Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor Read Free Page B

the cotton to sew uniforms. But the oil that powered battleships at sea and bombers through the skies topped Japan’s list of critical imports. Japan could produce a mere two million barrels a year, a figure equal to just 0.1 percent of the world’s oil output. The United States by comparison—the world’s largest producer—delivered seven hundred times that amount. “Napoleon’s armies moved on their stomachs,” observed a New York Times writer. “Modern motorized armies move on gasoline.”
    The hunger for natural resources had led Japan to invade Manchuria in 1931 and push into northern China six years later. Roosevelt had watched Japan’s aggression with alarm, but just as in Europe he found his options limited. He sent bombers and fighters to the Chinese, hoping to bog down Japanese forces. In an effort to better project American power in the region—and over the fierce objections of some of the Navy’s top admirals—Roosevelt ordered the Pacific Fleet redeployed from California to Hawaii. These token measures, however, failed to dissuade the Japanese, who sided with Germany and Italy to form what the president called an “unholy alliance.” Japan invaded southern French Indochina in July 1941, a clear prelude to the capture of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. Roosevelt felt he had no choice but to retaliate. He ordered Japan’s assets frozen and shut off oil exports, a devastating blow since America supplied more than 80 percent of the empire’s oil.
    Roosevelt knew Japan promised a formidable fight even though the four-year war with China had proven costly. Japan had stockpiled raw materials, from iron ore and rubber to a two-year supply of oil. To stretch supplies it had ordered gas rationed and later halted all civilian traffic, including buses and taxis. Essential vehicles burned charcoal or wood. Workers punched out more than 550 planes a month, boosting Japan’sair forces to some 7,500 aircraft; a figure that counted some 2,675 Imperial Army and Navy tactical planes, like fighters and bombers. But Japan’s muscle spread beyond the skies. Aggressive recruitment would soon swell the Army’s 1,700,000 soldiers to 5,000,000, while the Navy’s register listed 381 warships, including 10 battleships, 10 aircraft carriers, 18 heavy cruisers, and 112 destroyers. The Japanese Navy not only outgunned American forces in the Pacific but proved more powerful in that ocean than the combined navies of the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.
    These issues weighed upon the president this first weekend in December. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. had asked Roosevelt only a week earlier, as his office prepared a $1.5 billion bond offering, whether he foresaw a crisis that would disrupt the financial markets. “I cannot guarantee anything,” Roosevelt had replied. “It is all in the laps of the Gods.” But the president still clung to the hope that he might avert war. In a move just the night before that reflected his sense of urgency, he had ignored Japan’s political protocol and fired off at nine a message directly to Emperor Hirohito. “Only in situations of extraordinary importance to our two countries need I address to Your Majesty messages on matters of state,” Roosevelt began. “Developments are occurring in the Pacific area which threaten to deprive each of our Nations and all humanity of the beneficial influence of the long peace between our two countries. Those developments contain tragic possibilities.”
    Roosevelt’s message would be too late.
    THE BLACK PHONE ON the president’s Resolute desk rang at 1:40 p.m. on Sunday, interrupting his lunchtime conversation with Hopkins, Roosevelt’s closet adviser, whose chronic ill health and shriveled stature led others to describe him as resembling “a strange, gnomelike creature” and even “a cadaver.” Dressed in an old gray sweater given to him by his eldest son, James, Roosevelt polished off the last