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What
Should We Do?
By Edward R. Murrow
Washington, D.C.
December 8, 1941
 resident
Roosevelt will call for a joint session of Congress today to discuss
yesterday's bombing of Pearl Harbor and the reported loss of 2,400
Americans. I can report that our commander-in-chief is calm and
will not ask for a precipitous "outright" declaration
of war against the Japanese, but instead leans toward a general
consensus to "hunt down the perpetrators" of this act
of "infamy." Speaking for the Congress, Senator Arthur
Vandenberg promised bipartisan support to "bring to justice"
the Japanese pilots. Many believe that the "rogue" airmen
may well have flown from Japanese warships. In response, Secretary
of War Stimson is calling for "an international coalition to
indict these cowardly purveyors of death," and will shortly
ask the Japanese imperial government to hand over the suspected
airman from the Akagi and Kaga — "and any
more of these cruel fanatics who took off from ships involved in
this dastardly act." Assistant Secretary Robert Patterson was
said to have remarked, "Stimson is madder than hell —
poor old Admiral Yamamato has a lot of explaining to do."
Secretary of
State Cordell Hull, however, this morning cautioned the nation about
such "jingoism." He warned, "The last thing we want
is another Maine or Lusitania. We wouldn't want to
start something like a Second World War and ruin the real progress
in Japanese-American relations over the last few years." Hull
himself is preparing for a long tour to consult our allies in South
America, Africa, and colonial France: "If we get the world
on board, and make them understand that this is not merely an aggressive
act upon us, much less just an American problem, such a solid front
may well deter further Japanese action."
Even as Hull
prepares to depart, special envoy Harry Hopkins is calling for a
general statement of concern from the League of Nations, condemning
not only the most recent Japanese aggression, but also an earlier
reported incident in Nanking, China. "If we can get an expression
of outrage from the League, Japan may well find itself in an interesting
pickle. We're looking for some strong League action of the type
that followed the banditry in Ethiopia and Finland." Hopkins
finished by emphasizing the rather limited nature of the one-day
Pearl Harbor incursion, and suggesting such piecemeal attacks were
themselves a direct result of past American restraint. "We
did not rattle our sabers when they went into China. Had we listened
to the alarmists then, we might well be seeing Japanese anger manifesting
itself from the Philippines to Wake Island in the coming days."
Secretary of
the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., a few hours ago reminded the
nation of the current disturbing economic news. "Four million
Americans are still out of work. Americans are not out of this Depression
by any means. Are we to borrow money to build planes that we don't
even know will fly?" The industrialist Henry Kaiser was no
more optimistic: "There is simply no liquidity in these markets.
We shouldn't even be considering rearming. It is not as if we are
going to build a ship a day. Even launching a carrier every couple
of years could put us back to 1932."
Military leaders,
smarting over yesterday's losses, were no more ready for war. Even
the usually colorful Admiral Halsey sounded a note of concern to
this reporter, "Look, they have all the cards, not us. The
bastards over there could give us a decade of war at least. Where
do I get bases for my subs and flattops? Who gives me strips for
the flyboys? This could be a new war with no rules. Believe me,
brother, we ain't going to Midway or some place like that in six
months and cut down to size the whole damn imperial fleet. It's
just not going to happen." Admiral King was nearly as blunt,
"Hell's bells, no one has ever conquered Japan since they kicked
the Portuguese out. Do the American people really want to go over
to that part of the world and fight those samurai madmen? The logistics
are impossible. These people have been at war for years. I've seen
these Zeros — you put a suicide basket case with a wish to
die for the emperor in with a tank of gas, and you've got a guided
rocket that will blow our ships out of the water." Colonel
James Doolittle was even more cautious than the top brass when told
of calls for potential early American counterattacks. "Swell
— the last thing we need is to send in some hot-dogger to drop
a few bombs for the press boys that cause no real damage and get
our fellas killed in the bargain."
On the home
front, prominent voices in the arts expressed far stronger reservations
about possible American "revenge". Robert Maynard Hutchins
of the University of Chicago explained to me that the Pearl Harbor
incident cannot be separated from its larger cultural context. "We
must guard against this absurd and ongoing moral absolutism on the
part of the United States in seeing complex cultural differences
in black and white terms of the Occident and the Orient. We have
no monopoly on morality or justice." His colleague, Mortimer
J. Adler, elaborated: "Far too often we look at the world through
Western lenses. But in Japanese eyes, this rather desperate attack
is seen as a "slap", a lashing out of sorts to get the
attention of the United States, really more of a desperate cry of
the heart than anything else." Adler went on, "Japan has
had a tradition of isolation from and distrust of Western civilization
— rightly so in some respects, given everything from past European
missionaries to racism, economic exploitation, and colonialism.
If we inflame passions, they may well simply divorce themselves
from the world community — or worse, set off a conflagration
of pan-Asian hatred toward Occidentals that could last for generations.
It seems to me Pearl Harbor is rather more of a case of Admiral
Perry's chickens at long last coming home to roost."
Contacted at
home, the noted naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison was pessimistic
about the strategy involved in any U.S. response: "Good God,
do they want us to fight the entire world — Germany, Italy,
Hungry, Bulgaria, Romania, and now Japan? We lose 2,400 sailors
— less than an annual poliomyelitis outbreak — and then
we start a World War II? I find these calls for mindless retaliation
not only naïve, but disturbing as well in their failure to
take account of America's strategic impotence. That's a part of
the world we know very little about."
Prominent American
clergymen blasted the very idea of armed retaliation, calling instead
for interfaith services and greater tolerance of Japanese religious
beliefs. Cardinal Cushing warned against castigating the entire
Japanese people for the actions of a few fanatics, adding that "Bushido,
is, in fact, merely a variant of Shintoism, itself an age-old and
misunderstood faith that is as humane as anything in Christian teaching."
Cushing added, "There is nothing in Bushido, much less Shintoism
that is inherently bellicose or at all anti-Western. These few extremists
are hardly representative of either public or religious opinion
in Japan." Cushing concluded, "The Emperor himself is
a pacifist, a Zen scholar in fact deeply devoted to entomology,
with no interest at all in bloodshed. And so the better question
might be posed: 'Why does so much of Asia hate us?'"
Celebrated
director John Ford reflected Hollywood's unease with the early rumors
of war. "Hell, we are artists, not mouthpieces. What are we
to do — join the Navy to make movies on government spec? Had
we had more Japanese films available to the American people in the
first place, we wouldn't have had this misunderstanding." A
few Hollywood stars who were willing to speak on the record agreed.
Jimmy Stewart called for a world conference of concerned actors
and screenwriters. "There have been some great Japanese movies.
We need to reach out to our brother actors over there. The last
thing we need is a bunch of us would-be pilots storming over to
Burbank to enlist." Clark Gable was adamant in his belief in
keeping America from doing something "stupid," as he put
it. "If you haven't heard lately: We're actors, artists really,
not war-mongers. I'm sure that our Japanese counterparts feel the
same way. We need to put away the B-17s and get the cameras rolling
on both sides."
Celebrated veterans were especially angered about knee-jerk American
anger. Alvin C. York, Medal of Honor winner and hero of the Great
War, was reported as "madder than hell" at the "war
scare." "We shouldn't fight in some jungle island just
because the Japanese hate old man Rockefeller as much as we do."
In an in-depth
newsmaker interview, 81-year-old General John J. Pershing told Henry
Luce of Time magazine, "I've made war before —
long and hard. I've seen it. These sunshine sluggers talk a great
game, but wait until our dead pile up. No, it is time to collect
our thoughts and think like adults for a change. Lashing back is
just what these extremists want us to do. If a war breaks out, then
their mission is accomplished. I'd hate to see us playing into the
hands of a few militarists who want to topple the moderates and
the emperor. This ocean war with carriers is an entirely new challenge,
nothing like we have ever seen before. Why get our boys killed only
to make a few samurai martyrs?"
And so it is
with confidence today that this reporter assures the American people
and the world that sobriety, maturity, and prudence — not bombs
— are the watchwords on the home front. Remember — our
enemies can only win if they make us answer their violence with
more needless violence.
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