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00:00:00Seventy years after the attack at Pearl Harbor.
00:00:06The Japanese have drawn first blood.
00:00:08There are secrets.
00:00:09The details are not available.
00:00:10That remain unspoken.
00:00:12How could we be caught so unprepared?
00:00:14This is the story of President Franklin Roosevelt.
00:00:17He knew this was going to be a difficult day.
00:00:19The longest Sunday of his life.
00:00:21In the first 24 hours after the Japanese attack.
00:00:24The attack was made on Oahu.
00:00:26Boldly leading Americans into a world already at war.
00:00:30Hour by hour.
00:00:32Everyone is saying well it was someone else's fault.
00:00:34Minute by minute.
00:00:35They have gotten no response to any of the messages.
00:00:37What secrets are revealed?
00:00:39Roosevelt would have been given cocaine.
00:00:41The question is how much cocaine.
00:00:42This is the story of Pearl Harbor.
00:00:44A date which will live in infamy.
00:00:46As you've never seen it before.
00:00:48These 24 hours are the turning point of the 20th century.
00:00:56Franklin Roosevelt loved his stamp collection.
00:01:13Loved to spend time putting stamps in a stamp book.
00:01:19It was a form of relaxation for the president.
00:01:26Swing is the thing.
00:01:28And Goodman is the king.
00:01:30Roosevelt is sitting at his desk going through his stamp collection.
00:01:46And the phone rings.
00:01:53Now Roosevelt did not want to be disturbed.
00:01:55But the operator told him that it was an urgent call from Frank Knox.
00:01:58Who was the secretary of the Navy.
00:02:01And the secretary of the Navy tells him they've hit us.
00:02:08The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
00:02:14Doesn't have a lot of specifics.
00:02:16Doesn't know what the American response was.
00:02:19All he knows is it doesn't look good.
00:02:23These great moments of history.
00:02:26When a president hears something as momentous as Pearl Harbor.
00:02:29You expect them to say something profound.
00:02:32But all Roosevelt said was, oh no.
00:02:42Knox said this is no drill.
00:02:43Roosevelt asked him if he could confirm it.
00:02:45He said he absolutely couldn't confirm it yet at this point.
00:02:48But all indications were that this was real.
00:02:52But Roosevelt, even though it hadn't been confirmed, believed it was true.
00:02:56He said it's just the type of thing the Japanese would do.
00:02:58That it was a sneak attack.
00:03:00The world today.
00:03:02By shortwave radio, Columbia now brings the latest world news.
00:03:05Presented over these stations by Golden Eagle Gasoline.
00:03:08Go ahead, New York.
00:03:10New York.
00:03:11A Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
00:03:13The attack apparently was made on all naval and military activities.
00:03:17On the principal island of Oahu.
00:03:19It's interesting that on the most important day of Roosevelt's presidency.
00:03:23December 7th, 1941.
00:03:25He didn't go into the Oval Office.
00:03:27He stayed on the second floor of the White House in his Oval study.
00:03:30The room that he was the most comfortable in.
00:03:31Roosevelt conducts all the nation's affairs from this one room.
00:03:35The details are not available.
00:03:37They will be in a few minutes.
00:03:38The White House is now giving out a statement.
00:03:45It's hard for us to imagine now.
00:03:47But back then, information came slowly.
00:03:50You can't just turn on your TV and see live pictures on CNN.
00:03:54Roosevelt has to wait.
00:03:58There was no direct line between Pearl Harbor and the White House.
00:04:02It took hours for Roosevelt to have a clear sense of what had happened at Pearl Harbor.
00:04:07In the beginning, he didn't know how many of the ships were attacked.
00:04:10He didn't know how many planes were involved.
00:04:12He didn't know if Japan had launched this attack on its own.
00:04:16Was this the first of many attacks?
00:04:18Was this simply to knock out the Pacific Fleet?
00:04:21Perhaps this air attack was a precursor to a land invasion.
00:04:25He doesn't know whether American planes had intercepted the Japanese force.
00:04:29He didn't know any of these things.
00:04:31And so one of the great challenges for FDR was, given this sense of uncertainty about what really happened, what was he to do next?
00:04:39What was he to do next?
00:05:07In 1941, the world is consumed by aggression.
00:05:11Adolf Hitler's armies had already marched across Europe.
00:05:16In the Pacific, Japan was trying to seek to expand its own empire.
00:05:20About 80% of the oil that Japan used came from the United States.
00:05:26In 1941, Roosevelt places an embargo on oil, on Japan, in an effort to tame its aggressive stance in the Pacific.
00:05:36That begins the clock. The clock starts ticking toward Pearl Harbor.
00:05:40As Roosevelt is getting more updates on what happened and finally getting more information, his son James comes into the study and he sees his father.
00:05:51And his father is almost frozen, suspended in time for a second.
00:05:54He notices that Roosevelt was wearing one of his old sweaters, one of James' old sweaters.
00:06:00James described his father as sad but courageous at the same time, determined.
00:06:06He approached his father and asked what he could do.
00:06:09And FDR looks over to his son and he says, stick around, I may need you.
00:06:23The first report he gets at 228 gives him the first glimpse that something awful has taken place.
00:06:29Remember, there's no direct communication between Hawaii and the White House.
00:06:33So what's happening is the naval commander in Hawaii, Admiral Block, is calling the War Department
00:06:38and talking to the chief naval officer, Admiral Stark.
00:06:42Admiral Stark is then calling over to the White House.
00:06:44And Block is giving him kind of vague information, not full detail that Stark is looking for
00:06:51or that Roosevelt is looking for.
00:06:53But finally, Block says, look, I don't know if this is a secure line.
00:06:58I don't know if the Japanese are listening in.
00:07:00So here you have the president who's trying to get detailed information
00:07:03but they don't want to give it to him because they're afraid the Japanese are listening on the line.
00:07:07So at one point, Stark, who's talking to Block, he said, just tell me.
00:07:12Even now it's vague.
00:07:13He believes there were 50 planes from one aircraft carrier, major damage and a significant loss of life.
00:07:19Roosevelt's getting a sense that the Japanese have pulled off a surprise attack.
00:07:24And that the American Navy and the Army had perhaps been caught off guard.
00:07:30The Japanese have drawn first blood. Secretary of War Stimson ordered all war departments.
00:07:32The Japanese have drawn first blood. Secretary of War Stimson ordered all war departments.
00:07:37personnel to report for duty tomorrow in uniform.
00:07:54At about 3 p.m. the War Council convenes at the White House.
00:08:10Stimson from the War Department, Knox from the Navy Department, General Marshall and the Secretary of State Cordell Hall.
00:08:17And his question to his advisors is basically, how the hell could this have happened?
00:08:24How could the Japanese attack what was perceived to be one of the strongest military installations in the world?
00:08:31How could this happen on your watch? How could we be caught so unprepared?
00:08:36Essentially what they say is, we sent out word that an attack was going to happen.
00:08:40General Marshall and Secretary Knox had warned the local commanders in the Pacific.
00:08:45Intercepts had told them that there was an expectation that the Japanese were going to attack.
00:08:50In part, what had happened was their fault.
00:08:54Pearl Harbor had a lack of information about what was going on.
00:08:58And so everyone is essentially covering themselves in the immediate aftermath of the attack and saying, well, it was someone else's fault.
00:09:05We've done what had happened.
00:09:06We've done it.
00:09:07We've done it.
00:09:08We've done it.
00:09:09We've done it.
00:09:10We've done it.
00:09:11We've done it.
00:09:12Everything's happened to the former officer's fault.
00:09:13.
00:09:35One person who was present on December 7th
00:09:56that is rarely spoken of was, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt.
00:09:59When Franklin hears that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, she doesn't know
00:10:05about it.
00:10:07She goes upstairs and she walks by the Oval Study and she sees all these people running
00:10:11around.
00:10:12She sees that Franklin is really busy.
00:10:14And she knows from the conversation she overhears on the phone that something awful has happened.
00:10:19And she looks at Franklin and what she sees, she refers to as a deadly calm.
00:10:27The last time she saw that deadly calm was in August of 1921 when the doctor stood there
00:10:34and told Franklin Roosevelt that he had polio and he would probably never walk again.
00:10:40Franklin Roosevelt was toughened by his own personal experience dealing with polio that
00:10:52he acquired as a 39-year-old man.
00:10:55This was the president who used a wheelchair every day of his life and had a serious disability.
00:11:15Roosevelt was unable to stand unaided.
00:11:17He used steel braces that he would lock into place to hold himself in an upright position.
00:11:22Roosevelt went to great lengths to hide his disability.
00:11:25It was mentioned at times in the press, but most Americans had no idea that Franklin Roosevelt
00:11:30had no use of his legs.
00:11:32Roosevelt didn't want to be seen in a wheelchair.
00:11:34He only wanted to use the wheelchair to get from one point to another.
00:11:37And he designed his own wheelchair, which was essentially a kitchen chair that he cut off
00:11:41the arms and attached wheels to.
00:11:44But he asked the press not to photograph him while he was in the chair.
00:11:49When he was told he had polio, he never gave up hope that he would walk.
00:11:53He never gave up the possibility that he would be the person who would be able to find a cure.
00:11:57And he spent most of his life searching for a cure.
00:12:00That was the way he dealt with crisis.
00:12:03When he was told really bad news, from that moment on, he simply developed a plan for dealing with it.
00:12:10No matter how bad the news was on December 7th, he had this deadly calm.
00:12:15He knew now we were in this war.
00:12:18Heavy guns defend the parts of Pearl Harbor and Honolulu.
00:12:23Remember that Oahu, the island itself, is one of the most formidable maritime fortresses in the world.
00:12:28With Pearl Harbor devastated, perhaps incapacitated, we knew by this time the Pacific was a Japanese lake.
00:12:36They could do whatever they wanted in it.
00:12:39Will the Philippines be next? Almost certainly.
00:12:42The Philippines have been a colony of the United States since the Spanish-American War.
00:12:46And Americans were very much involved in shaping the armed forces of the Philippines.
00:12:51The leading representative of the army, General Marshall,
00:12:55he needs to get a hold of General Douglas MacArthur over in the Philippines, and he simply can't reach him.
00:13:02General Douglas MacArthur was a hero of World War I who had gone into retirement,
00:13:07and Roosevelt brought him out to build up American armed forces in the Philippines.
00:13:11Roosevelt did not particularly like MacArthur.
00:13:13MacArthur was a very political general and also was a man with a massive ego who would constantly talk,
00:13:18that he had special insight into the minds of what he called Orientals,
00:13:23and that guidance from Washington was unnecessary,
00:13:26that he would be perfectly capable of handling the situation of the Philippines.
00:13:29But they're not even sure where MacArthur is. They're not even sure what's happening there.
00:13:33Have the communications been cut off by the Japanese?
00:13:36So, George Marshall is antsy. He wants to get back to the War Department
00:13:40because he wants to make sure that MacArthur knows that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.
00:13:44He wants to make sure that they're on alert,
00:13:46that they should expect an attack from Japan at any time if it hasn't occurred already.
00:13:50He wants to make sure that there's not two Pearl Harbors in the same day.
00:13:54Japan's game became crystal clear today.
00:14:08Her desire was war, war with the United States.
00:14:12America's outpost of the Pacific, mighty Pearl Harbor, naval base was under heavy attack.
00:14:18Pearl Harbor was one of the two greatest intelligence failures in U.S. history.
00:14:249-11 was the other.
00:14:27Both of these attacks exhibited common patterns,
00:14:30where there was information out there where a perceptive person might have known about the attack,
00:14:35but that information was very difficult to interpret.
00:14:38And this is what Roosevelt quickly discovers in his meetings with the military leaders.
00:14:48At the very same time, basically, as FDR is meeting with his advisers,
00:14:52there's a big rally taking place.
00:14:55In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the American First movement is holding a rally
00:15:00in which Gerald Nye, senator from North Dakota, is going to give a speech.
00:15:05Americans want no more war.
00:15:08Most of all, they want no more participation in foreign war.
00:15:13America First is an organization which was founded in the late 1930s,
00:15:17and it becomes committed to keeping the U.S. out of World War II.
00:15:20There's this large auditorium that's decorated in red, white, and blue,
00:15:24filled with these enthusiastic America First supporters who believe that Roosevelt is a warmonger
00:15:30who was trying to lead America into battle.
00:15:32And they were chanting, and they were hooting, and they were calling,
00:15:35Whose war is it? Roosevelt's. Whose war is it? Roosevelt's.
00:15:39And that chant went on and on and on.
00:15:41So by this time, an enterprising young reporter from the local newspaper
00:15:44has learned about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
00:15:47So he goes to the rally, and he wants to get Nye's reaction to this news.
00:15:51So he finds Nye in a little room off the stage before he goes out,
00:15:55and he tells them that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.
00:15:58Nye just blocks it out, doesn't accept it.
00:16:03And he goes out on the stage, and he gives his typical anti-Roosevelt diatribe.
00:16:08That Roosevelt is pushing us to war. That Roosevelt is a warmonger.
00:16:12That if we, the people, the American Firsters of the United States, don't come together,
00:16:17we will find ourselves in another world war.
00:16:20There is but one war that I would like to see this world engage in.
00:16:24That is a war against the private munitions makers the world over.
00:16:29Gerald Nye went on, and at one point the reporter walked up on the stage
00:16:32and handed him a slip of paper that said Japan has declared war on the United States.
00:16:36And Nye just pushed it aside, and he continued to talk for 45 minutes,
00:16:40ranting and raving about how Roosevelt was trying to get us into an unjust war.
00:16:45Until finally he tells the audience that it appears that Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor.
00:16:53He tells the news, but does so in a negative fashion.
00:16:56He darkly hints that the president might have somehow manipulated the situation.
00:17:00And this rally signals the very quick end of America First.
00:17:06The group as a whole disperses almost immediately after the Pittsburgh rally.
00:17:11The
00:17:23goose
00:17:29Who
00:17:33Who
00:17:38We have just heard word that Japan itself has declared war on the United States.
00:17:52The Republican leader of the Senate, Charles McNary, says now the nation must unite in giving Japan a beating for her stupidity and aggression.
00:18:00There's a quotation from Representative John Kunkel, Pennsylvania Republican, which is typical of many.
00:18:05When 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.
00:18:12At this time, when we're having meetings of the military leaders in Washington, D.C. and America, firsters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
00:18:21we have the American ambassador in Great Britain having a late dinner with Winston Churchill at the prime minister's retreat of Chequers.
00:18:30And they're talking about the war. Of course they're talking about the war.
00:18:33Remember, Churchill and England have been fighting for their life, and they need help. They need help desperately.
00:18:39Churchill is convinced that while Britain perhaps can survive a Nazi onslaught,
00:18:45the only way that the British can actually defeat Germany is if the United States enters the war on Britain's side.
00:18:51Churchill knew that he had an ally in Roosevelt.
00:18:53He understood that Roosevelt wanted to do what he could to help Britain.
00:18:58But the politics of the American scene had always restrained Roosevelt.
00:19:03So Churchill was despondent on Sunday night, December 7th.
00:19:08He felt that all of his efforts to try to get Roosevelt to commit troops and to actually enter the war had failed.
00:19:14So Churchill was depressed. He wasn't saying much.
00:19:17Every evening at 9 p.m., Churchill listened to the BBC news.
00:19:23And up comes the radio onto the dinner table. It's kind of like a little music box.
00:19:29And out comes this extraordinary story. America had been attacked at Pearl Harbor.
00:19:34And Churchill, of course, is completely shocked.
00:19:37Churchill jumps out of his chair and starts running up the stairs saying,
00:19:42I will declare war immediately.
00:19:44And those around him said, Mr. Prime Minister, you can't declare war on the basis of a radio broadcast.
00:19:50You need to know more about what happened.
00:19:51And so the British Prime Minister decides to call his friend and ally, Franklin Roosevelt.
00:20:06Churchill gets on the line and says, you know, is it true?
00:20:08And Roosevelt immediately recognizes Churchill's accent.
00:20:12And he says, yes, we're all in the same boat now.
00:20:15Churchill's reaction was one of relief.
00:20:19The British had been desperate to get the Americans into the war.
00:20:23This was not how they wanted it to happen.
00:20:26But at least it was now clear the United States could not be neutral in the war against the totalitarian states.
00:20:33But there's a little kernel of doubt that's still gnawing away at Churchill.
00:20:36The problem for Churchill was the United States had been attacked by Japan, not by Nazi Germany.
00:20:44Now, with the United States the victim of Japanese aggression,
00:20:48it's possible that the United States is going to react naturally,
00:20:51which is to go first against the country that attacked him.
00:20:54So can we use this as an opportunity to get the United States to go to war with Hitler
00:21:01and help us roll back Hitler's gains in Western Europe
00:21:05and then destroy Imperial Japan and make it pay for Pearl Harbor?
00:21:10Even though he's publicly euphoric, there are all these questions and doubts
00:21:16about just what the impact of this attack is going to be.
00:21:20What's fascinating is that here, Winston Churchill is ecstatic that the United States is finally in World War II,
00:21:29but oddly enough, his chief adversary and nemesis, Adolf Hitler.
00:21:33And he's also elated.
00:21:36At about the same time, in East Prussia, in the Wolf's Lair,
00:21:40Hitler receives the news, and he's with his generals.
00:21:42As far as Hitler is concerned, the war is won.
00:21:47He believes that America's military might overestimate it, so he calls for champagne for everybody.
00:21:52Hitler tells the generals, Japan hasn't lost a war in 3,000 years.
00:21:58We can't lose now.
00:22:00He feels the war has been decided.
00:22:02The first detailed report that Franklin Roosevelt gets about the extent of the damage takes place at 3.50.
00:22:16He was hoping that there would be some Nazi involvement in the attack
00:22:21because that allows him to use this attack to justify going to war against Germany.
00:22:27A Germany that dominates the continent of Europe will be an absolute disaster for the United States.
00:22:35Japan is, for Roosevelt, a nuisance.
00:22:38It's not the military threat.
00:22:41It's not the economic threat of Germany.
00:22:44This is the genius of Franklin Roosevelt.
00:22:47Even though the Japanese have inflicted this devastating defeat,
00:22:50he understands that his top priority must be to liberate Europe and defeat Nazi Germany.
00:22:58So he's constantly asking, were there any German planes?
00:23:01And now eyewitnesses said that at least two of the planes had swastikas on them.
00:23:06To be continued.
00:23:25To be continued.
00:23:28To be continued...
00:23:58To be continued...
00:24:28To be continued...
00:24:58To be continued...
00:25:28To be continued...
00:25:58To be continued...
00:26:28His fury about what happened and his determination to move America to address this aggression.
00:26:35We just have a bulletin from London that President Roosevelt's announcement of Japanese air attacks on the United States Pacific bases staggered London, which awaited fulfillment of Prime Minister Churchill's promise to declare war on Japan within the hour if she attacked the United States.
00:26:51To be continued...
00:27:21To be continued...
00:27:51It's completely inadequate.
00:28:22But FDR just knows that's not going to work.
00:28:25He doesn't want the American people to be confused.
00:28:27He wants them to feel the emotion he does.
00:28:30So he says no to it.
00:28:31Roosevelt 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 relations to the United States and Japan.
00:28:41This 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.
00:28:55After Secretary Hall left, President Roosevelt began to edit the speech.
00:29:08After Secretary Hall left, President Roosevelt began to edit the speech.
00:29:10Far from making a speech even longer or more complicated, he thinks about it, and he thinks, a date that will live in world history?
00:29:16He said no.
00:29:17He wanted to make a change.
00:29:18And he begins to rewrite that first, most dramatic sentence.
00:29:23He actually crosses out world history, and he writes down infamy.
00:29:30Now it becomes yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
00:29:40And so thus would become born one of the most famous sentences ever given by a president, a date which will live in infamy.
00:29:49Just extraordinary words, beautiful, powerful.
00:30:10So at approximately 528, Roosevelt gets a call from the Hawaiian governor, Poindexter.
00:30:38Quite frankly, Governor Poindexter seemed a little bit frazzled by what's going on.
00:30:44And while Roosevelt is talking to him, trying to get information about the nature of the attack, Poindexter screams.
00:30:50Roosevelt hears Poindexter say, in essence, oh my God, we're being attacked again. Another wave, third wave is coming in.
00:30:58Roosevelt puts the phone down, and he says to Harry Hopkins and Grace Tully, who's with him, the Japs are attacking again.
00:31:05It's four hours or so since the original attacks, and he's being told there's another wave of Japanese planes dropping bombs on Hawaii.
00:31:15So what's Roosevelt thinking? This means the Japanese are still there.
00:31:19It means the aircraft carriers are still off the coast of Hawaii.
00:31:22So you've got to think that he's thinking this is a land invasion. This is the prelude to a land invasion.
00:31:29This country, which was not unified on the question of going to war with the Axis, has been unified since about 2.30 p.m. this afternoon.
00:31:51Indeed, the only dissenting note came from Senator Nye, who was quoted by the United Press as blaming the Japanese attack on the British.
00:32:02But Senator Wheeler did not take that line. He said, the only thing now is to do our best to lick hell out of them.
00:32:11At 5.30 p.m., Roosevelt is wheeled down to the office of the White House physician, Dr. Ross McIntyre.
00:32:23Roosevelt was suffering from a sinus infection that day. His head was throbbing. He was congested.
00:32:28So shortly after the Japanese attack, he realizes that he now has his long day.
00:32:34Roosevelt has the White House operator call McIntyre and asks him to come in.
00:32:38He doesn't want to go before the American people or go before important cabinet meetings in obvious discomfort.
00:32:45There were no antibiotics at the time for treating sinus ailments.
00:32:48So all the procedures that he could have performed involved trying to shrink the nasal tissue to allow him to breathe
00:32:56and to clear out the sinuses and to relieve the pressure that he was feeling.
00:33:01The most commonly used drug for getting that result was cocaine.
00:33:13Secretary Hou has just released the following statement.
00:33:16Japan has made a treacherous and utterly unprovoked attack on the United States.
00:33:20At the very moment when representatives of the Japanese government were discussing with representatives of this government,
00:33:25principles and causes of peace, forces of Japan were attacking.
00:33:30It's no small feat for FDR to manage all this when one considers, among everything else, just his health alone.
00:33:37Roosevelt suffered from chronic sinus congestion throughout his life.
00:33:41It was a source of great discomfort to him.
00:33:44And so one of the things he does on December 7th is spend an hour and 10 minutes with his physician trying to get some relief from this chronic sinus problem.
00:33:57At 530, Roosevelt is wheeled into his physician's office, Dr. Ross McIntyre.
00:34:08McIntyre was a Navy man like Roosevelt.
00:34:11McIntyre will later be somewhat controversial as Roosevelt's physician.
00:34:17Given the treatments that were available in 1941, what could McIntyre have done in 70 minutes that would have helped to relieve Roosevelt's sinus problems?
00:34:27The most commonly used drug for getting that result was cocaine.
00:34:32We 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 that time.
00:34:40And that's how we treated patients with sinus problems.
00:34:45They would put the cocaine on cotton and literally paint the membranes of the nose.
00:34:50And now, an analysis by William L. Scheher.
00:34:53From Berlin itself, we've heard very little tonight.
00:34:56That'll take some time, maybe 10, 15, 20 minutes.
00:34:59And that would shrink the membranes and allow the sinuses to drain.
00:35:02There was a typical Hitlerian outburst, typical except that it was rather brief.
00:35:08It's hard to say exactly how much cocaine was given.
00:35:12There seems to be some disagreement of whether it would have been a .25%, a .5%, 1%, or even as much as 2%.
00:35:21Obviously, the greater the concentration of cocaine, the more likely that it would have had some psychological impact.
00:35:27It 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.
00:35:33The German people were told this, quote,
00:35:38As a result of constantly increasing warmongering of the American President Roosevelt in recent weeks,
00:35:44The first clashes between Japanese and United States Armed Forces occurred today.
00:35:50And there were a couple of other sentences of similar nonsense.
00:35:53I think it's clear that the medical procedure that McIntyre performed certainly relieved Roosevelt's congestion.
00:36:01Whether or not the cocaine that he used as part of the treatment also gave Roosevelt a temporary emotional boost is impossible to know.
00:36:10And we'll never know for sure because his medical records were destroyed after he died.
00:36:14But they could still be destroyed after he died.
00:36:44While Roosevelt is in the doctor's office with McIntyre,
00:37:00Eleanor Roosevelt goes on radio and gives her weekly Sunday message.
00:37:06Of course, this message is going to include news of Pearl Harbor.
00:37:09And now here's the Pan-American Coffee Bureau's Sunday evening news reviewer and newsmaker
00:37:18to give us her usual interesting observations on the world we live in, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
00:37:25It is a kind of extraordinary thing that the first Roosevelt voice that the American public hears
00:37:32in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack is not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but Eleanor Roosevelt.
00:37:37Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
00:37:40I'm speaking to you tonight at a very serious moment in our history.
00:37:45For months now, the knowledge that something of this kind might happen seemed impossible to believe.
00:37:51That is all over now, and there is no more uncertainty.
00:37:56We know what we have to face, and we know that we are ready to face it.
00:38:02Eleanor is more of a partner with Franklin Roosevelt than she is a traditional First Lady.
00:38:09The traditional First Lady said really nothing in public, and would certainly not have gone on the radio
00:38:15to deliver such an important message to the American people.
00:38:19But Eleanor was different.
00:38:21By tomorrow morning, the members of Congress will have a full report and be ready for action.
00:38:25The address that Eleanor would give on that evening was worthy of any president.
00:38:30She's basically laying the groundwork for FDR's war address that would come the next day.
00:38:34Many of you all over this country have boys in the services who will now be called upon to go into action.
00:38:41She spoke with great empathy for people who had sons in the military.
00:38:46I have a boy at sea on a destroyer.
00:38:49For all I know, he may be on his way to the Pacific.
00:38:53You cannot escape anxiety.
00:38:56You cannot escape a clutch of fear at your heart.
00:39:00And yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.
00:39:06She was basically saying to the mothers and the families of America,
00:39:11your boys may be sent to die, and I understand.
00:39:14Whatever is asked of us, I am sure we can accomplish it.
00:39:20We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America.
00:39:28Now, things were moving very fast during the day.
00:39:31They had to get their hands on all sorts of different issues.
00:39:34The Secret Service, they thought, well, by God, if they could hit us at Pearl Harbor, what was next?
00:39:38The White House?
00:39:39They didn't know.
00:39:44President Roosevelt talked by Trans-Pacific Telephone with Governor Poindexter of Hawaii,
00:39:49and the governor notified him that a second wave of Japanese bombers was beginning to swarm over Hawaii
00:39:55at the very moment he was talking to the president.
00:39:57The White House?
00:40:27Roosevelt comes back from his meeting with Dr. McIntyre and is wheeled back into the
00:40:32Oval Study.
00:40:34He's joined by Grace Tully, his secretary, and with Harry Hopkins.
00:40:38Hopkins is Roosevelt's closest friend, and he actually lives in the White House.
00:40:42He lives in the Lincoln bedroom, just a few doors down from Roosevelt.
00:40:45The White House brings up trays for dinner.
00:40:48It is, to say the least, an uncomfortable dinner.
00:40:52Roosevelt really doesn't want to talk about Pearl Harbor.
00:40:56He would hope to ignore Pearl Harbor, but it was like ignoring the 800-pound gorilla
00:41:01that's sitting at the table with him.
00:41:03It's the only time in this 24-hour period where Roosevelt reveals his vulnerability.
00:41:16All throughout the day, FDR had really portrayed a sense of firmness, that while everyone was
00:41:21seemingly on the verge of panic and feeling the strain, he was the linchpin holding everyone
00:41:28together.
00:41:29But all of a sudden, over dinner, he just lets his fears run rampant.
00:41:33He's afraid that the Japanese may be, at that very moment, preparing to launch an attack against
00:41:37the West Coast.
00:41:38He worried that they could invade the West Coast of the United States and proceed as far east
00:41:44of Chicago before the United States could put up a reasonable defense.
00:41:49He knows America's lack of readiness.
00:41:52We had an army, if you can believe it, that was roughly the size of Sweden's.
00:41:56Just the previous spring, the United States had only one combat-ready division.
00:42:00You compare that to Germany, which had over 200, and Japan had over 100.
00:42:05This was a country that was not prepared for war.
00:42:08From Washington, the recruiting office of the United States Navy announces that all recruiting
00:42:12centers will be open at 8 a.m. tomorrow.
00:42:15Our next special news broadcast is scheduled at 7.15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, when we
00:42:20shall hear from Edward R. Murrow from Washington.
00:42:22But now, we return you to our regularly scheduled program.
00:42:27At approximately 7.10 p.m., Roosevelt gets the most detailed report of the damage done at
00:42:32Pearl Harbor.
00:42:33So this is roughly six hours after the first planes began dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor.
00:42:39And now Roosevelt, for the first time, is reading the destroyers, the battleships that have been
00:42:46crippled or destroyed.
00:43:03I think it's probably at this moment that Roosevelt's
00:43:33getting a full picture of what took place in Hawaii.
00:43:37He knows at this point that the American response had been feeble.
00:43:40He knows that there was devastation, significant loss of life.
00:43:44But now, the gravity of the destruction is finally taking hold.
00:43:49Roosevelt learns that the Nevada was hit by a torpedo and set afire.
00:43:54The Oklahoma was hit by three torpedoes.
00:43:57She capsized.
00:43:58The Tennessee was partially capsized.
00:44:00The California was set on fire and she is burning.
00:44:03The Arizona was hit by torpedoes or aerial bombs and she is capsized.
00:44:08The West Virginia is still afloat and all right, but pretty badly damaged by fire.
00:44:12Crews pumped so much water into the Raleigh to put out a fire that she is in bad shape.
00:44:17Remember, Roosevelt had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
00:44:22Roosevelt loved the Navy.
00:44:24This news must have been excruciating.
00:44:28You know that every line just really hits him like a punch in the gut.
00:44:35He's a former Navy man.
00:44:36I mean, he knows what this is like.
00:44:38He's not seeing the images, but in his mind's eye, he can conjure it up.
00:44:42Ships burning, twisted steel, men dying, other men writhing in pain.
00:44:48He knows the size of these ships.
00:44:51And when he gets reports that ships are capsized or sunk or on fire,
00:44:57he knows the number of lives that are likely to have been lost.
00:45:02And at one point, he puts his head in his hands and he's just shaking his head over and over saying,
00:45:07my God, I'm going to go down in history as a disgraced president.
00:45:10I'm going to go down in history as a disgraced president.
00:45:13Roosevelt's the president of the United States.
00:45:15He's the commander in chief when this debacle of Pearl Harbor takes place.
00:45:19Are people going to blame him?
00:45:21Are people going to say that he was sleeping on the job?
00:45:24Representative Dingell says that in the morning,
00:45:26he will demand the court-martial of top-ranking Army and Navy officers
00:45:30as a result of the Japanese attack on Hawaii.
00:45:37When one evaluates Roosevelt's leadership in that first day,
00:45:59he does make a serious error in judgment.
00:46:03During dinner time, Roosevelt's solicitor general, Charles Fahey, goes in,
00:46:12and his concern is Japanese Americans.
00:46:16At this time, there's, oh, roughly about 92,000 Japanese Americans.
00:46:22There's been a concern with these Japanese Americans being security risks.
00:46:27Even though FDR had been told earlier that the Japanese were not a security threat,
00:46:32he wasn't taking chances on that.
00:46:34He wanted to do what he thought was necessary
00:46:36to ensure that there would not be, as he often talked about,
00:46:39and railed against the fifth columnists, the saboteurs.
00:46:42Remember what they have in mind.
00:46:43Hitler had sent fifth columnists into various countries to prepare them for his invasion.
00:46:49So Roosevelt and most American officials believe the Japanese had probably done the same.
00:46:54The question is, could Japanese Americans in Hawaii have somehow assisted this attack?
00:46:59There's no way of knowing this at this time.
00:47:02And so Roosevelt's solicitor general wants to know,
00:47:05does he have the right to start arresting any suspected Japanese?
00:47:12Roosevelt gives him the authority.
00:47:15He sent a signal that Japanese Americans were almost guilty until proven innocent of being disloyal.
00:47:26He was really a creature of the prejudices of his day.
00:47:29He called the Japanese Japs.
00:47:31And Roosevelt was largely indifferent to the violation of civil liberties.
00:47:36So the order that Roosevelt signed the following day was very limited in scope.
00:47:43And it was designed only to round up those who were perceived to be a threat.
00:47:51It later morphs into something that was far different and an egregious violation of civil liberties.
00:48:01Of course, this is what would become one of the saddest chapters in the Roosevelt Presidency
00:48:07and really in American history.
00:48:09The internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
00:48:14So the record, which is generally extraordinarily good for Roosevelt in those first hours,
00:48:20has a touch of darkness.
00:48:23And here comes a bulletin.
00:48:24The War Department has invoked the Espionage Act against the publication of military information regarded as secret.
00:48:36We all know that and we can't any longer state anything about army strength outside the continental limits of the United States.
00:48:55While Roosevelt was having dinner, military leaders finally said they had reached MacArthur in the Philippines.
00:49:02Remember, they had been trying to reach MacArthur for some time that day and had gotten no response to any of the messages that had been delivered to the Philippines.
00:49:10And they told MacArthur, be on full alert. There is a strong likelihood that you are next.
00:49:18MacArthur, in his very confident, arrogant way, said, don't worry. Our tails are in the air.
00:49:25Japanese attempt anything, we can handle it. We've been caught off guard at Pearl, but we're fine in Manila.
00:49:32That was the message that was conveyed to Franklin Roosevelt.
00:49:36For Roosevelt, that's the first piece of good news he has.
00:49:40But within the next few hours, he was going to receive an unexpected and inconvenient phone call that would result in a private tragedy.
00:49:48Ladies and gentlemen, in view of the tense international situation, we have delayed the broadcast of the General Petroleum Program, I Was There, normally heard at 8.30.
00:50:03We'll follow immediately at 9 o'clock.
00:50:06We 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.
00:50:13At 8.30, Roosevelt meets with his cabinet in the Oval Study.
00:50:23His cabinet assembles around him in a ring. This is what they often did.
00:50:28And they're now a unit. They're working together.
00:50:32Many of them had to travel from some distance away, somewhere in New York, somewhere in the Midwest.
00:50:37They had all flown to Washington. They knew that this was a serious moment.
00:50:40But communication not being what it was like today, many of them didn't really have much information about what had happened.
00:50:47And he utters these very grave words.
00:50:50He says to them, this is the most important cabinet meeting since 1861.
00:50:55To him, this is as significant as the beginning of the Civil War.
00:51:00FDR, as usual, was right. This was the most important cabinet meeting.
00:51:06And then the president laid out before them what had happened.
00:51:10He tells them the extent of the damage. He tells them about the battleships and the destroyers.
00:51:15He tells them about the lives lost.
00:51:17The cabinet is stunned.
00:51:18There was really just a state of shock, a state of disbelief.
00:51:22Nobody could believe that this had actually happened.
00:51:25Like all Americans, they had seen the Hollywood caricatures of the Japanese as these short men and thick glasses that spoke bad English.
00:51:35How could these people have done this to the United States?
00:51:39How could we have been caught so absolutely unprepared for this attack?
00:51:47Most Americans, including high-level government officials, simply did not believe the Japanese possessed the technical know-how to pull off an attack like this.
00:51:56Some of them suggested, well, have the Japanese invented a new weapon, a new type of bomb? What's going on?
00:52:02Maybe the Japanese had come up with some new planes that could fly at high altitudes and drop bombs to 30,000 feet.
00:52:09Members of the cabinet, members of the military, underestimated the Japanese partly for racial reasons, that Japanese were not equal to white Westerners.
00:52:22Secretary of War Stimson tells Roosevelt that there's no way that the Japanese could have carried out this attack themselves.
00:52:28They must have been inspired by the Germans.
00:52:32While this meeting is taking place, there's not just this political and military drama, but there's a deeply personal drama that takes place.
00:52:54While Roosevelt is meeting with his cabinet, Missy LeHand, his old secretary, calls.
00:53:00She's worried about him.
00:53:03Missy, at this point, is at Warm Springs, where she's receiving therapy for a severe stroke that she had suffered months earlier.
00:53:09She wants to talk to Franklin Roosevelt.
00:53:12Missy LeHand was probably more personally important to Roosevelt during his presidency than Eleanor Roosevelt was.
00:53:19Many people viewed her as Franklin Roosevelt's surrogate wife.
00:53:25Some have suggested, including his own children, that he had a sexual relationship.
00:53:30Other members of his family have suggested that it was not a sexual relationship.
00:53:33He put a provision in his will that, should he die before she did, that she would get half of his estate.
00:53:41He gave half of his estate to Eleanor and half his estate to Missy LeHand.
00:53:44She was the woman who gave him the affection that Eleanor never could.
00:53:51Franklin and Eleanor, their private relationship really had fallen apart years earlier when Eleanor discovered that Franklin was having an affair.
00:53:58From that moment, they slept in separate bedrooms.
00:54:02Eleanor and Franklin never slept in the same bedroom in the White House.
00:54:06So, 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.
00:54:17Roosevelt gets the message, but he never calls her back.
00:54:21She's devastated by it.
00:54:25And Missy is so hit by this, so struck by this, that she would actually try to commit suicide within a few weeks.
00:54:34Roosevelt made friends, but he also discarded friends quickly.
00:54:38When I suspect that in her feeble state in Warm Springs, when Franklin didn't return her phone call, that she realized that she had been discarded.
00:54:46He lacked the emotional room to deal with the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, mobilize the nation for war, and still satisfy the emotional needs of a woman who was still madly in love with him.
00:55:01So, their relationship was a personal tragedy that was the result of Pearl Harbor.
00:55:06After Roosevelt gives them the latest up-to-date information that he has from Pearl Harbor, he goes over the address.
00:55:19He says, look, this is what I'm going to say to the American people.
00:55:23Short, direct, to the point.
00:55:26Let's get behind our war efforts.
00:55:29And once again, Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, takes this opportunity to say, I don't like it. We need more.
00:55:36His argument is, look, the most important war in 500 years deserves more than a footnote.
00:55:44It deserves more than a five- or six-minute message.
00:55:48And he's backed up by a good many members of the Cabinet.
00:55:51Secretary Stimson, for example, completely agrees with Hull and says to Roosevelt, you know, you really should say more.
00:55:55The public needs to hear more.
00:55:57Roosevelt does something that very few presidents do.
00:56:00He overrides the unanimous recommendation of his entire senior foreign policy staff.
00:56:06Roosevelt's political instincts told him that he needed to keep the speech short so that people would listen to it,
00:56:12and that the Japanese attacking America in the Pacific would not be justification enough for the United States to enter the war in Europe.
00:56:19But they're simply not satisfied.
00:56:25So for now, Hull and Stimson settle back and decide to fight a little later.
00:56:31The meeting has to come to an end, and he asks them all not to talk to the press or the congressional leaders who are waiting outside.
00:56:38He says to them, I just told you everything, but I'm not going to tell them everything.
00:56:41Tell them everything.
00:56:42They're going to sell it.
00:56:43They can't be done.
00:56:44They will not tell you everything.
00:56:45They can't be done.
00:56:47I don't know, oh no.
00:56:49I don't know if they've ever been
00:57:12At 9 o'clock, he meets with his congressional leaders.
00:57:23Remember, he's not planning on telling them the full truth.
00:57:27He passes out good Cuban cigars to them.
00:57:30He tells them, look, people, I'm going to give you the full dope here.
00:57:33I'm going to tell you what's happening.
00:57:35He made them feel that he was bringing them into his confidence,
00:57:39when in reality, he was being very devious.
00:57:41And he wasn't sharing anything confidential with them.
00:57:44FDR didn't want them to know all the grisly details.
00:57:47A, because he was worried it would be demoralizing.
00:57:50And B, because he knew as soon as he told them,
00:57:52it would be out all over Washington, all over the country, within minutes.
00:57:56He gives them vague information about what took place in Pearl Harbor.
00:58:00He says there was significant damage.
00:58:01He says there's going to be a significant loss of life.
00:58:04But he doesn't go into the detailed reports about the ships that had been capsized and sunk and that were on fire.
00:58:09Even so, the senators and congressmen sat there and they said nothing.
00:58:14They were almost in shock.
00:58:15You could hear a pin drop.
00:58:17Finally, after giving as little information as he can, it gets around to the point of the meeting.
00:58:23He needs to address the American people before a joint session of Congress.
00:58:28And so he says, will you give me a formal request?
00:58:32I would like to address Congress tomorrow at about 1230.
00:58:36But they ask him, are you going to deliver a war message?
00:58:38He says, I haven't decided yet.
00:58:40And they said to him, you know, what are you going to say?
00:58:43He has this kind of puzzled look on his face.
00:58:44Well, he says, well, you know, I haven't written the speech yet.
00:58:47I'll see.
00:58:48Of course, he had written it and they'd been tinkering with it throughout the day.
00:58:51Roosevelt is about to end the meeting.
00:58:54And Tom Connolly, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who's sitting there smoking his cigar, just gets irate.
00:59:02He just exploded.
00:59:03What the hell happened?
00:59:04How could this have happened to us?
00:59:05And he started grilling FDR.
00:59:07He wants to know who's responsible for this.
00:59:10Did our planes get in the air?
00:59:12How much did the Japanese suffer?
00:59:14Where were our forces?
00:59:15Were they asleep?
00:59:16What was going on?
00:59:17And Roosevelt doesn't know the answer to that question yet.
00:59:21He still doesn't know.
00:59:41The congressional leaders leave the room.
00:59:44And as they do, Courtauld Hall is back for round three now.
00:59:47And he's about to strike out.
00:59:49Hall's like a dog that's got a hold of a bone and he's not going to let go of it.
00:59:53Hall wants a longer address.
00:59:56He says, look, FDR, you got it all wrong.
01:00:00You've got to listen to me.
01:00:01You need a longer speech.
01:00:04And Roosevelt, by this time, he's got enough on his plate.
01:00:07He doesn't want to deal with Cordell Hall.
01:00:10So Roosevelt does what he does best.
01:00:12He gave in and says, yes, you know, you've got some good points.
01:00:15I want to think about them.
01:00:17Now get out of my office.
01:00:19And Hall left thinking that maybe the president was at least open to some of the suggestions he made.
01:00:24But in reality, Roosevelt was simply trying to get rid of him.
01:00:28As Hall leaves the office, Roosevelt's sitting there.
01:00:30He's trying to get his head around Pearl Harbor.
01:00:33What he doesn't know is that he's about to get even worse news about another American military blunder in the Pacific.
01:00:39It has nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.
01:00:40Representative Sam Rabin, Speaker of the House of Representatives,
01:00:47announces that he is calling all members of the House of Representatives to assemble tomorrow morning.
01:00:52Speaker Rabin said he had not been informed yet whether the president would ask tomorrow for a declaration of war.
01:00:57But he said that the House would be willing to follow the president on whatever he proposed.
01:01:02To be continued...
01:01:29It's an amazing coincidence that the night of December 7th, the President of the United
01:01:49States had a scheduled dinner with the country's most famous radio broadcaster, Edward R. Murrow.
01:01:59Roosevelt would not have dinner with Murrow, but he still found time to see him.
01:02:10Murrow is a celebrity reporter. This is a guy that reported from Great Britain during the Blitz.
01:02:18The Blitz was the German strategic bombing of Britain that began in September of 1940 and continued until May of 1941.
01:02:27It was Murrow's voice that really brought the horror of World War II home to most Americans.
01:02:32And so, Edward R. Murrow was now going to be talking to the President of the United States at a time when Americans were facing the same challenges that Londoners had been facing for well over a year.
01:02:44And so, at midnight, Murrow comes in. They have a beer. They eat some sandwiches. And Roosevelt begins to talk.
01:02:54And unlike when FDR met with the senators and congressmen, this time he really let it all hang out.
01:03:02He confessed all the battle statistics, every battleship that had been hit, all the casualty figures. He held nothing back.
01:03:10At one point, he takes his fist, he pounds it on the table, and he says, the plane's on the ground, on the ground. He can't understand why the planes at Pearl Harbor were on the ground.
01:03:23And Murrow sat there and he knew he was watching a historic moment.
01:03:28And at no point does he say to Murrow, this is off the record.
01:03:32Edward R. Murrow had the scoop of his life handed to him by the President of the United States.
01:03:38Murrow was conflicted. Does he reveal this information that, at this point, no one knows? Or does he keep it to himself?
01:03:46Murrow 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 surprise on December 7th.
01:03:59That was a decision that Murrow made as an American.
01:04:02General Douglas MacArthur, head of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East, was officially informed of a surprise attack on Hurrah in the middle of the night.
01:04:12He issued a cunning statement telling the Filipino populace not to lose their heads.
01:04:18And in a statement he said, quote, the military is on the alert and every possible defense measure is being undertaken.
01:04:27My message is one of serenity and confidence. End quote.
01:04:42¶¶
01:04:48¶¶
01:04:52¶¶
01:04:57¶¶
01:05:01¶¶
01:05:11On a momentous day, Roosevelt is finally ready to go to bed.
01:05:21He's got the speech of his lifetime coming up that next afternoon.
01:05:25His son, James, wheels him into his bedroom, helps him undress,
01:05:29and lifts him from his chair and puts him into the bed.
01:05:33That image for me is so powerful because here's the man
01:05:36who's about to lead the nation into war,
01:05:39and he has to be physically lifted by his son into bed.
01:05:44James was serving as a Marine liaison officer in Washington.
01:05:47He had essentially an office job in the military at this point.
01:05:51And as James lifted his father into bed,
01:05:54they spoke about the fact that the country had entered this kind of deep, dark tunnel
01:05:58and that they couldn't see the end.
01:06:00James confesses. He says,
01:06:01Dad, this has been a terrible thing that's happened today.
01:06:04I'm in the Marines. I would like to see combat.
01:06:07Roosevelt's got three sons, potentially in harm's way.
01:06:10And now James, his fourth son, says,
01:06:13Dad, you know, I think I better request a combat assignment.
01:06:18So Roosevelt, you know, he's got a lot on his mind.
01:06:21He gets ready to go to bed.
01:06:23Oftentimes, as he was trying to fall asleep at night,
01:06:25he would imagine his youths, imagine wandering through the woods.
01:06:30And remember a time when he could walk.
01:06:33Remember a time when he could go hunting for birds.
01:06:38Sledding down the hill from Hyde Park towards the Hudson River.
01:06:43The days that he could run.
01:06:46The days of just absolute security of youth.
01:06:55Roosevelt is woken up by a phone call at 7 a.m. from Grace Tully.
01:06:59Grace Tully had just received an urgent message from London.
01:07:02In the overnight hours in Washington, Churchill had discovered that the Japanese attack had not been confined to Pearl Harbor.
01:07:15That Japan had struck also the British colonies in Malaya and in Singapore.
01:07:19And so the British felt compelled to immediately move to declare war against the Japanese.
01:07:25Churchill is just itching to go before Parliament and ask for a declaration of war against Japan.
01:07:33Can he go before Roosevelt does anything?
01:07:36Roosevelt does not want Winston Churchill to declare war before the United States.
01:07:41He's been plagued by this perception that he has been playing into Churchill's hands.
01:07:46So FDR has the ambassador get a message as quickly as possible to Churchill.
01:07:50Please hold off. Let me do it first and then you can declare war.
01:07:54But Churchill was so gung-ho, he wasn't going to miss this opportunity.
01:07:58A month ago, I pledged the word of Great Britain that should the United States become involved in a war with Japan,
01:08:08a British declaration would follow within the hour.
01:08:13And the message never gets to Churchill on time.
01:08:17And Churchill will go before Parliament and ask and receive a declaration of war,
01:08:22actually before the United States does.
01:08:25You have been listening to British Prime Minister Churchill speaking from London.
01:08:29The programs The Man I Married and A Helping Hand,
01:08:32regularly heard over some of these stations,
01:08:34will be heard tomorrow at their regularly scheduled time.
01:08:41Roosevelt spent most of the morning in his bedroom, propped up on pillows,
01:08:45reading the latest intelligence reports that were coming in.
01:08:48And one piece of information that particularly incensed Roosevelt was to learn that the Japanese had attacked the Philippines.
01:08:59Remember, Douglas MacArthur had told Roosevelt, you know, he was on full alert,
01:09:04that the Americans had their tails up in the Philippines.
01:09:07They were sensitive towards danger.
01:09:09MacArthur's planes are sitting on the tarmacs when the Japanese planes appear overhead.
01:09:16Incredibly, he didn't get his planes up into the air.
01:09:19And in a matter of less than two minutes, half his fleet was wiped out.
01:09:25So, for the second time in less than 24 hours, the Japanese find an American military installation that is unprepared for an assault.
01:09:34MacArthur had done virtually nothing to stop the disaster that rained down upon the Philippines.
01:09:41He let a Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack succeed in the Philippines.
01:09:47The commanders at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel and General Short, they both lost their jobs.
01:09:53They were attacked for dereliction of duty.
01:09:55MacArthur, who had warning that Kimmel and Short didn't have, somehow survives his dereliction of duty.
01:10:03You've got to think that Roosevelt is just puzzled.
01:10:07How could the American military have failed him, and failed him twice in less than 24 hours?
01:10:15Despite being furious at what happened with MacArthur, Roosevelt realizes he needs to focus on his speech.
01:10:20What he doesn't know is that he's going to need the help of one of America's most notorious gangsters in order to give the speech.
01:10:26December 7th started out as a warm and sunny day, but a cold front moved through.
01:10:41By Monday morning, December 8th, the sky was gray, the temperatures were cold.
01:10:45It was a cold, gray day in Washington, which was fitting the public mood.
01:10:50It was a cold, and the cold front kept his touch on the ground.
01:10:53Limited to the sky with a cold, no?
01:10:54Before all, it was a cold, and if you'd expect everything was dry, it's a cold, and then it was very cold.
01:10:57Maybe certain things were hurt, but a cold front ended while it was cold.
01:10:59But secondly, if you had to go on the cold front, you would have to collect everything for you.
01:11:00It was a cold front, and it was a cold front, when your head was cold.
01:11:02You can't see yourselves.
01:11:03You can't see what the cold front of us is through the sky.
01:11:07The end of the sky with him.
01:11:09A cold front, you can't see what it was cold.
01:11:11After all, we have to go on the side from the phosphor,
01:11:13and the sea level of the sky, but let the sea is pretty much worse,
01:11:14When we think of a president giving an address, that in and of itself is meaningful and stressful
01:11:24enough. But with Franklin Roosevelt, there's this added complication of him having to create
01:11:28the illusion that he could walk. FDR always felt that it would be a political liability
01:11:35if he were seen as this kind of helpless man in a wheelchair.
01:11:39Ever since he was inflicted with polio in 1921, he was determined to develop a way of walking
01:11:45so, as he said, he didn't scare the hell out of people.
01:11:51Probably around 11 o'clock or so, his valet, Arthur Prettyman, started preparing him for his major address.
01:11:57This means getting dressed. Well, getting dressed for Roosevelt was an arduous task. It will take him about an hour.
01:12:08Life was an effort for this man. The kinds of things that we take for granted. Getting dressed in the
01:12:16morning. Walking. Leaving aside the things that we don't have to do. Writing speeches to rally a nation
01:12:25at war. He couldn't put his pants on. Imagine, you know, the indignities of this, and yet the strength
01:12:32of the man at the center of the story.
01:12:36Prettyman had a routine. He would take Roosevelt and lie him flat on his back on the bed. And the
01:12:42first thing he would do is put on his braces. And the purpose of the brace is to lock his legs in,
01:12:49to make them completely stiff so they can't bend. The braces were strapped both at the knee and the
01:12:54thighs. They were pulled as tight as possible to give Roosevelt a very stiff-legged gait.
01:13:02The next thing he would do is put on his shoes. So he'd put on his socks and his black shoes.
01:13:07Then the pants had to be put on over the shoes and over the braces. This was a very difficult process
01:13:15of swaying Roosevelt and moving Roosevelt back and forth as the pants were maneuvered first over the
01:13:24shoes, then over the braces, and then pulled up to his waist. Once the pants were on, he would pick
01:13:30him up off the bed and put him back into his wheelchair. And when it came to his so-called
01:13:34walking, really he wasn't walking at all. Essentially what Roosevelt tried to do was to cover up the
01:13:41extent of his disability. And he does it by using his son's arm as one might a parallel bar, and also
01:13:48would use a cane in the other hand. He would move by essentially throwing his body weight forward.
01:13:55Because he couldn't move his legs. His legs were actually locked in these braces. They were like
01:14:01poles and they were lifeless. And so he would lunge forward with his shoulders and use his upper body
01:14:07to drag himself forward. James would take a step forward. The crutch would move forward. The braces
01:14:13would swing forward. James, crutch, braces. James, crutch, braces. It almost created the appearance that he was walking.
01:14:24He once confessed that he considered himself one of the greatest actors in the nation. And he was one
01:14:29of the greatest actors. Because once those braces were put on, once he was finally prepped, once he
01:14:35was finally dressed, he was not a helpless man in a wheelchair. He was the leader of what would be the
01:14:41most significant military alliance the world had ever seen.
01:14:51At 12.05, Roosevelt enters his limousine for the ride to the Capitol.
01:14:57When you think about presidential security, the president of the United States did not have a
01:15:00bulletproof car. So the Secret Service is afraid that some Japanese saboteur is going to try to
01:15:08assassinate the president on his way to the Capitol. Interestingly, there was a rule that the
01:15:13government couldn't spend more than $750 for a car, even for a car for the president of the United
01:15:20States. And you couldn't get a bulletproof car for $750. So on Sunday evening, they're scrambling
01:15:25around. They're trying to think how they're going to do this. And they realized that they had
01:15:28confiscated Al Capone's old car. And Al Capone had a bulletproof car. Mike Riley, the head of his
01:15:35protective detail, leads him to a car. And the car is painted this kind of spanking new black,
01:15:40yet it looks a little different. And the president looked at Riley and said,
01:15:43what's up, Mike? Where did you get this new car? And Riley says, well, Mr. President,
01:15:48it's uncomfortable and has a dubious reputation. Well, what is its reputation? And Riley says, well,
01:15:55this was Al Capone's car. And the Treasury Department confiscated it when, you know,
01:16:00Al Capone had some tax problems with the Treasury. And they got this car in the deal.
01:16:05And Roosevelt said, oh, well, I hope Al doesn't mind.
01:16:09And that was the car that transported Roosevelt from the White House to the Capitol.
01:16:25So as FDR rides along to the Capitol, it's a very different scene than when Woodrow Wilson traveled
01:16:51the same route when he was going to declare World War I. Back in 1917, when the United States went to war,
01:16:58the streets were aligned with enthusiastic people cheering for Wilson.
01:17:05The day was different. There was no cheering. The mood was somber.
01:17:12The only thing I can do to give you a sense of this scene is to compare it almost to Abraham Lincoln
01:17:17near the end of the war when he got into a train to go see the fallen Confederate capital of Richmond.
01:17:22And he gazed out almost morosely at the hideous scenes of war. He saw this walking spectacle of
01:17:28wounded men with bandages. And he thought, what a sad, sad scene.
01:17:32And I sort of think that as FDR was going along, it makes me think of that same scene with Lincoln,
01:17:42the cost of war going through his thoughts. He knew what America was about to go into.
01:17:48This meant tens and tens of thousands of Americans would die. This meant years of warfare.
01:17:53It would have been easy for him to give a speech that fired up the American people. But he saw that
01:18:01happen once before in World War I. And he saw that it fades quickly. And he knew how difficult this war
01:18:07was going to be. He needed to give the most important speech of his political career. And he did not want to be
01:18:17wheeled to the podium. He didn't want to be in a chair. He needed to walk. With everyone watching him. But it's quite a long walk.
01:18:32You have to think that every time he moves his body forward, he's thinking to himself, don't fall. Don't fall.
01:18:40At 1229, Roosevelt is wheeled down to the back of the house.
01:18:55Now it's time for what Roosevelt probably thought was the most frightening moment of the entire ordeal.
01:19:03The house was packed with all eyes on Franklin Roosevelt.
01:19:08And he had the challenge of having to get from the back of the hall up to the speaker's roster without falling down.
01:19:17And that was his worst nightmare, to fall in public in the full glare of the world.
01:19:23The Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor.
01:19:26We know what we have to think.
01:19:29So far, the news has been all bad, has been all bad, all bad.
01:19:35If he fell while making his way up to give the most important speech of a generation, what would that say for the country?
01:19:43It would have been a terrible tragedy. It would have conveyed such weakness.
01:19:47It would have sent the wrong message to the Japanese, to Adolf Hitler.
01:19:51He stood up. His braces were then locked into place at his knee.
01:19:57And then with his son James on one side and his cane in the other, he walked down the aisle.
01:20:04The hall erupts in applause, cat calls, whistles.
01:20:08There was a sense of energy and excitement that electrified the hall.
01:20:17President escorted by his son James, Captain Jimmy Roosevelt in the uniform of the United States Marine Corps.
01:20:26Reporters watching Roosevelt slowly, painfully, maneuver his way towards the podium, noticed that his face was determined.
01:20:42And they reported what he must have been thinking about.
01:20:45He's got the speech of his lifetime coming up.
01:20:48But 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.
01:20:55He was concentrating on that gargantuan task of simply making his way up the aisle to the podium without falling.
01:21:03And so it was a great act of physical courage that he showed that day, just in getting to the speaker's platform.
01:21:11And that courageous walk is forgotten.
01:21:15What's remembered is the speech.
01:21:16At 1232, Franklin Roosevelt delivered his message to a joint session of Congress.
01:21:25Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate, of the House of Representatives.
01:21:35As Roosevelt began to speak, the gallery went completely silent.
01:21:39People really hung on every word he spoke.
01:21:42Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.
01:21:54The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
01:22:05There had never been a wartime speech quite like this.
01:22:09Throughout most of the speech, it was quiet.
01:22:11The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces.
01:22:21I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost.
01:22:26You didn't know if people were in shock.
01:22:28Just as the cabinet had trouble digesting all this, they were trying to digest it all.
01:22:32As commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
01:22:40But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.
01:22:48For the millions of Americans who were sitting at home listening to his voice, what he conveyed was his supreme sense of competence.
01:22:57No 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.
01:23:14This was not a nation that had just suffered a military defeat.
01:23:17This was a nation that was determined to wage war and to win and to fight for principles that it believed in.
01:23:25With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.
01:23:37So help us God.
01:23:39This is what they needed to hear.
01:23:53This is what they wanted to hear.
01:23:55I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941,
01:24:11a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
01:24:26Probably to the dismay of Cordell Hall, Roosevelt gave the short speech he wanted to give.
01:24:33Six minutes and 30 seconds.
01:24:35A memorable six minutes and 30 seconds.
01:24:39But of course, standing there looking out over this tremendous ovation, Roosevelt must have had mixed feelings.
01:24:45He 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.
01:24:53And just what a moment of crisis this really was.
01:24:55The public overwhelmingly supported Roosevelt's speech, and it gathered the largest audience in the history of radio up to that moment.
01:25:05In the 1970s, theückt milling at the Taiwan
01:25:13And the budget that undermined us a long time and a big time and victory.
01:25:20And there was no beginning to finish from сегодня's October 16th of 2017, July 15th of 2008.
01:25:25You know President Osmond, the 31st of 2012, 많이 studio said.
01:25:27Within 24 hours of President Roosevelt first learning about the Japanese attack on Pearl
01:25:45Harbor, Congress votes to declare war.
01:25:49In World War I, it took four days for Congress to declare war.
01:25:53But boom, FDR comes, gives a speech, six minutes and 30 seconds, boom, they start debating.
01:26:00And literally within an hour, Congress had voted war.
01:26:03It was 82-0 in the Senate, and in the House, there was only one dissenter, that was Jeanette
01:26:09Rankin, and she had voted against World War I as well.
01:26:13Funny how the historical wheel turns.
01:26:17When Roosevelt signs the joint resolution recognizing war with Japan, the United States
01:26:23has just experienced the most dramatic and significant 24 hours of the 20th century.
01:26:30Pearl Harbor is the divining line between the past and the future.
01:26:36It brings America into the war, tips the balance of power in favor of the Allies, leads to Hitler's
01:26:43defeat.
01:26:45Before Pearl Harbor, America was a third-rate military power.
01:26:50After Pearl Harbor, America emerges as a superpower that never questions that it needs to play
01:26:55a role in the world.
01:27:00I think Roosevelt's actions in the 24 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor were among
01:27:06the most brilliant in the history of presidential leadership.
01:27:09Despite the confusion and the chaos of the moment, he remained calm.
01:27:15He inspired a nation.
01:27:17So at that moment, as Franklin Roosevelt delivered his message to a joint session of Congress, what
01:27:33you see is a man who could not walk, who was about to carry the nation on his back into battle.
01:27:42So when did he do
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