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

Air Raid, Pearl Harbor! This is No Drill! 331
it was steadying to know fi nally that the die was cast. One
could no longer do anything but face the fact that this country
was in a war; from here on, diffi cult and dangerous as the
future looked, it presented a clearer challenge than the long
uncertainty of the past. 68
FDR had a previously scheduled meeting of his principal
advisers for 3:00 p.m., and they soon began arriving: Hull,
Stimson, Knox, Marshall, and Stark. In anticipation of this meeting,
Marshall and Stimson had prepared papers on the status of
U.S. military preparedness.
Th e atmosphere at the conference was “not too tense.” Th e
participants all looked on Hitler as the real enemy. Th ey thought
“that he could never be defeated without force of arms; that
sooner or later we were bound to be in the war and that Japan
had given us an opportunity.” FDR
discussed at length with Marshall the disposition of the troops
and particularly the air force. . . . [Marshall] said he had ordered
General MacArthur to execute “all the necessary movement
required in event of an outbreak of hostilities with Japan.”
Many matters were dealt with at the meeting. Th ose present
agreed that “some type of censorship had to be set up at once.”
And the president “ordered the Japanese Embassy and all the
consulates in the United States to be protected and ordered all
Japanese citizens to be picked up and placed under careful surveillance.”
When a move required the president to sign an executive
order, he “instructed the person to whom he talked to go
ahead and execute the order and he would sign it later.” 69
68Eleanor Roosevelt, Th is I Remember (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949),
pp. 233–34.
69Sherwood, Th e White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, pp. 436–37, and
Roosevelt and Hopkins, pp. 431–32.