Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

The Morning of the Fateful Day 305
Nomura phoned again shortly after 1:00 to ask for a postponement
until 1:45. Hull agreed to the time change. 97
Sunday Morning at the White House
Th e morning of December 7 was a busy one for FDR. He
had been up late the night before with Marshall, Stark, Stimson,
Knox, and Hopkins, discussing until the early hours of the morning
the crescendo toward which the situation in the Far East was
building. At about 10:00 a.m., FDR’s naval aide, Beardall, delivered
to him in his bedroom the fi nal 14th part of the Japanese
reply. It is possible that FDR’s busy day began even earlier when
Stark phoned giving him advance notice of that morning’s two
crucial Japanese intercepts—part 14 of Japan’s fi nal reply and the
extremely important “One p.m. Message.” In any event, when the
MAGIC pouch containing the “One p.m. Message” was delivered
to FDR later that morning, he learned fi rsthand about that as
well as the other urgent Japanese intercepts.
FDR’s personal physician, Dr. Ross T. McIntire, was one of
the president’s closest associates. He admired FDR greatly and
faithfully kept his secrets, both medical and non-medical. From
the day of FDR’s fi rst inauguration until the day of FDR’s passing
in 1945, McIntire saw the president “each morning and again
in the evening.” 98 December 7, 1941, was no exception. McIntire
was “with him [FDR] on that Sunday morning from ten to twelve
o’clock, while Mr. Hull was waiting over in the State Department
for the Japanese envoys to bring their government’s reply to the
American note.” According to McIntire, FDR thought that even
given “the madness of Japan’s military masters [they] would not
risk a war with the United States.” Th ey “might well . . . take
97Hull, Th e Memoirs of Cordell Hull, p. 1095. See also Pratt, Cordell Hull, vol. 2,
pp. 517–18.
98Ross T. McIntire, White House Physician (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1946), p. 3.