Their date with the day that lives in infamy

Today’s column tackles a question from G.H. about the fates of the U.S. and Japanese ambassadors to each other’s country after war between the two countries began on Dec. 7, 1941.

By extension, it also dealt with when war was officially declared. (In the absence of words — and the express words to that effect were indeed still absent at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941 — the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was an obvious de facto declaration. But G.H. spoke of the “official” declaration by Japan — the words.)

If you’re interested, here’s more information about all of that.

As noted in the column, on the evening of Dec. 6, the Americans intercepted an incomplete message and instructions on when to deliver it that Japan sent to its two ambassadors in this country.

In the wee hours of Dec. 7, the last part of the message was sent — and intercepted.

President Roosevelt believed it meant war — though it wasn’t an outright declaration to that effect. (The full text of the long message is at the bottom of the previous link.)

Most interesting — and alarming — to the handful of U.S. officials who tried to puzzle out the meaning of the message was a specific instruction to the ambassadors that itself wasn’t meant to be conveyed to the U.S. It was that the message was to be delivered to the U.S. at 1 p.m. Washington time.

The message didn’t note that the intended delivery time equated to 7:30 a.m. Hawaii time — or that Japan planned to attack Pearl Harbor 25 minutes after that.

But it was clear to U.S. officials that the specific instruction about the delivery time meant… something and probably something of a warlike nature.

Just what, though, was unclear — though critics have said the time was a clear indicator that Pearl was the target instead of Panama (where it would have been noon at 1 p.m. DC time) or the Philippines (where it would have still been nighttime then).

Washington had previously warned U.S. commanders in the Pacific that war was imminent. Then, when Army Chief of Staff George Marshall finally read the message, he sent another warning — but it failed to get there in time.

Meanwhile, ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu had trouble decoding the long message and had to ask the Americans to postpone their meeting — until 2 p.m.

The attack had already begun and U.S. officials already had the briefest word of it. At 2:20 p.m., U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull met with Nomura and Kurusu and said nothing of the attack. Instead, he pretended to read the message for the first time, gave a blistering rebuke to the ambassadors, and that was it.

Nomura and Kurusu left and were later packed off with their staff to be interned at The Homestead in Hot Springs, Va. (Note: The U.S. interned German and Italian diplomats at another luxurious resort — The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.V.

If you’d like to hear radio reports from the time about the attacks, go here. For an account of that day by FDR secretary Grace Tully, go here. And here you can read the text of a radio address made in 1942 by Joseph C. Grew, the  U.S. ambassador to Japan on Dec. 7, 1941, after he was released from his detention in that country.