Dedication DEDICATED TO MY WIFE AND CHILDREN, FIVE GRANDCHILDREN, FIVE GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN, AND ALL MY SHIPMATES TO THE ETERNAL MEMORY OF OUR GALLANT SHIPMATES IN THE USS ARIZONA WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN ACTION 7 DECEMBER 1941 MAY GOD MAKE HIS FACE TO SHINE UPON THEM AND GRANT THEM PEACE Epigraph If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge Contents Dedication Epigraph Prologue: The Awakening Part One 1 A Child of the Depression 2 To Sea on the Arizona 3 The Last Night 4 December 7th Part Two 5 The Damage 6 Among Angels 7 America Responds 8 Recovery 9 Home to Red Cloud Part Three 10 Back in the Fight 11 Endgame 12 The Lessons of Pearl Harbor 13 Remembering the Arizona 14 Preparing for the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Epilogue: The Reunion Writer’s Postscript Acknowledgments Corroborating Sources Index Photo Section About the Authors Credits Copyright About the Publisher Prologue The Awakening “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” —Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto Commander of Japan’s Naval Forces On the afternoon of December 7, 1941, news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, reached Washington, D.C. Rumors raced unchecked through the corridors of power. The Pacific Fleet, destroyed? The island of Oahu, overrun? Japanese subs, seen off the coast of San Francisco? Japanese troops, mounting an amphibious landing? Japanese spies, living among us? Switchboards lit up; teletypes chattered. Presses were stopped, broadcasts interrupted. The West Coast, with its large population of Japanese immigrants, panicked. Schools in California closed. So did businesses. “Extra!” editions of newspapers sold out as soon as their bundles hit the streets. And suddenly every Japanese- American living here was looked on with suspicion. Some were shunned. Others were harassed. And many, before the war’s end, would be displaced, forced to live in internment camps. As facts were checked and rumors dispelled, shock gave way to the sobering reality that America would be going to war—joining a global conflict it had wanted no part of. From coast to coast, people huddled around their radios, waiting to hear from their president. His “fireside chats” had gotten them through the Depression. If ever they needed a word from him, it was now. The president’s two speechwriters were out of town at the time, and so it would be his words, and only his, that the nation would hear. On the evening of December 7, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called his secretary Grace Tully into his office. “Sit down, Grace. I’m going before Congress tomorrow, and I’d like to dictate my message. It will be short.” By midnight, he had finished. When he awoke the next morning, a typed draft was waiting for him. He went over the speech and dressed for the day. At noon on December 8, Congress opened a special joint session with a prayer by the Senate chaplain, who called for national unity. About that time, six limousines pulled up to the White House. Roosevelt walked to the presidential car, silent and somber, pushing his legs, clad in painful braces hidden under his suit. The door of the Cadillac opened, and he eased himself in. Outside his car stood six Secret Service agents, three to each running board, each holstering a .38-caliber revolver. Inside sat four more, with sawed-off shotguns. Security had been ratcheted up all around the capital, not just for the president. Tensions were high. Everyone was wary. Inside the car the president was poring over his speech, weighing every word. His opening line announced that the previous day would “live in history.” It now seemed too pale a phrase. He scratched out “history.” He needed something ruddier, flushed with outrage. Above it, he printed the perfect word—“infamy.” At 12:20, the president’s motorcade pulled into the parking lot of the U.S. Capitol. When the somber procession stopped, Roosevelt emerged from his limousine, wearing a navy blue cape over his shoulders. His son James was a captain in the Marine Corps and was wearing his dress blue uniform as he took his place at his father’s side. His arm steadied his father as they made their way to the House chamber. The room was packed with senators, representatives, justices of the Supreme Court, and members of the president’s cabinet, along with the highest-ranking military leaders. His wife of thirty-six years, Eleanor Roosevelt, watched from the upstairs gallery, which was filled to capacity with more than five hundred people eagerly waiting for the president to speak. The entire nation was an extension of that audience, gathering around radios. In Red Cloud, Nebraska, my family collected before a wooden, battery-operated