Senate’s vote unanimous; House ballots 388-1 – victory pledged
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
BULLETIN
NEW YORK – An NBC correspondent in Manila reported today that “Manila is now under Japanese air bombardment.”
The Japanese attacked Fort William McKinley, just outside Manila, and Nichols Field on the outskirts of the city, he reported. Another attack was attempted against the RCA transmitter, he said.
TELEPHOTO: President Roosevelt delivers war message
President Roosevelt is pictured here as he delivered his momentous message to a joint session of Congress today, sketching briefly the extent of Japanese attacks and asking the House and Senate to declare that a state of war existed. In the background are Vice President Henry A. Wallace (left) and Speaker Sam Rayburn. To the right is the president’s son, Capt. James Roosevelt. (ACME Telephoto)
WASHINGTON (UP) – Congress today proclaimed the existence of a state of war between the United States and the Japanese Empire 33 minutes after the dramatic moment when President Roosevelt stood before a joint session to pledge that we will triumph – “so help us God.”
Democracy was proving its right to a place in the sun with a split-second shiftover to all-out war.
The Senate acted first, adopting the resolution by a unanimous roll call vote of 82-0, within 21 minutes after the president had concluded his address to a joint session of both houses.
The final House vote was announced as 388-1. The lone negative vote was cast by Rep. Jeannette Rankin, R-Montana, who also voted against entry into World War I.
The resolution now has to be signed by Speaker Sam Rayburn and Vice President Wallace before it is sent to the president at the White House. His signature will place the United States formally at war against the Japanese Empire, already an accomplished fact.
The resolutions were before both houses within 15 minutes of the time Mr. Roosevelt ended his seven-minute, 500-word extraordinary message.
There was a half second of uncertainty in the House when Rep. Rankin objected to unanimous consent for immediate consideration of the war resolution.
Speaker Sam Rayburn brushed the objection aside. It was she who in the small hours of April 6, 1917, faltered, wept, and finally voted “no” against a similar resolution aimed at Germany.
When the clerk came to her name on the roll call today, she voted “no” again.
A chorus of hisses and boos greeted her vote, the first cast against the war resolution.
Rep. Harold Knutson, R-Minnesota, who also voted against American entry into the World War in 1917, said today this nation “has no choice but to declare war on Japan.”
“I do not see that we have any other notice,” Mr. Knutson told reporters. “They declared war on us.”
Miss Rankin and Mr. Knutson are the only present members of the House who voted against war in 1917.
Only Miss Rankin and Rep. Clare Hoffman, R-Michigan, had remained seated when the House gave a standing ovation in response to Roosevelt’s solemn statement: “I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”
In a staccato of short sentences, the president told where the Japanese had hit yesterday throughout the Pacific area and how their representatives here had at the same time been continuing deceptive and false negotiations for maintenance of peace. And he said, simply, that he had ordered “all measures to be taken for our defense.”
“Always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us,” the president said grimly.
“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”
Under parliamentary procedure, one chamber must approve the resolution adopted by the other. Since the Senate acted first, its version was substituted by the House for the House resolution which differed in a few minor words.
Emery L. Frazier, legislative clerk of the Senate and a former member of the Kentucky Legislature, took the resolution over to the House after the Senate passed it.
The Senate received the resolution back from the House at 1:37 p.m. EST while Mr. Connally was debating the necessity for strict anti-strike legislation with Sen. James E. Murray, D-Montana. Mr. Murray asserted that strict legislation was unnecessary.
Just as he finished, House Reading Clerk Alney E. Chaffee entered the door and with a stiff bow announced that the House had passed a resolution declaring the “existence of a state of war with Japan.”
“There is the answer to the Senator’s convention,” Mr. Connally said.
The resolution was laid on the table for a while as Mr. Connally and Mr. Murray continued their debate.
Just before adjourning at 2:05 p.m. until noon tomorrow, the Senate gave consent for Vice President Wallace to sign the historic resolution after the session. He planned to do so in a ceremony in his office after Speaker Rayburn signs for the House.
Chairman Tom Connally, D-Texas, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced the war resolution in the Senate at 12:50 p.m. He asked for its immediate consideration, but Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg, R-Michigan, asked him to suspend the request so he could comment upon the resolution.
Mr. Vandenberg told the Senate that “when war comes to us… I stand with the commander in chief, notwithstanding past differences on foreign policy.”
He said that “there can be no shadow of doubt as to our answer to Japan,” and added that, “you [Japan] have unsheathed the sword and by it you shall die.”
When Mr. Vandenberg concluded, the Senate roll call on the Connally resolution was taken.
Democratic Leader John W. McCormack, D-Massachusetts, introduced the resolution in the House.
He moved immediately for a suspension of the rules and passage of the resolution.
Miss Rankin rose and said, “I object.”
“This is no unanimous-consent request,” Speaker Sam Rayburn said. “No objection is in order.”
McCormack then yielded himself 20 seconds in which he demanded immediate action on the resolution.
House Republican Leader Joseph W. Martin Jr., R-Massachusetts, then obtained the floor.
Cry ‘vote, vote’
Cries of “vote, vote” went up from the Democratic side.
Mr. Martin said he hoped there would not be a dissenting vote cast on the war resolution.
“Our nation is today in the gravest crisis since its establishment as a Republic,” Mr. Martin said. “All we hold precious and sacred is being challenged by a ruthless, unscrupulous, arrogant foe.
“Our ships have been sunk, our planes destroyed, many lives lost, cities and towns under the American flag have been ruthlessly bombed.
“We are compelled by this treacherous attack to go to war.
“There can be no peace until the enemy is made to pay in full measure for his dastardly crimes.”
More cries of “vote, vote” when Mr. Martin concluded.
‘Won’t be long’
“It won’t be long,” said Mr. Rayburn. “Let us keep order.”
The cries concluded, however, when Mr. Martin yielded three minutes to Rep. Hamilton Fish, R-New York, who said the time for action had come.
“There can be only one answer to the treacherous attack of the Japanese, and that is war to final victory, cost what it may in blood, treasure, and tears,” Mr. Fish said.
“The Japanese have gone stark, raving mad,” he added.
“I shall at the proper time volunteer my services as an officer in a combat division, as I did in the last war, preferably with colored troops.
“There is no sacrifice too great that I will not make in defense of America and to help annihilate these war-mad Japanese devils.”
‘Sit down’
Miss Rankin was standing, seeking recognition, when Mr. Fish concluded.
“Sit down, sister,” someone called.
Mr. Rayburn ignored her and Mr. McCormack yielded to Rep. Sol Bloom, D-New York, and Rep. Luther A. Johnson, D-Texas.
Date to ‘live in infamy’
Mr. Roosevelt promised, in his seven-minute, 500-word address, that we would never forget the treacherous manner of the onslaught and that, before we are through, Japan will be powerless to offend so again.
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan,” he said.
The president, preceded by the escorting Senate-House Committee, went into the House chamber, supported by his son, James, who wore his uniform of a Marine captain. He was greeted by a thundering ovation after he was presented to the assemblage by Speaker Sam Rayburn.
The ovation swelled in volume as the president reached the speaker’s stand and a rebel yell went up from the Democratic side.
War plea cheered wildly
The chamber was jammed. Members of Congress and spectators listened gravely and quietly as the president began his speech at 12:33 p.m.
But there was wild cheering when the president reached the point in his brief state paper asking for a declaration that a state of war exists.
The president did not mention Germany and Italy – Japan’s Axis partners in Europe.
Await further news
Congressional leaders had awaited the president’s message to decide whether to formulate a declaration of war only against Japan, or against Germany and Italy as well.
The president was apparently awaiting further information as to what Germany and Italy will do.
The president spoke to a tense, hushed joint session of both houses less than two hours after he had announced, through his secretary, 3,000 American casualties in the Japanese assault on the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian group. Of those casualties, 1,500 were estimated to have been killed.
Sink Jap subs
United States counteraction, the White House announced, has accounted for a “number” of Japanese warplanes and submarines. The Japanese toll of American warships in Pearl Harbor was one unidentified battleship which had capsized and one destroyer, which had exploded. Numerous American planes were destroyed and other warships damaged.
Meanwhile, at a press conference, Secretary of State Hull told reporters that, at the time of his meeting with the Japanese ambassadors yesterday, he heard rumors of a Japanese attack on Hawaii, but had not obtained confirmation.
He said he did not wait to check the rumors but received the envoys on their own representation that they wished to visit him.
The White House reported that one old battleship capsized in the attack on Pearl Harbor, one destroyer was blown up and “several other American ships were damaged.”
Jap subs sunk
It declared that American countermeasures had accounted for “a number of Japanese planes and submarines.”
The president was particularly gratified this morning over the mounting reaction of the country expressed to the White House in hundreds of telegrams and telephone calls.
Express ‘horror’
Secretary Stephen Early told a press conference that the tremendous volume of messages to the president “all express horror at this attack and pledge full loyalty to the president and the government.”
The messages came from governors, mayors, religious leaders, heads of civic movements, newspaper editors and radio broadcasters, many offering their personal services.
Assemble casualty lists
Even as the American armed forces in the mid-Pacific and the Far East defended this country with their lives and blood against the Japanese blitzkrieg, the War and Navy Departments were assembling data for the first casualty lists.
There already were scattered reports throughout the country that relatives of dead or missing men had received private notification of the sacrifice.
Congress, meanwhile, moved on other fronts to speed every facility for the successful prosecution of the war. The House Military Affairs Committee scheduled a meeting for tomorrow to repeal legislation restricting the use of selectees and National Guardsmen to the Western Hemisphere and U.S. possessions.
The action would remove any doubt as to the authority of the president to do away with that prohibition. There had been some belief that he would dispense with it during actual war.
Scores treachery
Symbolic of the unity which had swept a determined nation overnight was the comment of Rep. William G. Stratton, R-Illinois, who hitherto has opposed President Roosevelt’s foreign policy.
“There can be no question as to the stand that will be taken by every true American,” he said. “This treacherous attack on the United States by Japan will be met and avenged by a united and aroused people. We will not be satisfied merely with victory – Japan must be destroyed as a military power.”
To get what he asks for
Congressional leaders said the president would get whatever he asked for today. One high-ranking Democrat said, “It would be difficult to prevent Congress from declaring war today.”
Fighting actually began yesterday. By sundown in the Far East, it extended over a sweeping Pacific area of thousands of square miles from the Asian mainland to a point east of Hawaii where a lumber-laden American transport was torpedoed and sunk between those islands and the American continent.
The president had already ordered our Armed Forces to strike back and the war was on – declared or not.
Police shooed crowds away from the immediately vicinity of the White House. But in Lafayette Park, just across Pennsylvania Avenue, some hundreds gathered and then sang “America” and “God Bless America” as the conferees streamed out of the mansion. There had been a moment of excitement earlier in the day when crowds assembled around the Japanese embassy in Massachusetts Avenue where attaches were firing papers in big packages each equipped with a fuse and powder charge. But there was no violence there and none elsewhere in Washington in the first hours of our active participation in the Second World War.
Fitting neatly into the spectacular pattern of yesterday’s events was Japan’s final diplomatic move here, a request for an appointment with Secretary of State Hull. The hour was fixed at 1 p.m., just 25 minutes before the bombers zoomed low over Pearl Harbor. Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura and special envoy Saburo Kurusu actually reached the State Department more than an hour later and some 40 minutes after bombs fell on Hawaii. They delivered their government’s reply to Hull’s November 26 statement of basic principles for peace in the Pacific, a reply which rejected the principles, accused the United States of seeking to extend the war, and so enraged Mr. Hull that he blasted at Nomura that the note from Tokyo was a concoction of “infamous falsehoods and distortions.”
Discloses documents
The State Department immediately made public the American statement of basic principles, the Japanese reply and Mr. Roosevelt’s Saturday peace proposal directed to Emperor Hirohito. There was speculation here whether the president’s message ever reached the emperor at all.
Mr. Hull is expected to send to Congress today “a white paper” containing a chronological history of U.S.-Japanese relations which preceded yesterday’s attacks. This is customary procedure preceding a formal declaration of war.
Plainclothesmen were sent to the British embassy. British Ambassador Lord Halifax cancelled all engagements and was in constant communication with the White House and London.
The president considered declaring martial law in Manila. This would place the Army in supreme control there.
Chinese Ambassador Hu Shih spent 40 minutes with Mr. Roosevelt. He said the Japanese attack was “sheer madness.”
Playwright Robert Sherwood, who has helped the president to prepare some of his most important papers, was being flown here from New York by special plane. With him were Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and Postmaster General Frank Walker.
Not ‘knocked out’
White House conferees, who last night heard the worst straight from the lips of the president, came out acknowledging the force of the Japanese attack, but assuring all comers that we are not being “knocked out” in the Pacific.
Far from it. The U.S. Navy and Air Force are believed to be counterattacking and naval sources said we could carry the war directly to Japan by air.
Those conferees were solemn men as they emerged into night. White House police guards surrounded the mansion. It was no pocket pistol guard, either, but big, brawny bluecoats who had rifles and Thompson submachine guns in the crooks of their arms. This was no night for prowlers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or elsewhere in Washington because the Army was on guard too.
Streetlights dimmed at 12:48 a.m. today in a semi-blackout and District of Columbia officials called on all citizens to use nightlights.
Gen. Robert E. Wood, chairman of the America First Committee, climbed out of an airplane on LaGuardia Airport, New York, last night and said, “We will support the war.”
The national board of directors of the America First Committee in Chicago simultaneously urged its members to give full support “to the war effort of this country until the conflict with Japan is brought to a successful conclusion.”
Jap Embassy draws crowd
Staff members remain in Washington building
WASHINGTON (UP) – The handsome Japanese Embassy was converted into a dormitory for staff members today while curious crowds stared at the building housing the emissaries of America’s first avowed enemy in 23 years.
Japanese diplomats and newspapermen preferred to remain in the building, despite lack of bedding.
Hiroichi Takagi, the embassy’s third secretary, said over the telephone that he and his associates considered themselves “out of jobs because we were working for peace and that has ended.”
His first news of the changed situation, he said, was from press-association tickers.
Envoy called tired
Takagi said Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura appeared to be extremely tired but was otherwise all right. Concern over his health had been expressed by those who thought the action of Japan’s militarists, men he has tried to keep in check, must have been a great shock to him.
The United States sent prompt protection to the embassy and the State Department said protection would be supplied to all diplomatic personnel of Japan in the United States.
But before the police officers arrived, the Japanese staff, on short-sleeves despite the cold weather, had begun the burning of embassy papers. The boxes were equipped with fuses and powder which, when a light was applied, quickly reduced the papers to ashes.
Burned on lawn
Grates of the lawn were used for the burning. An embassy attache wisecracked to photographers, “There go my love letters.”
A crowd gathered and the driveway gates in Massachusetts Avenue were swung shut. There were a few boos for arriving Japanese officials, hastily reporting to the embassy after hearing the news, but the crowd was orderly.
There is expected to be difficulty in arranging safe conducts for Japanese officials to their homeland.
Under international law, the diplomats are entitled to the full protection of the United States while in this country and by custom, they are accorded safe conduct by all belligerents through whose countries they might pass.
Liner en route
The Japanese passenger liner Tatsuta Maru is reportedly at sea en route to the United States and might be used for the return of Japanese diplomats. But they may not be permitted to leave until satisfactory arrangements are made for Ambassador Joseph C. Grew and his staff to leave Tokyo.
There will be efforts to arrange transfers of Japanese newspapermen in the United States and American newspapermen in Tokyo.
Japan’s island position may make the matter difficult and a protracted period of negotiations was expected. The exchanges might be made at some neutral ports in the Pacific in another few weeks.
Men ordered back
SAN FRANCISCO – The 12th Naval District headquarters last night ordered all men attached to ships at Mare Island Navy Yard to report to their posts immediately.