FIRST THINGS FIRST

A fair indication of the state of mind of civilian America on December 7, 1941, was provided, as many have remarked, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., where the local football team, the Redskins, played its final game of the season against the Philadelphia Eagles. Messages kept arriving for the journalists, military personnel, and government officials telling them of the Japanese attack and calling them out of the stands and to their stations. But the sellout crowd refused to be distracted from the game.

The stadium management would not announce the Japanese attack over the public address system, a decision approved by the owner of the Redskins, who explained that Pearl Harbor was not sports news. The Washington bureau chief of INS sent an employee to the White House to cover the war story while he himself remained at the stadium to watch the end of the game. The Washington Post headline the following day was war's outbreak is deep secret to 27,702 redskin game fans.

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