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put into a sentence something that ought to be released to the press as a formal statement.

Steve Early was tearing around. Other members of the Cabinet were coming in. There were a number of other high officers of the government around. At the moment I don't recall who they were. About half an hour after we got there Francis Biddle came puffing in, with his eyes wide open. He's very wide-eyed, has a large, beautifully shaped head, that is completely bald in the upper stories. His eyes are far apart. When excited or interested, his eyes seem to be further apart than ever. You get this effect of intense brightness. He came into the room with his eyes extremely bright and wide-eyed. He came right up to one or two of us and said, “For God's sake, what has happened?” He didn't know. He said, “I'm just off the plane from Cleveland. What in the world has happened?”

I can't say who it was, but I think it was one of the Assistant Secretaries of the Navy, or one of the naval aides with Knox, who gave us the first coherent report we had had. When I say “coherent”, I mean that he began at the beginning and told us something. All he said was, “This morning a Japanese fleet launched air planes and bombarded Pearl Harbor, which is the great naval installation in Hawaii, with a very serious loss of ships and army and navy personnel. We don't know how much has been lost. We don't know the circumstances. We just know that it happened.” That was all, a clear statement.