NBC Red
Metropolitan Opera Auditions
of The Air
December
7, 1941, 5:00 pm EST
| Opera singers from Cincinnati are given on-the-air auditions for the Metropolitan Opera of New York. The program was interrupted midway through for news from Upton Close in San Francisco, Ford Wilkins in Manila (a CBS short-wave broadcast), and H.V. Kaltenborn in New York. |
| 00:00 Program introduction and opera
auditions 14:43 Program interruption: NBC newsroom: Japanese flash: Imperial headquarters announces state of war with United States. Upton Close in San Francisco: The Imperial headquarters took things right out of the hands of the civilian government. The government might not have even known anything about the attack. Speeches by Japanese military leaders will begin about 7:30 EST before a fanatical military association of "gangsters." |
| 16:53: NBC tries to contact Manila but can't get the right contact, back to San Francisco. Close describes the damage done at Pearl Harbor.Oklahoma was hit. Two ships, possibly including the West Virginia, was sunk. Speculation that the attack came from the south. Flash--Japan has also declared war with Great Britain. |
20:00: From Manila: Ford Wilkins confirms that Manila has not been attacked. Apparently NBC picked up on the CBS broadcast. There is a notable gap of dead air time between the end of Wilkins's report and the the beginning of H.V. Kaltenborn's. 23:04: H.V. Kaltenborn from New York: Word from Shanghai that a British gunboat in the harbor has been sunk. It's possible they were aiming at the U.S. Gunboat Wake. Kaltenborn confirms that the report of the attack on Manila was a mistake, but there was much damage at Pearl Harbor. It is evident now that the entire world is at war. The one question is what Russia will do in reference to Japan. |