The U.S. At War: National Ordeal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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