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That was the first statement I had that placed specifically in time and in place, saying what had happened. The degree of destruction, or the quality of the bombardment, we didn't know. It came from the air principally, although at that time there was no certainty that it didn't involve naval bombardment as well.

That was very shocking. I hadn't heard the whole story before. I'm sure that neither Walker nor Wallace had. Everybody had been wandering around trying to get a bit of information here or there, everybody assuming that you must know all that they knew, and they didn't know much. Hardly any of them realized that we didn't know that the shooting had been at Pearl Harbor, or that it had been from the air, or that it came from a Japanese air carrier, or that the carrier was a part of a fleet. This young naval aide put it just as succinctly as that, very flat-footedly - “That's all we know.”

It was shocking. There was terrific excitement. We sat down nearby the desk of the President because the principal focus of conversation was there. Knox would come in and out. Stimson would come in and out. Early was rushing back and forth saying, “They've had another telephone connection with Admiral ‘So-and-So’. Things are worse than were reported earlier.”

It must have been nearly nine o'clock before any kind of order developed. Henry Morgenthau came in eventually, as