Nicholas Best - Seven Days of Infamy: Pearl Harbor Across the World

Another book about Pearl Harbor? Why?

Several reasons, chief of which is that only a bit of it is about Japans attack on Hawaii. I have written a brisk account of the raid for newcomers to the subject, but that is not the purpose of the book. The real aim is to examine the three days leading up to the attack and then look at the extraordinary aftermaththe impact it had not only on the United States but also on a variety of widely different countries across the globe.

People everywhere were affected by Pearl Harbor. It was one of those very rare days in world history, like the Armistice of 1918 or the assassination of President Kennedy, when millions of ordinary folk across the planet remembered exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

Their individual stories are fascinating. Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, and James Cagney were in Hollywood when they heard. Kurt Vonnegut was taking a bath at Cornell, Ernest Hemingway was on the road, and Dwight Eisenhower was having a well-deserved nap in Texas. Kirk Douglas was a waiter in New York, getting nowhere with Lauren Bacall. Jack Kennedy was playing touch football in Washington, while Ed Murrow was preparing for a round of golf before meeting President Roosevelt at the White House.

In Europe, Churchill and Hitler were both delighted when they were told about Pearl Harbor late in the evening. Anthony Eden was on his way to Russia, and Eamon de Valera was preparing for bed. Thousands of Jews were being herded to their deaths in Latvia and Poland. Menachem Begin was wandering through Soviet Central Asia, seeking an escape route to Palestine.

In the Far East, Lady Diana Cooper was fast asleep in Singapore. Jawaharlal Nehru had just been released from prison in India. Ho Chi Minh was in the jungle, and Mao Tse-tung was in his three-room cave at Communist Party headquarters in China.

Wherever they were in the world, millions of people stopped what they were doing to absorb the news and ponder the implications of Japans sudden assault on the industrial might of the United States. For better or worse, the event had consequences for a vast swath of people. I have gathered some of the more interesting stories to give an account of Pearl Harbor as seen through the eyes of mostly famous characters not usually associated with the attack. I have done it in their own words wherever possible.

As for the attack itself, I have interviewed some survivors and have come up with several eyewitness accountsthree of them Britishnot hitherto seen in print. I hope my account is as accurate as anyone elses, but I wont go any further than that. Pearl Harbor was such a chaotic affair, with so many mildly contradictory stories, that it would be a very foolish author who claimed that his was the definitive version of events.

There are indeed several alternative realities to Pearl Harbor. Admiral Husband Kimmel remembered his words on being hit by a spent bullet differently every time he was asked. Lots of other people did the same, changing their stories slightly from one interview to the next. Many remained convinced that they were still under attack late in the morning of December 7, when historians who were nowhere near the action assured them that they werent.

I have done my best to gather everything together into a reasonably coherent account. If any grumpy academics want to fall on some minor misapprehension and loudly trumpet their own superior knowledge, I will cheerfully put up my hands and utter those words that Americans so love to hear, especially in a British accent: I surrender just so long as youre absolutely sure that your version is correct.

The immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor is every bit as gripping as the attack itself. The frenzied few days following the raid culminated on December 11 with the German and Italian declaration of war on the United States. I hope readers will agree with me that there have been very few weeks like it in the history of the world.

* * *

Warm thanks to Noel Cunningham-Reid and Joan Evans (ne Fawcett) for their personal memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor; to Danielle Oser for providing her grandmother AraBelle Fullers account; and to Senator Bob Dole for sending me his memories of listening to President Roosevelts address to Congress on the radio.

Thanks also to Soozi Stokes and Fiona Cunningham-Reid for help with their parents accounts, to the Earl of Halifax, Lady Holderness, and Chris Webb at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York; and to Daphne Hughes and Lesley Parris for allowing me to use previously unpublished letters and photographs from HMS Repulse . The book is much richer for their help.

You heard, did you?

What?

The Japs.

What about them?

Theyve gone and bombed some bloody harbour in Hawaii. The Yanks are in!

L ANCE -C ORPORAL D IRK B OGARDE, S NAKES AND L ADDERS

The New Public Offices building lies just across the road from St Jamess Park, in the heart of central London. It is an unremarkable office block completed in 1916, one of many similar government buildings clustered around Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament. Nobody walking past it in the dark days of December 1941 ever gave it a thought as they passed the concrete blast wall erected against the bombing and continued on their way.

But appearances are deceptive. There was far more to the New Public Offices building than met the eye. For more than two years, ever since the last days of peace in August 1939, the anonymous gray building had been the nerve center of Britains fight against Hitler and the Nazis. It was where Winston Churchill usually spent the night, rather than the prime ministers official residence at 10 Downing Street. It was also where his staff conducted the war, from the seventy or so windowless cubicles in the basement known collectively as the Cabinet War Rooms.

The basement had not been designed with war in mind. It wasnt even bombproof, although it was safer than anywhere else in the vicinity. As war approached and a conflict with the Germans became inevitable, the British had set up their headquarters below ground level with all the pipes, wiring, and electronic equipment that they needed for a prolonged confrontation that would probably have to be fought all over the world. The lights in the Cabinet War Rooms had been switched on for the first time on August 27, 1939, four days before Germany invaded Poland. They had not been turned off since.

The rooms could only be entered from inside the building. A steel-helmeted marine with rifle and bayonet stood guard at the door. Nobody was admitted if their name wasnt on the list, or if they didnt know the password, which was changed every day. From the inside, the war rooms seemed more like a ship than anything else, with narrow, cramped corridors, humming machinery, ventilation pipes overhead, and seamanlike marines who said Aye-aye, sir when addressing an officer.

Most of the men who worked in the war rooms were servicemen. They were usually retired officers from the three fighting arms taking desk jobs that would free younger men for active duty. Most of the women were civiliansyoung typists, secretaries, and decoders who worked long hours in atrocious conditions and saw so little daylight that they were provided with sunlamps to make up for the vitamin deficiency. Those sleeping in the dank accommodation beneath the war rooms had to ask the sentrys permission to visit the bathroom on the first floor, flashing him a bare ankle as they hurried past in their nightclothes, clutching towels and soap.

Central to the war rooms, the single most important place in the whole complex, was the Map Room. It was here, next door to Churchills emergency bedroom, that three senior officers, one each from the army, navy, and Royal Air Force, worked around the clock with a team of map plotters to collate the information that came in to them from all over the world.