National Ordeal

The Government and People of the United States declared war on the Japanese Empire at 4:10 p.m. Monday, Dec. 8, 1941.

At dawn the day before, the Japanese had attacked savagely all along the whole great U.S. island-bridge which stretches to the Orient.

It was premeditated murder masked by a toothy smile. The Nation had taken a heavy blow. The casualties crept from rumor into uglier-rumor: hundreds on hundreds of Americans had died bomb-quick, or were dying, bed-slow.

But the war came as a great relief, like a reverse earthquake, that in one terrible jerk shook everything disjointed, distorted, askew back into place. Japanese bombs had finally brought national unity to the U.S.

Alarm. Instantly on the news from Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt ordered the Army and Navy: "Fight Back!" The U.S., after 22 years and 25 days of peace, was at war.

All news from scenes of action was routed immediately to the White House, issued at once in bulletins to the press. The War Council was telephoned. The President called a Cabinet meeting for 8:30 p.m., a session with Congressional leaders for 9 p.m.

He had already finished the first draft of his war message. In the second-floor red-room study, he talked to the Cabinet, then brought in the Congressional leaders --among them, on his first visit to the White House in many a moon, aging, croak-voiced Senator Hiram Johnson of California, oldest of the Isolationists. The President was deadly serious. There was no smile. The lines in his face were deeper.

When his visitors had gone, the President went back to work. In the small hours, he went to bed, slept for five hours.

At noon next day the President sat back in the deep cushions of the big closed car, adjusted his big dark Navy cape. The gravel spattered from the driveway, the car moved off slowly around the south lawn, and up the long clear stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue toward the looming dome of the Capitol. On each running board perched a Secret Service man. His car was flanked on both sides by open Secret Service cars, three men on each running board, four men inside. The men in the tonneaus held sawed-off riot guns. Those outside carried .38-caliber service revolvers.

The Capitol was alive with police, Marines, plainclothesmen. The crowd spread the length of the Plaza, knotted here & there around portable radios.

The President moved slowly into the House of Representatives. In the packed, still chamber stood the men & women of the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, all of the U.S. Government under one skylight roof. Below the great flat-hung Stars & Stripes stood Vice President Henry Agard Wallace, Speaker Sam Rayburn. The heavy applause lingered, gradually began to break into cheers and rebel yells. Speaker Rayburn gave one smash of his heavy gavel, introduced the President in one sentence.

Mr. Roosevelt gripped the reading clerk's stand, flipped open his black, loose-leaf schoolboy's notebook. He took a long, steady look at the Congress and the battery of floodlights, and began to read.

"Yesterday, Dec. 7, 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. . . ." He spoke of the Japanese treachery; then, his voice heavy, almost thick: "The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to the American naval and military forces . . . very many American lives have been lost. . . ."

He outlined the long series of attacks: Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands, Wake, Midway. The chamber was silent. When he said: "Always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us," the room roared with a cry of vengeance. "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion," continued the President, "the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory." At this, the biggest cheers of the day. "We will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. . . . We will gain the inevitable triumph--so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare . . . a state of war. . . ." The President left the House. Members began roaring impatiently: "Vote! Vote! Vote!" The Speaker gaveled for order. The Senate left.

The President had arrived at 12:12 p.m. At 1 p.m. exactly the Senate passed the declaration of war, 82-to-0. (There were 13 absentees, Washington-bound by train and plane, and one vacancy.)

The House, listening with marked impatience to get-right speeches by the G.O.P.'s Leader Joe Martin and Ham Fish, received with a whoop the identical Senate bill, adopted it as a substitute. The vote: 388-to-1.

The lone dissenter was Miss Jeannette Rankin, Montana Republican, grey-haired pacifist who also voted, with many a tear, against the declaration of war on April 6, 1917. This time Miss Rankin, to whose pleas for recognition the Speaker was conveniently deaf, mostly sat, with a bewildered smile, muttering over & over to all those who pleaded with her to change her vote: This might be a Roosevelt trick. How do we know Hawaii has been bombed? Remember the Kearny! I don't believe it. In Montana, Republicans raged, cried shame.

At 1:32 p.m., the Congress had declared war. At 4:10 p.m. the President signed the resolution in his office.

The President talked to Russian Ambassador Maxim Litvinoff, arrived just before the attack. Then he relaxed on his office sofa, slept soundly for an hour. When he arose he checked reports again (still piled with bad news), announced that he would speak to the nation the next night, and began dictating his speech.

To a greater extent than at any time since he first took command during the choking depression eight years ago, the President could act with complete authority. He could fire, hire, demand, order, and get what he thought best and necessary--with perfect assurance that the country was solidly behind him.

For the U.S. was in a state of granite certainty. The words of Woodrow Wilson on the dim fragrant spring night of 24 years ago were once again, were still, good:

"To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principle that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.

"God helping her, she can do no other."

Ahead was war: humiliations, sacrifices, disasters; crushing taxes, grinding work.

The war had got off to a bad start; there were military wise men who thought that the U.S. had suffered the blackest day in its military history since 1812. But to a nation finally unified to war's reality, this opening disaster would be of small account. The U.S. had embarked on the greatest adventure in its history: to make the world really safe for democracy.

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