Bethesda. -- At 3 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Lt. Cmdr. Kenjiro Ono was listening to Bing Crosby sing "Sweet Leilani." Ono was in the radio room of the Japanese aircraft carrier Okagi, the command ship of a task force headed for Pearl Harbor. He was not really a fan of Der Bingle. He was listening to the all-night music program from KGMB in Honolulu, primarily for the weather report. When he heard it -- "partly cloudy, ceiling 3.500 feet, visibility good" -- he knew the weather was perfect for what the task force planned to do.
In 125 minutes the Japanese destroyed or damaged 18 ships and 188 planes, and killed 2,400 American sailors and soldiers.
When Eve Arden heard the news, she did not take it seriously: "I was running the vacuum over our sublet carpet and could catch only an occasional phrase from the radio I had. 'Attacking in waves,' I heard. 'Battleships already sunk,' and the words 'Pearl Harbor' and 'Japanese planes.' Well, I thought, Orson's done it again."
Bob Hope did not take the report seriously, either. He was going over his monologue for his Pepsodent radio show when his wife, Delores, rushed into the room. "The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor," she said. Hope's first reaction was to laugh: "This sounded like a Colonna line, like the one when Jerry hurried in during a war sketch and shouted: 'Hope, I've just delivered an ultimatum to the enemy.' ' Are you sure they got it, professor?' 'How could they miss it; I put it in an ultimatum can.' "
But British producer Alexander Korda was not joking when he said that he and Winston Churchill had caused Pearl Harbor. "He gave a little credit to the Japanese," an anonymous friend of Korda told Laurence Olivier's biographer Thomas Kiernan. "But he assured everyone that because of himself and Churchill, Roosevelt was persuaded to bring the U.S. in, and that FDR precipitated the attack . . . so as to give the U.S. an excuse to go in as quickly as possible."
One future president of the United States had absolutely nothing to do with the attack.
Ronald Reagan was literally caught napping. It was around 11.30 a.m. California time when the news went out across the nation. In his autobiography, "Where's the Rest of Me?" Reagan wrote: "I have no intention of doing a chapter on 'Where I Was on December 7.' I was in bed asleep."
Edward G. Robinson had a special reason to remember Pearl Harbor. His wife, Gladys Lloyd, was suffering from depression at the time; her "reaction to Pearl Harbor was manic. . . . She was prepared to go out and die for her country. She raged against the Japanese, predicted a squad of Marines would destroy them in a few days. She was prepared to fight the war single-handed. . . . Not only she, but I could win the war."
Then came her depression: "I'd started it all. It was my fault." Robinson was Jewish, and maybe, his wife implied, "if it hadn't've been for the Jews there would have been no Hitler, and hence no Pearl Harbor."
At the time of Pearl Harbor, Alan Ladd was in a hospital, recovering from pneumonia after collapsing on the set of "This Gun for Hire." According to one columnist, "though weak as a fly and still burning with fever, Alan jumped out of bed yelling, 'Got to get out of here, they'll be needing guys like me.' " However, it would take the Army nearly two years to catch up with him.
Gene Tierney was on Catalina Island that Sunday, shooting the comedy "Rings on Her Fingers" with Henry Fonda. "We had just started our camera when an assistant came racing down the beach." He told them about the attack and said, "We've got to clear out for the mainland right away." In her autobiography, she recounts their panic:
"We wrapped up at once and were soon sailing toward San Pedro. The radio reports of the Japanese attack were shrill and disconnected, and led to wild speculation aboard our boat. Some of the cast thought they might hit the California coast next."
But of all the stars stunned by Pearl Harbor, the ones making "Across the Pacific" had to be the most distressed. John Huston, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet and Humphrey Bogart were hoping to take advantage of their recent success, "The Maltese Falcon;" their new film was about thwarting a Japanese plan to destroy Pearl Harbor.
They began filming at the end of November, but had to shut down production when Japan actually did it. "It was a creepy feeling," Mary Astor said in her memoir, "A Life on Film," "to have been talking about 'the plans of the Japanese' in the picture and then have them practically blueprint our script."
After a few months' delay, and with the plot changed to thwarting a Japanese attempt to blow up the Panama Canal, the film was completed. "However, the war," said Mary Astor, "changed everyone's life, even my insulated and well protected one."
Roy Hoopes is the author of "When the Stars Went to War," to be published by Random House next month.