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Dec. 7, 1995 - Bill Cooper
57:52
Year 1941 – Pearl Harbor
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The End
The End
You are listening to the Hour of the Time.
I'm William Cooper.
Ladies and gentlemen, this morning, December 7, 1995, commemorates the 54th anniversary of the Japanese infamous attack upon the United States at Pearl Harbor and Skokio Barracks, Hawaii.
Tonight, we begin in January 1941 and relive that year, called On the twentieth day of January, 1941, the cold breezes along Washington, D.C.' Japan by the United States of America.
On the 20th day of January, 1941, the cold breezes along Washington, D.C.'s Pennsylvania Avenue carried a set of fresh-cut lumber and new coats of paint.
Workmen had constructed temporary but historic grandstands for the thousands of people who were there to see something that had never happened before in American history.
Amen.
A president was to be sworn in for a third time.
I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the honor of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Go help me God.
Armored cars, tanks, and anti-aircraft guns rolled past the reviewing stand.
Warplanes roared overhead in V formations.
Sidewalk salesmen walked buttons that proclaimed, to hell with Hitler.
And the President's speech echoed what he had told the nation in his State of the Union speech two weeks earlier.
Let us say to the democracy, we shall send you in ever increasing numbers ships, planes, tanks, guns.
That is our purpose and our pledge.
At that moment, it's doubtful that anyone remembered or cared that January 20th was the anniversary of a treaty signed in 1887 with the independent nation of Hawaii, giving the United States a lease on a naval base in a place called Pearl Harbor.
The End
Classical music in the European tradition always had a place in American culture, but never set a stage.
Americans preferred music for humming in the shower, for crooning in a rumble seat, for dancing, and for listening, while busy doing other things besides listening.
But in 1941, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and some other unlikely names were on the hit parade.
Thank you so very much, ladies and gentlemen.
Our theme song adapted from the Psychosophy Pheonic Conservatory, V5 Minor, "Tonight We Love" .
Rennie Martin and the band in 1941.
He had a new theme, a hit recording, and helped start a trend.
Rennie Martin and the band in 1941.
Rennie Martin and the band in 1941.
Just as Bizet had his day in 1941 with the Les Brown Band, one of Ludwig von Beethoven's sonatas was added to Glenn Miller's songbook.
More was involved in this than appreciation for the masters.
The American Society of Composers and Publishers, ASCAP, was on strike, demanding royalty payments for the use of their music on radio.
The networks responded by forming their own music licensing company, BMI, Broadcast Music Incorporated, and by banning ASCAP music from the air.
With a big gap to fill, the strike lasted for ten months.
Radio turned to music imported from Latin America and music in the public domain.
I breathe a deep, a life of air.
You'll need a life of air from the stars of the air.
Stephen Foss's I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair was played so many times that students at UCLA burn Jeannie in effigy.
The Light Brown Hair was played so many times that students at UCLA burn Jeannie in effigy.
Of all the classics revived in 1941, none was more justified by the times than Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, at least the first four notes.
Foremost, it sounded like the dot, dot, dot, dash of Moscow that stood for the letter V. V for victory.
This is Edward Brown.
With those four notes, the BBC in London began broadcast to the continent.
People on the continent drew the V in paint or chalk or traced it in the dust wherever their oppressors were certain to see it.
In the United States, there were bees in lights on Broadway and many public buildings.
Guests announced their arrival with the bees.
Radio announced news reports with the bees.
Jewelry stores offered diamond studded bees.
And restaurants laid down the silverware in a bee.
Chefs sounded the call to victory as they left American Harbors, carrying the supplies to help England live.
In the first months of 1941, German U-boats, the great grey sharks of the Atlantic, were sinking British cargo vessels three times faster than shipyards could replace them.
Lost cargoes meant shortages of everything, including tea.
But the British didn't fall apart as Hitler hoped.
They would make do.
And it helped them to know that German civilians were feeling the pinch from the RAF.
But the shortage of weapons was one problem the British Home Front It couldn't solve.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy.
For us, this is an emergency as serious as war itself.
This is Frank Warren.
President Roosevelt's solution to Britain's depleted stock of munitions and money was a political masterstroke called Lend-Lease.
The United States would lend to the British what they needed with repayment to be made in kind after the war.
Although Britain would pay dearly in gold and in empire possessions, General Hugh Johnson, a former New Dealer, attacked Lend-Lease as a reckless giveaway of resources needed for America's defense.
There is a committee in this country called Defend America by Aiding the Allies.
Since there are no longer any allies, that means defend America by defending England.
There is another committee called Defend America First.
That is my ticket.
Senator Burton Wheeler, a leading isolationist, denounced Lend-Lease as another step in FDR's plans that would, and I quote, plow under every fourth American boy.
We're so close to war that on January 30th, 1941, the War Department announced that they were seeking bids on 1,500,000 caskets.
For your sons and for mine.
But Lend-Lease has some prominent supporters, too, including Wendell Wilkie, who went to London to see Prime Minister Churchill.
Churchill's appeals, heard in the United States on the eve of the Lend-Lease vote in Congress, helped carry the day.
The other day, President Roosevelt gave his appointment in the late presidential election a letter of introduction to me.
And yet he wrote out a verse in his own handwriting from Longfellow.
Sail on, O ship of state!
Sail on, O union strong and great!
Humanity, with all its fears, with all the hopes of future years, is hanging breathless on my feet.
What is the answer that I shall give in your name to this great man?
The tools, and we will see it again.
The ordeal would continue, but spirits were lifted in the spring when Germany's three best U-boat commanders and the great battleship Bismarck were sunk.
And lifted, too, by confidence that Lendlis was the beginning of the end of the last fiction of American neutrality.
From the America of 1941, the view of Japan was as vague as the Pacific mists that seemed to hold Japan's islands suspended and disconnected from 20th century Earth.
A place of Shogun warlords and samurai swordsmen, and the people who lowered their necks obediently for the blade.
American school children knew that Admiral Perry had opened Japan to trade and Western ways through technology to increase wealth.
But another lesson Japan learned from Western example was the use of power to create empire.
After wars against China and Russia and alliance with the West in World War I, Japan emerged as Lord of the Far East until economic depression in the 1920s shattered its sense of security.
The army seized the moment, purged and murdered its way to power, and began its quest for empire by invading Manchuria in 1931.
And by controlling the Chinese coast, Japan's course was set.
it would look to its needs in targets of opportunity to the south in the Pacific.
The End
If ever there was a sound that could melt iron, not to mention lovers, it was the sound Harry James got out of a trumpet.
It's easy to hear why his recording of You Made Me Love You was one of the biggest hits of 1941.
One of the few sure things that year was that every time that Jimmy Dorsey took his band I've never loved anyone the way I love you.
to do a recording studio, he'd come out with a bestseller.
I've never loved anyone the way I love you.
How could I, when I was born to be just you?
I love you.
I love you.
What's up is their dream?
What's up, rawls and monorilla rock and a brawl, a brawl of suik?
What's up, rawls and monorilla rock and a brawl of suik? - Americans bought more than 130 million recordings in 1941.
It was the best year the record industry ever had.
1941 was the best year a lot of Americans ever had.
Mobilization fed the economy with paychecks that went straight from the assembly line to retail stores.
Department stores had their best year since the 1920s.
With coffee selling for 22 cents a pound, eggs at 28 cents a dozen, and sirloin steak at 35 cents a pound, most people had money enough to buy what they needed and to splurge on what they wanted.
Like a cruise to Rio at carnival time for $395.
The most prominent profile afloat as the year went on was not the Regal Swan, but the Ugly Duckling, the tubby, ungainly liberty ship that American shipyards were building in record time and plopping into the ocean, first by the dozens, then by the hundreds, to carry the cargo that would help England survive.
Those liberty ships and hundreds of other freighters and tankers, the ones that escaped the German U-boats, formed a bridge across the Atlantic, returning to the United States, carrying as ballast in their holds stone rubble from England's devastated cities.
It did not go to waste.
Example?
Tons of stone from bombed-out Bristol became the foundation for part of New York City's East River Drive.
The shepherd will tell his sheep The valley will bloom again, and Johnny will go to sleep in his old little room again.
There'll be blueberries over the white cliffs of Boulder tomorrow.
Just you wait and see me. - February 1941, Washington.
Japan's Admiral Nomura arrives as the new ambassador to the United States.
At issue is President Roosevelt's economic pressure on Japan to withdraw from China.
March 1941, Berlin.
Hitler conceals from Japan his plan to invade the Soviet Union.
He urges Japan to seize Singapore, to damage Britain, and to intimidate the United States into remaining neutral.
The German people hardly know the whole extent of this misery.
They don't know the rumbling spirit of these houses, in which thousands of lullabies have to be artificially nourished and nurtured, which stand deeper than any animal.
I see this here.
Ah, but the eye didn't mention here is that to be old.
Oh, Lord, here is the name of the Lord.
Joseph Stalin, everyone agreed, was as cunning as a fox.
With the West hostile to Russia, he went along with the schemes of Germany and Japan so he could extend his borders and defenses.
He prepared for war, but wasn't ready for it.
In June 1941, the Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, and Finns came at Stalin three million strong, and the old fox found that he had outfoxed himself.
His purge of the army in the 1930s left him with too many incompetent cronies, leading men who were poorly trained, equipped, and deployed.
Throughout the summer, Russian armies retreated, destroying everything as they fell back.
Millions of Russians were dead and captured.
By the fall, Laid's army was besieging Leningrad.
Von Rundstedt's army had occupied the Ukraine, and Vox's army was in sight of the spires of the Kremlin.
The Kremlin was in sight of the Kremlin.
In 1941, Glenn Miller's Song of the Volga Boatman was popular in the United States, but Russians weren't.
Senator Harry S. Truman probably spoke for a lot of people when he said he hoped the Germans would kill a lot of Russians, and vice versa.
But any enemy of Hitler's was an ally, at least for the time being.
With strong public support, Roosevelt and Churchill promised Stalin all aid possible.
Little was available, and it was late getting there.
The year wasn't without it to welcome distractions from war news.
Furl away, written by Eddie O'Carroll, became the fifth horse since 1919 to win racing's Triple Crown.
Whirl-A-Way pulls away.
Porter's cap is in second place, but it's Whirl-A-Way winning the race by six points.
The internationally famous Detroit Brown Bomber, always a great credit to his chosen profession, and the race he represents, the heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Lewis!
Joe Lewis, the heavyweight boxing champ since 1937, had seven title fights in 1941, and won them all, six by knockouts.
Ted Williams hit 406 for the Red Sox.
The Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series, led by Joe DiMaggio, who set a record during the season by hitting safely in 56 consecutive games.
In the loss column in 1941 was the death of Lou Gehrig, Two years after his farewell as a Yankee.
Today, Dave, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
And Babe Ruth, the greatest Yankee of them all, wasn't in baseball anymore, but showed that he was still a heavy hitter.
The babe bought $100,000 worth of defense bombs.
July 1941, Washington.
The United States, having broken Japan's top-secret probe, knows of the country's decision to establish bases in Indochina, even at the risk of war.
July 26.
President Roosevelt freezes all Japanese assets in the United States.
The Dutch government, in exile in London, cancels delivery of oil to Japan from the Dutch East Indies.
August 6.
With 90% of its oil cut and with trade almost at a standstill, Japan offers to compromise.
But the President and Secretary of State Cordell Hull insist on total Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina.
There was a time in 1941 when millions of young Americans were worried about the Lone Ranger.
He'd been wounded seriously and could barely manage whispered instructions to his faithful Indian companion, Tonto.
What those young fans didn't know was that an auto accident had taken the life of 32-year-old actor Earl Grazer, the voice of the Lone Ranger.
But then came the episode when The Masked Man, restored to health in the person of actor Brace Beamer, was again leading the fight for law and order in the early western United States.
I warn you, sir, I warn you!
Great horse, Silver.
Thank you.
Los Angeles Bay, Newfoundland.
Roosevelt and Churchill hold a shipboard meeting.
They warn Japan that attacks on British or Dutch possessions in the Pacific would mean war with the United States.
Japan's Prime Minister Kanoya's later request for a meeting with FDR is denied.
September 6, Tokyo.
In view of the U.S.
position, Japan's military leaders demand full mobilization for war.
October 16.
Prime Minister Konoye, failing to make diplomatic progress with the United States, is forced to resign.
He's replaced by the most radical of the warhawks, General Hideki Kojo.
I'll be with you in Apple Blossom Town.
The marriage rate was up.
To change your name to mother.
There was a lot of name changing in 1941.
The marriage rate was up.
The birth rate was up.
The hands on women's skirts were up.
Flashier jewelry, brighter colors, and more revealing clothes caught everyone's eye, if not everyone's approval.
There were zoot suits with a drape shape and a neat pleat.
After a decade of austerity, it seemed time to step out and move up.
Even with back orders for tanks and planes, Detroit still hoped to sell five million new cars.
From big business came complaints about the cost of retooling for defense and worries about a possible bust after the boom.
From Capitol Hill came loud cries that so much military equipment was being sent to England that American soldiers were training with broomsticks instead of rifles and sitting inside cardboard boxes pretending to be in tanks.
From Senator Truman came charges of waste in defense contracts.
The White House came up with more public money for the defense economy and assumed full authority over production priorities and schedules.
mobilization was on track and picking up speed will be audiences in nineteen forty-one saw Joan Fontaine and Terry Grant in suspicion She won an Oscar.
So did How Green Was My Valley from 20th Century Fox.
The New York Film Critics gave their Best Picture Award to Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane.
Ronald Reagan and Anne Sheridan were two of the stars in Warner's King's Row.
Remember when she came down the Elroy Dinehouse and you and Eric and I played on the race?
I was an awful little crappy thing, wasn't I, girl?
Yes, I was.
You teased me.
You tried to get fresh.
I was an awful kid, I guess.
Yes, you were.
I think I got that emotion that day because Paris was there.
I liked her my whole life better than I did you.
Then?
You're sure of it now?
What do you think?
When a girl likes the way I do about you, she means it.
Because I want to.
Because I like you better than anybody in the world.
I'm serious.
It's all right.
Nothing as serious as my whole world, is it?
Hey!
I wanted wings.
That 1941 movie featured Ray Milan, William Holden, Ray Morris, and Brian Donnelly.
But the real stars were the flying fortresses, the B-17s.
It was the first time Americans got a good look at them.
For the Navy Air Corps, Errol Flynn and Fred McMurray flew together in dive bomber.
Her own power was a yank in the RAF.
Ronald Reagan flew bombers to Britain in International Squadron.
Phil Silvers was in the Navy, and Bob Hope was caught in the draft.
It was all unabashed And enlistments went up after every showing.
So did the ire of the isolations.
Every agency of mass communication has been, and is being, utilized to excite the passions and the emotions of the American people.
Are we Americans to eternally dedicate ourselves and our children to the preservation of the British Empire?
That was Senator Burton Wheeler again.
He accused Hollywood of warmongering, and he described the movie Sergeant York, about the pacifist-turned-hero of World War I, Alvin York, as pure propaganda.
He began an investigation.
Hollywood's lawyer was Wendell Wilkie.
Senator Gerald Nye thought it worthy of note that some of Hollywood's most powerful men, including Goldwyn, Mayer, Zanuck, and Zukor, were foreign-born Jews.
And there was Colonel Charles Lindbergh.
I am advised to speak guardedly on the subject of the war, and that to be effective, what one says must meet with general approval.
Yet, right or wrong, I prefer to say what I believe or not to speak at all.
Lindbergh told an America First rally that the greatest agitators for U.S.
involvement in Europe's war were, quote, the British, the Roosevelt administration, and the Jews, end of quote.
His explanation that the war would only make matters worse for Jews in Europe and in the USA did not soften the outraged reaction.
The president found the remark disgraceful.
Lindbergh resigned his commission in the Army Air Corps Reserve.
The city of Charlotte, North Carolina changed the name of Lindbergh Drive to Avon Terrace, symbolizing the fall from public grace of the man who had been idolized as the greatest living hero of the 20th century.
In February 1940, Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler's SS, ...approved a site in Poland as suitable for a slave labor camp.
Four months later, the gates of Auschwitz opened, and millions of people were brought inside to suffer and die.
June 1941.
The collaborationist government of France at Vichy, led by Marshal Philippe Pétain, announced the arrest of some 12,000 Jews on charges of plotting against German-French interests.
Many of the 12,000 and many more later would just disappear.
Of the last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay.
No matter how they change her, I'll remember her.
November 5, 1941, Washington.
Secret Japanese messages intercepted by the United States set the end of November as the deadline for diplomatic progress.
You all know how difficult my mission is.
Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochemps.
November 15th, San Francisco.
Japan's envoy to Berlin, Saburo Kurosu, arrives in the United States to assist Ambassador Nomura in efforts to start talks with Secretary Hall.
You all know how difficult my mission is, but I'll do all I can to make it a respectful one for the sake of two countries, the Baird and the United States.
November 18, Tokyo.
20 Japanese warships and submarines sailed from their home ports to scout the waters between Japan and Hawaii.
Goodbye, dear.
I'll be back in a year because I'm in the Army now. .
Thank you.
Don't I look handsome dressed up like this?
Stop your crying and give your soldier a kiss.
They may send me out to That song about 1940's happy-go-lucky recruits became obsolete in 1941.
Still be the girl of my dreams For if I hear I'll be back in a year Don't forget that I love you That song about 1940s happy-go-lucky recruits became obsolete in 1941.
The Congress, by the narrowest of margins, approved an extension of the draft and lengthened the tour of duty from 12 months to 30. - Make your love, go!
In fine democratic fashion, the famous and the anonymous got their greetings from the president through their local draft boards and were packed off to basic training to occupy adjacent bunks.
Among the famous, William McChesney Martin, president of the New York Stock Exchange, and Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers, who today, before swapping his flannels for khakis, hit two home runs against the Yankees.
While many Americans were worried about what impact Army life would have on their sons and on society, they were shocked to learn that Army doctors were rejecting 40% of the men they examined as unfit for duty.
They had poor eyesight, bad teeth, deformities of the limbs, diseases of the heart, mental and nervous disorders.
They were the products of the Great Depression, victims of malnutrition, And many of the veterans of the Dust Bowl and Okie migrations who made it to the Army's chow lines were eating three meals a day for the first time in their lives.
My brothers and my sisters they are stranded on this road A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod.
Landlord took my home and he drove me from my door And I ain't got no home in this world anymore Woody Guthrie, who sang of the Depression's lost souls, would sing again about lives sacrificed in events so large that they become the collective losses of history with no personal meaning.
On October 31st, U-boat 552 put a torpedo into the side of the U.S.
destroyer Reuben James.
It went up in a ball of fire.
When Woody Guthrie sang about the Reuben James, It did not recall a fact of war, or that a ship had been lost, but that men had been lost.
One hundred men went down to their dark, watery grave.
When that good ship went down, only forty-four were saved.
But the last day of October, as they saved forty-four, in the cold, icy waters by the cold ice would show.
Tell me, what were their names?
Tell me, what were their names?
Did you have a friend who called you to prove and change?
What were their names?
Tell me, what were their names?
Did you have a friend who called you to prove and change?
It was there in the dark of that one certain night That they watched for the eulogium and bid for the pipe And the vine and the rock and the grape was a-throbbin' And David Rubin came from the golden ship Tell me, what were their names?
Tell me, what were their names?
Did you have a friend on the moving train?
What were their names?
Tell me, what were their names?
Did you have a friend on the moving train?
What were their names?
Tell me, what were their names?
November 20th, 1941.
Tokyo.
Japan proposes an interim settlement of the China question, pending further negotiations.
The idea is rejected by Washington.
November 26.
A carrier task force steams out of Japanese ports.
November 27, Washington.
The White House, still monitoring Japan's secret communications, alerts all U.S.
Pacific Commanders that hostilities appear imminent.
November 29, Tokyo.
Japan officially rejects the U.S.
conditions for negotiation.
November 30th, Borneo.
British intelligence reports on progress of a Japanese task force, and suspects the targets will be Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies.
Another task force, steaming toward Hawaii, goes undetected.
December 2nd, Singapore.
The British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse arrive in port.
Intended as a warning to Japan, it is much too little, and much too late.
December 2nd, Tokyo.
Japanese naval headquarters informs its commanders at sea that talks with Washington have broken down.
All attacks, as planned, will be carried out.
December 6th, the White House.
President Roosevelt sends a personal message to the Emperor himself, imploring him to preserve the peace.
The Japanese cabinet is surprised by this breach of protocol.
There is no reply.
December 7, 1941.
6 a.m.
Airplane engines start up on the decks of six Japanese aircraft carriers.
Within 15 minutes, more than 180 warplanes are in the air.
Soon, radio broadcasts from Hawaii will be heard on cockpit radios.
here Pearl Harbor is less than 90 minutes away.
Hawaii time.
Mustard-colored warplanes with red suns on their wingtips take off from six Japanese aircraft carriers.
Their target?
About 90 minutes away is the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor.
For years there had been speculation that in the event of war in the Pacific, Pearl Harbor would be a primary target.
For weeks prior to that December Sunday, Pacific commanders had been warned to be on the alert.
For days there had been confirmed reports of Japanese military movement, and even in the last hours and minutes before those planes reached their target, There were signs of an enemy's approach.
But despite that, when the first of the mustard-colored planes appeared overhead, the men and ships of Pearl Harbor were asleep and at ease.
At 9.30 a.m.
on December 6th of 1941, the first 13 parts of a 14-part message from the Japanese government to its embassy in Washington is intercepted by Massey.
That was the nickname for the system American cryptographers used to break Japan's secret code.
The message signals a breakdown in Japanese-American diplomacy, and when President Roosevelt reads it, he says, this means war.
By midnight, the President has drafted a speech calling for a declaration of war if Japan attacks British or Dutch possessions in the Pacific, which he considered likely targets.
FDR leaves his second-floor study in his wheelchair and retires to his bedroom for the night.
At the U.S.
Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, it's five-and-a-half hours early, 6.30 p.m.
Everyone at Pearl Harbor is supposed to be on war alert, but there had been a false alarm about Japanese military movements the week before.
And the two top commanders of Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short, interpret intelligence reports from Washington as warning against sabotage, not invasion.
Small boats are bringing sailors ashore from their ships in the harbor.
Soldiers are drifting away from Schofield Barracks.
In Honolulu and at other waterfront hangouts, another rousing Saturday night is beginning.
At midnight, less than 10 miles from Honolulu's bright lights, Japanese submarines, like mammals of the sea, give birth to several midget sons.
They'll try to sneak into Pearl Harbor when the anti-submarine nets are open for American vessels.
In Washington, it is now 5.30 a.m., Sunday, December 7.
At the Japanese Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, a staff member spends the night waiting for the 14th part of the message that Ambassadors Nomura and Karusu are to present to the U.S.
government.
The magic codebreakers are also waiting in their offices on Constitution Avenue, just a few blocks away.
7.30 a.m.
The transmission from Tokyo begins.
The message, stating Japan's regrets that further negotiations with the U.S.
would be futile, is taken to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Stark, It is now about 3 a.m., Hawaii time.
Some 200 miles north of Oahu Island, aboard six Japanese aircraft carriers, more than 300 warplanes are being serviced and loaded with bombs and torpedoes.
Their crews are awakened.
The first pilot to be roused is Mitsuo Fuchida, 38 years old, hero of the China War, flight commander for the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Another transmission from Tokyo to its embassy.
The 14-part message that was transmitted earlier is to be delivered to Secretary of State Cordell Hull at precisely 1 p.m.
Admiral Stark and intelligence officers note that at 1 p.m.
Washington time, Pearl Harbor will be the only American base in the Pacific where the sun will have risen.
No new war alert is issued.
Colonel Bratton, Chief of the Magic Section, puts in a call to Fort Myers, Virginia, just outside Washington, to inform General George Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, about the Japanese message.
But the General can't be reached.
He's out on his customary Sunday morning horseback ride.
It's about 11 a.m.
before General Marshall returns to his quarters.
Later, after seeing the Japanese message, he prepares a warning to be sent to all Pacific Commanders.
Significance of the hour set by the Japanese is not known, but, accordingly, be on the alert.
It is now 6 a.m.
in Hawaii.
Flight Commander Fuchida ties a Hachimaki around his flying helmet, a white scarf centered with a bright red stump.
With his radio operator, he climbs into the cockpit of his plane, waits for the signal, and when it's given, rises into a bright blue sky.
In Hawaii, it is 6.30.
In Washington, It's twelve noon.
At the Japanese Embassy, Ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu watch the clock anxiously.
Urgent business had not been expected on a Sunday.
Most of the Embassy staff is gone for the weekend.
Translation of Tokyo's message will not be ready by one o'clock.
And the Ambassadors ask the State Department for an hour's delay.
The Army's signal service to Hawaii is hampered by atmospheric.
It's decided to send General Marshall's warning as a telegram to San Francisco, or relayed to Hawaii by radio.
The U.S.
destroyer Ward spots a Japanese submarine trying to sneak into Pearl Harbor.
Commander William Autelbridge orders an attack with deck charges.
Navy headquarters is notified.
But unconfirmed submarine sightings have been so common that no importance is given to the report from the Ward.
It is now 7 a.m.
Privates George Elliott and Joseph Lockhart are on a routine training exercise at a radar station on the northern end of Oahu Island.
A massive blitz flickers on the screen.
When this is reported, a duty officer at 4th Chapter assumes that the blitz are a flight of B-17s due in that morning from the mainland.
Elliott and Lockhart are told to shut down the station and report for church parade.
It is now 7.30 a.m.
Commander Fujita's first wave of attack planes approaches Oahu as the warning cable from General Marshall is arriving in the Honolulu Telegraph Office.
It's too early for regular telegraph service on the island, and the message had not been marked urgent.
So it is typed up and given, along with other cables, to the delivery boy, who puts them in his motorbike pouch and tests out on his rounds.
It's now 7:40 a.m.
Aboard the battleship Tennessee, birthed at Borbs Island in Pearl Harbor, a Marine detachment is assembled on the fan tail for morning colors.
To their backs are the battleships Arizona and Nevada.
The West Virginia is moored alongside.
Up ahead in battleship row are the California, the Oklahoma, and the Maryland.
The battleship Pennsylvania is nearby in dry dock.
At Wheeler and Hickam Fields, American fighter planes and bombers are parked in tight clusters to guard against sabotage.
Also for security purposes, the ammunition for most anti-aircraft guns is under lock and key.
Most military personnel are away from their posts.
Many men are still sleeping or hanging around the mess halls.
It's now 7.55 a.m.
Sunday, December 7, 1941, 7.55 a.m.
The U.S.
Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Japanese warplanes, launched from carriers and led by Mitsuo Fuchida, sweep along the western coast of Oahu Island and turn at its southern edge.
Fuchida tells his radio operator, notify all planes.
Begin the attack.
The battleship Tennessee is hit for the torpedo.
A bomb falls into a funnel on the Arizona, exploding the forward magazine, breaking the ship's spine and throwing scores of men through the air.
Admiral Isaac Kidd and more than a thousand men are trapped on board as the Arizona begins to settle to the harbor bottom.
Navy and Marine gun crews hold fast against strafing and incendiary bombs.
A Japanese dive bomber is hit and disintegrates.
Another plane crashes on Ford Dynam.
The pilot runs from the wreckage and dies on a Marine's bayonet.
The Oklahoma is rolling over, her hull out of the water.
Torpedoes break open the West Virginia.
Her decks are ablaze and her captain, Mervyn Bennion, lies mortally wounded on the bridge.
There are great clouds of smoke rising from Hickam and Healer Field.
The planes are being destroyed on the ground.
Runways are littered with burning wreckage.
The flight of unarmed V-17s from the mainland flies into fire from Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft fire from the ground.
One of the flying Fortresses is burning and going down.
The rest scatter and land in crash lands at Hickam and Wheeler.
Heavy smoke is rolling up from the Pennsylvania and two destroyers that are bound.
The California is burning, shrouded in smoke and hosting support.
The Nevada hit by torpedoes gets underway and is run aground to keep her from sinking.
At Scofield Barracks, men are running everywhere, many of them half-dressed, scrambling for rifle and machine gun ammunition, firing from the tops of trucks and from barracks roofs, a Japanese plane strapped the quadrangle.
An only enlisted man, James Jones, rushes out of a mess hall as another fighter with red stungs on his wings makes a pass.
Jones can see the pilot's tachimaki headband.
He can see the pilot's smile and wave as the plane sweeps by.
The Connors are ready to kick off now.
They've just scored.
Ace Parker did it.
John Stublin and Boyce lead the Giants 7-0.
Here's the whistle.
Merrill Connors comes up.
He boots it.
It's a long one down to around the three-yard line.
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press.
Flash, Washington.
The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
At the same moment that many Americans are hearing first word of the attack, Japan's envoys, Kurusu and Nomura, are entering the office of Secretary of State Hull.
Hull has kept the ambassadors waiting for 15 minutes while discussing with President Roosevelt by phone the events at Pearl.
Nomura presents the message from Tokyo and apologizes for not delivering it at 1 p.m.
as he'd been instructed.
The secretary asks him, why 1 o'clock?
And Nomura says, I don't know.
Hull glances over the document and pretends to read it.
He knows what's in it.
He's already seen the intercepted version.
He knows the reason for the 1 o'clock deadline.
In Japan's manner of meticulous protocol, the war warning was to have preceded hostilities by 30 minutes.
Powell says nothing about Pearl Harbor.
The president has told him not to.
Grimly, he denounces the Japanese document as being crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions, and brusquely sends the ambassadors away.
We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.
The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air, President Roosevelt has just announced.
The attack also was made on all naval and military activities on the principal island of Oahu.
Within minutes, crowds of people gather outside the White House, peering through the fence and into windows, watching, waiting for something to happen.
A Japanese Flash.
Imperial Headquarters announces state of war with the United States.
Across the country, people tie up phone lines and gather around radios, collecting and swapping information.
The government of the Dutch East Indies has just declared war on Japan.
Both the recent declared war on Japan tonight and other Latin American nations are expected to follow.
Across the country, newspaper special editions are snapped up as soon as they hit the streets.
According to Japan's declaration of war in the United States, Hawaii has been under two air attacks today.
More than ten persons were wounded when enemy planes machined on the town near Honolulu, according to a righteous dispatch.
And General Douglas MacArthur has ordered all women and children in Manila to evacuate the seacoast and move to areas in West.
There are few facts to contradict rumors of hundreds of ships destroyed.
Invasion forces off the coast of Mexico.
Sabotage in California.
This is H.V.
Carlton Braun speaking from the NBC Newsroom.
It is evident now that the world entirely is at war.
Emotions as well as facts are confused.
The threat of war had existed for so long that the start of it, finally, is a release.
A satisfying, even exhilarating relief.
Yesterday, December 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.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
History, in every century, records an act that lives forevermore.
We'll recall, as is the land we bought, the things that happened on the Delighted Shore.
Let's remember World War II, as we go to meet the foe.
Let's remember Earl Parker as he gives me out of all.
He will always remember how they died for liberty.
Let's remember Earl Parker and go on to this place.
On Christmas Eve, a convoy of ships sails into the cold mists of San Francisco Bay.
Amen.
Their cargo, in chassis and on stretchers, are some of Pearl Harbor's dead and wounded.
More than 2,200 sailors, soldiers, and Marines died in the attack, and more than 1,000 others were wounded.
Four battleships sunk.
Four heavily damaged.
More than 300 airplanes destroyed.
Most of them on the ground.
At the White House on Christmas Eve, there is no traditional family gathering.
All four of the Roosevelt sons, James, John, Elliot, and Franklin, Jr., are in uniform.
But there is a dinner and caroling for Winston Churchill, who has just arrived in the United States by battleship.
When the President speaks to the nation on Christmas Eve with Churchill at his side, and when the Prime Minister addresses Congress the day after Christmas, many people are greatly encouraged, fortified by the thought that these two men, What kind of a people do they think we are?
are together in purpose and in person under the same rule.
He and his people have pointed the way to the worry and the sacrifice of the state of little children everywhere.
What kind of a people do they think we are?
Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?
Ladies and gentlemen, you have been listening to a special presentation of the Hour of the Time.
Tonight's production was written, produced, and narrated by Edward Brown Frank Gorin and William B. Williams.
I'm William Cooper.
We're good to go.
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