CBS News was first with a broadcast of news of the attack, and NBC later broadcast a more comprehensive report from Honolulu. Honolulu's station KGU broadcast this that evening: "No one would believe when reports ..."
It was unbelievable, just as when the second of the World Trade Center towers was struck by an airplane and it became clear that there was more afoot than a terrible accident.
Then, as now, various and sundry misfits advanced overly-feverish theories blaming the government: Roosevelt "let" the attack happen, Bush "masterminded" the WTC collapses in order to create a casus belli for a Holy Crusade.
Not then, and not now; we just forgot what a treacherous place the world really is, and let down our guard. The difference, then, is that America was willing to unsentimentally get about the business of killing the SOB's; today, we are not.
Democracies do fail from the inside — yet another of history's lessons that we've failed to learn.
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Article comments
1 - Jerry
Bob,
Thank you for the solemn reminder. See this pertinent link.
2 - Phillip Winn
I was a little surprised at how little I heard today about the 65th anniversary, but I don't watch TV, so perhaps the news networks were blanketing the airwaves. I did hear some, which is good.
3 - Mohjho
"yet another of history's lessons that we've failed to learn."
Both September 11 and December 7th do have something in common. Looking back, we know that there was enough information before the attacks to have taken some action. It was the failure of those in charge to adequately understand the clues given and/or act accordingly. I'm not convinced these lessons are learnable.
Do yourself and your family a favor and go to Hawaii and visit the USS ARIZONA MEMORIAL. It is truly a moving experience.
4 - Nancy
I was considerably shaken when I first learned that FDR, whom I had always been taught was a great president, did in fact know that an attack was imminent & did in fact let it happen in order to sway public opinion to engaging the US in joining WWII. IMO this changes him materially from a hero into a monster, just as much as the same circumstances do with Bush. No leader is ever justified in allowing, thru commission or omission, the murders of US citizens in order to bring about some political goal or other. FDR surely has their blood on his head, as complicit in their murders as were the Japanese pilots who bombed & strafed them.
5 - Franco
#1 â€" Jerry
Read your provided link. Shockingly relevant!
6 - S.T.M
Nancy wrote: "I was considerably shaken when I first learned that FDR, whom I had always been taught was a great president, did in fact know that an attack was imminent & did in fact let it happen in order to sway public opinion to engaging the US in joining WWII."
Nancy, while FDR knew a Japanese attack was imminent, no one knew where it was coming from or what American interests would be attacked and where. US code-breakers also knew Japan planned to attack Britain, which they did on the same day (but on Dec 8, because of the international dateline). However, both only knew it was coming some time soon.
Winston Churchill quite rightly drew a sigh of relief, as Germany, then allied to Japan, immediately declared war on the US. With Britain the only democracy in Europe left standing and American ships already escorting convoys to the mid-point of the Atlantic for some months, the US was in fact already engaged in a de facto naval war with Germany.
In reality, FDR tried to keep the US out of the war for as long as possible, while supplying Britain and the Soviets with as much materiel as America could. It was Japanese expansionism, not FDR, who brought the US into the fray.
Even knowing that an attack was imminent at SOME time and having been warned about it some time prior, it was simply the unpreparedness of a then peace-time US military, both in Washington and on Oahu, that contributed nearly as much to the carnage as the Japanese themselves.
However, it is patently wrong to say FDR was complicit in the attack. While he might have secretly been glad that it provided an excuse to officially join the war, I'm sure he wasn't happy about the scale of the destruction or the American lives lost.
If you ask people outside the US, he remains one of the greatest presidents in US history, if not THE greatest. For the leader of a world power, that has to be a telling factor.
Imagine how he'd be remembered if he'd let the Nazis continue their rampage through Europe and the Japanese theirs in Asia and the Pacific.
My mother always spoke reverently about him, and she had cause to, growing up in wartime England where the street she lived in was flattened by the Germans.
Perhaps sometimes the noble cause is worth much more than might be apparent at first glance.
In this case, any comparisons to George Bush are probably odious. America was engaged in a righteous and just war in 1941.
If one's to have wars at all, I suppose they are the best kind. While Americans might have forgotten what it was really all about, those non-Americans who owe their lives and their freedom to people like FDR and Winston Churchill have not.