Four hours after the first bombs and torpedoes hit the Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got his first call from Hawaii Territorial Gov. Joseph B. Poindexter, who erroneously told the president that a third wave of Japanese bombers was overhead.

There was no third wave.

What Poindexter heard, according to University of Oklahoma historian Steve M. Gillon, might have been American planes.

Gillon, resident historian for The History Channel, and five other historians provided the information for a new two-hour cable television special that offers an in-depth look at the critical 24-hour period after Japan’s attack 70 years ago. There are no major revelations in either the book or special.

However, Gillon sees no evidence that Roosevelt knew the attack was coming and used it to push the United States into war.

Gillon, author of the newly published book "Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation into War," and the other historians drew on their research and new information provided by the FDR Library, for the special program, which premieres Wednesday at 6 p.m. Hawaii time and repeats at 10 p.m. Gillon’s book and television special trace the events leading to the Japanese attack on a Sunday in December to 24 hours later, when Roosevelt delivered his six-minute, 30-second "Day of Infamy" speech to a joint session of Congress.

The book and television show contain vignettes including erroneous initial reports that some of the Japanese planes over Pearl Harbor had swastikas; that Roosevelt used a bulletproof car confiscated from gangster Al Capone because the government did not have its own protected car; and that FDR used a small diluted amount of cocaine, prescribed by his doctor and administered medicinally, for a sinus problem.

There was no direct phone line between Pearl Harbor and the White House 70 years ago.

One hour after the attack, Adm. Claude Bloch, who commanded the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor, contacted Adm. Harold Stark, chief of naval operations, who forwarded reports to the White House, according to the program.

Roosevelt did not get the most detailed report on the effects of the attack until five hours and 45 minutes after the first wave of Japanese fighters.

Bloch, according to Gillon, "was vague about the extent of damage, fearing that the Japanese were listening in on the phone call and would know what a crippling blow they had delivered."

During the brief phone call that took place in the second-floor Oval Study between Roosevelt and Poindexter at 5:30 p.m. Washington time, Hawaii’s territorial governor said about 50 civilians on Oahu had been killed. He also asked for the president’s approval to declare martial law because he feared that residents of Japanese ancestry might be aiding a future invasion of the island.

In the television special and in his 224-page book, Gillon said Poindexter told the president that another round of Japanese planes was buzzing overhead.

"Roosevelt turned to Hopkins, ‘My God there’s another wave of Jap planes over Hawaii right this minute,’" the book says, referring to presidential adviser Harry Hopkins.

That information was shared with Steve Early, the first full-time White House press secretary, who passed it on to reporters at his 5:55 p.m. briefing a few minutes later. Gillon speculates that is how reports of a third wave became a part of many accounts of the attack.

It was Early who had alerted The Associated Press, United Press and International News Service from his home just 30 minutes after the Japanese attack with Roosevelt’s brief statement: "The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor from the air and all naval and military activities on the island of Oahu, the principal American base in the Hawaiian Islands."

Gillon also writes that despite there was no evidence that the Japanese community here or on the mainland was involved in subversive activity and that there was overwhelming evidence that they were loyal to the United States, Roosevelt on the evening of Dec. 7 instructed Solicitor General Charles Fahey to implement Emergency Proclamation 2525. That proclamation authorized the FBI to arrest any aliens in the continental United States whom it deemed "dangerous to public peace and safety."

Timothy Naftali, presidential historian, said in the video that by giving the FBI such authorization six hours after the attack, Roosevelt "sent a signal that the Japanese Americans were guilty until proven innocent and that they were disloyal."

There were 92,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry living in the United States in December 1941, constituting 30 percent of Hawaii’s population.

Mindful of the so-called "fifth column" of German spies and saboteurs who aided Hitler’s conquest of Europe, Roosevelt and his advisers assumed there must similar networks in the Japanese community within U.S. borders.

In March 1942 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced evacuation of Japanese residents on the West Coast. It affected more than 100,000 people who were made to sell their homes and business and relocate to internment camps. Gillon describes Executive Order 9066 as "an egregious violation of civil liberties."

Gillon writes that "FDR walked a delicate line in the hours after Pearl Harbor. He needed to use the attack to justify declaring war against Japan, but he wanted to avoid providing the public with details of devastation."

To prevent public panic, minimize the damage to morale and mitigate any intelligence benefit to the enemy, the only information Roosevelt allowed to be released the first day of the attack was that 100 were dead, 350 wounded and four battleships "damaged."

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