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there was no personal excuse for them, that they personally knew everything.

Well, the President told us that Mr. Hull had disposed of the Japanese negotiators, that that was over, that there was no question about it, that we had been the victims of a humiliating surprise attack, and that the next thing, as he saw it, was that the Congress of the United States must the very next day declare war at once. There must be no delays. We must move at once to do those things that must be done under the war powers of the President, the Secretary of the Navy and the Army and that nothing could interfere with that. He wished to send a message to Congress in which he told them the whole story and made this recommendation for a declaration of war.

The first question that popped into my head, and I think I asked it - if I didn't, somebody else right next to me did - “How could it be? “Why didn't our patrols find it out?”

The answer was, “We do not know how it could have happened. The guess here is, and we haven't this confirmed from Hawaii, that a Japanese fishing fleet, which had seemed innocent enough, had been not only the conveyor of messages, but may even have been a disguise for actual weapons of bombardment. But we do not know. We haven't yet got sufficient information.”