Pearl Harbor - 24 Hours After

70 years after the attack at Pearl Harbor

"The Japanese have drawn first blood"

There are secrets,

"The details are not available"

that remain unspoken.

"How could we have been caught so unprepared?"

This is the story of President Franklin Roosevelt.

"He knew this was going to be a difficult day,

the longest Sunday of his life."

In the first 24 hours after the Japanese attack,

"The attack was made on Oahu"

boldly leading Americans into a world already at war.

Hour by hour,

"Everyone is saying it was someone else"s fault"

Minute by minute,

"They had gotten no response to any of the messages"

What secrets are revealed?

"Roosevelt would have been given cocaine.

The question is, how much cocaine?"

This is the story of Pearl Harbor,

"A date which will live in infamy."

As you've never seen it before.

"These 24 hours are the turning point of the 20th century."

Franklin Roosevelt loved his stamp collection.

Loved to spend time putting stamps in a stamp book.

It was a form of relaxation for the president.

"Swing is the thing, and Goodman is the King."

Roosevelt is sitting at his desk, going through his stamp collection.

And the phone rings.

Now, Roosevelt did not want to be disturbed

but the operator told him that it was an urgent call

from Frank Knox, who was the Secretary of the Navy.

And the Secretary of the Navy tells him,

"They've hit us."

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Doesn't have a lot of specifics,

doesn't know what the American response was.

All he knows, is it doesn't look good.

These great moments of history when a president

hears something as momentous as Pearl Harbor,

you expect them to say something profound.

But all Roosevelt said was, "Oh no."

Knox said, "This is no drill."

Roosevelt asked him if he could confirm it.

He said he "absolutely couldn't confirm it yet

at this point, but all indications were that this was real."

But Roosevelt, even though it hadn't been confirmed,

believed it was true.

He said "its just the type of thing the Japanese would do;

that it was a sneak attack."

"The World Today, by shortwave radio,

Columbia now brings the latest world news

presented over these stations by Golden Eagle Gasoline.

Go ahead, New York."

"A Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The attack apparently was made on all

Naval and Military activities on the principle island of Oahu."

It's interesting that on the most important day

of Roosevelt's presidency, December 7th, 1941,

he didn't go into the Oval Office.

He stayed on the 2nd floor of the White House

in his oval study, the room that he was the most comfortable in.

Roosevelt conducts all the nations affairs from this one room.

"The details are not available. They will be in a few minutes.

The White House is now giving out a statement."

It's hard for us to imagine now

but back then, information came slowly.

You can't just turn on your TV and see live pictures on CNN.

Roosevelt has to wait.

There is no direct line between Pearl Harbor and the White House.

It took hours for Roosevelt to have a clear

sense of what had happened at Pearl Harbor.

In the beginning he didn't know how many ships were attacked.

He didn't know how many planes were involved.

He didn't know if Japan had launched this attack on its own.

Was this the first of many attacks?

Was this simply to knock out the Pacific fleet?

Perhaps this air attack was a precursor to a land invasion.

He doesn't know whether American planes had

intercepted the Japanese force.

He didn't know any of these things.

And so one of the great challenges for FDR

was given this sense of uncertainty about what really happened.

What was he to do next?

In 1941, the world is consumed by aggression.

Adolf Hitler's armies had already marched across Europe.

In the Pacific, Japan was trying to seek

to expand its own empire.

About 80% of the oil that Japan used

came from the United States.

In 1941, Roosevelt places an embargo on oil on Japan

in an effort to tame its aggressive stance in the Pacific.

That begins the clock.

The clock starts ticking toward Pearl Harbor.

As Roosevelt is getting more updates in what happened

and finally getting more information,

his son James comes into the study,

and he sees his father, and his father is almost frozen,

suspended in time for a second.

He notices that Roosevelt was wearing one of his old sweaters,

one of James' old sweaters.

James described his father as sad but courageous

at the same time, determined.

He approached his father and asked what he could do.

And FDR looks over to his son and he says,

"Stick around, I may need you."

The first report he gets at 2:28 gives him his

first glimpse that something awful has taken place.

Remember, there's no direct communication

between Hawaii and the White House,

so what's happening is the Naval commander

in Hawaii, Admiral Block, is calling the war department

and talking to the Chief Naval Officer, Admiral Stark.

Admiral Stark is then calling over to the White House.

And Block is giving him kind of vague information,

not full detail that Stark is looking for,

or that Roosevelt is looking for.

But finally, Block says "Look, I don't know if this is a secure line.

I don't know if the Japanese are listening in."

So here you have the President who's trying

to get detailed information but they don't want to give it to him

because they are afraid the Japanese are listening on the line

so at one point Stark, who is talking to Block, he said, "Just tell me."

Even now today, he believes there were 50 planes from one aircraft carrier.

Major damage, and a significant loss of life.

Roosevelt's getting a sense that the Japanese

have pulled off a surprise attack.

And that the American Navy and Army had been

perhaps caught off guard.

"The Japanese have drawn first blood.

Secretary of War Stimson

ordered all war department personnel

to report for duty tomorrow in uniform."

At about 3pm, the war council convenes at the White House.

Stimson, from the war department.

Knox, from the Navy department.

General Marshall.

And the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull.

And his question to his advisors is basically

"How the hell could this have happened?"

How could the Japanese attack, what was perceived

to be one of the strongest military installations in the world?

How could this happen on your watch?

How could we be caught so unprepared?

Essentially what they say is we sent out word that an attack was going to happen.

General Marshall and Secretary Knox had warned

the local commanders in the Pacific.

Intercepts had told them that there was an expectation

that the Japanese were going to attack.

In part, what had happened was their fault.

Pearl Harbor had a lack of information about what was going on.

And so everyone is essentially covering themselves

in the immediate aftermath of the attack

and saying 'well it was someone elses fault.'

One person who was present on December 7th,

that is rarely spoken of, was of course Eleanor Roosevelt.

When Franklin hears that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, she doesn't know about it.

She goes upstairs and she walks by the oval study and

sees all these people running around.

She sees that Franklin is really busy.

And she knows from the conversation she overhears on the phone

that something awful has happened.

And she looks at Franklin,

and what she sees she refers to as a deadly calm.

The last time she saw that deadly calm was

in August of 1921 when the doctor stood there

and told Franklin Roosevelt that he had polio,

and he would probably never walk again.

"This is CBS in America calling Honolulu.

Go ahead, Honolulu."

(mumbled speech)

Franklin Roosevelt was toughened

by his own personal experience dealing with polio

that he had acquired as a 39 year old man.

This was a president who used a wheelchair

everyday of his life, and had a serious disability.

Roosevelt was unable to stand unaided.

He used steel braces that he would lock into place

to hold himself in an upright position.

Roosevelt went to great lengths to hide his disability.

It was mentioned at times in the press,

but most Americans had no idea that

Franklin Roosevelt had no use of his legs.

Roosevelt didn't want to be seen in a wheelchair.

He only wanted to use the wheelchair

to get from one point to another.

And he designed his own wheelchair

which was essentially a kitchen chair

that he cut off the arms and attached wheels to.

But he asked the press not to photograph him while he was in the chair.

When he was told he had polio,

he never gave up hope that he would walk.

He never gave up the possibility that he

would be the person who would be able to find a cure,

and he spent most of his life searching for a cure.

That was the way he dealt with crisis.

When he was told really bad news, from that moment on

he simply developed a plan for dealing with it.

No matter how bad the news was on December 7th,

he had this deadly calm. He knew now we were in this war.

"Heavy guns defend the parts of Pearl Harbor and Honolulu.

Remember that Oahu, the island itself, is one

of the most formidable maritime fortresses in the world."

With Pearl Harbor devastated, perhaps incapacitated,

we knew by this time the Pacific was a Japanese lake.

They could do whatever they wanted in it.

Will the Philippines be next?

Almost certainly.

The Philippines had been a colony of the United States

since the Spanish American War and Americans

were very much involved in shaping the armed forces of the Philippines.

The leading representative of the army, General Marshall,

he needs to get a hold of General Douglas McArthur

over in the Philippines, and he simply can't reach him.

General Douglas McArthur was a hero of World War 1

who had gone into retirement and Roosevelt

brought him out to build up American armed forces in the Philippines.

Roosevelt did not particularly like McArthur,

McArthur was a very political general and also

was a man with a massive ego who would constantly

talk that he had special insight into the minds

of what he called 'orientals' and that guidance from

Washington was unnecessary.

That he would be perfectly capable of handling

the situation in the Philippines.

But they're not even sure where McArthur is.

They're not even sure what's happening there,

if the communications been cut off by the Japanese.

So George Marshall is antsy.

He wants to get back to the war department

because he wants to make sure that McArthur

knows that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.

He wants to make sure that they're on alert.

That they should expect an attack from Japan

at anytime, if it hasn't occurred already.

He wants to make sure that there's not two

Pearl Harbors in the same day.

"Japan's game became crystal clear today.

Her desire was war.

War with the United States.

America's outpost out of the Pacific,

mighty Pearl Harbor, naval base was under heavy attack."

Pearl Harbor was one of the two greatest

intelligence failures in US history.

9/11 was the other.

Both of these attacks exhibited common patterns

where there was information out there

where a perceptive person might have known

about the attack, but that information was very difficult

to interpret, and this is what Roosevelt quickly

discovers in his meetings with the military leaders.

At the very same time basically as FDR is meeting

with his advisors, there is a big rally taking place.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the American First Movement

is holding a rally in which Gerald Nye,

Senator from North Dakota, is going to give a speech.

"Americans want no more war.

Most of all, they want no more participation in foreign war.

America First is an organization which is founded

in the late 1930's and it becomes committed

to keeping the US out of World War II.

There's this large auditorium that's decorated

in red, white, and blue filled with these

enthusiastic America First supporters who believe

Roosevelt is a war monger who's trying to lead America into battle.

They were chanting and they were hooting and they were calling,

"Who's war is it? Roosevelt's!"

"Who's war is it? Roosevelt's!"

And that chant went on and on and on.

So by this time an enterprising young reporter

from the local newspaper has learned about

the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

So he goes to the rally and he wants to get Nye's reaction to this news.

So he finds Nye in a little room off the stage

before he goes out, and tells him that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.

Nye just blocks it out, doesn't accept it.

He goes out on the stage and gives his typical anti-Roosevelt diatribe.

That Roosevelt was pushing us to war.

That Roosevelt was a war monger.

That if we, the people, the American Firsters

of the United States don't come together,

we will find ourselves in another World War.

"There is but one war I would like to see this world engage in.

That is a war against the private munitions makers the world over."

Gerald Nye went on and at one point the

reporter walked up on the stage and handed him a slip of paper

that said "Japan has declared war on the United States."

And Nye just pushed it aside and he continued to talk

for 45 minutes, ranting and raving about how

Roosevelt was trying to get us into an unjust war.

Until finally, he tells the audience that it appears

that Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor.

He tells the news, but does so in a negative fashion.

He darkly hints that the President might have somehow

manipulated the situation, and this rally

signals the very quick end of America First.

The group as a whole disperses almost immediately

after the Pittsburgh rally.

"We have just heard the word that Japan

itself has declared war on the United States.

The Republican leader of the Senate, Charles McNary says

"Now the nation must unite and give Japan a beating

for her stupidity and aggression.

There's a quotation from Representative John Contho,

a Pennsylvanian Republican which is typical of many,

"When anyone takes a poke at you, the only thing to do is

to go at them with everything you've got and beat the daylight out of them."

At this time, when we are having meetings

of the military leaders in Washington DC,

and America Firsters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

We have the American Ambassador in Great Britain

having a late dinner with Winston Churchill

at the Prime Ministers' retreat of Checkers.

And they are talking about the war.

Of course they are talking about the war.

Remember, Churchill and England have been fighting

for their life and they need help.

They need help desperately.

Churchill is convinced that while Britain

perhaps can survive a Nazi onslaught,

the only way that the British can actually

defeat Germany is if the United States

enters the war on Britain's side.

Churchill knew he had an ally in Roosevelt.

He understood that Roosevelt wanted to do what he could to help Britain,

but the politics of the American scene

had always restrained Roosevelt, so Churchill was

despondent on Sunday night, December 7th.

He felt that all of his efforts to try to get Roosevelt

to commit troops and to actually enter the war had failed.

So Churchill was depressed.

He wasn't saying much.

Every evening at 9pm, Churchill listened to the BBC news,

and up comes the radio onto the dinner table.

It's a kind of like a little music box.

And out comes this extraordinary story.

America had been attacked at Pearl Harbor.

And Churchill, of course, is completely shocked.

Churchill jumps out of his chair, and starts

running up the stairs saying "I will declare war immediately!"

And those around him said, "Mr. Prime Minister,

you can't declare war on the basis of a radio broadcast.

You need to know more about what happened."

And so, the British Prime Minister decides to call

his friend and ally, Franklin Roosevelt.

Churchill gets on the line and says "Is it true?"

And Roosevelt immediately recognizes Churchill's accent

and he says "Yes we are all in the same boat now."

Churchill's reaction was one of relief.

The British had been desperate to get the Americans into the war.

This was not how they wanted it to happen,

but at least it was now clear the United States

could not be neutral in the war against the totalitarian states.

But there's a little kernel of doubt

that's still gnawing away at Churchill.

The problem for Churchill was the United States

had been attacked by Japan, not by Nazi Germany.

Now with the United States, the victim of Japanese aggression,

it's possible that the United States is going to react

naturally, which is to go first against the country that attacked it.

So, can we use this as an opportunity to get

the United States to go to war with Hitler,

and help us roll back Hitler's gains in western Europe,

and then destroy imperial Japan and make it pay for Pearl Harbor.

Even though he's publicly euphoric,

there are all these questions and doubts

about just what the impact of this attack is going to be.

What's fascinating is that here Winston Churchill

is ecstatic that the United States is finally in World War II,

but oddly enough his chief adversary and nemesis,

Adolf Hitler, and he's also elated.

At about the same time in East Prussia,

in the wolf's lair, Hitler receives the news,

and he's with his generals.

As far as Hitler is concerned, the war is won.

He believes that America's military might be overestimated

so he calls for champagne for everybody.

Hitler tells the generals "Japan hasn't lost a war in three thousand years.

We can't lose now."

He feels the war has been decided.

The first detailed report that Franklin Roosevelt

gets about the extent of the damage takes place at 3:50.

He was hoping that there would be some Nazi involvement

in the attack because that allows him to use

this attack to justify going to war against Germany.

A Germany that dominates the continent of Europe

will be an absolute disaster for the United States.

Japan is, for Roosevelt, a nuisance.

It's not the military threat.

It's not the economic threat of Germany.

This is the genius of Franklin Roosevelt.

Even though the Japanese had inflicted this devastating defeat,

he understands that his top priority must be

to liberate Europe and defeat Nazi Germany.

So he's constantly asking "Were there any German planes?"

And now eye witnesses said that at least 2 of the planes had swastikas on them.

As he discovers the enormity of the attack,

Roosevelt is quite certain that he is going to

have to go to Congress and request a declaration of war against the Japanese.

"What Japan has done today in beginning hostilites

against the United States, is to begin to play her role

in the Axis attempt to conquer the world."

All of Roosevelt's speech writers were out of town that weekend,

so he was left alone to draft what was going to be

the most important speech of his presidency.

And Roosevelt understood that whatever he said

on December 8th had to be the very best message

to bring the country together and to restore its self confidence.

He doesn't want it to be muddled or complicated or overly legalistic.

He wants it to be succinct. He wants it to be emotional.

He wants it to be clear.

And he wants it to be something he can use

to galvanize the American people.

Roosevelt puts on a sport coat, and calls for Grace Tully,

his secretary. Grace Tully walks in and Roosevelt

is smoking a cigarette, and he tells Grace

that he wants to dictate a message.

He knew in his head, exactly what he wanted to say.

So Roosevelt asks Tully to sit down,

and he tells her, "This will be short."

She said that in this remarkably calm voice

he started to dictate without a pause or hesitation

the message that he would deliver the next day

to a joint session of Congress.

Roosevelt begins, "Yesterday, December 7th, 1941,

a date which will live in world history,

the United States of America was simultaneously

and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan."

You can feel in his words his fury about what happened

and his determination to move America to address this aggression.

"We just had a bulletin from London that President Roosevelt's

announcement of Japanese air attacks on United States

Pacific bases staggered London, which awaited

fulfillment of Prime Minister Churchill's promise

to declare war on Japan within the hour

if they attacked the United States."

After he finishes dictating the speech,

Tully brings it over and types it up.

Roosevelt wants to get Secretary of State

Cordell Hull's response to this speech.

He calls him into his study and reads him the speech.

It takes about 5 minutes to read.

Hull is shocked; he thinks it the worse speech he's ever heard.

As far as Hull was concerned, it was completely inadequate.

It's too short, it's not well argued.

Hull wants a speech that painfully sets out every

dispute between the United States and Japan.

Every point that the United States had tried

to prevent war, and Japan had forced the war on us.

This is simply not a statement he thinks is worthy

of the President of the United States on an occasion like this.

He wants an indictment of Japan.

But FDR just knows that's not going to work.

He doesn't want the American people to be confused.

He wants them to feel the emotion he does.

So he says no to it.

Roosevelt explains to him that he wants people to listen to this speech.

That this isn't the time for a detailed legal brief

about the relation between the United States and Japan.

This was the time to state that the Japanese

had launched a treacherous attack.

That the United States was the victim.

And the United States was a powerful country which

was going to respond and defeat this aggressor.

After Secretary Hull left, President Roosevelt

began to edit the speech.

Far from making his speech even longer and more complicated,

He thinks about it, and he thinks,

"A date that will live in world history."

He said no, he wanted to make a change.

And he begins to rewrite that first most dramatic sentence.

He actually crosses out world history,

and he writes down infamy.

Now it becomes "Yesterday, December 7th, 1941,

a date which will live in infamy."

And so thus would become born one of the most

famous sentences ever given by a president.

A date which will live in infamy.

Just extraordinary words, beautiful, powerful.

So at approximately 5:28, Roosevelt gets a call

from the Hawaiian Governor, Poindexter.

Quite frankly, Governor Poindexter seemed

a little bit frazzled by what's going on.

And while Roosevelt is talking to him,

trying to get information about the nature of the attack,

Poindexter screams.

Roosevelt hears Poindexter say, in essence,

"Oh my God, we are being attacked again.

Another wave, a third wave is coming in!"

Roosevelt puts the phone down, and he says to

Harry Hopkins and Grace Tully, who's with him,

"The Japs are attacking again."

It's 4 hours or so since the original attacks,

and he's being told there's another wave of

Japanese planes dropping bombs on Hawaii.

So, what's Roosevelt thinking?

This means the Japanese are still there.

It means the aircraft carriers are still off the coast of Hawaii,

so you've got to think, he's thinking this is a land invasion.

This is the prelude to a land invasion.

"This country, which was not unified on the question

of going to war with the Axis, has been unified

since about 2:30pm this afternoon.

Indeed the only dissenting note came from

Senator Nye, who was quoted by United Press as

"blaming the Japanese attack on the British"

but Senator Wheeler did not take that lie.

He said "The only thing now is to do our best to lick hell out of them."

It's no small feat for FDR to manage all this,

when one considers among everything else, just his health alone.

Roosevelt suffered from chronic sinus congestion

throughout his life. It was a source of great discomfort to him,

and so one of the things he does on December 7th

is spend an hour and ten minutes with his physician

trying to get some relief from this chronic sinus problem.

At 5:30, Roosevelt is wheeled into his physican's office, Dr. Ross McIntire.

McIntire was a Navy man, like Roosevelt.

McIntire will later be somewhat controversial as Roosevelt's physician.

Given the treatments that were available in 1941,

what could McIntire have done in 70 minutes that would have helped

to relieve Roosevelt's sinus problems?

The most commonly used drug for getting that result was cocaine.

We didn't have the antibiotics and things like we have today,

so we know that most likely he was given cocaine

because that was the drug of choice at the time,

and that's how we treated patients with sinus problems.

They would put the cocaine on cotton and

literally paint the membranes of the nose.

"And now, an analysis by William L.Shires.

From Berlin itself, we've heard very little tonight."

That'll take some time, maybe 10, 15, 20 minutes,

and that would shrink the membranes and allow the sinus's to drain.

"There was a typical Hitlerian outburst,

typical except that it was rather brief."

It's hard to say exactly how much cocaine was given.

There seems to be some disagreement of whether

it would have been a .25%, a .5%, 1% or even as much as 2%.

Obviously the greater the concentration of cocaine,

the more likely that it would have had some psychological impact.

It would have given him some brief sense of euphoria,

if you could feel any sense of euphoria on this day,

and also a boost of energy.

"The German people were told this

'As a result of constantly increasing war mongering

of the American President Roosevelt in recent weeks,

the first clashes between Japanese and United States

armed forces occurred today'

and there were a couple of other sentences of similar nonsense."

I think it's clear that the medical procedure

that McIntire performed certainly relieved Roosevelt's congestion.

Whether or not the cocaine that he used as part of the treatment

also gave Roosevelt a temporary emotional boost is impossible to know.

And we'll never know for sure because his medical records

were destroyed after he died.

While Roosevelt is in the doctors office with McIntire,

Eleanor Roosevelt goes on radio and gives

her weekly Sunday message.

Of course this message is going to include news of Pearl Harbor.

"And now here's the Pan American Coffee Bureaus

Sunday evening news reviewer and news maker

to give us her usual interesting observations

on the world we live in. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt."

It is a kind of extraordinary thing that the

first Roosevelt voice that the American public hears

in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack

is not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but Eleanor Roosevelt.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

I'm speaking to you tonight at a very

serious moment in our history.

For months now the knowledge that something

of this kind might happen seemed impossible to believe.

That is all over now.

And there is no more uncertainty.

We know what we have to face, and we know

that we are ready to face it."

Eleanor is more of a partner with Franklin Roosevelt

than she is a traditional First Lady.

The traditional First Lady said really nothing in public,

and it would certainly not have gone on the radio

to deliver such an important message to the American people,

but Eleanor was different.

"By tomorrow morning, the members of Congress

will have a full report and be ready for action."

The address that Eleanor would give on that evening was worthy of any president.

She is basically laying the groundwork for

FDR's war address that would come the next day.

"Many of you all over this country have boys

in the services who will now be called upon to go into action."

She spoke with great empathy for people who had sons in the military.

"I have a boy at sea on a destroyer.

For all I know, he may be on his way to the Pacific.

You cannot escape anxiety.

You cannot escape the clutch of fear at your heart.

And yet I hope that the certainty of what

we have to meet will make you rise above these fears."

She was basically saying to the mothers and families of America,

Your boys may be sent to die, and I understand.

"Whatever is asked of us, I am sure we can accomplish it.

We are the free and unconquerable people

of the United States of America."

Now things were moving very fast during the day,

they had to get their hands on all sorts of different issues.

The secret service, they thought "By God if they could hit

us at Pearl Harbor, what was next? The White House?"

They didn't know.

"President Roosevelt talked by transpacific telephone

with Governor Poindexter of Hawaii,

and the Governor notified him that a second wave

of Japanese bombers was beginning to swarm over Hawaii

at the very moment he was talking to the President."

Roosevelt comes back from his meeting with Dr. McIntire

and is wheeled back into the oval study.

He is joined by Grace Tully, his secretary, and with Harry Hopkins.

Hopkins is Roosevelt's closest friend,

and he actually lives in the White House.

He lives in the Lincoln bedroom, just a few doors down from Roosevelt.

The White House brings up trays for dinner.

It is to say the least, an uncomfortable dinner.

Roosevelt really doesn't want to talk about Pearl Harbor.

He would hope to ignore Pearl Harbor,

but it was like ignoring the 800lb. gorilla that's sitting at the table with them.

It's the only time in this 24 hour period

where Roosevelt reveals his vulnerability.

All throughout the day, FDR had really portrayed

a sense of firmness that while everyone

was seemingly on the verge of panic and feeling the strain,

he was the lynchpin holding everyone together.

But all of the sudden over dinner,

he just lets his fears run rampant.

He's afraid that the Japanese may be, at that very moment,

preparing to launch an attack against the west coast.

He worried they could invade the west coast of the United States,

and proceed as far east as Chicago before

the United States could put up a reasonable defense.

He knows America's lack of readiness.

We had an army, if you can believe it,

that was roughly the size of Sweden's.

Just the previous spring, the United States

had only one combat ready division.

You compare that you Germany, which had over 200.

And Japan had over 100.

This was a country that was not prepared for war.

"From Washington, the recruiting office of the United States Navy

announces that all recruiting centers will be open at 8am tomorrow.

Our next special news broadcast is scheduled

at 7:15pm eastern standard time, when we shall hear

from Edward R. Merl from Washington, but now

we return you to our regularly scheduled program."

At approximately 7:10pm, Roosevelt gets the most detailed report

of the damage done at Pearl Harbor.

So this is roughly 6 hours after the first planes

began dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor, and now

Roosevelt, for the first time, is reading

the destroyers, the battle ships that have been crippled or destroyed.

I think it's probably at this moment that

Roosevelt's getting a full picture of what took place

in Hawaii. He knows at this point that the American

response had been feeble. He knows there is devastation,

significant loss of life, but now the gravity

of the destruction is finally taking hold.

Roosevelt learns that the Nevada was hit by a torpedo and set afire.

That the Oklahoma was hit by 3 torpedoes; she capsized.

The Tennessee was partially capsized.

The California was set on fire, and she is burning.

The Arizona was hit by torpedoes or aerial bombs, and she is capsized.

The West Virginia is still afloat and alright,

but pretty badly damaged by fire.

Crews pumped so much water into the Raleigh to put out a fire that she is in bad shape.

Remember, Roosevelt had been assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Roosevelt loved the Navy.

This news must have been excruciating.

You know that every line just really hits him like a punch in the gut.

He's a former Navy man, I mean he knows what this is like.

He's not seeing the images, but in his minds' eye he can conjure it up.

Ships burning, twisted steel, men dying, other men writhing in pain.

He knows the size of these ships.

He gets reports that ships are capsized or sunk or on fire.

He knows the number of lives that are likely to have been lost.

And at one point, he puts his head in his hands

and he's shaking his head over and over saying,

"My God I'm going to go down in history as a disgraced president.

I'm going to go down in history as a disgraced president."

Roosevelt's the President of the United States.

He's the Commander in Chief.

When this debacle Pearl Harbor takes place,

are people going to blame him?

Are people going to say he was sleeping on the job?

"Representative Dingle says that in the morning he will demand

the court marshall of top ranking Army and Navy

officers as a result of the Japanese attack on Hawaii."

When one evaluates Roosevelt's leadership in that first day,

he does make a serious error in judgement.

During dinner time, Roosevelt's Solicitor General Charles Fehey,

goes in and his concern is Japanese Americans.

At this time there's roughly about 92,000 Japanese Americans.

There's been a concern with these Japanese Americans being security risks.

Even though FDR had been told earlier that the Japanese were not a security threat,

he was not taking chances on that.

He wanted to do what he thought was necessary to ensure that

there would not be, as he often talked about and railed against,

that 5th column, the saboteurs.

Remember what they have in mind.

Hitler had sent 5th columns into various countries

to prepare them for his invasion.

So Roosevelt, and most American officials believed

the Japanese had probably done the same.

The question is could Japanese Americans

in Hawaii have somehow assisted this attack?

There's no way of knowing this at this time.

And so Roosevelt's Solicitor General wants to know

does he have the right to start arresting any suspected Japanese?

Roosevelt gives him the authority.

He sent a signal that Japanese Americans were

almost guilty until proven innocent of being disloyal.

He was really a creature of the prejudices of his day.

He called the Japanese Japs.

And Roosevelt was largely indifferent to the violation of civil liberties.

So the order that Roosevelt signed the following day

was very limited in scope, and it was designed only

to round up those who were perceived to be a threat.

It later morphs into something that was far different

and an egregious violation of civil liberties.

Of course, this is what would become one of the saddest

chapters in the Roosevelt presidency, and really in American history.

The internment of Japanese Americans during the second World War.

So the record, which is generally extraordinarily good

for Roosevelt in those first hours has a touch of darkness.

"Here comes a bulletin.The War Department has invoked the Espionage Act

against the publication of military information regarded as secret.

We all know that, and we can't any longer state anything

about army strength outside the continental limits of the United States."

While Roosevelt was having dinner, military leaders

finally said they had reached McArthur in the Philippines.

Remember, they had been trying to reach McArthur

for some time that day, and had gotten no response to

any messages that had been delivered to the Philippines.

And they told McArthur "Be on full alert."

There is a strong likelihood that you are next."

McArthur, in his very confident, arrogant way, said

"Don't worry. Our tails are in the air.

Japanese attempt anything, we can handle it.

We've been caught off guard in Pearl, but we are fine in Manilla."

That was the message that was conveyed to Franklin Roosevelt.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in view of the intense international situation,

we have delayed the broadcast of the general petroleum program

I Was There, normally heard at 8:30.

It will follow immediately at 9 o'clock.

We don't know very much about the operations of Hawaii

beyond the White House statement that it is feared

there has been a heavy loss of life and property."

At 8:30, Roosevelt meets with his Cabinet in the oval study.

His Cabinet assembles around him in a ring,

this is what they often did.

And they are now a unit, they are working together.

Many of them had to travel from some distance away.

Some were in New York, some were in the Midwest.

They had all flown to Washington.

They knew that this was a serious moment.

But communication not being what it was like today,

many of them really didn't have much information

about what had happened.

And he utters these very grave words.

He says to them "This is the most important

Cabinet meeting since 1861."

To him, this is as significant as the beginning of the Civil War.

FDR, as usual, was right.

This was the most important Cabinet meeting.

And then the President laid out before them what had happened.

He tells them the extent of the damage.

He tells them about the battleships and destroyers.

He tells them about the lives lost.

The Cabinet is stunned.

There was really just a state of shock,

a state of disbelief.

Nobody could believe that this had actually happened.

Like all Americans, they had seen the Hollywood

caricatures of the Japanese.

Short men with thick glasses that spoke bad English.

How could these people have done this to the United States?

How could we have been caught so absolutely unprepared for this attack?

Most Americans, including high level government officials,

simply did not believe the Japanese possessed

the technical know-how to pull off an attack like this.

Some of them suggested "Well have the Japanese invented

a new weapon? A new type of bomb? What's going on?"

Maybe the Japanese had come up some new planes

that could fly at high altitudes and drop bombs from 30,000ft.

Members of the Cabinet, members of the military,

underestimated the Japanese partly for racial reasons.

That Japanese were not equal to white westerners.

Secretary of War Stimson tells Roosevelt

that there's no way the Japanese could have carried out this attack themselves.

They must have been inspired by the Germans.

While this meeting is taking place,

there's not just this political and military drama,

but there's a deeply personal drama that takes place.

While Roosevelt is meeting with his Cabinet,

Missy Lehan, his old secretary, calls.

She's worried about him.

Missy, at this point, is at Warm Springs

where she is receiving therapy for a severe stroke

that she had suffered months earlier.

She wants to talk to Franklin Roosevelt.

Missy Lehan was probably more personally important

to Roosevelt during his presidency than Eleanor Roosevelt was.

Many people viewed her as Franklin Roosevelt's surrogate wife.

Some have suggested, including his own children,

that he had a sexual relationship.

Other members of his family have suggested that it

was not a sexual relationship.

He put a provision in his will that should he die

before she did, that she would get half of his estate.

He gave half his estate to Eleanor,

and half his estate to Missy Lehan.

She was the woman that gave him the affection

that Eleanor never could.

Frankin and Eleanor their private relationship

really had fallen apart years earlier

when Eleanor discovered that Franklin was having an affair.

From that moment they slept in separate bedrooms.

Eleanor and Franklin never slept in the same bedroom in the White House.

So, Grace Tully explains to Missy that the President

was in a meeting, but that she would give him the message

and he would call her back either later that evening or tomorrow.

Roosevelt gets the message, but he never calls her back.

She's devastated by it.

And Missy is so hit by this, so struck by this,

that she actually tried to commit suicide within a few weeks.

Roosevelt made friends, but he also discarded friends quickly.

I suspect that in her feeble state in Warm Springs

when Franklin didn't return her phone call,

that she realized she had been discarded.

He lacked the emotional room to deal with the

tragedy of Pearl Harbor, mobilize the nation for war,

and still satisfy the emotional need to the woman

who is still madly in love with him.

So their relationship was a personal tragedy

that was a result of Pearl Harbor.

After Roosevelt gives them the latest up to date information

that he has from Pearl Harbor, he goes over the address.

He says, "Look this is what I am going to say to the American people."

Short, direct, to the point. Let's get behind our war effort.

And once again, Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State

takes this opportunity to say "I don't like it. We need more."

His arguement is, Look, the most important war

in 500 years deserves more than a footnote.

It deserves more than a five or six minute message.

And he is backed up by a good many members of the Cabinet.

Secretary Stimson, for example, completely agrees with Hull

and says to Roosevelt, "You really should say more,

the public needs to hear more."

Roosevelt does something that very few presidents do.

He overrides the unianimous recommendation of his entire

senior foreign policy staff.

Roosevelt's political instincts told him that he

needed to keep the speech short so that people would listen to it,

and that the Japanese attacking America in the Pacific

would not be justification enough for the United States to enter the war in Europe.

But they're simply not satisfied.

So for now, Hull and Stimson settle back and decide to fight a little later.

The meeting has to come to an end,

and he asks them all not to talk to the press

or to the congressional leaders who are waiting outside.

He says to them "I just told you everything.

But I'm not going to tell them everything."

At 9 o'clock he meets with his Congressional leaders.

Remember, he's not planning on telling them the full truth.

He passes out good Cuban cigars to them.

He tells them "Look people, I'm going give you the full dope here,

I'm going to tell you what's happening."

He made them feel that he was bringing them into his confidence.

When in reality he was being very devious,

and he wasn't sharing anything confidential with them.

FDR didn't want them to know all the grisly details.

A)Cause he was worried it would be demoralizing.

And B) Cause he knew as soon as he told them

it would be out all over Washington,

all over the country within minutes.

He gives them vague information about what took place in Pearl Harbor.

He says there was significant damage.

He says there's going to be a significant loss of life.

But he doesn't go into the detailed reports about the ships

that have been capsized and sunk and that were on fire.

Even so, the senators and congressmen sat there and they said nothing.

They were almost in shock.

You could hear a pin drop.

Finally after giving as little information as he can,

he gets around to the point of the meeting.

He needs to address the American people before a joint session of Congress.

And so he says "Will you give me a formal request?

I would like to address Congress tomorrow at about 12:30."

But they ask him, "Are you going to deliver a war message?"

He says "I haven't decided yet."

They said to him, "What are you going to say?"

He has the kind of puzzled look on his face and says,

"Well, you know I haven't written the speech yet, I'll see."

Of course, he had written it and they'd been

tinkering with it throughout the day.

Roosevelt is about to end the meeting,

and Tom Connelly, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Commity,

who's sitting there smoking his cigar, just gets irate.

He just exploded, "What the hell happened?

How could this have happened to us?"

And he started grilling FDR.

He wants to know who's responsible for this.

Did our planes get in the air?

How much did the Japanese suffer?

Where were our forces? Were they asleep?

What was going on?

And Roosevelt doesn't know the answer to that question yet.

He still doesn't know.

The Congressional leaders leave the room,

and as they do, Cordell Hull, it's back around 3 now,

and he's about to strike out.

Hull's like a dog that's got ahold of a bone

and he's not going to let go of it.

Hull wants a longer address.

He says "Look FDR, you've got it all wrong.

You've gotta listen to me, you need a longer speech."

And Roosevelt, by this time, he's got enough on his plate.

He doesn't want to deal with Cordell Hull.

So Roosevelt does what he does best.

He gave in and says "Yes you've got some good points.

I'm going to think about them.

Now get out of my office."

And Hull left thinking that maybe the President

was at least open to some of the suggestions he made,

but in reality Roosevelt was just trying to get rid of him.

As Hull leaves the office, Roosevelt's sitting there.

He's trying to get his head around Pearl Harbor.

What he doesn't know is that he's about to

get even worse news about another American military blunder in the Pacific

that has nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.

"Representative Sam Raben, Speaker of the House of Representatives,

announces that he is calling all members of the House of Representatives

to assemble tomorrow morning.

Speaker Raben said he had not been informed yet

whether the President would ask tomorrow for a declaration of war.

But he said that the House would be willing to

follow the President on whatever he proposed."

It's an amazing coincidence that the night of December 7th,

the President of the United States had a scheduled dinner

with the countries most famous radio broadcaster, Edward R. Murrow.

Roosevelt would not have dinner with Murrow,

but he still found time to see him.

Murrow is a celebrity reporter.

This is a guy that reported from Great Britian during the Blitz.

The Blitz was the German strategic bombing

of Britian that began in September of 1940

and continued until May of 1941.

It was Murrow's voice that really brought the horror

of World War II home to most Americans.

And so, Edward R. Murrow was now going to be

talking to the President of the United States

at a time when American's were facing the same challenges

that Londoners had been facing for well over a year.

And so at midnight, Murrow comes in to have a beer.

They eat some sandwiches,

and Roosevelt begins to talk.

And unlike when FDR met with the senators and congressman,

this time he really let it all hang out.

He confessed all the battle statistics.

Every battleship that had been hit,

all the casualty figures.

He held nothing back.

At one point he takes his fist and he pounds it on the table,

and he says "The planes on the ground. On the ground!"

He can't understand why the planes at Pearl Harbor were on the ground.

And Murrow sat there, and he knew he was watching a historic moment.

And at no point does he say to Murrow "This is off the record."

Edward. R. Murrow had the scoop of his life

handed to him by the President of the United States.

Murrow was conflicted.

Does he reveal this information that at this point no one knows?

Or does he keep it to himself?

Murrow decided that he should let the President of the United States

be the first person to inform the American people

about the catastrophe and about the extent of the suprise on December 7th.

That was a decision that Murrow made as an American.

"General Douglas McArthur, head of the

United States Armed Forces in the far east,

was officially informed of the suprise attack

on Hawaii in the middle of the night.

He issued a calming statment,

telling the Philippino population not to lose their heads,

and in that statement he said "The military is on the alert,

and every possible defense measure is being undertaken.

My message is one of serenity and confidence."

At 12:30, after a momentous day,

Roosevelt is finally ready to go to bed.

He's got the speech of his lifetime coming up that next afternoon.

His son James wheels him into his bedroom,

helps him undress, and lifts him from his chair

and puts him into the bed.

That image for me is so powerful

because here's the man who's about to lead the nation into war,

and he has to be physically lifted by his son into bed.

James was serving as a Marine liaison officer in Washington.

He had essentially a office job in the military at this point.

And as James lifted his father into bed,

and they spoke about the fact that the country

had entered this kind of deep, dark tunnel

and that they couldn't see the end.

James confesses. He says "Dad, this has been a terrible thing that has happened today.

I'm in the Marines, I would like to see combat."

Roosevelt's got 3 sons, potentially in harms way.

And now James, his 4th son, says "Dad, you know I think

I better request a combat assignment."

So Roosevelt, you know he's got a lot on his mind,

and he gets ready to go to bed.

Often times, as he was trying to fall asleep at night,

he would imagine his youth.

Imagine wandering through the woods.

And remember a time when he could walk.

Remember a time when he could go hunting for birds.

Sledding down the hill from Hyde Park towards the Hudson River.

The days that he could run.

The days of just absolute security of youth.

Roosevelt is woken up by a phone call at 7am from Grace Tully.

Grace Tully had just received an urgent message from London.

In the overnight hours in Washington,

Churchill had discovered that the Japanese attack

had not been confined to Pearl Harbor.

That Japan had struck also the British colonies in Malaya and Singapore

and so the British felt compelled to immeditately

move to declare war against the Japanese.

Churchill is just itching to go before Parliment

and ask for a declaration of war against Japan.

Can he go before Roosevelt does anything?

Roosevelt does not want Winston Churchill

to declare war before the United States.

He's been plagued by this perception that he's been

playing into Churchill's hands.

So FDR has the ambassador get a message as quickly as possible to Churchill,

"Please hold off. Let me do it first, and then you can declare war."

But Churchill was so gung-ho, he wasn't going to miss this opportunity.

"A month ago I the word of Great Britian

that should the United States become involved

in the war with Japan, a British declaration would follow within the hour."

And the message never gets to Churchill on time,

and Churchill will go before Parliment

and ask and receive a declaration of war

actually before the United States does.

"You have been listening to British Prime Minister Churchill speaking from London.

The programs The Man I Married, and The Helping Hand,

regularly heard over some of these stations,

will be heard tomorrow at their regularly scheduled times."

Roosevelt spent most of the morning in his bedroom, propped up on pillows,

reading the latest intelligence reports that were coming in,

and one piece of information that particularly

incensed Roosevelt was to learn that the Japanese

had attacked the Philippines.

Remember, Douglas McArthur had told Roosevelt

you know, he was on full alert,

that the American's had their tails up in the Philippines,

they were sensitive towards danger.

McArthur's planes are sitting on the tarmacs

when the Japanese planes appear overhead.

Incredibly he didn't get his planes up into the air,

and in a matter of less than 2 minutes,

half his fleet was wiped out.

So for the 2nd time in less than 24 hours,

the Japanese find an American military installation

that is unprepared for an assault.

McArthur had done virtually nothing to stop the disaster

that reigned down upon the Philippines.

He let a Pearl Harbor like suprise attack succeed in the Philippines.

The commanders at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel and General Schwart,

they both lost their jobs.

They were attacked for deriliction of duty.

McArthur who had warning that Kimmel and Schwart didn't have

somehow survives his deriliction of duty.

December 7th started out as a warm and sunny day.

But a cold front moved through.

By Monday morning, December 8th, the sky was gray,

the temperatures were cold.

It was a cold, gray day in Washington,

which was fitting the public mood.

When we think of a President giving an address,

that in of itself is meaningful and stressful enough,

but with Franklin Roosevelt, there is this added complication

of him having to creat the illusion that he could walk.

FDR always felt that it would be a political liability

if he were seen as this kind of helpless man in a wheelchair.

Ever since he was inflicted with polio in 1921,

he was determined to develope a way of walking

so as he said, he didn't scare the hell out of people.

Probably around 11 o'clock or so, his valet, Arthur Prettyman,

started preparing him for his major address.

This means getting dressed.

Well, getting dressed for Roosevelt was an arduous task.

It will take him about an hour.

Life was an effort for this man.

The kinds of things we take for granted.

Getting dressed in the morning. Walking.

Leaving aside the things that we don't have to do.

Writing speeches to rally a nation at war.

He couldn't put his pants on.

Imagine the indignities of this, and yet the strength of the man at the center of the story.

Prettyman had a routine.

He would take Roosevelt and lie him flat on his back on the bed,

and the first thing he would do is put on his braces.

And the purpose of the brace is to lock his legs in

to make them completely stiff so they can't bend.

The braces were strapped both at the knee and the thighs.

They were pulled as tight as possible to give

Roosevelt a very stiff legged gait.

The next thing he would do is put on his shoes.

So he put on his socks and his black shoes.

Then the pants had to be put on over the shoes and over the braces.

This was a very difficult process of swaying Roosevelt

and moving Roosevelt back and forth as the pants

were manuvered first over the shoes, then over the braces,

and then pulled up to his waist.

Once the pants were on, he would pick him up off the bed

and put him back into his wheelchair.

And when it came to his so called walking,

really he wasn't walking at all.

Essentially what Roosevelt tried to do was to cover up

the extent of his disability.

And he does it by using his son's arm as one might a parallel bar,

and would also use a cane in the other hand.

He would move by essentially throwing his body weight forward,

because he couldn't move his legs, his legs were actually locked

in these braces, they were like poles, and they were lifeless.

And so he would lunge forward with his shoulders,

and use his upper body to drag himself forward.

James would take a step forward,

the crutch would move foward,

the braces would swing forward.

James, crutch, braces.

James, crutch, braces.

It almost created the appearance that he was walking.

He once confessed that he considered himself

one of the greatest actors in the nation,

and he was one of the greatest actors

because once those braces were put on,

once he was finally prepped,

once he was finally dressed,

he was not a helpless man in a wheelchair.

He was the leader of what would be the most significant

military alliance the world had ever seen.

At 12:05, Roosevelt enters his limosine for his ride to the Capital.

When you think about presidential security,

the President of the United States did not have a bullet proof car.

So the Secret Service is afraid that some Japanese

saboteur is going to try to assasinate the President on his way to the Capital.

Interestingly, there was a rule that the government

couldn't spend more than $750 for a car,

even for a car for the President of the United States.

And you couldn't get a bullet proof car for $750,

so on Sunday evening they are scrambling around

to try to think of how they are going to do this

and they realized that they had confiscated Al Capone's old car,

and Al Capone had a bullet proof car.

Mike Riley, the head of his protective detail,

leads him to a car and this car is painted

this kind of spanking new black, yet it looks a little different.

And the President looks at Riley and says "What's up Mike?

Where did you get this new car?"

And Riley says "Well, Mr. President, its uncomfortable

and had a dubious reputation."

"Well what is its reputation?"

And Riley says "Well, this was Al Capone's car,

and the Treasury Department confiscated it when you know,

Al Capone had some tax problems with the Treasury,

and they got this car in the deal."

And Roosevelt said "Well I hope Al doesn't mind."

And that was the car that transported Roosevelt

from the White House to the Capital.

So as FDR rides along to the Capital,

its a very different scene than when Woodrow Wilson

traveled the same route when he was going to declare World War I.

Back in 1917 then the United States went to war,

the streets were lined with enthusiastic people, cheering for Wilson.

The day was different. There was no cheering.

The mood was somber.

The only thing I can do to give you a sense of this scene

is to compare it almost to Abraham Lincoln near the end of the war,

when he got into a train to go see the fallen Confederate capital of Richmond,

and he gazed out almost morosely at the hideous scenes of war.

He saw this walking spectacle of wounded men with bandages,

and he thought, what a sad, sad scene.

And I sort of think that as FDR was going along,

it makes me think of that same scene with Lincoln.

The cost of war going through his thoughts.

He knew what America was about to go into.

This meant tens and tens of thousands of Americans would die.

This meant years of warfare.

It would have been easy for him to give a speech

that fired up the American people.

But he saw that happen once before in World War I,

and he saw that it fades quickly.

And he knew how difficult this war was going to be.

He needed to give the most important speech of his political career,

and he did not want to be wheeled to the poduium.

He didn't want to be in a chair.

He needed to walk,

with everyone watching him, but its quite a long walk.

You have to think that every time he moves his body forward,

he's thinking to himself "Don't fall. Don't fall."

At 12:29, Roosevelt is wheeled down to the back of the house.

Now its time for what Roosevelt probably thought

was probably the most frightening moment of the entire ordeal.

The house was packed with all eyes on Franklin Roosevelt.

And he had the challenge of having to get from the back of the hall

up to the speakers rostrum, without falling down.

And that was his worst nightmare, to fall in public,

in the full glare of the world.

"The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."

(mumbled speech)

If he fell while making his way up to give the most

important speech of a generation, what would that say for the country?

It would have been a terrible tragedy.

It would have conveyed such weakness.

It would have sent the wrong message to the Japanese, to Adolf Hitler.

He stood up. His braces were then locked into place at his knee.

And then with his son James on one side, and his cane on the other,

he walked down the aisle.

The hall erupts in applause, cat calls, whistles.

There was a sense of energy and excitement

that electrified the hall.

"President Roosevelt, escorted by his son James Roosevelt,

in the uniform of the United States Marine Corp."

Reporters are watching Roosevelt slowly,

painfully, manuver his way towards the podium.

Notice that his face was determined,

and they reported what he must have been thinking about.

He's got the speech of his lifetime coming up.

But in fact, and as his son James recalled later,

Roosevelt wasn't solemnly thinking of the speech,

or thinking about what he was going to say,

he was concentrating on that gartantuan task of

simply making his way up the aisle to the podium, without falling.

And so it was a great act of physical courage that he showed that day,

just in getting to the speakers platform.

And that courageous walk is forgotten.

What's remembered is the speech.

At 12:32, Franklin Roosevelt delivered his message

to a joint session of Congress.

"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker,

members of the Senate and the House of Representatives,"

As Roosevelt began to speak, the gallery went completely silent.

People really hung on every word he spoke.

"Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

United States of America was suddenly and deliberately

attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan."

There had been a wartime speech quite like this.

Throughout most of the speech, it was quiet.

"The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian island

has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces.

I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost."

You don't know if people were in shock,

just as the Cabinet had had trouble digesting all this,

they were trying to digest it all.

"As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy,

I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense,

but always will our whole nation remember the character

of the onslaught against us."

For the millions of Americans who were sitting at home listening

to his voice, what he conveyed was a supreme sense of confidence.

"No matter how long it may take us,

we'll overcome this premeditated invasion.

The American people in their righteous might

will win through to absolute victory."

This was not a nation that had just suffered

a military defeat. This was a nation that was

determined to wage war and to win,

and to fight for principles that it believed in.

"With confidence in our armned forces,

with the unbounding determination of our people,

we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God."

This is what they needed to hear.

This is what they wanted to hear.

"I ask that the Congress declare that since

the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan

on Sunday December 7th, 1941, a state of war

has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire."

Probably to the dismay of Cordell Hull,

Roosevelt gave the short speech he wanted to give.

Six minutes and thirty seconds.

A memorable six minutes and thirty seconds.

But of course standing there, looking out over

this tremendous ovation, Roosevelt must have had mixed feelings.

He had indicated that the damage to Pearl Harbor was serious,

but only he knew and a few members of his Cabinet,

just how bad things really were,

and just what a moment of crisis this really was.

The public overwhelmingly supported Roosevelt's speech,

and it gathered the largest audience in the history of radio up to that moment.

Within 24 hours of President Roosevelt first learning

about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,

Congress votes to declare war.

In World War I, it took 4 days for Congress to declare war.

But boom, FDR comes, gives his speech, six minutes and thirty seconds,

boom, they start debating and literally within an hour Congress had voted war.

It was 82-0 in the Senate, and in the House

there was only one dissenter, that was Jeanetter Rankin,

and she had voted against World War I as well.

Funny how the historical wheel turns.

When Roosevelt signs the joint resolution,

recognizing war with Japan,

the United States has just experienced the most

dramatic and significant 24 hours of the 20th century.

Pearl Harbor is the dividing line between the past and the future.

It brings America into the war, it tips the balance of power

in favor or the Allies, leads to Hitler's defeat.

Before Pearl Harbor, America was a third rate militay power.

After Pearl Harbor, America emerges as a super power

that never questions that it needs to play a role in the world.

I think Roosevelt's actions in the 24 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor

were among the most brilliant in the history of presidential leadership.

Despite the confusion and the chaos at the moment,

he remained calm, he inspired a nation.

He was a monument of strength and leadership.

So at that moment as Franklin Roosevelt delivered

his message to a joint session of Congress,

what you see is a man who could not walk,

who was about to carry the nation on his back into battle.