“All of Roosevelt’s speechwriters were out of town that weekend, so he was left alone to draft what was going to be the most important speech of his presidency,” says David Woolner of the Roosevelt Institute. More ignominiously, in that first day the president also set in motion the detention of Japanese-Americans.

Just as on Sept. 11, the chorus of outrage over how the country could have been caught so unprepared began almost immediately. And the political and military responses were muddied by the many unknowns: Was a full invasion of the West Coast coming? Was Germany involved?

The program finds the human moments in the big-picture timeline. One involves Roosevelt’s sinuses, which were congested and causing him considerable discomfort. We’re told that about four hours into the crisis, he spent more than an hour with his physician seeking relief, which at the time probably would have involved swabbing his nostrils with cocaine.

Another strong point of this interesting reconstruction is that it never forgets the men and women at Pearl Harbor. While focusing on the response of the nation’s leadership, it quietly updates what was going on there: the men trapped inside the battleship Oklahoma when it capsized; the futile effort to treat burn victims who had jumped from their ships into flaming oil. Another 24-hour period in this war would come to be known as the longest day, but this one must have seemed pretty endless to all involved.