Robert E. Sherwood

"In those hours and days that followed Pearl Harbor the city of Washington was afflicted with jitters. Some people who knew the extent of the damage that the Japs had inflicted, were talking darkly of disaster. They were talking of the imminence of grave danger to our country—even of the possibility of Japanese invasion of our West Coast, or of Nazi raids on our East Coast. I didn’t know how real or how valid these fears might be. But—when I went into the presence of the president himself—I heard no talk of "disaster," no jitters. I knew that I was back in America. The president loved those ships that were hit at Pearl Harbor. When they were hit, it was as if the Japs had hit his own family. But he knew—he knew with all the confidence of a loyal American—he knew that no Japs and no Nazis—nor all the Japs and all the Nazis put together—could ever deliver a knockout blow against this country. He knew—better, perhaps, than any man who ever lived—he knew what Americans are and what Americans can do. And in those hours and days, after Pearl Harbor, the president would sit back and lean back in his chair, in his oval study up there on the second floor of the White House, and he stated very clearly and very simply what he thought our military strategy in this war ought to be. He completely rejected a defensive policy. He rejected the policy of withdrawing our Navy into our home waters, and of deploying our growing, magnificent Army in foxholes and trenches along our coasts. What he said, immediately after Pearl Harbor, was this: "We must go out there, where our enemies are, and fight them on their own home grounds. We must go out and find them, and hit them—and hit them again." And that has been the summary of our whole policy in fighting this war."