On this day 71 years ago, the United States experienced a day
that would live in infamy. In the news flash above, the
Associated Press made its first, terse announcement of the Pearl
Harbor attacks to the nation. AP Flashback has an excerpt about
that document from Breaking News: How The Associated Press has
Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else, detailing how the news
cooperative learned about the attack: In Washington, it was 2:20
p.m., and AP editor William Peacock was in his office
contemplating lunch - a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, just
delivered from the Peoples Drug Store next door - when the phone
rang, and a White House operator said, 'Stand by for a hookup
and statement from Mr. Early. Important.' Stephen Early, who as
a junior AP reporter in 1917 had been sent to pick up the
'Zimmerman note,' the secret German cable that sealed America's
entry into World War I, now was press secretary to President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. A telephone hookup connected the White
House simultaneously to AP, UP,