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When Lady Halifax learned the news, she asked their butler to open a bottle of champagne, claiming that there had been a birth in the family. into the war on Britain’s side, this was a moment to savor. The British ambassador confided to his diary that Japan had made “the biggest mistake in their history” by uniting Americans against them, and it would be “interesting to see whether Germany now follows suit.” For the British ambassador to the U.S., Lord Halifax, who had scorned by American non-interventionists since his arrival as he worked to bring the U.S. If Japan had in fact struck Hawaii and unambiguously brought the Americans into war, the unanswered question was: What did this mean for America’s relations with Germany?īesides notifying his cabinet principals, Roosevelt personally telephoned the ambassadors of the major Allied powers to inform them of the attack.

Roosevelt had indeed earnestly tried to keep the United States out of war in the Pacific, but this was less true with regard to the Atlantic. At 2:28 p.m., the chief of naval operations, Admiral Harold Stark, telephoned the White House to confirm the earlier reports, he could only state that “it was a very severe attack and that some damage had already been done to the fleet and that there was some loss of life.”

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The full report of the destruction took time to reach Washington.

this was “just the kind of unexpected thing the Japanese would do,” he remarked, “and that at the very time they were discussing peace in the Pacific they were plotting to overthrow it.” Yet Roosevelt recalled that Japan had initiated war with Russia in 1904 in a similar way by striking its naval base at Port Arthur. His first thought was that, “there must be some mistake and that surely Japan would not attack in Honolulu.” His expectation, in line with all the principal military officials and civilian leaders in Washington, was that any Japanese attack would begin with a British or Dutch colony-certainly not a core American territory on the other side of the Pacific.

Pearl harbor