Pat Bellinger's Air Raid, Pearl Harbor--This is no drill, sent at 07:58, was picked up by a West Coast naval radio station and instantly relayed to Washington. It landed on the desk of Admiral Harold Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, who immediately burst into the office of the Secretary of the Navy, Knox. "My God," exclaimed Knox, "this can't be true! This must mean the Philippies!" Stark replied that it was no mistake, and Knox called the White House. President Roosevelt was lunching in the Oval Room with Harry Hopkins. The President's first reaction was shocked disbelief; then he called Secretary of State Cordell Hull and told him the news.
In Honolulu, San Francisco, Washington, and New York, where Japanese diplomats were frantically burning their secret papers, the reaction of the man in the street was one of unanimous rage and incredulity. But most had never heard of Pearl Harbor.
New York's Radio Station WOR interrupted its regularly scheduled broadcast of the Dodger-Giant football game to flash the news to its listeners. In the same city's Carnegie Hall, announcer Warren Sweeney interrupted the Philharmonic, which was playing Shostakovitch's Symphony No. , to repeat the bulletin. He followed this shortly with a record of "The Star Spangled Banner."
Among the best of the published Pearl Harbor accounts is one by Walter Lord, who recounts in minute detail the catastrophe in Battleship Row.
--S.E. Smith
From: The United States Navy in World War II
Introduction To Part I: Chapter 3
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