduced the first Lend-Lease Bill, and began to speak for it in the Senate and around the country, one afternoon l got to my office from the Senate and the superintendent of police called me.
He said,''What do you want me to do with your effigy?'' l said,''My what?''''Your effigy.
Didn't you know you were hanged in effigy? ''ln front of the Senate wing of the Capitol this afternoon by a group of women.
'' l said,''No, l was on the floor.
'' He said,''A group of women had an effigy of you.
'' They had a Claude''Benedict Arnold'' Pepper placard across the chest and they'd tied a rope around the effigy's neck and strung him to a limb of the tree, They were shaking their fists at it.
The police went and cut it down.
ln the Capitol the historic bill is passed.
A night session sees the Senate vote 60 to 31 for it.
lt was a bitter fight and it was in many ways a major turning point in American foreign policy.
The debate was, in a sense, the last cry, the last major stand of the isolationists.
And when they were sharply outnumbered in the voting, it was very clear that their weight had really subsided in American councils of foreign policy.
Lend-Lease aid for Britain, Billions of dollars' worth of war materials.
The crucial question was the escort of convoys.
Every month Britain was losing 400,000 tons of shipping to German U-boats.
Gradually the US navy became directly involved in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Lieutenant Noah Adair was a watch officer in the first American ship hit by a German torpedo.
l had finished my watch and l was out on the bridge and looked down.
l saw a torpedo passing past our bow.
Another man on the stern, l found out later on, had seen one pass astern.
And then, almost simultaneously with that, we ourselves were hit.
The explosion hit right in the No.
1 fire room and destroyed the interior of the fire room and opened up a gash in the side of the ship from the water line right on down to the keel of the ship.
There were 1 1 men that were killed and about 21 , l believe, that were wounded.
All those that were killed were in the fire room.
As America prepares, the war comes ever closer.
On the Atlantic, vast convoys brave sub-infested waters.
US patrol planes keep ceaseless vigil We were doing the same thing we'd be doing if we were at war and on convoy duty.
lf we could get a sonar contact on the submarine, we'd drop depth charges on them.
lt was quite similar to being at war.
That summer, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met in a remote bay in Newfoundland.
For nearly two years they'd kept up a lengthy and intimate correspondence and now, with their naval and military chiefs, they spent four days coordinating plans.
They meet, and Mr Churchill hands the president a letter from the king.
The two greatest leaders of the freedom-loving world are ready for the historic conference.
The meeting marked America's re-entry into the world and the end of two decades of isolation.
Onward, Christian soldiers Marching as to war With the cross of Jesus Going on before Much of the discussion focused on Japan and what should be done if she joined her two Axis partners in the war, ltaly and Germany.
After Japan's aggression in China, Roosevelt had already embargoed exports of scrap metal to Japan.
When the Japanese occupied the whole of lndo-China, he cut off the most vital commodity of all, oil.
Japan sent negotiators to Washington.
Simultaneously the cabinet in Tokyo made plans for war.
The negotiations dragged on fruitlessly.
At the end of November radio intercepts told Roosevelt that a Japanese attack was imminent, but no one knew where it would come.
Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, On each anniversary of Japan's attack, the band of the US Pacific Fleet repeats the concert that was played on board the USS Arizona in 1941 .
For the soldiers, sailors and airmen sent to Hawaii in that year, Pearl Harbor was an enjoyable posting.
Despite warnings of the possibility of an attack, nobody believed that the Japanese forces could reach halfway across the Pacific.
Japan had a reputation in those days for being imitative.
They copied everything but put out a shoddy copy.
Our military people were convinced that they couldn't build anything very well.
They didn't believe that Japanese planes were very good or their trucks were very good, their mechanical stuff very good.
They didn't think they could be very good fighter pilots or bombing pilots because they couldn't see well and wore glasses, So there was a tendency to look down on the Japanese, to minimise them.
At five minutes to eight on the morning of December 7th, Japanese carrier-borne aircraft launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, 19 ships were sunk or disabled, 188 American aircraft were destroyed on the ground and 3,500 men were killed and wounded, lt was a Sunday and l was at home resting.
l got a call from the White House saying the president wanted me to come down.
l threw things together and went down and walked in and up to his study and he was sitting up there shuffling his stamps around.
l had expected chaos and excitement and tension and it was exactly the opposite.
lt was quiet, no confusion of any kind.
So l said to him, ''Why did you get me to come down here?'' He said,''Because war has begun.
'' And yet there was a feeling that he wasn't surprised, he wasn't taken aback and he wasn't worried.
December 7th 1941 , a date which will live in infamy.
The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan, Four days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States.
A future secretary of state remarked, ''At last our enemies, with unparalleled stupidity, ''resolved our dilemmas, clarified our doubts and uncertainties ''and united our people for the long, hard course that the national interest required,'' Aim.
Fire.
Aim.
Fire.
Aim.
Fire.
The annual ceremony of remembrance above the remains of the battleship Arizona.
More than 1 ,000 of her crew had died when a bomb detonated her forward magazine.
l think the differences just disappeared.
That was the greatest single example of a country that was widely divided being unified within almost minutes by a single stroke.
lf you ask me if there had been no Pearl Harbor, would we have gone into war, when would we have gone into war, l couldn't answer, l don't know.
The Japanese just did the dumbest thing in all military history and that did it.