Crucible of a Generation: How the Attack on Pearl Harbor Transformed America 1412865573, 9781315113203

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
ABOUT THE AUTHOR......Page 3
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Dedication......Page 6
CONTENTS......Page 8
Foreword......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 11
Author’s Note......Page 12
Prologue: Fifteen Fateful Days......Page 13
PART I Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941......Page 16
1 The Sunday Papers......Page 18
2 A World at War, a Nation at Peace......Page 21
3 Facing the Gathering Storm......Page 32
4 As We Were......Page 44
PART II Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941......Page 56
5 Monday, December 1, 1941......Page 58
6 Tuesday, December 2, 1941......Page 70
7 Wednesday, December 3, 1941......Page 85
8 Thursday, December 4, 1941......Page 104
9 Friday, December 5, 1941......Page 120
10 Saturday, December 6, 1941......Page 132
PART III “Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941......Page 144
11 A Quiet Morning in America......Page 146
12 What America Knew......Page 155
13 What America Didn’t Know......Page 158
14 The Answer......Page 163
PART IV First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941......Page 176
15 Monday, December 8, 1941......Page 178
16 Tuesday, December 9, 1941......Page 191
17 Wednesday, December 10, 1941......Page 207
18 Thursday, December 11, 1941......Page 220
19 Friday, December 12, 1941......Page 234
20 Saturday, December 13, 1941......Page 245
PART V First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941......Page 254
21 All in It Together......Page 256
22 A First Class Temperament......Page 267
Epilogue: Americans All......Page 273
A Note on Sources......Page 278
Index......Page 282

Citation preview

CRUCIBLE OF A GENERATION

Crucible of a Generation tells the story of the fifteen days surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor through the pages of eight leading American newspapers. Focusing on publications such as The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, J. Kenneth Brody paints a vivid picture of U.S. political culture and society at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. Brody considers the papers in full, from headlines to “help wanted” ads, in a text richly illustrated with archival images, wartime posters, and editorial cartoons. The book provides a compelling snapshot of the United States and the role of the media at a time of dramatic tension and global change.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. Kenneth Brody served as a World War II naval officer in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Pacific theaters. He practiced law in Seattle and was executive vice president of a Fortune 500 company, and then retired to write the history of his era. He is the author of The Avoidable War and The Trial of Pierre Laval.

CRUCIBLE OF A GENERATION How the Attack on Pearl Harbor Transformed America

J. Kenneth Brody

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of J. Kenneth Brody to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-4128-6505-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-4128-6557-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-11320-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

FOR KATE AND DON

“All I know is what I read in the papers.” —Will Rogers

CONTENTS

Foreword Acknowledgments Author’s Note Prologue: Fifteen Fateful Days

ix x xi xii

PART I

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

1

1 The Sunday Papers

3

2 A World at War, a Nation at Peace

6

3 Facing the Gathering Storm

17

4 As We Were

29

PART II

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

41

5 Monday, December 1, 1941

43

6 Tuesday, December 2, 1941

55

7 Wednesday, December 3, 1941

70

8 Thursday, December 4, 1941

89

viii

Contents

9 Friday, December 5, 1941

105

10 Saturday, December 6, 1941

117

PART III

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

129

11 A Quiet Morning in America

131

12 What America Knew

140

13 What America Didn’t Know

143

14 The Answer

148

PART IV

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

151

15 Monday, December 8, 1941

153

16 Tuesday, December 9, 1941

166

17 Wednesday, December 10, 1941

182

18 Thursday, December 11, 1941

195

19 Friday, December 12, 1941

209

20 Saturday, December 13, 1941

220

PART V

First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941

229

21 All in It Together

231

22 A First Class Temperament

242

Epilogue: Americans All A Note on Sources Index

248 253 257

FOREWORD

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. —Franklin D. Roosevelt

The death of up to an estimated eighty million people in World War II challenges comprehension in today’s world of negotiations and limited wars. The military forces of the United States suffered more than 400,000 deaths. What was the country’s state of mind in the days surrounding America’s entry to this most pervasive of all wars? J. Kenneth Brody addresses this question through its newspapers. Newspapers at their best put facts together and in doing so reflect the face of the age. Dame Rebecca West, the great British novelist and political journalist, tells us that without the face of the age set before us we will imagine it. Brody uses The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, The Denver Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Oregonian as his windows reflecting the face of 1941 America. His review of what was published in these newspapers from November 30 to December 14, 1941—the week before and the week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—tellingly demonstrates the singular and critical role newspapers played in the pre-television, pre-Internet 1940s. The daily newspapers presented a composite view of the interests of their readers and reveal the mindset of the populace of that time. Brody has captured the mood of the country during this critical period, demonstrating both the diversity of the nation and its ultimate unity. He portrays the monumental effort the war required, against the background of the full range of day-to-day life in wartime America. Sandy Rowe Former Editor The Oregonian

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their contributions to this work, the author is deeply indebted to many, including the following: Anne Ekstrom whose clarity of words and thought grace every page of this book and for her boundless commitment to it; Arthur Levinson for his thoughtful, incisive commentary; Rebecca Peer of Peer Project Management who maintained the manuscript over its gestation; Sandra J. Brody whose loving care of the author and of his work was essential to its successful completion. Thanks to all.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As the epigraph suggests, this book is about the world as observed by the American newspaper reader through his newspaper. To best reproduce this newspaper reader’s experience, the book is organized in chapters covering successive newspaper editions for the days from November 30 to December 14, 1941. The date identifying each newspaper story is its date of publication rather than its dateline. The dateline (except as noted) is the day before the date of publication. The Sunday papers of December 7, 1941, were printed and distributed before the momentous events at Pearl Harbor took place. The December 7 chapters therefore present a summary narrative of what happened that day—as well as what was reported in the newspapers—to bridge the gap between the days before and the days after.

PROLOGUE Fifteen Fateful Days

This is the story of fifteen fateful days, from Sunday, November 30, to Sunday, December 14, 1941. These were the days that saw the traditional America of yesterday standing hesitantly on the sidelines of a world in flames, in Europe, in Africa and in Asia, and finally plunged, not by its own will but by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, into a new role in a new world, the world of today and of tomorrow. Not simply a chronology of events, this book is a kaleidoscopic view of America’s domestic and foreign policies, of its society at every level, of its varied peoples and cultures and its economic underpinnings, its racial anguish, its tone, temper and flavor as the nation slowly emerged from the travail of the Great Depression on its way to greatness in a war-torn world of which it would be, if not the last, then surely the world’s best hope. The great struggle of the isolationists for America’s heart and head and the rhythms of daily life in America were played out against the backdrop of the inexorable and totally unsuspected approach, day by day, from November 30 to December 7, of the Japanese Pearl Harbor Striking Force. The story is uniquely told from the pages of eight great American newspapers to which Mr. and Mrs. America looked for that information and understanding only their newspapers could supply. Protected by its oceans, America had watched the rise and expansion of Nazi Germany and the collapse of the French and British armies in Europe. Japan was as vocal and unyielding in its own campaigns of aggression in China, Manchuria, and Southeast Asia, seeking natural resources to sustain its ambitions for a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It was met head on by American financial and economic sanctions in an attempt to defend American interests in the Philippines and in China. To meet Japanese Prime Minister Tojo’s challenges, America based its policy on concepts of morality and ineffective treaties of long ago. The forces of isolationism had powerful leaders: Charles A. Lindbergh, Herbert Hoover, Senators Taft, Nye, and Wheeler. Their base was in America’s heartland, the Midwest, and their voice was the Chicago Tribune. Isolationism was often ingrained with a distrust of the New Deal. And so it was that the Chicago Tribune that hit that

Prologue

xiii

city’s newsstands and front porches on the morning of December 7 flatly accused the President of treason even as the bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor. The dominant figure on the American scene was the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, seen here in a triumphal progress through the Georgia countryside to his favorite retreat at Warm Springs and seen, too, at the congressional podium commanding the attention of the nation and of the world. This is a portrait of the nation he led. The defense buildup had awakened a slumbering economy, lending enormous relief to a stricken nation as it built a vast array of ships, planes, and weapons, presumably for the use of others. Humble factors advancing the economy could be seen through help wanted ads for machinists at a dollar an hour. Men’s suits were two for $39.95 and a five-course steak dinner cost a dollar. The prices of homes from $5,000 in California tracts for aircraft workers to Beverly Hills mansions at $25,000 tell more than simply price. The sellers clearly indicated who was welcome to buy and who was not, and the same designations could be seen in the help wanted ads. They told what race and what religion might hope to land the job. The prices of groceries and of used cars, what buyers from the hinterlands came from New York to buy—cheaper dresses, basement corsets, and millinery— offer a portrait of another age. So it was with the culture, with the formally portrayed brides of The New York Times Sunday Edition in contrast to the let-it-all-hang-out wedding stories of The Times today. Social America ran the gamut from the debutantes of the Junior Assemblies of New York and Charleston’s St. Cecilia Ball to Minnesota farm girls showing prize cattle at a livestock exposition and a Georgia ten-year-old whose mother made her the best-dressed girl in her school class on a budget of $7.69 for the year. Here are the faces of America, including the “old timey” Texas preacher who lived on $2.00 a week and wouldn’t trade his cabin for the state capitol. Other aspects of the culture are warmly noted: the movies that Americans loved; the great days of the New York theater, the books Americans read, the modern art that confused and discomfited them, the sermons they heard, and the radio programs that helped make the country one. All these combine to shape a cultural portrait of the America of then. The book tells of the indignities and injustices heaped upon black Americans and black America’s dignified response. The pundits, led by Walter Lippmann, debated America’s role in the world. Estimates of the military and economic strength of Japan versus the United States were widely diverse. Among them were Secretary of the Navy Knox’s boastful claims of naval superiority. Here are some what-ifs of history. What if Japan’s path of conquest had avoided the Philippines and other American interests? The Pearl Harbor attack resolved all that and the nation stood as one, including, and handsomely, the Chicago Tribune. James “Scotty” Reston, in a moving report of the congressional response to the attack, told how a great nation went to war. The fog of war shrouded Pearl Harbor but that did not prevent optimistic estimates of America’s successes. The public attitude was one of cheery confidence— victory would neither take very long nor cost very much. There were reports of American victories and Japanese defeats that never happened. The recruiting stations were flooded with eager aspirants, and at schools, colleges, plants, and workplaces

xiv

Prologue

Americans joined in a spirit that would be sorely tried before long. There were false alarms of air raids in San Francisco, whose Army commandant grumpily observed that real bombs would teach the public a lesson. And there were raids that never came on the East Coast. When Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, the American people were truly engaged in a World War. But what if Germany and Italy had not, of their own volition, joined the issue? Would the United States have carried the war to Africa and Europe then? America was and is an amalgam of personal lives and life stories, and this was never truer than in the fifteen fateful days beginning November 30, 1941. The First Lady was not only the Assistant Director of Civil Defense but carried on an extraordinary schedule of events that reflected her interests and her passions. Joseph Reid, age eleven, wrote to the Navy offering his services as a cabin boy which, he had read in Treasure Island, was the only berth available to a youth of his age. The commandant of the Naval District sent a sympathetic reply. Lucyle Richards, cowgirl and pilot, on trial for the murder of her lover, cattleman Frank Dew, was acquitted by a weeping jury and went on to ferry bombers to Britain. Margelee Hollingsworth of Acadia, Florida, population 4,055, came to the nation’s capital to be a clerk-typist for the Navy, an adventure that only a short time before would have been unthinkable. These are representative samples of the events that occur and the vignettes that populate this book. With Crucible of a Generation in hand, step onto the stage and into the world of America of November 30, 1941, as the pageant unfolds and the America of yesteryear metamorphoses, under Japanese bombs on Pearl Harbor, into the country it is still becoming today.

Lower Manhattan seen from the S.S. Coamo leaving New York, 1941. Soon chartered as an army transport ship, the Coamo would be sunk in the Atlantic on December 2, 1942—with the largest loss of life on a U.S. merchant vessel during the war.

FIGURE 0.1

Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIGfsa-8a37403.

PART I

Last Sunday at Peace November 30, 1941

1 THE SUNDAY PAPERS

FIGURE 1.1

San Francisco newspaper vendor, December 8, 1941.

Photo by John Collier. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIGfsa-8c33704.

4

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

November 30, 1941, marched in its measured steps from the Far East across the broad expanse of the Pacific, across meridians of longitude and time zones and across the continental United States. It was Sunday, and Sunday brought with it in the metropolis, and in cities large and small, the Sunday papers. Long before the emergence of the electronic marvels that would bring the news of the world to the palm of one’s hand or to a computer screen, long before the Internet and television, broadcast and cable, indeed long before the news of the world poured across cyberspace in a continuum covering all hours and all days, there was radio, a marvel itself in its time, and there was, above all, the printed word in its myriad forms. There was the book for the long-range, deeply considered view, whether in prospect or in retrospect. There were the periodicals for current and shorter-term reporting and analysis. Above all there were the newspapers for day-to-day and week-to-week reports of the multivarious transactions of the human race. They furnished the indispensable flow of information that enabled societies to function, to know the fundamental facts of the world in which they operated, to appraise forms and functions of nations and governments. In addition they purveyed entertainment, inspiration, and the opportunity to see a wider world than the one that lay beneath their own eyes. One needs only to consider box scores and batting averages, stock prices, and stock averages to understand how the worlds of sport and finance are absolutely dependent upon the continuing flow of news. It is a timeless cliché that the newspaper reports are the first draft of history. One might query the policies or the politics of a paper, or even its morals, or those of its owner, but the newspaper was and is clearly an indispensable element in any community or society. Americans smiled but Will Rogers grasped the elemental truth when he observed that all he knew was what he read in the papers. It was in this faith that Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to The New York Sun to ask if there really was a Santa Claus because her papa had told her: “If you see it in the Sun, it’s true.” Not all Sunday newspapers attained the majestic poundage of The New York Times Sunday Edition. But they were clearly far different from the daily papers, if not in kind then surely in the quantity of what they gave the public to read and what the advertisers paid for. They contained both news in far greater depth, and more varied and fundamental analysis, than the dailies could support; and they were looked to for news not only of sport and business, but also of society, of weddings and engagements, and of deaths, of fashion and style, of culture and religion. Many offered Sunday magazines or supplements, book reviews, and such widely popular fixtures as the funny papers, which then were often funny, and crossword puzzles. Reading the Sunday papers took time and attention and was often achieved by dividing and distributing the many sections to the tastes and interests of family members. At the Creation the Lord had enjoined his people to labor for six days, “but on the seventh day thou shalt rest,” leaving open the question whether reading The New York Times Sunday Edition constituted a day of labor or a day of rest. If, like so much else, newspaper delivery has been professionalized and depersonalized, in 1941 the common carrier of the newspapers, daily and Sunday, was the iconic newspaper delivery boy, that exemplar of sturdy independence, industry and thrift, who was bound to rise on the foundation of his earnest endeavors. He

The Sunday Papers

5

recalled Ragged Dick and a host of other Horatio Alger heroes who by pluck and luck rose from hard circumstances into the American pantheon. In 1941, church attendance was more the norm than the exception and a careful study of schedules of church services (which were of course published regularly in the press, as were the reports of the sermons preached) shows that, leaving aside the frequent schedules of masses offered by the Catholic church, the most common hour for church services in New York and across the country was 11:00 a.m. An interested reader of The New York Times could mine the paper for news of general or particular interest before, during or after his breakfast, in ample time to go to his church, or perhaps to the golf course when and where the weather permitted. In addition to its primary function of disseminating the news, the newspaper reflected opinion—whether the opinion of the readers or, as so often, the opinion of its owners, reflecting the maxim that the press is indeed free if you own a newspaper. Investigative journalism has been a prominent, often sensational, function of the press. Newspaper advertising was until recently the basic driver of demand in a commercial, consumer society. Radio is an ephemeral medium, conveying specific content only at the specific time of broadcast, then disappearing into the ether. Television in 1941 was an experiment and a dream. If you wanted to know what the American people knew in 1941 (or any other year), if you wanted to know what they thought, if you wanted to know when they thought it, then you would best find the answers in the newspapers, daily, weekly, periodically. You would find them in the yellowing newspaper files or on microfilm. You would find in them the news of the world and the news of the nation, the repository of the hopes, the fears, the joys and the sorrows, the shared experience of a community, a state, or a nation. The America of November 30, 1941, was a far different America from the America of today. A scant two weeks later America was becoming closer to the America of tomorrow then it was to the America of its yesteryears. It was, of course, December 7 that divided these two Americas. If you asked what the American people knew on the immediate road to December 7 and how they responded to that catastrophic event and its aftermath, you would find it in the newspaper files. To answer these questions we will turn to a regionally disparate group of metropolitan newspapers representing a broad spectrum of outlook and opinion. You will find here, out of a wide array of possible choices, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, Houston Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and The Oregonian, worthy representatives of great regions of America. Day by day, from Sunday, November 30, 1941, until December 14, 1941, they will tell the tale of a nation at peace, if a troubled peace, then of a nation at war that would lead to victory, to engagement with a troubled world, and to a power scarce dreamed of in November 1941. Brief sketches of these newspapers, their history, their ownership, their circulation, their politics, their tone and temper, are included in A Note on Sources. This is not a story of presidents and dictators, of statesmen and politicians, of admirals and generals, of arms and the man. It is, instead, the story of the American people at peace and at war.

2 A WORLD AT WAR, A NATION AT PEACE

A World at War In nearly every quarter of the globe the world was at war on this November 30, 1941. In Europe, the 1938 Nazi takeover of Austria had been followed by the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia at the ill-fated Munich conference later that year. In September 1939, the Wehrmacht opened the Second World War by attacking Poland from the west while the Red Army beset it from the east, thus achieving a fourth partition of Poland. At the third partition, it has been said of the Empress Catherine the Great: “She weeps but she takes her share.” Neither Hitler nor Stalin shed any tears for Poland. The tiny Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were pawns on the chess board as the fortunes of war moved them back and forth between the German and Soviet belligerents. In April 1940, Germany conquered its small neighbor Denmark by telephone as German forces swept across the narrow straits to dominion over Norway. The next month, the Wehrmacht launched its assault on Belgium and the Netherlands, which briefly resisted before surrendering. The French Army (once “the finest army in the world”) and the British Expeditionary Force were routed from the soil of France in an evacuation gallant, indeed, but in any practical calculation a total defeat. In southwestern Europe, Spain, supported by German and Italian forces, had just emerged from a devastating civil war that had claimed a million lives. To the southeast, Germany was on the move again in April 1941, descending in a quick victory upon Yugoslavia, which subsided in defeat into internecine strife between Tito’s communists and Michaelovic’s royalist Chetniks. This campaign had liquidated Mussolini’s failed attempt in an unsuccessful war on Greece to imitate Hitler’s blitzkrieg. Another British evacuation from Greece was followed by another defeat at the hands of German paratroopers in Crete. War raged across continents. In North Africa, British forces battled Italians and the Afrika Korps across the Libyan deserts from the suburbs of Cairo to the shores

A World at War, a Nation at Peace

7

of Tripoli. In the horn of Africa, Italian and British forces did battle in Ethiopian fastnesses. On Africa’s Atlantic coast, an ambitious Free French assault on Dakar foundered. Competing loyalties between Vichy administrators and the Free French now left huge expanses of French North Africa sought after by both belligerents. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, where Hitler sought to gain a strategic position, British troops, aided by the Free French, forestalled a German takeover of Syria, although the rest of the Middle East, including Palestine, remained a tinderbox. In Iran, Russian and British troops enforced a de facto occupation of the country. War was a bloody fact of life in Asia, fueled by Japanese dreams of empire in the form of a vast East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. From the 1931 conquest of Manchuria, and the renewal of hostilities in 1937, Japanese armies were steadily expanding their grip on vast Chinese domains. Along the borders of Manchuria and Mongolia, Russian and Japanese troops waged bitter and hardly noticed battles. Now the Japanese were casting longing eyes on much of Southeast Asia, including British Malaya, French Indo-China, and the Netherlands East Indies, all rich in the resources Japan lacked.

FIGURE 2.1

“The present situation demands statesmanship of a high order.”

Cartoon by Rollin Kirby. By permission of the Estate of Rollin Kirby Post. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-130775.

8

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

There was war not only on land but at sea. There the battles stretched from the South Atlantic, where the German battleship Graf Spee was cornered, scuttled, and sunk, to the North Atlantic, where the mightiest German battleship, the Bismarck, met its fate. What Churchill called the most critical battle of all was being waged against the German U-boat fleet, which sought to interdict the flow of the armaments and supplies critical to Britain’s continued resistance, indeed its existence. Another critical maritime front was in the Mediterranean, where the resupply of the strategic British base in Malta was essential to the continued flow of British troops and cargoes to support North African battles. America’s keenest attention was focused on the air over Britain: there the Few had taken on Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe in the most remembered and most romanticized of all arenas of combat. The Battle of Britain had begun in July 1940. On it hung literally the fate of the world. Heavy German losses on September 15 signaled the survival of the RAF. What was later known as the Blitz would keep London and other great cities of Britain under a constant hail of bombs until the following May. The modest British bombing of scattered German targets was, for the time, all the response it could muster. * On this Sunday, November 30, the greatest battles were being fought in the western reaches of the Soviet Union, where German armies and their allies were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. On June 21, 1941, Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa, intending to demolish his archenemy, the Soviet Union. With two million German troops, 150 divisions strong, and 3,550 tanks supported by 2,000 aircraft, this was the mightiest armed force the world had ever seen. The Soviet armies, their leadership recently decimated in Stalin’s purges, had performed poorly in the Winter War with the outmanned Finns. Few thought they would last for more than a matter of weeks, or at most months. Indeed, in the opening phases of the campaign, the German armies took more than two million prisoners in vast battles of encirclement. Unlike the French armies, which had surrendered en masse, the Russians stood their ground, often even when the blitzkrieg had left them far to the rear. To the surprise of many, experts and laymen alike, the Soviets were not merely standing their ground, but on one front had gone over to the offensive. At home in America, readers of their Sunday papers this November 30 learned that the Soviets had gained a decisive victory in the Don basin to the south, routing five German divisions and recapturing the key city of Rostov. All this was confirmed by the German announcement of a withdrawal from some sections of Rostov. There was a sinister addendum to the German reports. German forces had withdrawn, they said, to permit reprisals against members of the civilian population who had aided the defenders. In northern seas, Britain reported that two of its submarines had sunk at least eight German supply and troopships trying to set up a supply line to Petsamo in Finland. British Commonwealth troops were heavily engaged in Libya’s North African desert, where a major tank battle was being fought southeast of Rezegh. Britain claimed that tanks of the Afrika Corps were being contained while infantry action was strengthening and widening the corridor to the besieged garrison at Tobruk.

A World at War, a Nation at Peace

9

There was no abatement of tension in the Pacific, The New York Times reported. Japanese bombers were on the attack over the Burma Road, which was the sole path of supply and reinforcement to the beleaguered armies of China’s Chiang Kai-shek. Japan’s premier, General Hideki Tojo, proclaimed that British and North American exploitation in Asia must not only be purged, but with a vengeance, and that Japan would suffer no interference in her Asiatic sphere. All this reflected a long history. Traditional American Asiatic policy had been based on the Open Door, a Chinese market open to all comers, and on the independence and territorial integrity of China. These were the principles of the Nine-Power Pact of 1922. But Japan had rudely broken from these principles in its 1931 takeover of Manchuria and, after the outbreak of hostilities in 1937, had moved aggressively to conquer vast swaths of China. In 1940 Japan had joined Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the Tripartite Pact of Alliance, uniting forces of aggression across three continents.

A Nation at Peace: Pronouncements and Positions America was neutral, but there was little doubt where her sentiments and interests lay. There was support for embattled Britain and sympathy for the Chinese. All this expressed itself in a U.S. embargo on the scrap metal and iron needed to feed resource-poor Japan’s armaments industry. When on July 27, 1941, a defeated France ceded control of its Indo-China empire to Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with a freeze on Japanese assets in the United States. There followed continuing discussions, negotiations, pronouncements, and positions, Japan always seeking resources and a free hand in Asia, the United States always proclaiming the principles of open markets and nonaggression. Thus, in late November 1941, Japan proposed freedom from U.S. economic restraints and a free hand in China and in Indo-China. All were contrary to the principles enunciated by U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull on April 16, 1941: respect for the territorial integrity of China, nonintervention in the affairs of other countries, equality of economic opportunity in China and nondisturbance of the status quo in the Pacific except by peaceful means. Japan, of course, thought otherwise. In November it proposed that the United States open its trade to Japan and refrain from hindering Japanese activity in China, to which the response was a demand for the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China. On November 20, 1941, Japan made its final offer. Japan would withdraw from China when a peace settlement was arrived at, but when that would be it did not say. The United States would cooperate in the sale of commodities to Japan, restoring commercial relations, supplying Japan with “a requisite quantity of oil,” and the United States would take no action prejudicial to peace talks between China and Japan. To Hull, this would be a condonation of further Japanese aggression and the abandonment not only of China but also of the cherished principles of the NinePower Pact. Hull replied with his proposals of November 26, 1941: that Japan abide by the U.S. principles, agree to a nonaggression pact in the Far East, and withdraw its forces from China and Indo-China. He must have known that these proposals were

10

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

nonstarters with Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo. It was these proposals to which Hull was awaiting a reply, as The New York Times reported in its Sunday, November 30, 1941, edition in its front-page summary of “The International Situation.”

A Nation at Peace: Spiritual Counsels Since the opening of hostilities with the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, bombs had rained down on great cities: Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London. They did not spare famous houses of worship. In Coventry, England, the cathedral stood in ruins. Christopher Wren’s great London churches suffered grave damage. One of the most moving images of the London Blitz was the great dome of St. Paul wreathed in smoke and flame. But America was still at peace, and in New York City a throng of 10,000 gathered on this Sunday to see for the first time the great altar of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Its cornerstone had been laid in 1892, and the work was ongoing, prompting the irreverent label “St. John the Unfinished.” On this first Sunday in Advent, when the curtains were parted, for the first time the audience could see the 600-foot-long nave stretching from the great bronze doors to the richly decorated altar illuminated by the light of six flickering candles. A host of dignitaries attended the event. They included New York Governor Herbert Lehman and, tellingly, Major General Irving J. Philipson, commander of the Army’s Second Corps Area, and Rear Admiral Adolphus Andrews of the Third Naval District. They were accompanied by a host of visiting bishops and clergymen. There were messages from the Right Reverend Henry St. George Tucker, the presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and also from the seemingly ubiquitous President Franklin D. Roosevelt who had been for thirty years a trustee of the cathedral. In his message, FDR wrote that “In this time of world crisis,” America’s faith in the eternal verities of religion remained unshaken. From 7:30 to 8:00 a.m. there was an organ recital and then a Service of Many Witnesses with representatives of the conquered countries of Europe carrying their flags. The morning service opened with a stately procession of 500 led by Bishop Manning. In his sermon he spoke of “an outbreak of almost incredible evil, a return to sheer barbarism, and to unbelievable cruelties, an assault upon all the basic principles of Christian and civilized life.” The historic cathedrals of the United Kingdom, he said, were in daily peril. He had a message to his brethren in Great Britain and to all those struggling under the yoke of tyranny and aggression: That America is with them, that although, like other nations, we have been slow to realize that such evil could be real, we were now acting, we were now taking our place, and we shall give our whole strength in this day of crisis for the world, for our own land and for humanity.1 But what did giving “our whole strength in this day of crisis for the world, for our own land, and for humanity” mean?

A World at War, a Nation at Peace

11

Not all churches and not all clergymen associated themselves with the bishop’s forthright pronouncements. Indeed, there was heated controversy as both isolationists and interventionists sought to bend the churches to their cause, thereby raising the eternal issue of where God stood on the matter. To address these issues, the American Institute of Public Opinion had conducted a nationwide poll interviewing men and women representing all churches in proportion to their membership. The question: should American participation in the war be discussed from the pulpit? The result: a majority of those polled said “no,” and this response was uniform among both church members and nonmembers. Those polls gave as their primary reason for such an attitude that they saw the church as a place of “spiritual escape” and a place for “peace and comfort.” To put it another way, the respondents didn’t want to hear on Sunday what they had been reading about in their newspapers and hearing on their radios from Monday through Saturday. But what of those who thought that the questions of war and peace should be discussed from the pulpit? Their attitude, the institute reported, was similar to the attitude of the country as a whole. That is to say a large majority was opposed to “official American entrance” into an all-out war. On this issue, 34 percent of respondents voted in favor of American participation but a clear majority, 55 percent, voted “no,” with 11 percent expressing no opinion. Those who voted for discussion from the pulpit were then asked what indeed the clergy should say. The results illustrated the wide spread of opinions then current: Twenty percent thought the appropriate message was to stay out of war versus twelve percent for direct participation. Another eleven percent wanted discussion of the kind of peace that should follow the war. Ten percent stressed national defense and national unity while five percent wanted the clergy to say openly and frankly what they believed. The largest segment of opinion was categorized in the report as “other.”2 Clearly, at this point, no loud and clear blast of Gideon’s trumpet would issue from the national pulpit. * Detachment, however, was not the universal mood. There was no division of opinion among those who on Friday, November 28, had come to Washington’s Epiphany Episcopal Church to join in a seven-day, twenty-four-hour Peace Vigil. They came late at night, they came at midnight, they came in the small hours of the morning. Some prayed silently while others prayed audibly and sang hymns. Among those attending late Friday night were Mrs. Burton K. Wheeler, wife of Senator Wheeler of Montana; Representative Clare Hoffman, a Republican of Michigan; and Mrs. Cecil Norton Broy, whose husband had been American Consul at Brussels. The time had come for individuals to take their stand. In an announcement sure to gain widespread notice, Mrs. Dwight Morrow, mother-in-law of Charles

12

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

A. Lindbergh, sternly opposed her famous son-in-law’s ardent isolationism. She announced the appointment of these well-known public figures to the Women’s Division of Fight For Freedom: Mrs. Wendell Willkie, wife of the 1940 Republican candidate for president; Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, widow of the late president; Miss Helen Hayes, reigning queen of the American stage; poet Edna St. Vincent Millay; Mrs. Dwight Davis; and the actress Miss Helen Gahagan.

The Threat of War: “How the Nation’s Youth Feels” If war were to come, the heaviest burdens and the gravest hazards would be borne not by the diplomats and policy makers, not by the bankers who would finance, and not by the manufacturers and industrialists who would produce the weapons of war. They would be borne by the youth, the male youth especially, who would carry the rifles, man the ships and planes, and pay the price for whatever the end result might be. Tommy Riggs, Jr., was a Princeton undergraduate, the son of a former governor of Alaska. In the antic spirit of college humor, he founded the Veterans of Future Wars, demanding a $1,000 bonus in advance for any service in a new war. The organization mimicked Adolf Hitler’s famed salute—a right arm extended upward but with the palm “upturned and expectant.” Riggs, as National Treasurer, made a well-publicized visit to Washington to lobby for a $2.5 billion bonus. His timing was impeccable—April Fool’s Day. The girls at Vassar College did not lag behind Princeton. The first chapter of its Home Fires Division of the Veterans of Future Wars there was dubbed the Association of Gold Star Mothers of Future Veterans. This aroused accusations of disrespect and the name was changed to Ladies Auxiliary of the Veterans of Future Wars. Veterans’ organizations responded with anger and in violent language. But Washington, D.C. Victory Post No. 4 of the American Legion preferred wit to blunt instruments, and over the radio its members gently chastised the college humorists, singing: Let’s be wise, let’s be prudent, Sings the modern college student, We will never fight the foe, Unless we’re paid before we go.3 This essay at college humor recalled what Henry Lee Staples and Samuel A. Schriner, Jr., called in The Washington Post “the violent opposition to foreign wars” of college students little more than a year ago. Then, they wrote, students had endorsed a stubborn isolationism exhibited in slogans and rallies and summed up in the defiant shout: “The Yanks are not coming.” Now, times and tides were shifting. The Wisconsin Daily Cardinal editorialized that the time for quibbling had passed. It claimed that the United States was at war, whether declared or not, that the matter was beyond argument and that the United States must be in it to win. At Princeton, John Brooks, Jr., said that though they might still raise their voices in protest, only a small minority failed to realize that the issue had already been decided.

A World at War, a Nation at Peace

13

To Charles P. Gyllenhaal of the University of Pennsylvania, nothing could be more important to American youth than the defeat of Hitler. A year ago, he said, he would have not have dared to make that statement. Loren Hickerson of the University of Iowa called for action: “We are in this war now. The United States is pitted against the Nazi philosophy in a death struggle. Immediate action is vital—wherever America can strike.” Still, only 21 percent of students at Yale and Harvard voted in favor of immediate entry into the war, though this was up from 6 percent a year before. Columbia was 22 percent in favor of immediate entry against 12 percent in April 1941. And a national survey of college newspapers by the Nassau Sovereign found that slightly less than one-fifth of the students polled wanted war now. If there was strong opposition to another American Expeditionary Force like that of 1917–18, there was also strong support for naval aid to Britain. The reporters observed that college students were beginning to see some form of intervention as inevitable, but like the man from Missouri they wanted to be shown. They were not impressed by phrases like “a war to end all wars” or “making the world safe for democracy.” Such maxims may have inspired their parents’ generation, but tended to leave these modern students cold. Edward T. Folliard, in his Washington Post report on the Veterans of Future Wars, concluded that the jest had played out a long time ago—three years ago when Hitler had snatched Austria and three and a half years before he stormed into Poland: “A lot of people have had to eat a lot of words since then.” A poll of 216 college newspapers published by The Commerce Bulletin, the undergraduate paper of the Columbia School of Commerce, found that whatever may have been the move away from isolationism and toward interventionism, the opinions of college students were still decidedly mixed. Thirty-four percent called for unlimited aid to Great Britain, even if it meant war. Another 35 percent backed all aid short of war. Twenty-one percent espoused a cash-and-carry policy, while only 9 percent eschewed all aid. This was interpreted as an interventionist sentiment by the editors, who took it to mean that U.S. entry into the war was “imminent.” But there was no call for immediate entry into the war. On the overall issue of U.S. foreign policy, 58 percent approved and 19.5 percent disapproved. This left a substantial undecided bloc, and left open the more important question of what the “foreign policy” may have been to which the respondents responded. If the editors made no claim of scientific accuracy, they did contend that the poll was “a fairly accurate indication of how the nation’s youth feels about the foreign situation.”

America’s Role: Dispatches from the Op-Ed Wars Chicago, the erstwhile Gem of the Prairie, was the financial and commercial capital of a vast hinterland stretching from old Ohio River towns across the river from Pennsylvania to the seemingly endless prairies of Nebraska and the Dakotas. It was natural that its citizens should look inward over this vast domain, just as it came more naturally for residents of the East and West Coasts to look

14

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

outward to Europe and to Asia. It was easy to understand why, in December 1941, Chicago was also the capital of American isolationism. Its principal newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, took strong stands against intervention in European and Asiatic wars, notwithstanding the gallant performance of its owner, Col. Robert R. McCormick, on the battlefields of the First World War. Chicago’s isolationist credentials were of long standing. In a warmly appreciated incident, the mayor of Chicago, Carter Harrison, had once promised that if ever the King of England came to Chicago, he would punch him in the nose. The Tribune’s message to its readers on Sunday, November 30, 1941, was stark. It showed the dome of the Capitol and a distorted Washington Monument floating in a sea of “Fog over Washington,” and superimposed upon this sinister scene was the following message: BEWARE— OF FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS! STOP! LOOK! LISTEN! THINK! THE PORTENTS ARE NOT GOOD! YOU ARE EDGING AN UNWILLING PEOPLE INTO AN UNPOPULAR, UNCONSECRATED WAR IN EUROPE AND ASIA IN BEHALF OF OTHER NATIONS IN ANOTHER HEMISPHERE, THE CONSEQUENCES OF WHICH, EITHER WIN OR LOSE, WILL BE OVERWHELMING. THESE ALIEN WARS ARE NOT OUR WARS, BUT OUR PRESIDENT IS DETERMINED UPON “WAR AT ANY PRICE.” THIS IS NOT THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE AND NEVER HAS BEEN.4 The Tribune’s gloomy forebodings were not confined to the front page. Chicago’s premier newspaper fulminated at length on its editorial page against the New Deal, which, it said, had for eight years been trying to substitute a planned society for the sturdy individualism once characteristic of the nation. It was, it said, a serious phenomenon when those who had benefited from the American political, social, and economic system looked favorably upon the methods of the totalitarian state. This was, it said, a whitewash of Stalin by a fifth column of “collectivists” who had been pushing their schemes and plots during all of Mr. Roosevelt’s administration and with his approval. All this, it thundered, was strong wine for those business leaders who had come to Washington to assume autocratic positions of power. Who were they? One was Donald M. Nelson of Sears Roebuck, now Chief of the Priorities and Allocation Board of the Office of Production Management. Another

A World at War, a Nation at Peace

15

was Floyd Odlum of Atlas Corporation. It seemed to the Chicago Tribune that these interlopers had captured the inner citadel of the American system. * There was a greater variety of opinion among readers of the Sunday Denver Post. Frank Roberton warned that no naval force could prevent a German airborne army from establishing bases on the eastern coast of South America. He cited as evidence German success in Crete. Bombers and fighter planes could defend such bases; and Hitler, he wrote, having succeeded in this operation, could easily subjugate one or more of the southern republics, duplicating his “one-at-a-time” conquest of Europe. Vera Flory asked: “Why should we go to war with Japan?” Certainly not, she observed, because Japan was guilty of aggression against Chinese “democracy.” She had no wish to see American blood shed to protect China. She was not alone in opining that there was no legitimate cause for a war with Japan. She wrote what many Americans of that day believed: that Great Britain wanted the United States to become involved in the war to protect Britain’s interests in China, opening a backdoor entrance into Britain’s war in which the United States would do most of the fighting. If opinions clashed, Colorado was involved. The Fowler Progress Club had been entertained during the week at the home of Mrs. Eugene Stewart. The guest speaker was Mrs. F. H. Trimble, the State Defense Chairman. She talked about women’s part in national defense. The club then stepped up and purchased a book of defense stamps. Turning to more congenial topics, Mrs. R. D. Lowder then presented a paper on homebuilding and furnishing, while Mrs. John Brevard enlivened and enlightened the proceedings with her talk about “Antiques

FIGURE 2.2

“America First” costume in Fourth of July parade at Vale, Oregon.

Photo by Russell Lee. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIGppmsca-12886.

16

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

and Heirlooms.” Mrs. Trimble concluded with an open forum on national defense. What was most interesting about the choice of editorials in the November 30 New York Times Sunday Edition was that none of them dealt with the war in Europe or the looming crisis in Asia. The newspaper editorialized on “Class Litigation.” Its editorial writers foresaw no 1941 tax changes, commented on “Jobs for Teachers,” and paid their respects to “Mr. Churchill at 67.” They wrote reverently about a “New House of God,” the just-opened Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and closed with a sensitive essay on “Moonlight.” If The Times did not stake out an editorial position that Sunday on isolationism versus intervention, its letter writers to the editor certainly did. Robert Aura Smith of New York wrote that he had just completed a lecture tour in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, conducting discussion groups on American policy among businessmen, bankers, teachers, and students. He had found no champions of isolationism. Among the 4,000 persons interviewed or represented, he had found only one admitted isolationist, a congressman from central Wisconsin. Any expression of nonisolationist sentiment was greeted with warm applause even in Milwaukee’s German precincts, and that was less than twenty-four hours after a large America First rally. In general, Mr. Smith found an attitude more of resignation than of crusading. What had been done had been done and the involvement of the United States was not a fairy tale but a fact. There was a sidebar. Mr. Smith reported that many of his respondents lacked a high degree of confidence in the domestic policies of the administration. Labor policy and strikes were a concern. But overall Mr. Smith concluded that any emergency would find the Midwest “extravagantly loyal in its devotion to the declared causes of the United States.” Alfred P. Jones of Pittsburgh suggested a world commonwealth, a combination of democratic nations as an intermediate step toward further development. His proposal echoed Alfred Streit’s then-current call for Union Now between Britain and America. A negotiated peace with Hitler? Hans Schmidt of Chicago wrote that peace with Hitler would mean the doom of decency and liberty. But the alternative, he presciently forecasted, was a long war and the total destruction of Germany. The peace of the American nation seemed still a matter of debate and choice. Meantime, the dark clouds of war were towering ever higher in Asia. America was on the sidelines, but for how long? It was making preparations.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

New York Times, November 30, 1941, 1 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 10 Washington Post, November 30, 1941, 10 Chicago Tribune, November 30, 1941, 1

3 FACING THE GATHERING STORM

A Nation at Peace: Stand-Off On October 16, 1941, Prince Fumimaro Konoye,1 Princeton educated and in the arena of Japanese politics considered to be relatively moderate, had tendered his resignation; the Emperor accepted it, expressing suitable regrets. On the next day,

FIGURE 3.1

Prime Minister of Japan Hideki Tojo.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

18

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

General Hideki Tojo succeeded Konoye as Prime Minister. The Emperor indicated to Tojo that he should not feel bound by any prior discussions or policies. In modern Japan, there had always been tension and a competition for power and influence between the navy and the army. The army was expansionist. Its leaders derived from the Samurai tradition, and Tojo was nothing if not a hardliner. The navy had always had a more global outlook, formed and trained as it had been in the traditions of Britain’s Royal Navy. Tojo confirmed his bona fides as a hardliner in his statement of November 29. Hostile nations, he said—and he named the United States and Britain explicitly— were trying to exploit the peoples of Asia for their own interest and profit. He was gratified, he said, by the unified efforts of three nations, Japan, Manchuria, and China’s puppet Nanking government, “to eliminate exploitation by America and other Western nations with a view of cutting these accursed chains from your feet so that a new era may be ushered in wherein you will be able to live in peace and happiness.” Chiang Kai-shek, he said, was dancing to the tune of Britain, America and communism. On the same day, Tokyo radio declared that the United States had rejected all of Japan’s efforts to live in peace. Japan had been patient to the utmost limit, the broadcast said. It had given the United States every possible opportunity to cooperate and live together in friendship. The conclusion was ominous: We are now in the very last act of this drama and let the whole Japanese Nation stand like one man behind its leaders for the highest and ultimate proof in her history.2 * Facing the gathering storm, the President sought refreshment in a weekend in his beloved Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had found comfort and recuperation from polio. He came by train to Newnan, where he transferred to an automobile for the forty-mile ride to Warm Springs. He made his way through a crowd eager for a glimpse of their president. There were brief formalities, handshakes with Mayor C. G. Smith, Sheriff A. L. Potts, and Chief of Police W. B. Sanders. Bodyguard Tommy Qualters threw a black cape with a velvet collar over FDR’s shoulders. The drive to Warm Springs under a bright sun through the autumnal countryside was, The Atlanta Constitution reported, “something of a triumphal procession.” Word had gotten around of the President’s route, and yards and crossroads along the route were jammed with people waving “howdy” to him. The President smiled and waved back. People stopped in their cars wondering about the delay; when they saw the President, they jumped out and waved their hats. If the President had come to Warm Springs for a rest, The Constitution observed that he needed it. When he emerged from the train, he had looked tired indeed, paler than usual, and with the famed Roosevelt shadows under his eyes. But the hard work of managing the ultimate crisis had not diminished the President’s famous geniality, as the greeters clapped and cheered. At the President’s favorite retreat, the Little White House, a detachment of Marines in full dress played the presidential ruffles and flourishes. After a brief stay,

Facing the Gathering Storm

19

the gates opened and the President emerged. At the wheel of his own car, a dark blue Ford with its top down, he drove to a nearby cottage where he had a reunion with his longtime secretary, Margaret “Missy” Lehand. He would speak at a Warm Springs dinner that evening.3 The President did not underestimate the seriousness of the situation in a speech at dinner to the patients of the Warm Springs Foundation. “I think we can offer up a little silent prayer that these people will be able to hold a Thanksgiving more like an American Thanksgiving next year. That is something of a dream, perhaps.” He went on to say: “In days like these it is always possible that our boys at the military and naval academies may actually be fighting for the defense of these American institutions of ours.” He ended his talk by calling upon Americans to appreciate their blessings, blessings that had been lost to many nations and peoples across the world.4 Shortly after, it was revealed that the President would cut short his visit to Warm Springs in response to the belligerent statement by Tojo that had exacerbated an already critical situation. The President warned other nations that his country was united behind a policy of opposition to aggression anywhere on earth. He wrote this expansive statement in reply to a letter from Senator Guy Gillette, Democrat of Iowa, a consistent opponent of the Roosevelt foreign policy and a steady vote against measures that would implement it. Senator Gillette’s letter recounted his opposition to many of the administration’s enactments based on a sincere belief in their unwisdom. He had not surrendered his convictions, but he told the President: As one who opposed the action the Congress has taken, and as one who recognizes the need for the present unified mobilization of all our national strength and resources for a victorious attainment of the goals for which we are now committed, I am taking the liberty of addressing this letter to you as President of my country and Commander-in-chief of her forces, tendering my support and service in any capacity or activity where I can be of assistance in the work which we have before us to do and for the purpose of enlisting myself and all that I have in service for the duration of the emergency. To this handsome statement, the President replied in kind. He expressed his gratification and went on to say: That there is debate or that there are statements of conflicting opinion prior to the decision should not be taken by persons abroad as an indication of lack of cohesion among our people, though that mistake is sometimes made. While there have been expressions of different views in regard to our foreign policy, I have always felt that those differences were of degree but not of principle. I have been confident that we Americans believe in the defense of our country and that such differences as existed concerned only the time and place to begin that defense or the methods to be employed to secure adequate protection to the ideals of political freedom for which our government has ever striven.5

20

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

Preeminent among Southern journalists, Ralph McGill of The Atlanta Constitution observed that FDR came from time to time to Warm Springs for the same reason that Scarlett O’Hara went back to Tara. It was about regaining strength, encouraging the soul, and building confidence in the face of the tasks ahead. To the President, McGill wrote, Warm Springs was a talisman of luck and success in facing great problems. So Roosevelt had come back to Georgia. He had scored “most amazing successes.” He had kept the country out of war, that is to say a war with an expeditionary force in Europe and a Navy actively fighting the foe. Yes, the Navy was on patrol and, yes, there would be an occasional engagement and, yes, some ships would be lost. But, he cheerfully observed, it presently looked as if there was no need to send an expeditionary force to Europe and, even better, “If Japan keeps out we will not have to send one anywhere.” So McGill, acknowledging Japan as the big problem, thought that with the President’s Warm Springs visit, the Roosevelt luck might triumph and in a serious diplomatic crisis the country would emerge peacefully. “If Japan makes an agreement with this country,” he concluded, “and stays out of the war on the Axis side, ‘The Old Master’ will have scored the greatest of his international triumphs.”6 * At New York’s Astor Hotel an audience of a thousand heard three knowledgeable speakers address the Far Eastern crisis: Tyler Dennett, former advisor to the State Department and past president of Williams College; Wilfred Fleischer, former managing editor of the Japan Advertiser and Tokyo correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune; and Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune. They didn’t agree. Mr. Dennett thought the prospect of a Pacific war a “phenomenon” in history, because of the very real compatibility of the economic and cultural interests of the United States and Japan. He viewed the United States as a long-time friend of Japan and found it both “foolish” and “utterly stupid” that Japan might try to gain by force what it could otherwise achieve through patience. But the United States would not, he said, be intimidated. Mr. Fleischer took a decidedly different point of view. To him Japan had no liking for America. The two countries were in agreement on no major issue. He doubted the current negotiations could advance much farther, and concluded that the country had come to a most dangerous pass in its relations with Japan and stood closer to war with Japan than at any time in the history of the relations of the two countries. Henry Luce admired the courage and the accomplishments of the Chinese people and was confident of their ultimate victory. He pointed to a strong tide of public opinion in favor of China (of which he was cheerleader-in-chief) and complained that government policy had failed to do what the public (or at least Henry Luce) wanted done.7 On the same day in a different venue, Professor Pierre Laurin, a longtime scholar and teacher at the University of Hanoi, offered a racier assessment of the Far Eastern situation. Japan, he said, was simply “bluffing.” In a war between Japan, the United States, and Britain, he boldly asserted, Japan would be defeated in a year.8

Facing the Gathering Storm

21

In its News in Review, the Houston Chronicle reported that the talks between Japanese envoy Saburo Kurusu and the State Department appeared to be near an end. It summarized Washington’s attitude: that the United States would never withdraw aid from China, would never appease Japan, and would never recognize territory acquired by Japan through aggression; and finally, that America would fight to uphold its rights in the Pacific. All this was emphasized by the Chronicle’s Washington correspondent, Howard Brayman. The relationship between the United States and Japan had never been so critical and so strained. So thoroughly basic and fundamental were the differences between the two countries that he found it hard to imagine what kind of a settlement could be reached between the two sides. What if Japan from its Indo-China bases should attack Thailand, which could then serve as a base for an attack on Singapore, or should cut the Burma Road, lifeline to China? Such developments, extremely serious in themselves, would immediately raise the question whether to allow continuing Japanese aggression in the Pacific until the war in Europe ended, and then to put Japan back in its place, or to move now, by military and naval action, to halt Japan’s expanding empire. * In few places was the debate between proponents of isolationism and intervention more intense than in the halls of Congress. Five Republican members of the House of Representatives journeyed to Britain to examine Britain’s war effort. If they remained divided as to the extent of American aid to Britain, the isolationists in the group confessed to having had to revise some of their opinions. Their basis for withholding aid to Britain had been the need for war material at home in the face of the threat of war in the Pacific. The question was not, they said, whether we should enter the war. It was rather whether Japan or Germany was the more logical opponent. But they all agreed that the visit had increased understanding of the common problems of the two countries. The representatives saw important changes taking place in Britain: a leveling of class distinctions, nationalization, and important health and food programs. They lunched with the Prime Minister and Mr. and Mrs. Churchill and attended services at Westminster Abbey after inspecting heavily bombed areas.9 * Nothing could more clearly exemplify Japanese attitudes than resolutions adopted at a great rally in Tokyo celebrating the first anniversary of the signing of the treaty between Tokyo and its Nanking puppet, and also of a joint declaration for mutual collaboration among Japan, Nanking, and Manchuko. The resolutions were issued, they said, on behalf of all of the people of Greater East Asia. They were adopted in the face of what Prime Minister Tojo called the gravest crisis Japan had faced in all of its two thousand years. The resolutions were as unyielding as they were expansive. The first was to rid the nation of hostile pressure against the fulfillment of Japan’s historic mission. The next called for the establishment as soon as possible of the Greater East Asia

22

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

Co-Prosperity Sphere and, if all that were not enough, for the foundation and eventual creation of a New Order in all the world. Were there overtones of Hitler here? If a New Order in East Asia and in the world were the goals, the final resolution identified the means. It was to prepare for the decisive battle uniting all of the billion people of Asia. These were, the resolutions asserted, the ideals for which millions of loyal officers and men were fighting on land, at sea and in the air, for which men and women, young and old, were bearing indescribable hardships on the home front, ready to sacrifice their lives for the Empire. The resolutions identified the enemy, Britain and the United States. They stood in the way of Asia for the Asiatics. Their acts, it was said, are an offense to God and humanity. So long as they failed to understand Japan’s mission and the ideals that inspired it, so long as they maintained their hostile attitude, “we are strongly resolved to crush them.” There was this final declaration: that there was a limit to the suffering and to the patience of the Japanese people.

The Threat of War: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum If America remained at peace, war and the threat of war were very much on its collective mind. The current euphemism for preparations for war was “defense” and in the aggregate “the defense program.” In a full-page ad, The Washington Post proudly announced that its carrier boys would “do their bit” for the defense program by selling Defense Savings Stamps as they delivered the newspaper. They would act without pay or profit for the convenience of their customers who would be able to purchase an Official Album holding 187 ten-cent Defense Stamps, exchangeable, interestingly enough, with five cents in coin, for a $25 U.S. Defense Bond. A large sketch of Uncle Sam placing an avuncular hand on the newsboy’s shoulder attested to the guaranteed appeal of this program. Meanwhile, on this day, American troops were returning from the field, not of combat but of training—295,000 men of the First Army and the Fourth Corps from a 10,000-square-mile tract in the Carolinas. Large numbers of these soldiers had been drafted under the Selective Service Training and Service Act of September 16, 1940, the nation’s first peacetime draft. The one-year term of service had been extended to thirty months by a narrow 203 to 202 vote in the House of Representatives on August 18, 1941, a scant four months before December 7. Hanson W. Baldwin, military correspondent of The Times, reported the opinion of General Lesley J. McNair that in tactics, leadership, administration, staff work, discipline, and morale the troops had shown marked improvement over September’s Third Army maneuvers in Louisiana, which had emphasized tank defense and the plane/tank team. General Hugh A. Drum of the First Army worried that after four or five months in the Army the troops were far from being experienced soldiers. He added that given plenty of ammunition for firing practice and completely equipped, they could become a combat army, eventualities he dryly found improbable. Significantly, the troops would return to their home bases largely by motor vehicle convoy rather than by rail as they had two years ago. Most of them were

Facing the Gathering Storm

23

looking forward to Christmas furloughs. Baldwin noted the welcome of the local populace who befriended the troops and offered them a hospitality that obviated the need to spend their $21 or $30 monthly pay. The Denver Post reported another aspect of the maneuvers. General Drum said they had placed emphasis on military ceremony, esprit de corps, snap and dash on the parade ground and personal and regimental pride.10 A feature story in The New York Times focused on the individual impact upon the soldier who took part in the maneuvers, on the hardships of the rifleman, and details of his pack. Many northeastern soldiers were having their first taste of Dixie. In one unit camped near a cotton field, the regimental chaplain organized a cotton-picking detail. As they went about their tasks, the regimental band stood by and played a Stephen Foster medley “in a strictly modern tempo.”11 * Meanwhile, another kind of civil-defense army was gathering. These were the Senior Service Scouts, high school–age Girl Scouts, 44,000 strong. They were organized on the advice and with the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and hyperactive New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Wearing overseas caps and red arm bands, they would provide daycare for children in boomtown areas, bicycle brigades, and rapid-fire messenger services. Bicycles would indeed be central to the performance of their duties, but these girls would be as versatile as they were patriotic, performing their duties on ice skates, roller skates, horseback, skis or snowshoes, and for older girls, in automobiles and motorboats. That was not all. They would know and use Morse code and flag and smoke signaling in circumstances where telephones might be out of order. While older girls were busying themselves with these important tasks, the Brownies were “scurrying about learning how to take care of themselves.” They planned to shine by their absence while concentrating on not getting in the way.12 While Senior Service Scouts were embarking upon their duties, the Citizens Committee for the Army and Navy in Los Angeles was coordinating thousands of offers from citizens of southern California to “Keep Them Smiling.” Among other things, they would provide a Christmas carton of cigarettes for every soldier at nearby Camp Elliott. Another unsolicited gift funded the purchase of six phonographs and 750 records for Camp Seward, Alaska. Proceeds from the sale of the music would be placed in an entertainment fund for soldiers in forty camps in the Southwest. The committee called for 200,000 knitted “V for Victory” sleeveless sweaters from southern California before New Year’s Day. The spirit of this effort was embodied by screen star Lola Lane, who said that Hollywood actresses were going to out-knit their theater audiences—woman for woman.13 While southern California was providing cigarettes to servicemen, Chicago was undertaking to provide girls—that is to say, dancing partners. Mrs. Ernestine Badt, working under the Chicago Board of Education, was organizing a list of some 5,000 girls from all sections of the city to dance with soldiers and sailors at events sponsored by churches, YMCAs, and fraternal groups. Mrs. Badt was no stranger to Chicago’s dancing daughters. She had organized successful mixers at local high schools for the past three years. The rules reflected the spirit of the

24

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

FIGURE 3.2

“Sleeping sickness.”

Cartoon by Rollin Kirby. By permission of the Estate of Rollin Kirby Post. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62–134618.

time. A girl could not register as a dancing partner unless she had a certificate of permission signed by mother, father and, if that were not enough, a witness. The parents had to undertake to provide transportation. Servicemen would not be permitted to take the girls home—or any place else. They had to be at least seniors in high school and no younger than eighteen years old. Besieged by requests, the agile Mrs. Badt was from time to time able to rustle up some 200 girls at a few moments notice. She undoubtedly had a hand in organizing the mixer program that included grand marches, countermarches, and robber dances.14 Large and small, these preparations for “defense” were shifting the economic weathervane toward prosperity, and war.

Economic Indicators: Happy Days Are Here Again “Happy Days Are Here Again” was the theme song of the 1932 Democratic convention that nominated FDR for president. It may have been associated, too, with the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. As prognostication, the song was premature. The country had passed through the shadow of the Valley of Depression for eight

Facing the Gathering Storm

25

long years. But as the year 1941 drew to a close, there were signs of a vigorous economic revival. If not here again, it seemed that some happy days might be at hand. “Christmas Buying Off to a Good Start” headlined a New York Times report that many items were not to be had, even on reorder, especially toys and electrical goods.15 Compared to the sober assessment of The Times, The Denver Post was euphoric. The shopping season, it claimed, had the verve of a hundred-yard dash. Local merchants agreed that they were on the threshold of the greatest shopping season in the city’s history, outstripping even the phenomenal season of 1920. And what was the reason for Saturday’s immense upswing in Denver shopping? A straightforward answer: people were making money and were ready to spend it in a giddy atmosphere where Depression was a word from a forgotten era. The stores and streets were filled in a remarkable opening of the Christmas season. November buyers were usually “lookers,” according to department store lore. But they were buying Saturday, not just looking, and even traditional last-minute items like neckties and silk stockings were selling at an accelerated pace. A similar retail phenomenon was taking place in Atlanta where “the biggest oneday shopping crowd within memory” was underway. Transport officials had been utterly unprepared for the size of the crowds on Friday and Saturday. They had to rush into service extra transportation equipment, busses, and trackless trolleys, not to mention virtually every man who could handle the equipment and the crowds. It was all truly remarkable given that there were still three more shopping weeks before Christmas.16 Nor was the upswing in sales a phenomenon confined to Denver and Atlanta. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that retail sales by independent stores in thirty-four states had shown a gain of 9 percent in October over the same month of the preceding year. And this was less than the increase in the year’s earlier quarters, when there had been an increase of 12 percent in retail sales in the first quarter, 18 percent better at the end of the first half, and an accumulative 20 percent better after the first three quarters of 1941.17 * Where there are retail sales, there must be jobs and payrolls to sustain them. And America was going back to work after all those dreary years of double-digit unemployment. America was building what The New York Times called “a bridge of ships” at hundreds of shipyards along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts, producing the merchant vessels that could carry all-out aid to the nations fighting against German and Italian aggression. All this activity brought to mind the experience of the First World War when American shipyards had produced more than fifteen million deadweight tons of merchant shipping in 1921. If this performance illustrated America’s genius for high-volume production, nevertheless most of the ships had been built too late to be of any use before the war ended, and suffered the ignominy of being laid up in vast fleets of idle and rusting merchantmen. That would not happen now. A million deadweight tons were scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 1942, 146 vessels of 1.4 million deadweight tons in the second quarter, 154 vessels of 1.65 million tons in the third quarter and 184 vessels of nearly 2 million tons in the last quarter. These ships would be built more quickly, in four and a

26

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

half to six months against ten to twelve months in the earlier era. Lighter-weight, more fuel-economical ships would feature high-pressure turbines in place of old-fashioned reciprocating engines and in place of the riveters, who later became famous through the eponymous Rosie, they would be far more quickly and securely welded. While America was preparing for war, there was a curious report that Germany was preparing for peace, at least in the transatlantic passenger trade. It was reported that six 23,000-ton liners had been laid down in Hamburg, one of which had already been completed. They were to have two classes, cabin and tourist. No third class would be included since it was anticipated there would not be the usual flow of emigrants leaving Europe for the United States or South America.18 * Where there are government orders, as in shipbuilding, there will be government rules and regulations. So, at a conference in Los Angeles attended by officials of the Office of Production Management (OPM), industry was forcibly reminded of the restrictions attending to defense orders. It was made clear that defense contractors must fill defense orders first, using only excess productive capacity for regular customers. There was concern that repair orders could be abused. While the Los Angeles conference was in session, a House committee was preparing an investigation into other aspects of defense contracting. Lobbying for contracts raised the perennial concern of accepting fees for aid and influence in the procurement of defense contracts. Indeed, the President had told a recent press conference that he favored legislation directly and specifically forbidding former federal officials from accepting fees for promoting government contracts. A bill was in the process of being drafted. The President had expressed his concern about fees and priorities under OPM guidelines. As so often was the case, a priority system, while solving some problems, raised others. Thus, a mass protest was planned by New York City’s dry-cleaning industry, whose supply of carbon tetrachloride had been shorted in favor of higher priorities. The Synthetic Cleaners Committee, headed by Hyman Mitowsky of Empire State Cleaners and Dyers, represented a thousand small businesses. How small? Their average sales were some $400 a week. They needed to keep their businesses alive and their employees at work. Instead of a mass protest there was a meeting with OPM representatives to prepare a presentation to Washington that might be a model for the resolution of problems in other industries. * A consequence of rising industrial activity and employment was the inevitable pressure on prices. Since February, the cost of living had increased by 8.5 percent, wholesale commodities by 14 percent and prices received by the farmer by 35 percent. Bernard M. Baruch, of the First World War War Industries Board, had proposed ceilings on all prices, rents, wages, and salaries. In the past week Representative Albert Gore of Tennessee had introduced such legislation: the measure failed in the House by 218 to 63. But on Friday the House approved a bill controlling prices on a selective basis. It envisioned legislation appointing a price administrator who would control all prices during a national emergency and a five-man board of review empowered to overrule the decisions of the price administrator.19

Facing the Gathering Storm

27

What did it all add up to? To the Houston Chronicle editorialist, the price-control bill passed by the House lacked any control of wages, and the limits placed on the cost of farm products were illusory. He noted that the additional $7 billion for defense the President had requested—which surely, it was thought, would be approved— would bring total defense appropriations since 1940 to nearly $68 billion, numbers that compelled attention. He calculated that the national income was running at an all-time record rate of $92 billion a year. According to the latest Department of Commerce report it was presently over $100 billion. Divided among all American families, this would produce an annual income of $2,875, a stunning figure in a country emerging from the depths of depression. Of course there would be a per-family allocation of $1,700 of the national debt. What to do? The Chronicle called first for a “non-political system of control of all prices and all wages and rents.” It targeted government spending, which it suggested should be hit by “a double-bitted ax.” The cries for deep cuts to the nondefense budget would find an echo in most presidential campaigns from that time and in legions of op-ed pieces and letters to the editor.20 * These new levels of economic activity and income would require manpower and womanpower. A Long Island City, New York, instrument company was advertising for automatic screw operators at $1.20 per hour and milling machine, engine lathe, and grinder operators all at $1.00 per hour. An intriguing ad by the Civilian Technical Corps offered auto and aircraft mechanics the “chance of a lifetime” to go abroad, work in a noncombatant capacity, and see England, all with free board, lodging, clothes, medical care, and a good salary. “Help the RAF,” was the final challenge. The classified employment ads contained strictures that sound odd to us today. “Auditor (travel), Protestant,” with industrial audit experience and younger than forty would earn $2,600 a year. Another advertiser sought a “neat” boy to deliver artwork and help in a retouching studio, “a wonderful chance for an energetic boy with good personality, character; state religion.” An old established import/export company was seeking a merchant apprentice who would start at the bottom and advance in accordance with performance. “Must have strong character and intensive pride in his own endeavor and determination continually to improve himself. . . . State age, religion and what you can contribute.” Apparently, religion was not the only limiting factor. The Terminal Agency was seeking “TYPISTS” who were tall as well as Christian, for an excellent future in publishing. Job opportunities included: purchasing, sales, clerks, IBM operators, lettering artists, mimeograph operators, musicians and music teachers, stenographers, and a “YOUNG MAN, educated, to demonstrate dance steps at social functions, excellent opportunity. . . .”21 The impact of defense spending was further evident in the call for a hundred plumbers and steamfitters for a U.S. Army airfield project at Tyndall Field in Panama City, Florida.22

Liberty and Justice for All: Equal Rights for Women? One consequence of wars abroad may have been renewed consideration of the Equal Rights Amendment. It had first been introduced in 1913 and was to be the

28

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

subject of a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The new proposal was introduced by Senator O’Mahoney of Wyoming. The western states had always been pioneers in the matter of women’s suffrage and the rights of women generally. The proposed legislation read: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall discriminate between the rights of men and women and no law making such discrimination shall be enacted by the Congress. One of the problems of passing this amendment was the vigorous opposition of the National Women’s Party. It was dedicated to legislation protecting women in the labor market. Its alternate proposal was: Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. It did not seem that the proposed amendment would gain much traction so long as women’s organizations and women themselves were sharply divided on appropriate concepts and language.23 * That last peaceful Sunday, much of what occupied Americans—their social interests and concerns, how they conducted their daily lives and thought about each other, what amused or entertained them, went on as usual.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Konoye: a frequent spelling in 1941, now commonly Konoe. Denver Post, November 30, 1941, 4 Atlanta Constitution, November 30, 1941, 1 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 1 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 24 Atlanta Constitution, November 30, 1941, 14C New York Times, November 30, 1941, 16 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 16 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 11 Denver Post, November 30, 1941, 1 New York Times, November 30, 1941, SM21 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 55 Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1941, 13 Chicago Tribune, November 30, 1941, 3 New York Times, November 30, 1941, B7 Atlanta Constitution, November 30, 1941, 2A New York Times, November 30, 1941, B7 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 3 Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1941, 4 Houston Chronicle, November 30, 1941, 4 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 18 Houston Chronicle, November 30, 1941, 4C New York Times, November 30, 1941, 55

4 AS WE WERE

FIGURE 4.1

Joe DiMaggio advertising Camel cigarettes (see color plate section).

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Stanford School of Medicine.

30

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

The Social Spectrum: “Who Killed Society?” Cleveland Amory, chronicler of The Proper Bostonians and of The Last Resorts, concluded his study of life in the upper reaches of America by propounding, in another work, the pregnant question: Who Killed Society? Whatever answers he or other students of social phenomena may have given, it is clear that Society was alive and well in New York on November 30, 1941. Departing from its usual sobriety, the good gray Times was practically giddy in announcing that the debutantes of the season were eagerly awaiting the Junior Assemblies to be held Friday night at the Ritz-Carlton. It further reported that the “Juniors” were the most exclusive dances in New York and ranked in importance with the St. Cecilia’s Society Ball of Charleston, South Carolina, the Philadelphia Assemblies, and Baltimore’s Bachelors Cotillions, the last of which would be attended by a large number of New York girls with Maryland affiliations. Four of the stars of the season were shown in formal portraits, three of them by celebrated glamour photographer Murray Korman. The highly prized membership in the “Juniors” could be attained only after a “rigid inspection” by the organizing committee before their mothers or guardians were invited to subscribe. At the strictly formal dances, each debutante and her two escorts were required to wear white gloves and pass along the receiving line. The debutantes of the current season would attend the first dance, and the debutantes of the season past the second. Dinner parties in advance of each dance could serve as the coming-out party for the honored debutante. The list of 122 new members represented established dynasties, the Morgan, Vanderbilt, Benjamin, and Rogers families. It included two granddaughters of President Theodore Roosevelt, Miss Judith Q. Derby and Miss Nancy D. Roosevelt, and a granddaughter of J. P. Morgan, Miss Ann Morgan, who was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Junius S. Morgan; Mrs. Morgan was a member of the committee. For those not yet of an age to qualify for the “Juniors,” subscriptions were being organized by Mrs. Evelyn King Robinson for the Senior Dinner Dance for debutantes of the next season at the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf Astoria. Such gaieties were not confined to the Big City. In the collegiate purlieus of Princeton, New Jersey, debutantes were very much in evidence if on a slightly more modest scale. Mr. and Mrs. Karl Dravo Pettit hosted an afternoon reception with dancing at their Cherry Hill Farm home on Friday to introduce their daughter, Miss Mary Estelle Pettit, to society. It was all done with style: the debutante was presented in a bower of smilax and rhododendron in a setting further decorated with white single and pompom chrysanthemums. A bevy of contemporaries assisted at the receiving line for Miss Pettit, who wore a bouffant gown of white net with a fitted bodice trimmed with gold. Her white tulle muff was decorated with pale pink camellias. The proud mother wore pale blue crepe and a corsage of pink spray orchids. Festivities carried on into the evening at a large dinner given by the debutante’s parents and Mrs. Paul Runyan at the President Day Club for

As We Were

31

out-of-town guests. Nor was this the end. The entire party moved on to a dance given for Miss Isabel Runyan. And the next day Mrs. Bevis Longstreth and her daughter Mary were to give a luncheon honoring Miss Pettit and her houseguests. On the same day of frenetic social activity, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Douglas Russell hosted a small supper dance in their Princeton home to present their daughter Miss Isabel Doolittle Russell. Her sister, Miss Louise Rivington Russell, assisted in the receiving line. To be in Society required energy and endurance. The supper dance was preceded by a dinner given by the Russells for their daughter and out-of-town guests. The debutante, who had graduated in June from the Foxcroft School, was now a student at Barnard College.1 Such gaieties testified to the aspirations to elegance in the upper-class precincts of suburban New Jersey. More informal and more mirthful was the masquerade in Atlanta at the annual Thanksgiving celebration of the Nine O’Clocks, where the gratin of Atlanta disported themselves in costume. A couple in blackface was pictured clad in bib overalls, plaid shirts, and ragged straw hats. Two chicken legs could be clearly discerned depending from the man’s left hand. “You’d never believe it, unless you were told, but the two plantation hands, caught by the photographer in the surreptitious act of ‘swipin’ a chicken at the Nine O’Clock’s annual Thanksgiving celebration, are Mr. and Mrs. John Raine.” This in a newspaper whose editor, Ralph McGill, was surely among the most broad-minded of all Southern journalists in matters of race, and a leader in the dawning of consciousness of the injustice of it all.2 * The Times reporting of weddings was straightforward. Miss Hennita Blackfan Janney, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Allison Janney of New Jersey, was married in Trinity Episcopal Church, Elizabeth, New Jersey, to William Sayen III, son of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick R. Sayen of Hamilton Square, New Jersey, by the Reverend Robert Lee Bull, Jr., the rector, assisted by the Right Reverend Wallace J. Gardener, the Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey. The bride was given in marriage by her father and was attended by Mrs. Gouverneur Morris Nichols of Princeton as matron of honor. A careful listing of her nine other attendants completed the story. When Cynthia Barrett, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Barrett of East Orange, New Jersey, married Ensign Raymond Emile Salman in our Lady of Sorrows Church in South Orange, the ceremony was performed by Monsignor James F. Kelly, the president of Seton Hall College. The bride, escorted by her brother Leonard Rutledge Barrett, wore her mother’s wedding gown of Brussels lace over ivory satin. Her lace veil was conformed into a cap. She carried a bouquet of bouvardia. The matron of honor, the maid of honor, the flower girl, and the best man were serially listed.3 The protocol of wedding reportage will be noticed. The principals are listed first with their parents and then the eminent divine who performed the ceremony. The bridal garb and accoutrements might be described and perhaps that of the mother of the bride and the bridal attendants. The careful listing of all of the participants in the ceremony would complete this homage to the seriousness of

32

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

the event that was then taking place. Perhaps there could be no greater gauge of the explosive postwar changes in American society than the contrast between the proprieties of The Times reports of 1941 weddings and today’s marriage announcements. In 1941, those whose engagements and marriages were published in The Times came from a well-defined social class and a recognized place in society. Today’s announcements bespeak a level of democratization beyond imagining in the world of The New York Times in 1941. * Even in a large metropolitan area—and New York was the epicenter of the largest in the America of November 1941 as it is today—there was an interest in the ebb and flow of social activity. Thus it was reported from New York that Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson, who had been at the Plaza, had left the day before for Cincinnati; and that Senator D. Worth Clark had arrived at the Ambassador from Washington. In Connecticut, Mr. and Mrs. Gayer G. Dominick of Silvermine had closed their home for the season and opened their town residence in New York; while Mr. and Mrs. Ralph M. Roosevelt of New Canaan had arrived in Coconut Grove, Florida, for the winter.4 The Times recognized the importance of club meetings and published a weekly schedule. On Monday, December 1, the Orange Mountain Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Orange, New Jersey, would hold its anniversary luncheon. Dr. George H. Ramsey was scheduled to speak to the Junior Service League of Pelham in the home of Mrs. J. Luther Cleveland. Meanwhile, the Bronxville League of Women Voters would hold its meeting at the home of Mrs. George VanSchaick, and Hadassah of Passaic, New Jersey, would celebrate its Founders Day.5

The Social Spectrum: An Entirely Different World While New York debutantes were eagerly awaiting the “Juniors,” two of their contemporaries were living in an entirely different world. At the Chicago International Livestock Exposition, Helen Althoff of Pipestone, Minnesota, slight and simply dressed, took the blue ribbon in the Junior Feeding Contest with her 708-pound shorthorn steer, Gene. It felt “pretty good” to win the championship, Helen modestly said, adding that she guessed she would get a good price for the steer now. Her mother had died when Helen was fifteen, leaving her to care for her father and their home. The 160-acre farm needed not only a housekeeper but another hand to the work. She didn’t work so hard, Helen explained. She got her fun raising prize cattle. But her schedule was indeed daunting. She rose early in the morning, milked the cows, cooked wheat cakes and sausage for her father’s breakfast, all followed by the housecleaning. But if she were needed, she was an experienced hand at cutting grain and putting up hay. After preparing and serving a big dinner at noon, she was again available to help her father in the afternoon, leaving her evening open for laundry, ironing, and baking.

As We Were

33

Asked whether she danced or dated, Helen replied promptly: “I don’t have time for such things. Besides I don’t like dancing. I’ve never done any.” She patted her steer and left the ring. Watching all of this was Irene Brown of Laledo, Mercer County, a seventeenyear-old freshman at Monmouth College. She had been the first girl to win the Steer Feeding Grand Championship at the Livestock Exposition of 1938. Disqualified from currently competing because she lived at school, she explained that when she was home she helped her brother Ross feed the steers and she had high hopes of repeating her 1938 championship. Asked her ambition, she replied that she probably would teach home economics but her true desire was to be “an efficient farm wife.” Overhearing that remark, Helen Althoff was quick to add, “Me, too,” and she smiled for the first time that day. * These girls came from presumably prosperous farms where the science of raising prize cattle and the art of marketing them were well known. But there was an entirely different level of agricultural life, for one example, in Georgia. Schoolteachers in the Peach State knew that every year there were thousands of children who stayed away from school because they lacked the proper clothes. Indeed, a recent WPA survey had shown that some 30,000 farm families in Georgia were not able to support themselves through the winter, especially where the cotton crop had fallen victim to drought. The Tom Richardsons, whose family had lived for three generations in the same house, had four children to clothe, the eldest eleven years old. Their daughter Berta, ten, was generally acknowledged to be one of the best-dressed girls in her school. The annual budget for this display of style combined with utility was an astonishing $7.69. How did Mrs. Richardson do it? She did it by making almost every item of clothing her daughter wore, as well as the clothes of the rest of the family. This was Berta’s clothing budget: Woolen Tweed Suit Print Dresses (3) Sack Dresses (3) Underwear (3) Shoes Socks Slips & panties Hood Ribbons TOTAL

$ .80 $ 1.05 $ .45 $ 1.42 $2.97 $ .75 $ .00 $ .00 $ .25 $ 7.69

The material for the tweed suit came from a remnant sale where Mrs. Richardson had bought it to cover a chair and had enough left over for the suit. The only other cost was for buttons and thread. The print dresses were for Berta’s “dress up” clothes;

34

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

the material cost about 35 cents for each dress. The other dresses were made from chicken-feed sacks. Mrs. Richardson bought shoes and socks after careful study of the mail-order catalogue. The slips and panties had cost nothing because she had made them from sugar and flour sacks. She even salvaged an old suit of her husband’s to make a suit for herself that was her Sunday best for two more years. “Her Sunday best” indicates that the Richardsons were church-goers, and recalls a time when reverence was evidenced by the formality of dress becoming to the Lord’s Day in the Lord’s House. Stand by the church doors of America today, and you will see the members of a greatly reduced congregation clad in shorts, jeans, sandals, and T-shirts. For the Tom Richardsons, reverence was expressed in their church-going attire, even if it consisted of Tom’s worn suit and Berta’s tweed costume made from an upholstery remnant. The Constitution approvingly captioned the story “Makes the Most of What She Has.”6 In the background of all of this creative activity was Ms. Frances Shelton, county home economist, and beyond her, WPA sewing rooms and the National Youth Authority Project.

Deflationary Times: Domestic Relations The homes from which The Times’s debutantes came and to which its brides would go required ample domestic help to maintain standards and appearances. Such help was plentiful in the waning years of the Great Depression when live-in servants were common in modest middle-class homes. The classified section of The Times Sunday Edition was replete with notices of female help needed and of situations wanted. That these were indeed in many cases modest homes is made plain by an advertisement for a young girl, housekeeper, with plain cooking experience and references who would share a room with a five-year-old girl, all for a monthly salary of $50. Race and ethnicity were significant factors in the hiring equation. A doctor’s home sought a white girl to do plain cooking for a small family. She would sleep in and have her own room and bath. It was an age of governesses. An experienced young governess for schoolgirls was offered $60 monthly. Where there was a problem child, the monthly salary was bumped up to $100. You could buy a good deal of service for $70 a month, as in the case of a business couple’s desire for a housekeeper-governess for an elevenyear-old child. She would have a college education, be trustworthy with a pleasant personality, young enough to be a congenial companion to a child and, into the bargain, driving would be essential. For this desirable post, the would-be employers asked for the applicant’s “correct age” with full detail as to her background. Religion was not usually specified for female domestic servants. But one family advertised for a sleep-in housekeeper in the self-described “good home” of a Christian family at a monthly salary of $55 to $60. A sad story must have lain behind the advertisement for a housekeeper to take full charge of three boys—nine, eleven, and thirteen years old in a motherless home, kosher cooking required.

As We Were

35

Among aspirants for posts as chambermaids, one had a broad choice of candidates identifying themselves as Scandinavian, Viennese, German, and Scotch. The venerable occupation of lady’s maid, and French into the bargain, brought a salary of $75 to $80. Another category, which in its former sense seems to have disappeared, was that of lady’s companion. One applicant for such a job described herself as British, a driver, a dietitian who would not only travel but spoke Spanish and was both unencumbered and congenial. An equally talented prospective lady’s companion described herself as cultured, American, Christian, unusually helpful and, into the bargain, healthy, happy, a nutritionist, who was artistic, sewed and could drive anywhere. The most modest of advertisers for a position as lady’s companion described herself as Swedish and educated, confessing that she was not young and seeking only a small salary. There was evident here the need for a safe home. The descriptor for the lowest level of domestic workers was simply “girl” and, in accordance with the color codes of the time, references abounded to “lightcolored girls,” “colored, neat” and “high type.” What would such girls do? They would cook, bake, wash and iron. But it is clear from the help-wanted pages of the day that white servants were preferred for serving at the table.7 If race was indicated in individual Times classified ads, the Houston Chronicle printed separate sections for “Colored” and for all others.8 In the same vein, The Atlanta Constitution carried ads for a “reliable colored girl,” a “neat experienced colored girl,” and a “colored undergraduate.” “Neat,” “reliable,” and “experienced” were evidently the highest accolades that could be offered to “colored girls.” The ads do not state, but one assumes that the homes in which they aspired to work would be almost exclusively white.9

Deflationary Times: Home Economics The homes in which these domestic servants would labor are described in compelling detail in the real-estate classified section of The Times. In Larchmont Gardens, spaciousness and comfortable living were available in a home that in addition to “the usual living room, dining room and kitchen” offered a library, sun porch, four family bedrooms, two baths and “servant’s quarters.” Not only was this home located with a sweeping lake view rich in waterfowl, but its final appeal was its location in a “highly restricted residential neighborhood.” The bargain price was $6,750 to liquidate an estate. It is apparent that the members of the Ochs and Sulzberger families, proprietors of The Times, did not hesitate to publish advertisements for the sale of property in residential neighborhoods where their presence would not be welcome. In Great Neck Estates one could buy a stately brick colonial with four master bedrooms, two baths, maid’s room and bath, den, and double garage on a large plot for only $13,000. In the Purchase area of Rye, a prospective buyer could view a white-shingled colonial farmhouse, with green shutters; it offered four master bedrooms, two

36

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

servants’ rooms, three baths, and extensive outbuildings, including two barns, stables, a ranch house, and a garage with quarters; its grounds were graced by stately trees, lawns, and gardens, plus a tennis court. All for $17,000. Fashionable visitors to Southampton today would look wistfully at “beautiful” home sites in the Shinnecock Hills at $300 an acre. A similar range of offerings could be found in Los Angeles where a new threebedroom home sold for $5,850. A two-story brick veneer and stucco English dwelling must have been a stately home indeed with its four master bedrooms, four baths, a library, and living rooms paneled to the ceiling. Further elegant appurtenances included a pipe organ, a swimming pool with adjacent dressing room, a three-car garage with chauffeur’s quarters above, all on an acre of beautifully landscaped grounds in the heart of Los Angeles. The selling price: $27,500. In Atlanta, suburbs were expanding and new homes were rising. For a threebedroom, two-bath home, prices ranged from $6,650 to $8,700 with Federal Housing Authority (FHA) financing. Financing was key as another builder emphasized that his new six-room homes could be financed by the FHA on monthly payments of $38.51.10 Builders of the time were as keenly aware as builders today of the primacy of the down payment and the monthly payment over the sticker price of the home. Thus, in Houston, a home on a 60 by 110 lot, graced with a large living room, dining room, and “breeze kitchen,” two bedrooms with a sleeping porch and a two-car garage, could be had for a down payment of $450 in cash and a $32 monthly payment.11

Human Interest: Names Make News The basic element of the news on Sunday, November 30, 1941, was, as it always will be, names and the people who bore those names. An obituary in the Chicago Tribune called to mind how brief was the history of Chicago. William G. McCormick, who died at age ninety, was the son of William S. McCormick who came to Chicago from Virginia in 1850. With his brothers Cyrus and Leander McCormick, he was one of the founders of the great agricultural implement business that had produced so many innovations in farm machinery, and indeed in the whole system of agriculture both at home and abroad. William G. McCormick was a brother of Robert S. McCormick, who was, in turn, the father of Col. Robert E. McCormick, editor and publisher of the Tribune. In his childhood years, Mr. McCormick rode to school daily on his pony and crossed the Chicago River on a barge manned by an Indian. In a country at peace, there were echoes of war. William Dutton Holland of Englewood, New Jersey, had left two years ago to join an American ambulance unit in France. Following the collapse of France in May and June of 1940, Holland had journeyed to England via Portugal and joined the RAF. A twenty-fouryear-old member of the Eagle Squadron, he had been wounded when he was shot down over France. The residents of Northampton, Massachusetts, were sensitive to the desire for privacy of Mrs. Grace G. Coolidge, the widow of the thirtieth president. She

As We Were

37

chose to avoid public appearances, even including the dedication of a bridge in memory of the late president. But during the past week she had attended a local meeting of the Fight for Freedom Committee, her first such meeting, her honorary chairmanship notwithstanding. This, she said, had aroused protests, including a letter that called her “an old age destroyer.” The former First Lady was then sixty-two years old. Alexander Woollcott was a popular raconteur, anthologist, and radio personality. Arriving in New York on the liner Excambion from Lisbon, he declined to give reporters an interview. “My trade,” he said, “is selling what I know at so much a word.” Corporal Albert S. Moxley of the Sixteenth Pursuit Squadron was aloft over Brooklyn at 4,500 feet when his pilot pointed to the lights below. Misinterpreting the wave of the pilot’s hand, Moxley took to his parachute and jumped, landing on the cornice of a family house where he dangled until rescued. The resident of the house offered Moxley a drink. He took it. * Few 1941 newspapers would have lacked a reference to Eleanor Roosevelt, the wide-ranging wife of the President. She was to be initiated on December 12 as an honorary member of the Radcliffe College Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Her subject as the evening’s speaker was “Women—Nazi, Fascist, and Democratic.” While The New York Times offered its readers Eleanor Roosevelt, the Chicago Tribune in its Sunday pictures section offered movie close-ups and sure-fire attractions, pictures of pets and Betty Grable. * Among the celebrities of the day few would be better known than Ethel Barrymore. She had made her debut on the New York stage in 1907 in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. In 1926 she had played 295 performances of Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife. In the past week she had broken that record as The Corn Is Green entered its second year.

Local Geography: Oregonians Look Inward The Oregonian for Sunday, November 30, 1941, headlined: “FDR SPEEDS NORTH AS WAR PORTENTS BECOME OMINOUS.” But The Oregonian’s gaze was concentrated inward. Its editorial spread entitled “Blueprint for an Empire” was written by Richard L. Neuberger, later U.S. senator from Oregon. The editorial described the vast agricultural project in which water from the Grand Coulee Dam would irrigate 1,200,000 acres, an area equal in size to the state of Delaware and the largest block of agricultural land available for development within the United States. It would bring 40,000 farm families onto the newly available arable land and contribute importantly to the 350,000 new residents thereby added to the population of the Pacific Northwest.12 The syndicated weekly supplement was a staple of American journalism. The Oregonian offered the American Weekly for the edification of its readers, who would

38

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

be treated to such articles as “Carving as a Household Art,” “The Confessions of a Follies Beauty,” and this poser: “Do You Know How to Manage Your Wife.” Its serial mystery was entitled “Murder By Mail,” the work of Mrs. Esther Kametz. Added to murder was misery, the story of Georgette LeBlanc, the mistress of Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck, who had inspired his most famous work The Bluebird. After he discarded her for a young wife, “the spark of genius eluded him, while broken-hearted Georgette struggled through years alone until the drama ended.” Perhaps the most universally popular feature of the Sunday papers across the land were the comics. The Oregonian offered a full menu of comics, including these classics: Popeye, Smilin’ Jack, Polly and Her Pals, Moon Mullins, Henry, Dick Tracy, Smitty, L’il Abner, The Gumps, and Tarzan.

Diversions: Arts and Entertainment The books reviewed in The Times on Sunday, November 30, 1941, showed a global outlook. The lead review was The World’s Iron Age by William Henry Chamberlain. Norway: Neutral and Invaded by Halvdan Koht, prime minister of the conquered land, and London Pride by Phyllis Bottome reflected nonfiction and fictional treatments of aspects of the world crisis. Only Farthest Reach: Oregon

FIGURE 4.2

Eleanor Roosevelt and Shirley Temple.

Courtesy of National Archives, photo 19561, NLR-PHOCO-A8066 from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library collection.

As We Were

39

and Washington by Nancy Wilson Ross looked inward in its critical reporting of developing economies and culture in the Pacific Northwest. The keen interest of the American public in events abroad was made clear by the list advertised by Reynals and Hitchcock. They included Fountainheads of Freedom by Irwin Edman; The Kremlin and the People by Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty; Is Tomorrow Hitler’s? by veteran columnist H. R. Knickerbocker; The Atlantic System by Forrest Davis; and, in quite a different category, Plain Words About Venereal Disease by Thomas Parran and R. A. Vonderlehr. The publisher G. P. Putnam’s that day was offering Churchill’s Blood Sweat and Tears; I Have Loved England by Alice Duer Miller; tales of Nazi debauchery in Munich Playground by Ernest R. Pope; and Nine Lives by Alice Grant Rossman, the adventures of a London cat in peace and war. Knopf ’s offerings included popular classics: William L. Shirer’s Berlin Diary; Newspaper Days by the irrepressible H. L. Mencken; No Other Road to Freedom by Leland Stowe; and a tribute to an American philosopher, Mr. Dooley’s America by Elmer Ellis. * Brooks Atkinson, the dean of New York theater reviewers, knew how to disassemble a play. He conceded that Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields, the authors of Junior Miss, knew “how to put a funny play together.” But there was little plot and a lot of rigging in a comedy he found tripping on its toes over several scenes in the last act. What is of interest two generations later is not the mechanics rigged up by the playwright. The theme, Atkinson reported, was “the lightheadedness of growing girls.” He found it “bubbling over with coltish entertainment.” These were nubile adolescents but, in the end, Atkinson assures us that they were all “good girls.” A trial, perhaps, he added, to well-behaved parents. But that, he said, was one of the basic jokes of American life. One thing is clear: in Mr. Atkinson’s lexicon, these were “girls,” and not “young women.” * Television transmission and programming existed in 1941. They were a littleappreciated fact of life, still limited to a small audience, but their potential power had set radio broadcasters into action. A week earlier an article in The Times had made serious accusations that the Columbia Broadcasting System was stifling the development of television in order to enhance the profitability of its radio operations. In a vigorous rebuttal, Adrian Murphy, the Columbia Broadcasting System executive director for television, said that radio stations and executives had gone into television in order to protect not only their own interests, but the future of radio. This, said Mr. Murphy, was in no wise blameworthy or sinister, given that any industry had a right to protect its future. The previous article had charged that “some executives” had admitted that by controlling television they had hoped to slow its development. “Some (unidentified) executives were dubious authority,” said Mr. Murphy, as long as they remained anonymous. But in any event television had become widespread enough among competing organizations that it was hardly susceptible of control by anyone.

40

Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941

What was important in the last analysis was programming, and this, Mr. Murphy declared, was the subject of an intensive effort by Columbia; it sought to advance an industry that could hardly be helped by “uninformed and baseless accusations.”13 * “Modern art” has always been a subject fraught with difficulty for the public as well as for those who have exhibited it to the public. In response to shocked and dismayed correspondents, The Times critic Edward Alden Jewell confessed that the newspaper’s reproduction of Joan Miro’s “Rope and Persons,” then being shown at the Museum of Modern Art, had been printed upside down. Such things could happen, Mr. Jewell replied, when the editor neglects to write “Top” on the back of a photograph or other reproduction. Anyway, Mr. Jewell observed, abstractions had been known to have been reproduced lying on their sides and a notable work of abstract art had been hung that way at a distinguished museum. A few of Mr. Jewell’s correspondents were sympathetic. Melvin Freidel, who maintained lowercase throughout, wrote: “alas for the poor maligned modern artist. Who lays out the art page and what did Miro ever do to him?” Mr. F. W. James of Belleville, New Jersey, found the critics’ remarks appalling in their childish innocence and closed by attacking the Miro as “indescribable filth.” Mr. Saul Raskin opined that American artists were in a bad way precisely because of such exhibitions. They had had their fill of Dali and Surrealism. Dali was, indeed, a misfortune to the American artist and, by the way, why was the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art traveling under the title “Dali & Company”? Mr. Jewell was happy to take on Mr. Raskin and indeed all comers. He asked a simple question: what indeed was the function of the Museum of Modern Art? He gave a simple answer. It seemed to him that the function of the Museum of Modern Art was to place modern art before the public. The public might not like it, but it ought to be exposed to it as much as possible, and the best way to illuminate the whole issue was to see the art itself. Here, indeed, was a tempest that has not perceptibly faded in the following generations.14

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

New York Times, November 30, 1941, 2/5 Atlanta Constitution, November 30, 1941, 6C New York Times, November 30, 1941, 66 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 67 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 55 Atlanta Constitution, November 30, 1941, 1 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 18 Houston Chronicle, November 30, 1941, 4C Atlanta Constitution, November 30, 1941, 8D Atlanta Constitution, November 30, 1941, 10D Houston Chronicle, November 30, 1941, 7C Oregonian, November 30, 1941, MI New York Times, November 30, 1941, 8/12 New York Times, November 30, 1941, 8/9

PART II

Last Week at Peace December 1–6, 1941

5 MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1941

A World in Flames: Storm Signals Flying Following up its victory at Rostov, Moscow radio announced that the forty-mile road from Rostov to Taganrog, the line of retreat of the German army, had been cleared. On the central front, Russian counterattacks blunted continuing thrusts against Moscow. Berlin had little to say about the situation at Rostov but broadcast claims of gigantic Russian losses. The day’s news was favorable to the Allied cause in North Africa, too. The British Eighth Army advanced across the Cyranaican hump to the Gulf of Sidra below Bengazi, cutting off Axis supply lines in Libya. German and Italian tank forces attempting to escape entrapment east of Tobruk were defeated by a flank attack. All this amounted to what Rome characterized as a “pause” on the Libyan front.1 * Storm signals were flying all across the Pacific. A large contingent of British and Indian troops “ready for all eventualities” landed at Rangoon in British Burma, and London radio said that more British warships had been dispatched to the Far East.2 In a twilight zone between peace and war it was announced that an American air group, with American pilots flying American planes under the Chinese flag, would defend the vital Burma Road from Japanese air attack. The members of the force were officially listed as members of the Chinese Air Force. Many were former regular officers of the U.S. Army and Navy. Further confusing their status, these officers retained their Army and Navy ranks or promotional standing and, interestingly, they would continue to receive their regular Army and Navy pay. Singapore was placed under emergency orders. U.S. consular authorities in Thailand were advising all American citizens to be ready to evacuate the country “at any minute.” Similarly, U.S. consular authorities advised Americans to leave

44

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

FIGURE 5.1

See color plate section.

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.5015:38.

Shanghai, while the Shanghai branch of the Chase National Bank of New York advised its clients that henceforth their accounts would be handled only at the depositor’s risk. At Manila, the U.S. Army and Navy were alerted; many officers had been called back from leave; and all leaves from the Corregidor fortress at the entrance to Manila Bay were suspended until further notice.3

The Threat of War: Wait and See Across the Pacific, The New York Times gravely reported that there had been no abatement of tension in relations between the United States and Japan. Under

Monday, December 1, 1941

45

the press of events the President had cut short his Warm Springs stay and left for Washington. He would arrive at noon to confer with his advisers. He looked “grim” and did not show the crowds that assembled in the Georgia backcountry villages through which he traveled the buoyant attitude of the day before. Only that evening the President had raised the possibility that U.S. troops could be in action within the year, or possibly even sooner. Certainly reports from Tokyo were ominous. There had been no formal reply to Secretary of State Hull’s statement of principles and the Japanese envoys remained in Washington. Japan’s Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo rejected Hull’s statement and his principles as “fantastic.” He characterized U.S. attitudes as “regrettable,” reiterating Japan’s determination to construct a “new order in East Asia.” The close relationship among Japan, Manchukuo, and the puppet regime at Nanking must be cemented, he said, going forward to a new order in East Asia on the basis of cooperation and coprosperity. The United States didn’t understand the real situation in East Asia, Togo charged. It was trying to apply “fantastic principles” and rules not adapted to the actual situation of the world. All this tended to obstruct progress toward the New Order. What Togo had earlier characterized as “regrettable,” he now labeled “extremely regrettable.” Japan, he said, stood for “Asia for the Asiatics,” under Japanese leadership, in stark contrast to the U.S. policy of the Open Door. That same day Japan, Manchukuo, and China celebrated the first anniversary of a joint declaration of cooperation. Foreign Minister Togo did not appear at a large rally in Tokyo, but his message was read by General Ando, the Executive Vice President of the Imperial Rule Assistance Organization. General Ando’s speech was, if anything, more blunt than the statements of the Foreign Minister. He said that Japan, Manchukuo, and China would “take all necessary measures and suffer any sacrifices” to establish the New Order on the basis of good neighborliness, economic collaboration, and joint defense with due respect to the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national characteristics of each of the three nations. A group of powers, he claimed, was trying to obstruct this. Among them was Chungking, a mere puppet of the United States, which would collapse once the strings were cut. He named another target. The Netherlands East Indies, he said, would be similarly finished once Japanese troops moved toward that region, and neither the United States nor Great Britain would be able to help. One hundred million Japanese were awaiting the outcome of negotiations, “determined to meet all eventualities and eliminate any obstacles in the way of a holy task.” He continued: “We now stand at the crossroads of peace and war. The road ahead is beset with difficulties but we should not be blinded by the temporary advantage of safety nor go astray on the way to our lofty goal.”4 All this said, the general concluded that Japan wanted to continue discussions with the United States for at least two weeks, despite dissatisfaction with certain fundamental points at issue. So the talks would continue. Since there had been no sign of Japanese military moves, the United States was inclined to wait and see. The question was whether

46

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Japan was bluffing. There remained, however, little question that the United States stood together with Great Britain and the Netherlands East Indies. The problem was one the world had faced before. Did the Japanese believe that the United States wouldn’t fight for Thailand as Hitler had once believed that Great Britain wouldn’t fight for Danzig? And in return for the withdrawal of Japanese troops from French Indo-China, would the United States be prepared to relax economic sanctions?5 * Amid rising tensions, Japanese envoy Kichisaburo Nomura spoke the truth when he told a reporter that there was still a wide gap between the American and Japanese positions but that: “I believe there must be wise statesmanship to save the situation.” Nomura’s statement gained authority in the light of a dispatch from a Japanese newspaper indicating that the closing of Japanese consulates in the United States was imminent.6

The Threat of War: Deep Divisions All of these developments offered a rich field for the pundits and the commentators on the current scene. Dewitt Mackenzie, a columnist syndicated by Wide World News, concluded that Japan’s decision to continue negotiations with the United States should not surprise anyone, given indications that Japan was anxious to avoid conflict with the United States. This was a decision, he thought, based on necessity and calculated to give Japan additional time to decide which side would win the European war. That was why German reverses in Russia and North Africa might have deeply influenced Japan’s decision makers. Hitler had achieved a remarkable string of victories, diplomatic and military, but his current difficulties in Russia and North Africa could result in a loss of luster and might forestall Hitler’s plans to capture the Russian agricultural and petroleum resources vital to any German victory.7 To the Chicago Tribune, it was an old story. Arthur Sears Henning of the Chicago Tribune Press Services saw Hitler goading Japan to fight America and Britain goading America to defend British interests in the Pacific region. It carried a parallel story featuring a statement by General Lesley McNair, the general commanding the Carolina maneuvers, that the U.S. Army could fight effectively given the necessary resources and equipment. But the losses would be unduly heavy, and the results against a force as potent as the German army might not be “all that could be desired.” He hoped that a year from now, the standard of performance of the army would be as different from today’s as today’s was from last year’s. But, he opined, it would take more than a year to bring the U.S. Army up to the standard of the German Wehrmacht.8 The novelty of many of the aspects of the U.S. military establishment was indicated by the death of the Army’s pioneer airman, sometime Lt. Frank Lahm. He had made the world’s first solo military flight. After minimal training, Wilbur

Monday, December 1, 1941

47

Wright had told him: “Go ahead and take her up.” This sometime cavalryman had risen to the rank of Lieutenant General, retiring at age sixty-four as Commander of Randolph Field, Texas, where 5,000 troops, 270 basic and advance training planes, and 20,000 civilians were present at his retirement ceremony. How these forces might compare to Japan’s was a matter of speculation that day.

America’s Role: An Age of Faith The nineties may have been gay and the twenties may have roared, but in 1941, religion remained a vital element in both public and private life. Eminent clergymen were well known, indeed in many cases famous, and their utterances were not only heard but listened to. Amid rumors of war and preparations for war, amid a deepening crisis, with much of the world already at war, it is instructive to note in the Monday papers what some of the most prominent spiritual leaders had to tell their congregations on Sunday, November 30, 1941. At Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Archbishop Spellman opened a fortyhour devotion to pray for “peace and true concord” after a solemn mass attended by 2,800. In the procession were leading members of the Catholic hierarchy, choristers, seminarians, and acolytes, all carrying lighted candles. The sanctuary was decorated with ferns and flowers in the papal colors of gold and white. The devotion continued with a solemn mass for peace. Monsignor Joseph F. Flannelly, administrator of the Cathedral, read two letters from Archbishop Spellman. The first called for a renewal of pledges to the Legion of Decency to avoid indecent entertainment, specifically condemning the film Two-Faced Woman as a danger to public morals. The second letter urged generosity in the next Sunday’s collection.9 Few clergymen were more eminent than Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, President of the Union Theological Seminary, who spoke at the Rockefeller-endowed Riverside Baptist Church. Men could thwart God’s plan, he said, and wreck His world with pride, greed, and folly. But, he reassured his audience, “God . . . never gives up.” He next addressed what he called a surge of racial feelings and discrimination based upon a sense of national superiority. This could be read as a veiled reference to anti-Japanese feeling occasioned by the crisis in Pacific relations. But his principal concern that day was the need for international institutions. We had entered a war, he said, referring to 1917–18, and we had decisively affected the outcome; but in the end we had washed our hands of the tasks of maintaining and developing justice and peace. Nevertheless he did not believe the United States would hazard its independence by entering into an association of nations. He easily fell in with American exceptionalism, demanding that the United States reflect its own national experience in counseling other people toward an orderly commonwealth of mankind with sufficient authority to maintain justice, prevent wars, and increase the well-being of all. The good reverend did not indicate the chances of success in counseling Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo, who both had their own ideas about justice, war and well-being, and an orderly commonwealth of mankind.

48

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

The Reverend Allen E. Claxton of the Broadway Temple Methodist Church of New York was hopeful, but in a very nonspecific way. He thought it possible that out of the suffering and cruelties of today a new world was being born. He thundered against oppression, invasion, tyranny, and cruelty, but was confident that even under intolerable conditions and with labor, effort, and pain the new Christian era could emerge, sealing the doom of injustice and tyranny. To Dr. Ralph Sockman at Christ Church, Methodist on New York’s Park Avenue, the world crisis was grading humanity according to the quality of its faith. Those of low faith might fall into hopelessness and self-indulgence, while those of a high-quality faith would see in the present tumult the working out of a divine law of moral harvest. Dr. Samuel Atkins Eliot was minister emeritus of the Arlington Street Unitarian Church of Boston. Speaking at the Unitarian Church of All Souls, 80th Street and Lexington Avenue, he urged people to be more “tomorrow-minded.” Happiness, he said, was not a matter of material means but a sense of progress toward our goals. Greet tomorrow, he urged, with the expectation of a divine surprise that might reveal the way to go, the truth to trust, and the life to live. These generalized prescriptions did not address the critical issues that that Sunday morning faced, not only by the faithful attending these services and sermons, but indeed all of the people who lived under the dark clouds of war and prospects of war.

America’s Role: Divided Counsels If the churches largely confined themselves to spiritual prescriptions, opinions as to America’s role in the world at war were sharply divided. There was never any doubt as to where the Chicago Tribune would stand. It thundered against foreign attachments, alien partnerships, and other loyalties. The American people, it said, would have been horrified in an earlier age if it had been suggested that the United States intervene in European conflicts. But there had been a change of policy under President Wilson, leaving the country caught up in “a circle of cause and consequence” as old as the hills in Europe. There was nothing new in what the President and Secretary Hull were saying. It had all been said by President Wilson and Secretary of State Lansing. As to England, it was simply following its age-old policy, a policy that had found it in opposition to Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon and Kaiser Wilhelm. The Tribune had more to say in its editorial pages. Under the title “The Red Carpet” it observed that while the European monarchies might claim to be engaged in a crusade for democracy, all the while bleeding white the U.S. Treasury, none had done the United States the compliment of adopting its form of government. No monarch had abdicated, no titles had been abolished. The fact is singular but not at all inexplicable. The Europeans know that if they adopted our system they would promptly lose out. Their strength is not in their democracy but in our snobbery. The minute the White House could no longer roll out the red carpet for the reception of royalty and the

Monday, December 1, 1941

49

moment that the New York snobs could no longer bob and curtsey, the high pressure campaign to destroy the country for the benefit of foreigners would languish.10 It is clear that the spirit of Mayor Carter Harrison was alive and well in Chicago in December 1941. * A less emotional analysis of the issues could be found in the letters to The New York Times. Jack D. Roberts found lacking the “moral incentive” that would stir the imagination and validate participation in a new war. The generation that fought the last war, he observed, had done so in the belief that the next generation would never have to make their sacrifice or repeat their experience. Looking back, calmly and dispassionately, he could see that the hopes in which the last war was fought had smacked of the innocence of the Children’s Crusade. He now spoke the unspeakable, that those who had died in the Great War had most certainly died in vain. No, he thought, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to generate a “burning moral purpose” to sustain a new war. * J. A. Leighton of Columbus, Ohio, examined the thinking of Midwestern isolationists. They thought, he observed, that Roosevelt and the New Deal were nearly as bad as Hitler and Nazism. They nourished an intense dislike of Great Britain as essentially selfish and ungrateful. Was it not a case, they asked, once more of pulling British chestnuts out of the fire? There were those who thought that Hitler might win the war but that his system wouldn’t last long. In any event, they believed that the war was none of America’s business, stating the classic proposition: we can live alone and like it. To the Midwestern isolationists the true American leaders were Lindbergh, Hoover, and Senators Wheeler and Nye. Having reported his findings, Mr. Leighton took a firm stand. The whole future of liberal civilization, he said was at stake. The choice now was to fight or to lie down and be trampled on by as powerfully organized, scientifically equipped a tide of tribalistic tyranny as had ever threatened the human race. Evasion he said, was impossible. America must stand up and be counted or lie down and be walked over. There was no middle place. There was no place to hide.11 * Perhaps the clearest, most straightforward statement of position could be found on the editorial pages of the Houston Chronicle. Reviewing Japan’s aggressive moves and threats, it concluded that “to any serious minded person in the world, this pattern spells war unless someone backs down.” But, it said, the American government’s hope to avoid war in the Pacific ought not to be at the expense of its principles. It should not sell out its Asiatic friends and allies for a temporary settlement. It further warned that turning over Asia to Japan meant turning

FIGURE 5.2

See color plate section.

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, N18.2:P94.

Monday, December 1, 1941

51

Asia over to the Axis. The United States could not in conscience retreat; but unless Japan backed down, the results could be dire—“world-wide destructiveness increased to a vast degree.”12 * The New York Times took a more limited view in its editorial “Our Marines Out of China.” Any American would have been proud had he stood in the crowd on the Bubbling Well road in Shanghai the other day when the first contingent of the Marines marched down the Bund on their way out of China. For this is the closing of the book on a great record.13 Of course the book was not closed but just opening. What that withdrawal meant to The Times was not lack of interest but precaution. It would have been unwise to leave in place hostages to a possible enemy.14 * Ordinary people cherished loyalties and deeply felt concerns. They were stirred to action on whatever scale was available to them. Bundles for Britain was seeking a million signatures and contributions to be flown to Great Britain for presentation to Queen Elizabeth. She would distribute the funds as she saw fit, preferably to bring Christmas cheer to “unfortunate British children.” New York’s butlers, maids, and cooks from private families formed the Private Service Division of the British War Relief Society. They had in fact collected $13,500. They were to hold an entertainment and dance at the Riverside Plaza Hotel, 253 West 73rd Street, on Thursday evening, December 4. Herbert W. Peacock, Miss Ann Morgan’s butler, was Secretary of the Division and was accepting ticket orders at Miss Morgan’s home on Sutton Place.15 There were, of course, those who thought differently. A call was issued by Miss Hazel Whitney, acting executive secretary of the Youth Committee Against War, for the Fifth National Youth Anti-War Congress to be held at the University of Chicago and the Chicago Theological Seminary from December 27 to December 30.16 A continent away, in Santa Barbara, California, Joseph Scott, president of the Archdiocese Holy Name Society, told 3,000 members of the organization to pray for world peace.

Liberty and Justice for All: Opportunity American Style But issues of war and peace did not monopolize the editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers. The Atlanta Constitution made a stirring plea for equal opportunity in education. Whatever his talents, it said, each child was entitled to an equal opportunity to develop his talents; indeed that precept was axiomatic to democracy. There can be no equality of opportunity while one child enjoys the advantages of free education in the best schools a prosperous city can provide

52

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

right through grade and high school while another child who happens to have been born in an impoverished, rural backwoods county can attend only a one-teacher school that goes no higher than the sixth grade. And this was true not only within the state but across the nation. The South had a higher birth rate and lower incomes than other wealthier states. Conclusion: A far seeing program of federal aid to education would equalize educational opportunities across the land.17 That the axiomatic precept of educational equality might apply across the rigidly confining boundary line of race seems never to have occurred, either to the writer or to the readers of this statement. * The Oregonian addressed a humbler concern. It cited a young Marine in Iceland, weary of fish, who yearned for a hamburger. Something ought to be done about it, the paper editorialized, concluding that hamburgers should follow the flag.18

Economic Indicators: Labor and Capital For the successful completion of the ambitious National Defense program, the cooperation of management and labor would be a necessity. This is what William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, told members of the American Bankers Association at its annual convention. He pointed to the stake both labor and capital had in the preservation of the free enterprise system. What Mr. Green did not mention was any reference to the labor disputes in basic industries that were then pending. The railway brotherhoods had refused to accept the conclusions of a presidential fact-finding board, leaving the process one step away from a strike. Only by President Roosevelt’s personal intervention had the coal unions’ demand for unionization, rejected by the Mediation Board, been referred to a newly appointed Arbitration Committee. Uncertainties aroused by labor strikes and the crisis in the Far East were adversely impacting financial markets. The stock averages were dropping to their lowest level since June 1940, when there had been a major break responding to the collapse of France and doubts concerning Britain’s ability to survive. There had been a rapid recovery, but the markets had now plumbed the levels of June 1940 and reached the levels of June 1938, following the Nazi seizure of Austria.19 * The concern for a railroad strike testified to the importance of the railroad system to the American economy. Alco, the American Locomotive Company, advertised its new SteamLiner locomotive under the headline “Hitched to a Star.” The SteamLiner had been chosen to power the newest and fastest daytime train, the Empire State Express. The ad also pointed to other famous trains powered by Alco locomotives. The majestic roll included the 20th Century Limited, the Commodore Vanderbilt, the Southwestern Limited, the Detroiter, the Ohio State Limited,

Monday, December 1, 1941

53

the Pacemaker, the Mercury, the Cleveland Limited, and the James Whitcomb Riley. The Pennsylvania Railroad was offering a seventeen-hour round trip from New York to Chicago for a $27.25 fare aboard the Trailblazer, and a round trip to St. Louis in twenty and a half hours on the Jeffersonian for $31.70. But a new challenger was entering the lists. TWA advertised “Sleep your way to Chicago” aboard a midnight Stratosleeper. Passengers could board at New York’s LaGuardia Airport at 12:45 a.m., sleep in a Stratoliner berth, and be in Chicago before breakfast for a full business day. The airline listed ten other daily flights.

Diversions: Arts and Entertainment The best-seller list evidenced a keen interest in the world at war. It was led by William L. Shirer’s Berlin Diary followed by John Gunther’s Inside Latin America and Pierre van Paassen’s That Day Alone. These serious works were lightened by Clifton Fadiman’s collection, Reading I’ve Liked, and Deems Taylor’s A Treasury of Gilbert & Sullivan. Fiction was presented by acknowledged masters of the genre, including The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin, Saratoga Trunk by Edna Ferber, and Windswept by Mary Ellen Chase. * War and threats of war did not dim the lights of Broadway. No sick man, the New York theater presented a dazzling array of stars of the first magnitude in vehicles offered by veteran playwrights and composers. Among the female luminaries, Helen Hayes was appearing in Maxwell Anderson’s Candle In the Wind, Gertrude Lawrence in Lady In the Dark, Ethel Barrymore in The Corn Is Green, and Judith Anderson with Maurice Evans in Macbeth. For comedy there was veteran producer George Abbott’s Best Foot Forward, Ethel Merman in Cole Porter’s Panama Hattie, Danny Kaye in Let’s Face It, and burnishing Broadway’s traditions, George Jessel’s High Kickers featuring Sophie Tucker was practically a showbiz anthology. Boris Karloff was appearing in Arsenic and Old Lace, and Noel Coward’s second offering of the season featured an all-star cast including Clifton Webb, Peggy Wood, Leonora Corbett, and Mildred Natwick in Blythe Spirit. Other comedies included Junior Miss, My Sister Eileen, and Cornelia Otis Skinner in Theater!!!. For drama one could see Paul Lukas in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine and The Land Is Bright by George S. Kauffman and Edna Ferber.20 A much-anticipated event was the opening at the Winter Garden of Sons o’ Fun with Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson supported by Carmen Miranda and Ella Logan. Patrons were advised to come at least a half hour before the curtain “when the fun begins.” Tickets for the opening at $8.80 were the priciest of the season, though they would revert to $4.40 for the best seats in the house during the piece’s Broadway run. * In what were then called “photoplays,” audiences flocked to see Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in Suspicion, Edmund Gwen and Sir Cecil Hardwick in Laburnum

54

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Grove, Nelson Eddy and Risë Stevens in Sigmund Romberg’s The Chocolate Soldier, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in They Died with Their Boots On, and Skylark with Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland, and Brian Ahern.21 * But whatever the interests and the diversions of this Monday, they were overshadowed by the knowledge that America would rise on the morrow to a world in flames and that the flames were creeping closer and closer.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

New York Times, December 1, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 1, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 1, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 1 Oregonian, December 1, 1941, 1 Denver Post, December 1, 1941, 8 Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 14 Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1941, 16 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 18 Houston Chronicle, December 1, 1941, 8 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 18 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 18 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 17 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 11 Atlanta Constitution, December 1, 1941, 6 Oregonian, December 1, 1941, 6 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 27 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 15 New York Times, December 1, 1941, 15

6 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1941

A World in Flames: Close at Hand If Americans were spectators on the sidelines of thunderous combats taking place in Europe, Asia, and Africa, there was little doubt where their sympathies lay. Most readers of the Tuesday papers were surely gratified to read the bold headline: “GERMAN ARMIES ARE REELING UNDER HAMMER BLOWS OF BRITISH AND SOVIETS.” On the southern front, Soviet troops continued to pursue General Paul Ludwig von Kleist’s armies retreating from Rostov. Remnants of his armies were in danger of being trapped by hard-charging cavalrymen pushing westward. The Soviets claimed to have shot down 102 Nazi planes and exacted a toll of 118 German tanks, 210 field guns, and numbers of small arms “impossible to count.” The Germans attributed their retreat to superior Soviet numbers. German armies were also under pressure on the Moscow front where violent attacks were repelled by Soviet defenders.1,2 * German General Johann von Ravenstein, captured by the British, summarized the war in the Western Desert: “A paradise for a tactician but Hell for a quartermaster.” It was one thing upon which the adversaries could agree as the tides of battle shifted east and west. German commander Erwin Rommel attacked the British Tobruk-Rezegh line in an attempt to break the Twenty-First Panzer Division out of its pocket east of the main British forces. But counterattacks were repelled, and the Axis forces suffered another defeat when the British attacked the Italian Ariete Division, “turning their full fire power on the rather inadequate armor of the Italian tanks, half of which had been lost the evening before while the rest were in full flight northward toward the Mediterranean.”3 There was an American presence on the desert battlefield. The New York Times reported that tanks with which the British armies were being equipped were “the

56

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

finest tanks now in use by any army on any battlefront” as evidenced by the performance of its lighter tanks that were routing heavier Nazi units. At least so it seemed at the time. Historians would later disagree. * The war at sea continued, as it always does, on a twenty-four-hour-a-day, sevenday-a-week basis. The Admiralty reported that the cruiser Devonshire had shelled and sunk an armed raider in the South Atlantic. In evidence of how savage the war had become, the raider’s crew took to the ship’s boats “but were not picked up because of the proximity of a German submarine.” 4 * The glare of preparations for war blazed out across the Pacific. The Governor of Singapore, Sir Shenton Thomas, declared a state of emergency, and issued a proclamation calling out all volunteers, Army, Navy, and Air Force, for active duty throughout Malaya. Soon guards and patrols in full war kit would be seen at important points. The Governor pointed out that volunteers were an integral part of the defenses of Malaya, were equipped with modern weapons, and formed a strong fighting force. Nevertheless, the government communiqué advised that the call-up of volunteers did not signify an immediate deterioration in the situation, but meant only that “the situation has not been clarified.”5 Further mobilizations were ordered in the Netherlands East Indies; Premier Curtin of Australia emphasized that his nation’s preparations were entirely defensive, and that there would be no war in the Pacific unless it were to come as the result of Japanese aggression. In Manila, Admiral Thomas C. Hart, Commander of the United States Asiatic Fleet, met in secret with Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur, U.S. Army Chief in the Far East. Official sources declined to comment further.6 In the face of all of these preparations, Singapore remained calm. But the feeling was widespread—war was close at hand but not inevitable.

The Threat of War: The President Takes Command The President had rallied the nation against fear itself. He had addressed the needs of the one-third of the nation that was ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed. He had reminded the nation of the Forgotten Man. He had addressed the staggering woes of a great depression with a panoply of programs, agencies, and rules that created a new balance (or imbalance) in the relationship of the public and private spheres of activity in the nation. Yet all this was in the civil arena and within the boundaries of the nation. He now presented himself to the American people in a very different role. On his return from Warm Springs the President assumed direct command of diplomatic and military moves relating to Japan.7 While he remained the nation’s chief executive and chief magistrate, he now donned the cloak of the Commander-in-chief. This was the predominant role he would play through the war years and until the end of his days. On his return to the capital, the President met in the Oval Office with Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold Stark and with Secretary of State Hull, who

Tuesday, December 2, 1941

57

had talked for more than an hour earlier the same day with Japanese envoys Nomura and Kurusu. Presidential advisor Harry Hopkins rose from his sickbed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital to join the President, Hull, and Stark for lunch. The President then met with Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles who had just conferred with British Ambassador Lord Halifax. * “Authoritative circles” pronounced few grounds for optimism in the pending negotiations, warning that a Japanese move into Thailand would not be tolerated. This called to mind a U.S. statement of the week before that left little doubt the country would meet, with force, any Japanese attempt to cut off the flow to the United States of essential defense materials, such as tin and rubber.8 The conference that day with the Japanese envoys had brought no reply to Secretary Hull’s questions of the previous week. The Japanese envoys were portrayed as entering the conference that morning smiling but departing grimly. Kurusu did say that there would be further conversations “if I am instructed to the effect.”9 It was widely reported that “the lights of peace flickered low in the Orient,” while Admiral Nomura told reporters that “there must be wise statesmanship to save the situation.”10 The lights of peace flickered low. There were those who held that Japan might yet retreat from its aggressive stance and that, in any case, the next week should tell whether there would be war or peace.11 There was certainly no softening in the Japanese position. Foreign Minister Togo called the statement of American principles “fanciful, unrealistic and regrettable.” The Japan Times Advertiser said that Japan needed to bring home to the United States some probably unpleasant truths about the situation in East Asia: that to apply American principles could happen only in dreamland. The newspaper Hochi warned of American disillusionment if they thought Japan could be intimidated into acceptance of the American proposals. In Washington, envoy Kurusu emolliently told reporters that Prime Minister Tojo had been badly misquoted in reports of his declaration that Britain and the United States must be “purged” from the Far East.

America’s Role: Confidant Estimates Nations do not go to war expecting to lose. History is the grim record of such miscalculations. American policy would be deeply affected, indeed made, by the studied opinions of the military, the executive, and by that body of public opinion which, in a democracy, must support them. The public heard many voices. They were, to an extraordinary degree, positive. Hugh G. Grant had resigned several months before as United States Minister to Thailand. His opinion was nothing short of exuberant. “If the Japanese really want war, now is the time to let them have it.”12 “I believe we can smash them within a period of a few months with our superior air and naval forces.” Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox exuded confidence in a signed article in the mass-circulation American Magazine. “The United States today has the greatest Navy

58

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

in the world. We are prepared to meet any emergency which may arise on one or on two oceans.” “Some Naval officers” may have been over-optimistic in claiming that the U.S. Navy could wipe out the Japanese Navy in two weeks. The more cautious estimate of the time required was six months. Ralph T. Jones, writing in The Atlanta Constitution, offered two predictions: that although there might be fighting in the Philippines and in Thailand, the U.S. part in any war with Japan would “be almost entirely confined to naval action.” He followed this with an equally rash prediction: “They [the Japanese] are pitifully vulnerable to attack from the air and if our Navy can’t smash the Japanese Navy we have been woefully misled.”13 There were those who were respectful of Japanese air power; to underestimate it, commentators said, would be a mistake. If Japanese bombers had betrayed notoriously poor aim at the start of the “China incident,” knowledgeable critics believed that there had since been a vast improvement. One who for several years had manufactured planes in China for Chiang Kai-shek opined that the workmanship and performance of Japanese planes would compare favorably with American planes. But there were others who took a sharply divergent viewpoint that surely had a racial tinge. Lucien Zaharoff was a popular writer on aviation topics. He predicted: “Japan would crumble like a house of cards if engaged in a great air war.” American Army officers writing in The Army and Navy Journal in 1937 concluded that the Japanese had “a marked inaptitude” for aviation, added to which they were poor marksmen. In a report that may have seemed incredible to newspaper readers in December 1941, Lynn C. Thomas writing in the magazine Western Flying reported that the Japanese Air Force suffered from a “suicide psychosis” in which they would deliberately dive their bomb-laden planes into their targets. Japan’s war in China had started several years before December 1941. Foreign military experts in Shanghai had been quoted then as saying that one hundred good American bombers and fifty American pursuit planes were capable of annihilating the Japanese Air Force in the Shanghai and Nanking areas within a week.14

America’s Role: A Clash of Opinions There was a substantial body of American opinion that did not rise to salute the Commander-in-chief, but remained deeply suspicious of where he was leading them. A bordered box in the Chicago Tribune bore this message: F. D. R. AND AMERICAN YOUTH On January 3, 1940, in his annual message to congress President Roosevelt said: “I can understand the feelings of those who warn the nation that they will never again consent to the sending of American youth to fight on the soil of Europe. But, as I remember, nobody has asked them to consent—for nobody expects such an undertaking.”15

Tuesday, December 2, 1941

59

Only the day before, the America First Committee had announced that it would play an active role in the 1942 primary and general elections. It would mobilize all those who opposed further steps to involve the country in war. It was necessary, the Committee said, because of the President’s efforts to deny the American people any voice in the gravest issues that had ever confronted the nation. Fascism, the Committee darkly observed, results when other branches of government surrender to one man the power to make decisions for the whole people.16 The opponents of the President’s policies were by no means a fringe element. In the recently published book We Testify, “A must book for every thinking American!,” they labeled themselves not as isolationists but as noninterventionists. Contributors to the book included former President Herbert Hoover, whose accomplishments in international humanitarian crises had led him to the Cabinet and to the Presidency; Robert Maynard Hutchins, sometime enfant terrible Dean of the Yale Law School and now President of the University of Chicago; the eminent divine Harry Emerson Fosdick and, inevitably, Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Other contributors were General Robert Wood of Sears Roebuck, aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky, and from the political sphere, Senators Burton Wheeler of Montana, Elbert Thomas of Utah, and Robert A. Taft of Ohio. Agree or not, said an advertisement for the book, Americans needed to know what “anti-war” speakers had said and why they had said it and why their conclusions had proved to be “appallingly accurate.” Arriving firmly at quite opposite conclusions, Walter Lippmann feared that the object of Japanese diplomacy was to drive a wedge between the United States and China, resulting in a Far Eastern Munich in which China would be granted some temporary relief against permanent Japanese overlordship, based on the supply of critical American war materials to Japan. There could be a general peace, he thought, only if the Japanese became convinced of America’s overwhelmingly superior armed force. As contrasted to a general peace, a New Order in Asia, subjecting its vast populations to Japanese hegemony, would only set the stage for the nightmare of two generations, the conflict between East and West, the war between yellow people and whites. Lippmann was eloquent in his conclusions: So we cannot retreat. The elementary dictates of prudence forbid it. Honor, which among nations is force without violence, prevents it. Duty, which is our obligation to those who come after us, compels us to say that we shall not deliver those who come after us to a mortal conflict between East and West.17 Lippmann spoke of principles. The Chicago Tribune saw the crisis as grounded in material interests. The “old time adventurers,” the British, the Dutch, and the French, had exploited the populations of Asia. The real material interests in the conflict, it opined, were represented in London and in Tokyo. Imperialism was, in

60

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

fact, inimical to American principles. Always content to accuse Britain of hypocrisy, the Tribune quoted Churchill as saying that the Atlantic Charter of Freedom did not run in the Far East. In essence, America was doing the talking and might well find itself doing the fighting.18 Looming over this conflict of views and visions there were those who came to an ominous conclusion: There can be no misinterpretation of the numerous indications that affairs between this country and Japan have reached a crisis so critical that the two countries may be formally at war before many days have passed.19

America’s Role: Political Wars The President had served for two full terms and was embarked upon an unprecedented third term. No administration had ever done more to change the power relationships between the citizen and his federal government. One government program emblematic of the New Deal was the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), charged with bringing electricity to the nation’s farms, ranches, and rural areas. It was not unexpected that foes of the administration’s foreign policy would also raise fierce opposition to many of its domestic initiatives. Thus, asserting that the administration was leading the country into an undeclared war, Representative Winter of Texas also levied charges against the REA.

FIGURE 6.1

President Roosevelt and Fala.

Courtesy of National Archives, photo 678526 from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library collection.

Tuesday, December 2, 1941

61

“Communists” and “fellow travelers” in the REA were hoarding copper wire in Texas cotton fields that, due to its size, could be used only in high-voltage transmission lines and would never serve a single rural home or barn. He further alleged that the OPM was allocating copper only to publicly owned transmission lines, denying copper to private companies for their private customers. In essence, he said, the REA was a dog in the manger, “teeming with communists, fellow travelers and bureaucrats who put political theory above the safety of their country.” Moving on to specifics, Representative Winter offered the information that no less than thirty-four “communists” and “fellow travelers” in the REA were earning a grand total in salaries of $115,720 per year.20 * A similar theme was propounded by the president of the Investment Bankers Association, who told members assembled for its annual meeting that the government had marched for eight years toward the complete domination of finance, business, and industry. He warned against using the rearmament program as an excuse to promote the government’s initiatives in these areas. He saw the trend of socialistic governments to tax savings out of existence in the course of achieving complete government control of business. “In our desire to protect ourselves from without let us not forget what goes on within.”21 * Such views were not limited to the President’s political opposition. Senators Carl A. Hatch of New Mexico and Joseph C. O’Mahoney of Wyoming, both Democrats, blamed the administration’s economic policies for unnecessarily destroying the American system of free enterprise and rapidly building a totalitarian state. Their comments gained authority from the fact that both senators were supporters of the administration’s foreign policy.22 The battle of public opinion sometimes boiled over into criminal charges and convictions. In Minneapolis eighteen persons were convicted by a jury on charges of conspiracy to incite insubordination in the armed forces. These were the first convictions under the Smith Act, itself an amendment to the Sedition Act of 1861. The Smith Act made it unlawful to advocate overthrow of the government. What was the evidence adduced against the defendants in these cases? Raids on the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party offices in St. Paul had turned up two red flags and several pictures of Leon Trotsky, who had earlier been assassinated in Mexico.23

Liberty and Justice for All: In the Matter of Race There was never a day in the era of the Second World War when a sharp contradiction was not readily visible between the ideals and principles the defense program was defending, for which a great war would be fought, and the actual treatment accorded American citizens of color in the military and in civil life. In East Point, Georgia, six members of the Ku Klux Klan were convicted of

62

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

flogging black fellow citizens. They pleaded for clemency but the governor stood firm. He commented, however, “I am always sorry when I can’t grant clemency.” The Governor would not comment as to his reasons.24 Elsewhere, it was a matter of separate accommodations. The Denver City Council voted $600 for the rehabilitation of a building that would be used as a recreation center for “Negro” soldiers. It noted that the federal government had already granted $1,900 for the same project. The members of the city council may have sincerely thought that they were accommodating the “Negro” soldiers. Those same soldiers might have entertained an entirely different point of view. There were those who did not accept such treatment, whether deliberate or grounded upon a misguided benevolence. In Portland, Oregon, Dr. DeNorval Unthank, Chairman of the Emergency Advisory Council for Negroes, charged that the Portland boilermakers’ and machinists’ unions had “systematically carried on a program of racial discrimination” which excluded blacks from employment in defense projects; and that the unions had entered into an agreement with vocational education departments of the Portland public schools, excluding blacks from their machine tool, aviation sheet metal, and ship welding programs. Yet these were the programs for which labor was in short supply at the booming Portland shipyards.25

Economic Indicators: Needs Along the Scale The driving force of Japan’s expansionism in East Asia was the search for natural resources by a resource-poor nation. Chief among these was oil, which would fuel the ships, the planes, and the vehicles of the Empire in its quest for the New Order in East Asia. In its massive defense buildup, the United States had the same critical need for an ample supply of oil, whether in sustaining the engines of war, the transportation systems that would deliver goods to the points of need, or the utilities that underlay the daily life of the people. Fortunately, the country was richly endowed: the Houston Chronicle headlined, “OIL LEASING SPREADING IN EAST TEXAS.” Knowledgeable readers in Houston could take note of an extensive lease play in Hopkins County, growing out of testing operations at the W. B. Hinton and Talco Asphalt and Refining Company, indicating a new pay opener at 4,755 feet in the Paluxy sand. It was not a surprise, therefore, that independents were active in the area and prices for acreage ranged from two to twenty dollars per acre within two to four miles of the new prospect.26 Timely advances in the science of oil exploration had made possible sharply expanded production. Dr. Everett Lee DeGolyer was named the recipient of the John Fritz Medal for 1941 in recognition of his pioneering work in geophysical exploration in the search for oilfields. His work, it was estimated, had resulted in the discovery of three billion barrels of oil. The presentation of the medal was to take place on January 14 at a dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York given by the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, of which Dr. DeGolyer was a past president. The stature of the award may be measured by the list of former recipients including Thomas A.

Tuesday, December 2, 1941

63

Edison, George Westinghouse, Orville Wright, Guglielmo Marconi, and Herbert Hoover. Dr. DeGolyer, it was said, had been the first engineer to understand the importance of geophysical methods in prospecting for oil.27 * If oil stood at the inception of the economic chain, at the other end—after varying stages of manufacturing and distribution—stood the consumer, whose needs were met through the vast retail trade. New York was the emporium where the retailers went to shop for their stocks. The Arrival of Buyers was regularly chronicled in The New York Times, and what the buyers sought and bought tells us much about the state of the country, its economy, personal tastes, and preferences. They came from far and wide. From Nogales, Arizona, S. Capin of Capin’s Department Store came to town to buy ready-to-wear, house furnishings, sportswear, infant’s and children’s wear, toys, and domestics. From distant Johannesburg, South Africa, W. Fier came to buy dressmaker suits and furtrimmed coats at Frohman and Altman. Filene’s of Boston sent a large delegation. The thin years of the Great Depression could be seen in Miss M. Kimball’s search for “misses’ cheap dresses” while E. McElanen looked for even “cheaper misses’ dresses.” But there was an upper end to the market, too, and Miss J. Morrissey was shopping evening dresses while E. Melnick sought a category that has since disappeared into the mists of fashions past, millinery. They came from Chicago: W. Sidelsky of Jean’s Style Shop for fur coats, chubbies, and fur collars; from Jacksonville, Florida, Miss O. Coleman of Flossy’s Ruffle Shop for ready-to-wear. It is curious to note that in the America of December 1941 the most sought-after line of clothing was corsets. From across the country they came to buy corsets: Mrs. A. Manser of E. N. Joslin Co. of Malden, Massachusetts; Miss B. Gray of William H. Block Co., Indianapolis, Indiana; from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Miss S. B. Klee of England Bros. Co. Thalhimer’s of Richmond, Virginia, sent Mrs. Kay Missleton, in search of “basement corsets” that would presumably lend shape to “cheap” or even to “cheaper” dresses. And still they came, corset buyers all: from Dayton, Ohio, Miss A. Wertz of Elder and Johnston Co.; from the Outlet Co. of Providence, Rhode Island, Miss J. Lubosky; from Frank and Seder of Pittsburgh, D. Ballman; and from The Parisian in Birmingham, Alabama, Mrs. O. Sisson. It had been thought that the flappers of the twenties had consigned their mothers’ and grandmothers’ corsets to the ash heap of history. But it appeared, instead, that they had become the firmly girded matrons of the forties, comforting the observer with the thought that, facing the stresses, the strains, and the perils of a world at war, the women of America would confront them all on a firm foundation.28 * In December 1941, the workhorse of American transportation was the steam locomotive. Indeed, World War II marked the zenith of steam railroading, to be transformed in a remarkably short time thereafter by the diesel locomotive. Thus it was a major event when two new high-speed locomotives built by the

64

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

New York Central Railroad for its Empire State Express were dedicated in New York. Governor Herbert Lehman presided over the ceremonies. He found in the two new locomotives a “vital lesson”: that like the trains, the nation must be streamlined in the face of an imminent threat to the American way of life and its freedoms. It took two tries for Mrs. Lehman to break the ceremonial bottle of champagne against the locomotive. The governor then donned an unlikely engineer’s cap to pose for the photo opportunity, which also included former governor Alfred E. Smith and Mrs. Smith, Postmaster General James A. Farley, City Council President Newbold Morris, and Edward G. Budd, president of the company which manufactured the passenger cars.29 * Denver was the great metropolis of a vast area of plains slanting upward to the mile-high level from which arose the towering peaks of the Rockies. The Roosevelt years had seen an unprecedented expansion not only in the operations of the federal government, but also at state and local levels. Nevertheless, Denver, with a 1940 population of 322,412, adopted a modest 1942 budget totaling only $8,539,198. The combined city and county would garner some $4.8 million from property tax, $2 million from miscellaneous taxes, a surprisingly modest $165,000 from income taxes, less than the $280,000 from automobile taxes, and the rest from miscellaneous sources.30 To sustain the city and county’s needs for water, the Board of Water Commissioners adopted a capital budget for 1942 of $698,857. These were the principal items in the budget: $265,000 for the city pipe system, $117,432 for the conduits division, $87,470 for the Moffat Tunnel diversion system, $100,000 for development of the western slope water supply and $28,440 for filter plants. Clearly a dollar went a long way in Denver’s budget for the coming year. How far a dollar went in Denver is best exemplified by the menu of the Golden Lantern Restaurant, “The Steakhouse of the West.” The restaurant offered a Blue Ribbon club steak, charcoal broiled with a fresh mushroom sauce and French fried potatoes, at 85 cents. This hearty main course was preceded by a choice of appetizers: Southern gumbo soup, a seafood Louie cocktail, a fresh shrimp or oyster cocktail, an imported crabmeat cocktail, a chilled half grapefruit or a fresh fruit cup. Two vegetables were offered as accompaniments, together with a choice of salads, including a pineapple cottage cheese salad, an endive salad with Roquefort dressing and hearts of lettuce with Thousand Island dressing. And all was followed by a list of desserts designed to meet every taste: a chocolate icebox cake, a baked Rome Beauty apple, a date or a pecan torte, a hot fudge sundae, and, of course, the iconic hot apple pie and sharp cheese. A more expansive diner could order a sirloin steak with all of the trimmings for 90 cents; big spenders could indulge in a tenderloin steak at $1.00 or a deluxe Blue Ribbon sirloin steak at $1.25. If Denver tastes ran to steak, Hall’s Restaurant at Seventh and K Streets Southwest in the nation’s capital offered a whole broiled live Maine lobster with salad and potatoes for $1.00, and also advertised as its Tuesday special, at

Tuesday, December 2, 1941

65

45 cents, a fried-chicken Maryland-style dinner with mashed potatoes, peas, hot biscuits, and coffee.31 * In the midst of a world in flames, newspaper readers still had mundane concerns to share. Letter writers to the editor of The New York Times that day opined that skillful driving would be a necessity for women serving in the Motor Corps. The question whether pushcarts should be favored brought a vigorous affirmative response, and there was quiet grief over the passing of the Tarrytown-Nyack ferry.32

The Social Spectrum: Annals of Society The New York Times was almost reverential and not a little bit patronizing in its report on the Baltimore Bachelors Cotillion held at the Old Lyric Theater and carrying on a tradition that started in 1796. The seventy-three debutantes were received by the wives of members of the Board of Governors; next followed the Grand March. The background decorations glittered with gold candelabras and brocades. Festoons of smilax graced the balcony and masses of orchids, roses, and gardenias were banked along the front of the boxes that surrounded the dance floor. On the stage a pergola was decorated with roses and smilax. Typical of the debutantes attending the party was Miss Emily Franklin, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Merryman Franklin of Glen Cove, Long Island and Cockeysville, Maryland. Her partners were Gaillard F. Ravenal, Jenkins Cromwell, Blanchard Randall, and Thomas Barbour. Her mother and Mrs. Ravenal fulfilled a function now archaic. They were her chaperones. Notable names among those presenting their daughters that evening were Mr. and Mrs. Alan Welch Dulles of New York and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Mrs. John V. A. MacMurray.33 In the Second City the Baltimore Bachelors Cotillion was played as satire. The Chicago Tribune reported that the Cotillion was the only door into Baltimore society. Nothing could erase the curse of exclusion from the Cotillion save a marriage wealthy enough to enable the groom to snub all the people who had once snubbed him. But Chicago was quick to claim two of the debutantes as its own: Miss Jane Jelke, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John F. Jelke of Lake Forest, and Miss Frances Connell, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Phillip G. Connell of Scott Street. It reported on their gowns, their bouquets, and their escorts and, overcoming its egalitarian reflexes, concluded with proprietary pride that “the two Chicago buds were among the belles of the ball.” * It is hard to conceive of a more frenzied social schedule than that of the President’s wife. On the day before, she had gone shopping at the bazaar held by the American Friends of Yugoslavia at the Bundles for Britain headquarters. The honorary chairman for that event was Mrs. Harlan Fiske Stone, the wife of the Chief Justice of the United States, assisted by the wives of Yugoslavian notables.

66

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Also in attendance were the wives of the Ambassador of Brazil and of the ministers of Greece, Czechoslovakia, and South Africa, “and a number of others from the diplomatic set.” From the bazaar Mrs. Roosevelt returned to the White House, where at tea she received Mrs. Beatrice Rathbone, M.P., the second American woman to become a member of the British Parliament. With Mrs. Rathbone were Mrs. Frances Biddle, wife of the Attorney General, and Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Meyer, the proprietors of The Washington Post. On Friday, the First Lady was scheduled to receive Brazilian journalists at luncheon, and later that day to attend a dinner for the “Open Road” group, sponsors of field trips to various parts of the country. In between those two events Mrs. Roosevelt would meet with a delegation of South Americans. White House dinners on Saturday evening and a Sunday luncheon were described as “purely personal.” But while in New York, Mrs. Roosevelt was scheduled to attend a benefit sale and an immigrant’s conference and make a visit to the Henry Street Nurses’ Home. Her Thursday lunch was to be with the Good Neighbor group. Mrs. Roosevelt said that Christmas plans for the White House would be similar to those of years past excepting that there would be fewer children participating. In fact, Dianna Hopkins, the daughter of FDR’s most intimate advisor, Harry Hopkins, was the only child then living in the White House. Mrs. Roosevelt said that no cellophane would be used on Christmas packages, following advice that such materials should be saved, and she hoped that much less tissue paper would be used—as a defense measure. The previous Saturday Mrs. Roosevelt had attended the Army–Navy football game. She had never been so uncomfortable, she said, at a football game in all of her life. Usually, she reported, her feet began to freeze at the end of the first quarter and she wondered why an “old lady” ever goes to such a game. But indefatigably, she went.34

Human Interest: Famous and Infamous Newspaper readers are perennially interested in the doings of the wise and the great and of celebrities who may be neither wise nor great but famous. It was a symbol of the times when Junius S. Morgan, the eldest son of J. P. Morgan, and a director of J. P. Morgan & Co., reported for duty as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He had served in the Navy aboard a destroyer in the First World War. The spectacle of a director of U.S. Steel and General Motors taking up his naval duties testified to a sense of service that was then abroad in the land, emphasized by the report that his younger brother was now serving as a Navy lieutenant.35 * Few topics are of more absorbing interest to newspaper readers than crime and punishment, especially in the case of a wronged woman and a gun. In a classic

Tuesday, December 2, 1941

67

of the genre, Mrs. Betty Williams of Long Beach, California, appeared before a coroner’s jury inquiring into the death of her husband, Technical Sergeant Noah Williams of Fort MacArthur. He had died on the front porch of his wife’s home, a small caliber bullet piercing his heart. Lieutenant Colonel Gail Cleland, the chaplain at Fort MacArthur, gave testimony of continuing incidents of marital violence, including beatings, furniture wrecking, and clothing destroyed in the apartment they had shared. The chaplain testified that Sergeant Williams had so threatened his wife that she feared for her life. Mrs. Fern Pitts, whose husband managed the apartment where the Williamses lived and where Sgt. Williams died, testified that after hearing a shot, she rushed to a window and saw Mrs. Williams standing in the doorway, a gun in her hand. Mrs. Williams said: “Call the cops, I’ve done it.” In further dramatic testimony, Mrs. Pitts said that the defendant, standing over the body of her dead husband, had muttered “Die, damn you, die.” The defendant claimed that her husband had died in her arms and that his last words were: “Honey, I had it coming.” Beyond that, Betty Williams refused to testify further.36

Diversions: Arts and Entertainment Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times dean of drama critics, had a sensibility that was generally considered to be highbrow; but he proved fully capable of enjoying the lowbrow humor of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson. They were returning to the scene of their Hellzapoppin’ “triumph” in what Atkinson termed a cornshucking bee called Sons o’ Fun. He lauded the performance of the sulfurous Carmen Miranda who “wears jingling costumes and wriggles her music.” It was, Atkinson reported, an excellent production. Hellzapoppin’ had come into a fortune and was putting on the dog.37 In other news of the theater, the Chekov Theater Players were planning a new and original presentation of Twelfth Night in which there would be no pause or intermission and the cast and technical crew would make all scene changes in full view of the audience. Cheryl Crawford was holding her production of Porgy and Bess in Boston until a suitable Broadway house became available and Warner Bros. was negotiating with Lillian Hellman for screen rights to Watch on the Rhine.38 * Radio was an ideal medium for a nation pressed by a great depression. Radio came direct to the home and, saving the initial expenditure, was completely and totally free. Families gathering around the radio set could keep up with the news and enjoy entertainment in the form of music, drama, comedy, and myriad other forms of entertainment. Radio had something for everyone. For the children there was Uncle Don. Sportscasters were famous: Bill Stern, Clem McCarthy, Jimmy Powers, and Stan Lomax were only a few. There were celebrated comics, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna, and Fibber McGee and Molly. But there was culture, too: the WJZ Treasury Hour presented Maurice Evans, the Golden Gate Quartet, and Geraldine Fitzgerald with

68

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

FIGURE 6.2

A grandmother listening to her radio.

Courtesy of National Archives, photo 196484, NLR-PHOCO-A-66312(5) from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library collection.

music by Eddy Duchin. For a fabulously diverse market WEVD offered Irish music and the Jewish Philosopher. At a testimonial dinner that night in honor of Edward R. Morrow, the principal speaker was to be poet and sometime Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish. Among other commentators on the news were Raymond Graham Swing, Gabriel Heatter, and Lowell Thomas. * As early as December 1941 television programs, still in their developmental stages, were being regularly broadcast in New York. WNBT offered the Radio City Matinee with former governor Alfred E. Smith and others. There were travelogues by Julien Bryan and songs by Igor Gorin. Catering to obvious audiences were dancing lessons, children’s stories, and more Songs by Timara. At opposite ends of the entertainment spectrum were visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and—was this a portent of things to come?—wrestling at Ridgewood Grove. * But behind the façade of entertainment, of stage, screen, and radio, there were portents of things to come. An Oldsmobile ad in the Houston Chronicle announced that airplane, cannon, and artillery shells were now rolling off Olds production lines. With its remaining facility, Oldsmobile was building only a limited number of quality cars. Its number one job, it told its readers, was defense.

Tuesday, December 2, 1941

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

New York Times, December 2, 1941, 1 Oregonian, December 2, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 4 Washington Post, December 2, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 6 New York Times, December 2, 1 Washington Post, December 2, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 4 Atlanta Constitution, December 2, 1941, 8 Washington Post, December 2, 1941, 14 Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1941, 27 New York Times, December 2, 1941,16 Washington Post, December 2, 1941, 11 Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1941, 14 Atlanta Constitution, December 2, 1941, 8 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 16 Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1941, 27 Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1941, 27 Denver Post, December 2, 1941, back page Atlanta Constitution, December 2, 1941, 1 Oregonian, December 2, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 2, 1941, B1 Houston Chronicle, December 2, 1941, B1 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 42 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 16 Denver Post, December 2, 1941, 10 Washington Post, December 2, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 22 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 30 Washington Post, December 2, 1941, 18 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 2 Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1941, 3 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 28 New York Times, December 2, 1941, 28

69

7 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1941

FIGURE 7.1

See color plate section.

Courtesy of National Archives, photo 5197, NWDNS-44-PA-2272 from the World War II Posters collection.

Wednesday, December 3, 1941

71

A World in Flames The Wednesday newspapers told of German troops fleeing Rostov under continuous Russian pressure. The Germans claimed that they were punching holes in Moscow’s defenses where counterattacks sought to contain an “admittedly acute” situation. * In London, Prime Minister Churchill told the country that the crisis of equipment was largely over; that the nation must now face a crisis of manpower, which would dominate 1942. Churchill asked the House of Commons for authority to draft three million more men for military service, and for the first time to require women to serve in the uniformed forces. Under the new program, the age for compulsory military service would be raised from forty-one to fifty-one, providing 2,750,000 men between these ages. They would not be required to “march with the troops” but would be put to static or sedentary work, releasing younger men for active service. Reducing the call-up age of youths from nineteen to eighteen and one-half years would raise an additional 70,000 men in 1942. The Prime Minister asked permission to withdraw the government’s promise not to send anyone younger than twenty years old overseas; this would break up existing troop formations. He also asked the House’s consent to send abroad men younger than nineteen. And finally, men not acceptable to the regular services, whose part-time service had hitherto been purely voluntary, would now be required to join the Home Guard. * In North Africa, the situation was described as one of “ups and downs.” The Germans had cut the corridor to the fortress of Tobruk and had again recaptured Rezegh. Perhaps more significant was the report of the sinking of an Italian destroyer and three Axis supply ships in the Mediterranean. In the end, reinforcement and resupply would be critical to both armies.

The Threat of War: Rising Tensions in the Pacific Under The Atlanta Constitution’s map of the Far East stretching from Peiping to the northern Australian port of Darwin appeared in bold print: “WAR IMMINENT IN VAST ORIENT.”1 Responding to that imminent threat, the greatest British fleet ever to sail in Far Eastern waters, headed by the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse, had arrived at Singapore. Miyako complained that the ABCD powers—Australia, Britain, Canada and Dutch East Indies—were attempting to bar Japanese entry into and activity in Burma, Malaya, the Netherlands Indies, and the Philippines. They were, it said, “hijackers waiting like wolves to jump on Japan.” America, too, was being cast as a wolf. Seigo Nakano was an enthusiastic admirer of Hitler and Mussolini. He had earlier attempted to form a Japanese

72

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Fascist Party, black shirts and all, with little success. He had made a fiery speech calling for immediate Japanese action to obtain military, naval, and air bases throughout greater East Asia, gaining Japanese dominance of the Western Pacific. As part of his program, he demanded the sinking of American transports, philosophizing that countries must use force if they were to make their basic national policies prevail. If Japan gave up her southward advance, the Netherlands Indies, French Indo-China, and China would “dance in ecstasy” and America would cast off her sheep’s clothing, finally appearing as “the wolf she really was.”2

The Threat of War: Alliances and Optimism On the other side of the world, tensions in the United States centered on the expected talks by President Roosevelt with the Japanese envoys Nomura and Kurusu. The tenor of various Japanese spokesmen and organs of opinion did not augur well for such talks. The United States, the Japanese press insisted, was attempting to apply “fanciful principles” to the Far East—principles based on the Nine-Power Treaty, which had been rendered obsolete by the new situation in East Asia created by Japanese arms. Nichi Nichi declared that if the United States were sincere in its search for peace in East Asia, it would stop interfering there and retire to its Western Hemisphere base. The Washington Post thought that the answer to its query “Peace or War in the Pacific?” might turn on the Japanese reply to the President’s message asking for an explanation of troop movements and concentrations in Indo-China. In his press conference, the President called his message “very polite” and firmly denied setting any deadline for an answer.3 The New York Times shared the President’s concern for Japanese penetration into Thailand, which it romanticized as a “quaint little country where the temple bells ring and the rivers run down to flood the rice fields.” “Little brown soldiers” in Thailand would, it said, threaten British and American interests and policies throughout the Far East, menacing the Burma Road and Malaya.4 * Britain and its dominions were at war on the ground in North Africa and in the Middle East, in the air over the European continent and over Britain itself, and across the seven seas. What stand would Canada, Australia, and New Zealand take in the event of a war between Japan and the United States? For Australia, were Japan to triumph in such a war, it would mean, sooner or later, an end to the policy of a “white” Australia. It was widely believed that Australia and New Zealand had arrived at an understanding with Washington for the grant of bases and facilities in return for assurances of “consultation” in any prospective emergency. Australia’s Minister of External Affairs had recently said that in a war with Japan the initiative should be with the United States, although Australia would accept no agreement at the expense of China or Russia.

Wednesday, December 3, 1941

73

Canada was less definite in its stance. A question had recently been asked in Parliament: would Canada adhere to a Churchillian promise to declare war against Japan “within the hour,” were the United States to be involved? The Canadian prime minister chose not to answer. He stated only that Canada’s attitude toward Britain and the United States was well known. In bilingual and bicultural Canada there was always the difficult question of conscription, and what was more, conscription for overseas service. Prime Minister King stood on his pledge against conscription without public approval in the form of a general election or a referendum. But Canada had an immediate interest at stake. Newly arrived Canadian troops were an important part of the Hong Kong garrison and would be on the front lines in the case of any Japanese attack.5 * Amid escalating tensions there were those who found cause for optimism. Gladstone Williams, writing in The Atlanta Constitution, proposed that the Japanese were simply bluffing. This, he opined, was the appraisal of the President and his chief advisors in foreign affairs and of Senators Tom Connelly of Texas and Walter George of Georgia, the present and past chairmen, respectively, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Williams thought that Russian defensive and now offensive successes and Britain’s improved performance in North Africa had raised second thoughts in the minds of Japanese policy makers. This was a pattern, he said: Japanese belligerency mounted with German successes and vice versa. He considered the cutoff of vital materials for the Japanese war machine another contributing factor. And the final proof, to this observer of the Japanese bluff, was the willingness of the Japanese representatives to continue to negotiate, saving face by so doing.6 New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia was even more optimistic. He had told the Senate Naval Affairs Committee the day before that he expected the war to be over in a year, so long as the United States sustained its production goals and delivered what was needed to its putative allies. This was further evidence of the mindset that America ought to supply the materials of war (at favorable cash prices) while others did the actual fighting. In the Houston Chronicle, DeWitt Mackenzie, another member in good standing of the commentariat, amplified and interpreted La Guardia’s remarks. This was, he wrote, a war of resources. Germany was bottled up on the European continent, its strength steadily waning for lack of replacement materials, while the strength of the United States and its allies was waxing. Mackenzie laid it down as axiomatic that, “if two and two make four,” then Germany must break its encirclement to gain fresh resources. In colorful phrases he concluded: “The crimson flash of great guns and the roar of exploding bombs may distract our attention from that fact, but they cannot altogether alter it.”7 To Walter Lippmann, the philosopher king of the punditocracy, the whole aim of Japanese diplomacy had been not to promote peace in the Pacific, but to isolate the Chinese and create an irreparable breach between China and the United States and Britain. Lippmann advised that there could be no settlement in the Far

74

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

East other than a general settlement that respected the interests of all the parties. Anything else would be a repeat of Munich. It would, moreover, set the stage for the nightmare of two generations, a war between East and West, a war he did not hesitate to label a war between the “yellow peoples and the whites.”

America’s Role: Political Responses American public opinion continued to be fiercely divided. America First announced that it would campaign actively for Senator Wayland (Curley) Brooks of Illinois, a leading isolationist. Its polls, it said, showed members unanimous for action at the polls and clamoring for a firm front against the “interventionists.”8 A stalwart among the isolationists—or, as they preferred to call themselves, the noninterventionists—was Colonel Joseph V. Kuznick of Chicago, who had commanded combat troops in France. He announced his resignation from the American Legion. In his opinion it was misrepresented by a handpicked Executive Committee, most of whom had never seen overseas combat. Worse yet, the Executive Committee had surrendered to the New Deal, in Kuznick’s view part and parcel of “an un-American hell-bent-for-war administration.” Only onethird of the Legion’s members had actually fought in World War I, he grumbled, and three-quarters opposed fighting Nazi Germany “just to save Bolshevism.” The statements of a small but vociferous section of the Legion were representative neither of its own membership nor of the American people.9 * While the Soviet Union was engaged in massive defensive battles from Leningrad in the north to Rostov to the Caucasus in the south, the American Communist Party and its allies were also embattled. Deep suspicion of its members and its activities was interwoven in the continuing debate about America’s role in the war and in the world. In New York, Actors’ Equity Association was in the process of submitting an amendment to its constitution barring members of the Communist, Nazi or Fascist parties or their sympathizers from holding office in or being employed by Equity. A January 9 final vote would require a quorum of 750 paid members present; if there were fewer, the council would be empowered either to accept the vote of a majority or to order another referendum. Also objects of the amendment were members of the Communist Party of the United States, the National Socialist Party of Germany and the Fascist Party of Italy, and in a basket clause, sympathizers with or persons who knowingly and willingly advocated the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or other unlawful means. Such persons would be ousted from the union.10 There were tangled loyalties involved here. The amendment provided for the ouster of members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a moment when the Soviets were basking in favorable public opinion occasioned by their sturdy defense and now offense against the invading Nazis. * In a letter to The New York Times, Merle Miller, later to become the biographer of Harry Truman, sounded a strident call to arms. He spoke in the name of

Wednesday, December 3, 1941

75

his generation arguing that their fathers had not succeeded in a “war to end all wars.” Indeed, they had lost the peace to a group of “disillusioned old men in the United States Senate.” But that hardly proved them wrong, Miller wrote, citing the heritage of the Revolution and the Civil War. His generation Miller labeled a generation of idealists, but idealists who were hardheaded enough to know that, together with the youth of England, of Russia, and of China, they could set free the conquered countries and the world. His generation, Miller wrote, might shrink from the sound and the fury, from meaningless slogans. But, speaking as one of draft age, he did not hesitate to claim that the majority of his generation were unafraid of the struggle for freedom. He echoed the President’s words that his generation had a “rendezvous with destiny” and assigned to it Lincoln’s well-known words that America could “nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.” He closed with his own words: “As courageously as we can, as wisely as we are able, we mean to say that, and now.”11 Joining Miller in calling for action, author and ex-Soviet agent Jan Valtin had told a Houston audience that America would have to adopt the methods of the totalitarian states, to learn that it could chop off heads, too. Democracy was all very well but played into the hands of the enemy. * In addition to the suspicion of communism, there was always abroad in the land latent anti-British sentiment. This was based in part upon Ireland’s grievances; in part upon concern for those hundreds of millions in the British Empire who did not enjoy the freedoms for which it was ostensibly fighting; and in part upon Americans’ distaste for so many manifestations of the British class system. But, Valtin assured his audience, it was not necessarily pro-British or pro-Russian to join in the struggle with those countries as allies. It was simply a matter of the preservation of America’s own freedom and of its own daily life. Until the Germans invaded Russia, he said, communists had been a menace to the United States. As soon as the war was over, they would be so again: they would resume their aims and their activities. Valtin spoke for many when he argued that it was a case of fighting now or fighting later, alone.12 * There were, to be sure, other voices, other opinions. No one is or has been more highly esteemed in America than its mothers. To slap the “Mothers” label on any activity or opinion is a much favored method of gaining public support. An organization calling itself Mothers Mobilized For America, Inc. (the notion of incorporation also lends solidity) sent letters of “condolence” to mothers of American sailors whose sons had been lost in the U-boat attack on the U.S. destroyer Reuben James. These letters did not stop at expressions of personal sorrow or sympathy. They intimated that it was not the German U-boats but the administration in Washington that had been responsible for the loss of these lives. This, The Oregonian editorialized, was “utter shamelessness” exceeding any boundary of isolationist criticism: it smelled of Nazi propaganda and might just as well have borne the label “Made in Berlin” and been mailed with a Nazi

76

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

stamp, so typical was it of the work of the “jabbering Herr Goebbels.” There would always be in America, The Oregonian said, dupes for such transparent ploys. Even if they were not real fifth columnists, only unwitting fifth columnists, they needed to be dragged out into the light.13 * Yes, the war and its impacts were the talk of the town. In New York various groups gathered to consider its progress and its prospects. The Namesake Towns Destroyers Committee of the English Speaking Union was meeting at 4:00 p.m. at Rockefeller Plaza. A dinner honoring Dr. Israel Goldstein, held by the Interfaith Committee for Aid to Democracy, was paralleled by a dinner at the Waldorf Astoria for the British War Relief Society to aid British children, and a 7:30 p.m. dinner at the Commodore Hotel honoring Russian Counsel Victor Felduishiny of the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Biro Bidjan.

Economic Indicators: Massive Defense Spending America was going back to work and the new demand was for swords, not plowshares. The New York Times listed previously unpublished government contracts. Transparency was important as a protection against self-serving and under-thetable dealing. Improprieties in government contracting were, as they had always been, a continuing concern. Instead of its standard printing presses, R. Hoe and Co., Inc. of New York undertook a $1,900,876 contract to produce gun-recoil mechanisms, while Otis Elevator Company contracted for $1,930,400 of gun mechanisms and castings. Growing armies needed more than guns, as indicated by a contract with Superior Linen Company for sheets, blankets, pillows, towels, and the like. Materials had to be moved and they would be, to the tune of $860,000 for Mack Truck parts and $827,049 to La France Truck Corporation—historic producer of fire engines—for trucks, and more trucks. If many suppliers ventured into new product lines, Antoneri Fireworks Company of Rochester was only doing what came naturally in supplying a million dollars’ worth of ammunition. But in the early stages of a great defense buildup, the real urgency was in machine tools and other essentials of the production lines that would be critical in filling all the other contracts. This was typified by contracts for a modest $2,600 with Manning, Maxwell, and Moore of Jersey City for drill presses, punches, and shears; with J. H. Williams & Company of Buffalo for forgings and dies for $6,410; for $4,211 with Ole Engstrom of New York City for punches and dies; and with Producto Machine Company of Bridgeport for $15,850 for milling machines. The largest of the contracts reported that day was with New Haven’s High Standard Manufacturing Company for over $10 million for guns. Democracy’s arsenal was gearing up and producing the spectrum of goods and components necessary to make fighting vehicles, planes and ships. Thus the Navy in the month of November was growing at the rate of a ship a day, with

Wednesday, December 3, 1941

77

thirty-three vessels completed in November, including the mighty battleship Indiana, destroyers, submarines, submarine chasers and auxiliary vessels.14,15 This scale of activity enabled William T. Witherow, chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers, to tell the opening session of its annual convention that American industry had already finished and delivered a volume of defense goods greater than had been specified in the government’s plans. Indeed, since March 11, 1941, when the first Lend-Lease bill had been enacted into law, industry had supplied nearly $10 billion in equipment against orders for $9.3 billion. “No matter how frequently the specifications are raised,” Witherow told his audience, “industry will produce to meet them.” The importance of the defense program was brilliantly illustrated by Witherow’s closing remarks, an unusual acknowledgment by an industry group that “only the unthinking can find fault with stricter government controls required to accomplish this titanic defense task with the speed necessary to do the job on time.”16 What was more usual was the warning by Senator Walter F. George of Georgia that federal taxes were nearing the danger line; that any increase would hurt the nation; and that the costs of the defense program must be spread over generations.17 The products of the defense program were on display for a day in a special defense train, one of three touring the country, that would be open at Houston’s Southern Pacific Station to local manufacturers and others interested in taking part in the defense program. More than 700 local manufacturers and machine shop operators were expected to visit the train in groups cycling through it every forty-five minutes. Other special groups would be formed of OPM representatives, city council members, and other officials not only from Houston, but also from Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Liberty and Justice for All: In the Matter of Race The contrast between the American promise and American performance was evident every day in the area of race relations, and it often took extreme, not to say grotesque, forms. In Jacksonville, Texas, the Central Texas Colored Methodist Conference in convention condemned the unjustifiable, indefensible, and horrible slaying of Matt Flournoy, a seventy-year-old black farmer, in the very courtroom where he stood trial on November 24 at Lufkin for the alleged assault and attempted slaying of Ray Morehouse, a nineteen-year-old white woman. Flournoy was stabbed to death in open court. His assailant, Ray’s twenty-fiveyear-old husband, was charged with the killing and released on a $3,000 bond. The Conference wrote to the U.S. Attorney’s office lamenting the negligence of the officers in the court and their failure to protect Flournoy. It asked in turn for a thorough investigation of the case.18 Was there hope for justice in such an environment and in the face of such attitudes? Modest progress appeared on the same day in a Georgia courtroom where a prison camp warden was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of black inmate Lewis Gordon. The victim and twenty-one others had

78

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

been confined in a “sweat box” for eight or ten hours. The warden had left the camp after ordering the punishment. When the prisoners cried out that they were dying, the warden’s deputy had refused to reverse the fatal order. The defense made the unlikely claim that the cause of death was shock from cold water poured upon the dying inmate in an attempt to revive him. This did not go down well with the jury, which took only forty minutes to return with its guilty verdict; the warden was sentenced to three years in the penitentiary.19 * For blacks in the South, the first priority was survival in a world where a black defendant was stabbed dead in the courtroom and a black prisoner became the victim of prolonged confinement in a sweat box. Against the odds, there were African Americans who fought to maintain their dignity, their sense of proportion, and a degree of participation in the system that so degraded them. Mrs. Mary Lee had written to “The Pulse of the Public,” the letters column of The Atlanta Constitution, expressing her fear that an increase in the number of “negroes” registered to vote was a threat—she did not hesitate to say it plainly— to white supremacy. Her letter evoked a penetrating response from Benjamin J. Davis of Atlanta. Mrs. Lee ought not to be alarmed, he wrote. White supremacy was nowhere in danger and she ought to look on Negro voters not as a menace to white supremacy but as a complement to real democracy. If white supremacy was unable to take care of itself, he observed, then it ought to get out of the way of real democracy. Mrs. Lee would do well, Davis wrote, to inform herself of the facts—that Atlanta had been so thoroughly gerrymandered that no ward had the possibility of a black majority. So Mrs. Lee, whom he had the grace to describe as “this good woman,” would do better to help her neighbors qualify to vote. The deep sense of inferiority imposed upon blacks over three centuries of submission is evidenced in Davis’s forthright declaration: I am a Negro man and I confess that the Negro is not prepared to take over and run this government and the white man has no cause to fear calamity if he has faith in his own intelligence. . . . The Negro, he continued, didn’t want to dominate the white man, but taxation without representation was as onerous now as it had been in 1776. All the Negro wanted, he concluded, was a fair voice in a system administered in the interests of all and not only of a part of the people. His closure was as eloquent as it was simple: “The Negro wants a working democracy based upon the principles of Christianity.”20

Deflationary Times: A Lingering Depression If delivery of goods for the growing defense program was measured in the billions, there were millions of Americans whose economics were on a humbler

Wednesday, December 3, 1941

79

scale. In Carrollton, Georgia, following a custom that had outlasted the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the first Tuesday in every month was Trading Day. Trading Day this week found a crowd of more than 200 milling around in the wagon yard between Louis Heatin’s mule barn and the Masonic Hall. What they brought to trade were the fraying and hard-worn goods of a hard-pressed peasantry. They brought their dogs: rabbit dogs, coon dogs, fox dogs, and bird dogs. There were all manner of musical instruments, guitars, banjos, fiddles, and mandolins. On display were broken shotguns crudely wired together. There was a miscellany of watches, ax handles, twist tobacco, and ancient bicycles. From time to time, one of the traders would stand on the high bank overlooking the wagon yard and yell: “I’ll give boot or take boot or swap even.” The reporter did not say that the people would slowly approach the seller. Instead it was “the folks” who would “mosey over” to see what he had to trade. It was noisy there in the wagon yard. Hound dogs were howling mournfully. Someone picked out chords to test a guitar. A whip was cracked as an owner tried to incent “an old rip mule to trot out and show his paces.” Mules were heehawing, and against all this background noise Carrollton laughed and talked. It was a sociable event. Taylor Criswell told the story of the raider of his hen house, when not only his eggs disappeared but also a painted wooden egg. The way he told it, six months later he killed a chicken snake and noted a bulge in the middle which he proclaimed with conviction turned out to be the wooden egg. Criswell then turned to business. He offered for sale six twists of tobacco for a quarter or “what’ll you trade,” sorghum syrup at fifty cents a gallon and ax handles made of seasoned hickory at a dime apiece. Frank Askew was a tall black boy in rubber boots. He came to swap his dog Cora and a fresh coonskin. A cross-eyed boy came by with a guitar. Askew reportedly plunked the strings and started to sing: I say gimme fried chicken when I’m hongry. Gimme white lightnin’ when I’m dry. Oh, I say, gimme fried chicken when I’m hongry. Gimme me white lightnin’ when I’m dry. Gimme me a good lookin’ brown skin woman In heaven when I die.21 Askew extolled Cora’s praises but the guitar owner didn’t need a dog or a coonskin. Newton King had a bicycle and a guitar but what he really wanted was a fiddle. Oscar Bush showed him a fiddle enhanced with fourteen rattlesnake rattles. That was to sweeten its tone, he said. King offered a dollar; Bush walked away from it, but when he slowly turned round and came back it was evident a deal was near, and in the end King got his fiddle and Bush a bicycle. C. E. Adams came “a tradin’” with a complete outfit consisting of a mule named Jack, a set of harness tied with string and a decrepit buggy. As traders will,

80

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

he extolled his mule: “it’s the perkiest stepping mule you ever saw, frisky as a feist dog.” His health was declining, said Adams, and he wanted to get rid of mule, buggy, harness and all, “like she stands.” It was a complicated business, but in the end, with a watch making part of the bargain, a buyer led off the mule named Jack still hitched to the buggy. It was trading day in Carrollton. “And how’ll you swap?”22 Carrollton was a small town; Houston and Harris County, Texas, formed a large metropolitan area. But the budget adopted by the Harris County Board of Public Welfare was, to say the least, modest. With a 1940 population of 384,514, it planned its 1942 welfare expenditures at $363,000, $25,000 less than the 1941 request, $21,733 less than the 1941 approved budget, and $10,489 less than actual expenses over the year. Based upon these stringent appropriations, the Houston Chronicle editorialized, the county was fulfilling its pledge to the community, and would attempt to meet its responsibilities without spending one dollar more than was absolutely necessary. The poverty of cash contrasted to the wealth of complacency was enshrined in the closing observation that “It has become the solemn patriotic duty of every possible official and every citizen to restrict all expenditures to vital and essential items.”23 * Depression could not extinguish America’s love for the automobile. But as in so many aspects of life, people adapted. Conrad Pontiac in Englewood, Colorado, offered a ’31 Hudson sedan at $65, a ’31 Studebaker coupe at $75 and a ’32 Buick coupe at $95. They might not, the dealer said, show low mileage on their speedometers but he emphasized they were “GOOD TRANSPORTATION.” At the upper end of the market Mountain Motors offered a late-model ’40 Packard four-door trunk sedan equipped with radio, heater, and overdrive at $895. Its maker urged prospective buyers to “Ask the Man Who Owns One.” Radios and heaters were not likely to be original equipment, and cars equipped with them commanded higher prices. When radios were first offered to car buyers there was concern about distractions that would cause accidents. But the market and the driving public had by 1941 taken this in stride. The ’31 models selling at less than $100 in their time would have been classed as “jalopies.” But there were available many later-model cars at extremely low prices: at Denver Buick, Inc., a ’36 Plymouth Deluxe Coupe at $295, a ’34 Chevrolet Coupe for $165, and a ’33 Buick Coupe with “new paint” at $125. The solid middle class of car buyers was represented by a ’37 Buick Special four-door trunk sedan with radio and heater for $475, a ’37 Olds Club coupe with radio, heater, and sport lite at $395 and a ’38 Buick Convertible Coupe with radio, heater, low miles and “very clean, priced to sell.”24 * It was not only in automobiles that the price levels of a deflationary era are still capable of surprising us today. One of Denver’s leading department stores, May Company, offered “prep suits,” fingertips, and overcoats at two for $19. In men’s

Wednesday, December 3, 1941

FIGURE 7.2

81

Tojo, Mussolini, and Hitler (see color plate section).

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, 2591244.

sizes, the careful buyer could find suits in tweed, cheviot, and cashmere handfinished fabrics, single or double breasted, or the new drape models, at two for $33. The same price applied to overcoats in heavy winter-weight fabrics. In an age when adolescent boys made the transition from knickers to long trousers, “longies” sold for $2.00. Women could buy rayon, crepe or satin slips, tailored, embroidered or lace trimmed, at three for $2.00. A household essential, wool blankets were reduced from $2.59 to $2.00 a pair. Christmas was on the way, and Santa could have filled his capacious bag with a wide array of toys: an easel-type blackboard, dolls with moving eyes, a heavy steel wagon, a dial typewriter, adjustable roller skates or a rotary type printing press, all of them two for $2.00.25

82

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Human Interest: All-American Girl The scope of the defense program may have been expressed in billions of dollars but it would take the work of multitudes of modest workers in modest positions to move the program toward its goals. One of these, reported in The Washington Post, was Margelee Hollingsworth of Acadia, Florida, population 4,055. Not without trepidation, Margy emerged from Washington’s Union Station, twentytwo years and ninety-eight pounds of hope and ambition.26 It had been a difficult decision, leaving home for the first time. But there were exciting possibilities: larger opportunities than Acadia could offer, an increase in salary, new people. In the manner of young women of the era, Margy powdered her nose and straightened the seams of her stockings in the cab that took her to the Navy personnel office. Standing in a long line, she was amazed at how quickly things went; and she emerged a clerk-typist in the Navy’s Torpedo Section at an annual salary of $1,440. She found the tempo of life fast by the standards of Acadia. Everyone walked fast and no one on the street said “Good morning” or “Howdy” to Margy. She soon realized why. In Acadia, everyone was acquainted; in Washington, nobody knew her. She found a home at the Belmont Gardens where 160 “government boys and girls” also lived. A week later she wrote home in wide-eyed wonder: “This is a wonderful town. There are so many things to see here.” After a month, dipping her pen in the ink bottle (the ballpoint pen was in the future) she wrote home that she was enjoying herself very much and that Washington was right in the middle of things. But taking up her pen again, not to her parents but to her diary, she confessed: “I’m terribly homesick.” She worried, too, about how Dad’s citrus was coming along. Things were brighter by the fourth month. She went out dancing at a nightclub. She faithfully recorded the event. The boy was nice, the club was nice, too. It was, she reflected, like going juking, “only you didn’t have to put in any nickels.” At the Belmont Gardens, Margy’s prim, plump roommate played the piano while others of her fellow residents gathered ’round in song. Returning to her room, Margy looked for a small cardboard box in her bureau drawer. It contained her collection of demitasse spoons. It was certainly growing. One wonders about Margy’s further career in the nation’s capital. One wonders, too, if she ever went back to Acadia. * Human interest stories like Margy’s could also be presented in photographs. A photo spread in The Oregonian featured landing-craft practice at McNeil Island in Puget Sound. Fifteen men were needed to carry the coffin of 815-pound Ruth Pontico. Primary schoolers were a perennially popular topic, and this edition showed students creating posters for the annual Ainsworth Grade School Carnival. Youth and age were combined in the picture showing one-time presidential candidate Al Smith “tripping the light fantastic” with a chorine from Olson and Johnson’s Sons o’ Fun.

Wednesday, December 3, 1941

83

Human Interest: A Fatal Shooting Stories of crime were and are a journalistic staple. The most celebrated are capital crimes and among these, surpassing crimes rooted in money or revenge, are crimes of passion, especially when a beautiful and sympathetic woman kills her lover. The trial of Lucyle Richards in Houston for the fatal shooting of her employer, Frank Dew, a wealthy Houston cattleman, had all the elements guaranteed to command a fascinated public. She was clad all in black—dress, shoes, hose, coat, and a dramatically flared offthe-face black hat. The defendant’s face was fixed in a solemn mask that never varied throughout the proceedings. Sitting with her during the trial were her sister, Mrs. Shirley Fitzgerald of Alvin, Texas, and “Sis” Martin, the cowgirl singer. The defendant was a professional bull rider and an eleven-year rodeo performer. She had been employed by Dew to ride bucking broncos in the first rodeo held in the new Sam Houston Coliseum and thereafter to break wild horses and train roping horses for him at a salary of $200 a month and board for her own horse. But Dew had paid only half the salary, a circumstance that must have aggravated the tension between the two. Emblematic of the defendant’s spirit of adventure, she was also a licensed aviation pilot, an accomplishment rare at the time and rarer still for a woman. Her marital history was as turbulent as her professional career. First married to Tex Richards, she had subsequently wed both Charley Bright and Donald M. Taft, Jr. The timing of these marriages and attempted annulments were key factors in the case. These marital proceedings notwithstanding, the defendant testified that she had been intimate with Dew and indeed that he had promised to marry her. In this tangled web of relationships the defendant testified that she had married Bright and Taft to get away from Dew and because, in testimony bound to appeal to the jury, she wanted a home, a family, and children. There were strands of conflicting passions here. While the defendant testified that she was trying to escape Dew, she also testified that he had threatened her with death if she did not procure an annulment of her most recent marriage to Taft and marry him. Another dark undertone in the case was insurance. It appeared that Dew had taken out $15,000 of insurance on the life of the defendant and then had the policy proceeds assigned to himself. In an altercation between the two, Dew had angrily told the defendant that she was worth more to him dead than alive. The defendant had spent part of the fatal afternoon waiting for weather to clear to give some friends an airplane ride. Called by Dew, she proceeded to his fashionable River Oaks apartment where he angrily accused her of failing to procure an annulment of her marriage to Taft. The defendant testified that Dew slapped her, knocked her down, picked her up, and violently shook her by the armpits. It was then that the defendant reached into her purse for her 25-mm handgun. In the ensuing struggle the defendant testified that she never had her finger on the trigger, that the gun had “exploded,” with results fatal to Dew. Why did the defendant carry a handgun? She testified that Dew had insisted she carry it for her own protection. She further testified that often, on drives in the country with Dew, they had competed in shooting at road signs and fence posts,

84

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

testimony bound to appeal to anyone who has ever driven the rural roads of Texas. The defendant testified that she had usually been the victor in such contests; this must have added to the tensions between the two. The courtroom was crowded for the closing argument by Assistant District Attorney A. C. Windborn; it was said to be the most brilliant and stirring of his career. Juries do not bring in a verdict until they have had one or more meals at the expense of the county, and it was only after dinner that the jury retired for the evening.

Diversions: Arts and Entertainment War dominated the new books of the season. Among the most popular was William L. Shirer’s Berlin Diary, his narrative of the swelling power of Nazi Germany as seen by a “neutral” observer. Former communist Jan Valtin had warned of the threat of Nazi Germany before a recent audience in Houston. The message was that America must be involved because its vital interests were at stake; and he expounded this theme at length in his best-seller Out of the Night. With the Soviet Union’s gallant defensive battle much in the headlines, an audience was assured for The Soviet Power: Why the Soviet Union Will Help Defeat Hitler by the unshakably contrarian Hewlett Johnson, the “Red Dean” of Canterbury. Perhaps it was the quest for certainty in an uncertain world that made the prognostications of Nostradamus of 400 years ago pertinent. But all reading did not focus on events on the world stage and popular fiction included The Strange Woman by Ben Ames Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Cugat by Isabelle Scott Rorick, Now, Voyager by Olive Higgins Prouty and The Hill of Doves by South African novelist Stuart Cloete. * The glitter and glamour of Hollywood had provided diversion, entertainment, and moments of joy during the dark years of the depression. They would perform the same function against growing threats of war. Everybody went to the movies; everyone loved the movies; and the goings-on of the people who made and performed in the movies were topics of perennial interest. Fans of the Andy Hardy series depicting the joys and woes of an irrepressible adolescent were glad to learn that Mickey Rooney, Lewis Stone, Cecilia Parker, Ann Rutherford and Fay Holden would soon be before the cameras filming The Courtship of Andy Hardy. What made this news even pleasanter was the return to the series of Cecilia Parker after her absence because of a contractual dispute with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Paramount was on the verge of signing Gary Cooper to play Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls. For the role, Cooper would be on loan from Samuel Goldwyn. Twentieth Century Fox had signed Spring Byington to replace Helen Broderick in Rings on Her Fingers, and Olivia de Havilland was to be tested for the female lead in Warner’s Saratoga Trunk after Irene Dunne had abandoned the role. It was a sign of Hollywood times that the Disney Organization had just delivered “The Thrifty Pig,” the first of four defense cartoons for the Canadian government.

FIGURE 7.3

See color plate section.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Life Begins for Andy Hardy poster from Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.

86

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

If America was not yet at war, Disney was. Three of the short subjects concerned war savings, but the fourth demonstrated the operation of anti-blitzkrieg weapons to be used for recruit training in the Canadian forces. * It was a great age for radio. In Chicago, 8:00 p.m. found Eddy Cantor presenting singer Dinah Shore, announcer Harry Von Zell, colorful party hostess Elsa Maxwell and glamorous French actor Jean Sablon. Also bidding for prime time were Fred Allen, whose gallery of comic characters included the vocal Senator Claghorn and the immortal Mrs. Pansy Nusbaum (you were expecting maybe Mrs. Harrison Williams?). With Allen were his wife, Portland Hoffa, singer Kenny Baker, intriguing French actress Simone Simon and monologist Joe Phipps. In addition to keeping Americans entertained, radio kept them informed of breaking news, with news broadcasts on the quarter hour on most stations.

Diversions: The World of Sport December was the off-season for baseball but action was hot and heavy, as always, in the Hot Stove League, named for time-honored gatherings around the pot-bellied stove of the general store. There dedicated fans learnedly discussed statistics from baseball’s rich trove of records and fiercely debated preferences and dislikes for teams and for players, most notably in the Major Leagues. It was, therefore, sensational news that twenty-six-year-old Mel Ott had been named manager of the New York Giants in succession to Bill Terry. Ott, a Hall of Famer, had been from 1934 an All-Star. The first National Leaguer to hit 500 home runs, he carried a career batting average of .304. He had been personally selected and tutored by baseball immortal John McGraw, who had first seen him as a sixteen-year-old and had sagely advised him never to change his unorthodox batting stance. There were concerns about Ott’s mild manner, so different from the fiery McGraw’s. Indeed, it was of Ott that the Dodgers’ then-manager Leo Durocher pronounced his celebrated bon mot: “Nice guys finish last.” Ott would fulfill McGraw’s prediction that he would never leave the Giants, spending his entire twenty-year career there as player and manager. Part of the sensation of Ott’s appointment was his salary, raised precipitously from $18,000 to $25,000 a year. It was a salary that recalled Babe Ruth’s celebrated response to the comment that his $80,000 contract in 1931 was more than the salary of the President of the United States: “I had a better year than he did,” he replied.27

The Social Spectrum: Pretty Daughters In The Atlanta Constitution Sally Forth reported that the diminutive figure on the dance floor surrounded by the stag line at some debutante affair would be Mimi Pappenheimer. She was, the report allowed, the personification of cuteness. “Scarcely five feet in height, laughing blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, her brown hair arranged in a striking fashion or after a mode strictly her own—that’s

Wednesday, December 3, 1941

87

Mimi.” The newspaper reported in detail her “quaint costumes” featuring offthe-shoulder necklines and voluminous skirts for formal wear. She was, the reader was informed, sophisticated, and always at the height of fashion, indeed looking like a page out of Vogue. It would surely raise the self-esteem of Atlantans of a certain class to know that their Mimi was unquestionably Vogue-worthy. She was to make her formal bow at a luncheon given by her mother on Friday, December 12, in the family home. Father Jack Pappenheimer was very much a part of these celebrations. He planned to host a cocktail party on Saturday at the Piedmont Driving Club, and had invited 100 guests “to meet his pretty daughter.”28 * Pleased as they may have been with the chic of their friends and familiars, provincials looked to New York as the undisputed capital of fashion. At Henri Bendel’s showing, slim-skirted day dresses contrasted with evening wear in voluminous folds of nets and taffeta. Splashy prints were chic: white angels disported themselves on the gray background of one evening dress while another white gown showed black figures performing calisthenics. If Jay Thorpe offered vivid colors—Tropic Red, Palm Green, Gulfstream Blue, Bimini Blue, and Florida Orange—he also presented contrasting black slacks, shorts, and bathing suits. In a conservative era, a black bathing suit featured a “rippling ballerina skirt.” There was also a ski toga. And one wishes to have seen the costume inspired by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police featuring a red jacket, a Sam Browne belt and a red woolen coat with navy facings and lining. All frames of reference were shattered when this striking costume was followed by an equally eye-catching after-ski costume. It consisted of a red velvet arrangement of harem pajamas with a wide embroidered belt and cuffs or alternatively a costume with one pajama leg blue and the other red velvet, with a black bodice and a wide sash “for the cocktail dinner hour.” One questions the amount of time the wearers of these costumes spent on the slopes and the degree of skill they displayed there.29

The Social Spectrum: Patriotism Interwoven Houston’s social traditions were the equal of Atlanta’s. Miss Ruth Pilkenton was married to Walter Scott Red at the First Presbyterian Church. Dr. Charles L. King read the marriage service. The organist played as a prelude “Ave Maria” from Otello by Verdi, “Claire de Lune” by Debussy and “My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice” by Saint-Saëns. Swelling to a crescendo, the choir of the First Presbyterian Church sang “Oh Perfect Love” and brought the music to a climax with the singing of “The Bridal Chorus” from Lohengrin. But on the same day, tradition and patriotism were interwoven. At the Junior League luncheon given by Mrs. T. M. Noorsworthy and her daughter, Mrs. M. Kirk Harrison, to honor Miss Martha Burton on her approaching marriage to John Bute II, the table was done in a Victory motif with a centerpiece of delphinium, white roses, and red carnations arranged in a pyramid effect in a Spode container on a pedestal. The bride-to-be wore a Victory pin.

88

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Atlanta Constitution, December 3, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 4 Washington Post, December 3, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 24 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 5 Atlanta Constitution, December 3, 1941, 5 Houston Chronicle, December 3, 1941, 6A Chicago Tribune, December 3, 1941, 13 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 3 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 33 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 24 Houston Chronicle, December 3, 1941, 2 Oregonian, December 3, 1941, 16 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 46 Washington Post, December 3, 1941, 8 Atlanta Constitution, December 3, 1941, 6A Denver Post, December 3, 1941, back page Houston Chronicle, December 3, 1941, A5 Atlanta Constitution, December 3, 1941, 4 Atlanta Constitution, December 3, 1941, 9 Atlanta Constitution, December 3, 1941, 41 Atlanta Constitution, December 3, 1941, 24 Houston Chronicle, December 3, 1941, 2B Denver Post, December 3, 1941, 31 Denver Post, December 3, 1941, 10 Washington Post, December 3, 1941, 33 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 34 Atlanta Constitution, December 3, 1941, 14 New York Times, December 3, 1941, 30

8 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1941

FIGURE 8.1

See color plate section.

Poster by Ben Shahn. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.4812:A-25.

A World in Flames: The Fighting Fronts In North Africa, rain and cold complicated operations but the Royal Air Force remained active. Meantime, rebellion and repression were raging across the European continent. There were shootings and bombings in Paris. In Brussels,

90

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

students mounted a strike against Nazi-appointed professors. The Germans launched a major offensive against irregular forces in Yugoslavia. The principal theater of operations in Europe remained the Eastern Front. On its southern reaches, the rout of German forces from Rostov continued with the Russians sweeping through Taganrog toward Mariupol. The Germans were compelled to throw in reinforcements from their Perekop garrisons to stem fleeing units of the defeated armies of Col. Gen. Paul Ludwig von Kleist. In scenes that would be repeated as Mussolini’s Russian venture collapsed again and again, the Russians reported the capture of two Italian divisions that were seeking in vain to stem the Russian offensive. At the same time, the Soviets launched major attacks along the entire front. The pivot of this gigantic struggle was in the front before Moscow, where the German command acknowledged heavy Russian counterattacks. From Leningrad in the north to Rostov and the Caucasus in the south, the military scene was one that observers would scarcely have forecast on June 22, the day Hitler had launched his massive attack on the Soviet Union.1 * Another critical battle was being fought every hour of every day across the often turbulent surface of the Atlantic. Britain could survive, but only with an unimpeded flow from the United States of the machines and munitions of war and the necessities of its population. In later years, Churchill remarked that throughout the war his greatest concern had been the war in the Atlantic, where defeat could fatally disable Britain’s war effort. The reality of this threat was exemplified by the battle of October 30–31 when the U.S. destroyer Reuben James, on convoy duty, was attacked by a U-boat and suffered the loss of 100 of its crew in a threehour battle that it survived.2 There had been German reports of the sinking of four merchantmen in a November North Atlantic convoy; and Canadian reports indicated the presence of U-boats off the coasts of Nova Scotia and the Labrador. Thus it was with “unmistakable satisfaction” that Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, at a weekly press conference, dropped a broad hint that the U.S. and the Royal Navies had found an answer to the submarine menace. The Secretary was coy; he had no details but told the assembled reporters that a reading of their own newspaper files would tell a good story. What the files revealed was that neither Britain nor the United States had reported the loss of a merchant ship since the Reuben James’s October 30–31 battle. The conclusion could be drawn either that the U-boats were becoming less effective or that antisubmarine efforts were becoming more effective. In the USS Kearney’s U-boat battle on the night of October 21–22, it had sustained torpedo damage and limped into an Iceland port with ten dead and eleven wounded. But news of the engagement was released only on December 3, indicating reticence in such disclosures.3 As the long subsequent course of the battle of Atlantic was to demonstrate, any feelings of “unmistakable satisfaction” were totally premature. * The Atlantic battles emphasized the extent to which the United States was becoming both the arsenal and the depot of Britain and consequently the extent to

Thursday, December 4, 1941 91

which the two economies were coordinating. The German response was logical. Germany was also to coordinate production of factories in France, Bohemia, Belgium, and elsewhere, all at the service of its economic and war machine. Germany was recruiting French workers for service in German industries, thus reducing unemployment in France, where in addition, some 1,800,000 French were prisoners of war. A unified European economy had long been discussed, debated, and dreamt of. The pressures of war seemed fitfully to advance its cause.4

The Threat of War: Continuing Conversations While awaiting a response to the President’s inquiry concerning the reinforcement of Japanese troops in French Indo-China, Secretary of State Hull held a press conference to report on continuing conversations with the Japanese envoys. Participants came away from the conference with a distinct impression: the gap between the positions of the two countries was so wide that it left no room for further negotiations. That indeed was what the Secretary said: since he did not know if or when Japan would reply to the President’s request, or to his own

FIGURE 8.2

Cordell Hull, Henry Morgenthau, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Franklin D.

Roosevelt. Photo by Harris & Ewing. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LCDIG-hec-47149.

92

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

statement, he could not predict further negotiations. Mr. Hull had diplomatically referred to the Japanese envoys as friends and the President had in his own press conference called Japan a “friendly power” and moreover one “with which the United States was at peace.” But these words could not disguise the basis of American policy and its direct contrast, not to say conflict, with Japanese values and positions. Mr. Hull said that Japan’s policies were based upon force in stark contrast to American policy based upon “law, justice and morals,” pursued by peaceful means. These were policies unlikely to evoke a positive Japanese response. Mr. Hull reviewed the long course of exploratory discussions in Tokyo between Admiral Nomura and American embassy staff, and discussions in Washington between the President and the Japanese Ambassador, all searching for a basis for negotiation. Mr. Hull had kept other nations, Great Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, and China, informed of these discussions so that if an accord were reached, it could cover a peaceful settlement across the continents, islands, seas, and populations of the Pacific.5 * The Washington Post portrayed a very different Secretary of State from the one who spoke of friends and friendship and exhaled pieties about the virtues of American principles. In its report, Hull charged Japan with a policy of conquest and military despotism, concluding that nothing in seven months of negotiations had narrowed the divide between Japanese and American positions. This narration charged that Japanese policy was based upon the use of force, as an instrument of policy, and in every way—political, economic, social, and moral—both at home and in the conquered territories. The Secretary of State might have been charged with a certain naiveté in so lately discovering the relationship between force and policy. He noted that a policy of force meant the conquest of the territories of others and the establishment of military despotism and control over the lives of conquered people. It was at this point that the Secretary claimed for his country a basic doctrine of justice and equality in the treatment of nations, in commercial relationships, and in the peaceful settlement of disputes. In the end the conclusion reported in The Washington Post coincided with The New York Times report: the gulf between the two nations had never been wider and had never reached a stage at which fruitful negotiations could begin.6 * The Japanese press did not respond favorably to the pieties of the Secretary of State. Quite to the contrary, The Japan Times Advertiser, a Foreign Office organ, categorized the behavior of Britain and the United States as “scandalous” and “beyond understanding.” Rather than responding to charges of Japanese presence in Thailand, it predicted that that unhappy country would soon be occupied by Allied troops. Hochi charged that the whole Far Eastern crisis was a manufactured product of British propaganda, meant to justify military action while the United States played for time with its Washington conversations. These were mirror images of the parties and their positions. But without regard to the alleged massing of the forces of the ABCD powers in the Far East, and irrespective of the Washington

Thursday, December 4, 1941 93

conversations, Hochi lauded Japan’s progress on her “immutable policy” of organizing a self-sufficient Co-Prosperity Sphere including Japan, Manchukuo, and China in response to the imperative need for Japanese self-sufficiency. Finance Minister Tsuneji Taniguchi saw Japan’s policy not as aggression but as defense. A highly organized national defense was to him the basic condition of a Japanese policy grounded on a self-sufficient supply of essential commodities in a joint economic structure of Japan, Manchukuo, and China. Nichi Nichi was more open and less inclined to rely upon platitudes. We frankly admit that we are determined to become the leading factor, a stabilizing factor, in East Asia. We tried to realize our ambition without the use of force. We have not hesitated in taking recourse to arms wherever our right to grow and prosper was obstructed or our national existence endangered. We are proud of our defensive wars in the East. We shall proudly rise on similar occasions in the future. If America does not want us to use force, she must side with us in the removal of the causes that make it necessary to utilize force. It added that if the existence of Western colonies in the Far East was a license to meddle in Japan’s affairs, then the Western powers ought to lose those colonies.7 These bellicose statements notwithstanding, Saigon radio announced that Tokyo had pledged not to send additional troops into French Indo-China and to refrain from using Indo-China bases for attacks on Thailand or the Burma Road. Indeed, the Japanese Embassy spokesman in Bangkok said that Japanese troops in Indo-China were no threat to Thailand. Japan, he said, did not want war: any outbreak of war depended upon Washington.8 * If diplomacy was at a standstill, other developments gave hope of a better outcome. The arrival of the British battle f leet in Hong Kong was thought by many to have raised the odds against war. These observers thought that a Japanese victory in South Asia might have been easy a year ago; today, however, Japan was faced with a desperate effort in which the chances of success were remote. The change in the balance of naval power, it was thought, might force Japan to abandon its more aggressive plans and return to the negotiating table.9 Deeply lodged in the American psyche and coloring perceptions of America’s role in the world crisis was a certain sense of disillusion, and of having been badly used in its participation during 1917–18 in the World War. The always colorful New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia spoke at the opening of a defense housing project adjoining the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He contrasted it to the adobe hut with a tent kitchen in which he had lived while his father served in the U.S. Army in Arizona. He expressed regrets common at the time: We were fooled once. We believed we had fought a war against war and would never again be called into a defense program for the protection of our rights as well as our shores.10

94

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

But facts were facts and American policy was creating enormous pressures in what The New York Times did not hesitate to call the siege of Japan. It noted that Japan proper supported seventy-eight million people in an area smaller than California and was surely far poorer in natural resources. Japan could scarcely sustain herself in foodstuffs and had to rely on other nations for the materials of war: petroleum, iron, steel, aluminum, lead, zinc, tin, machine tools, wood, and cotton. These were the stuff of what The Times labeled “a rigid economic blockade.” Conversely, American imports were down sharply, and the production of Japanese textile factories, a leading Japanese industry, had been slashed by 50 percent. Then there were the financial pressures created by a vast military expenditure inevitably leading to inflation.11 It was little wonder that while Japanese workmen were removing ferrous ornaments, fences, railings, and light posts for scrap metal, the Japanese press was charging the United States with a policy of encirclement aided and abetted by an alleged agreement with Australia for the use of strategic bases.12

America’s Role: Stern Editorial Realism Arthur Krock in The New York Times thought that the pessimism of the U.S. negotiators was not a ploy but represented reality. He reported a conversation with an unnamed policy maker who expected nothing good in Japan’s response to Secretary Hull’s statement. He added that it was conceivable that the Japanese would move aggressively at any moment. In what direction? The answer: to the south and to the west, through Indo-China and Thailand and possibly to the Netherlands Indies and Burma. And, the informant opined, Japan had ample troops to carry out such adventures. But what would inspire such desperate acts, Krock asked. To which his informant replied that Japan had followed the policy of force and aggression so long and so successfully, it had become ingrained in Japanese thought and outlook: German pressure and bribery were additional incitements to this kind of action.13 Walter Lippmann, writing in The Washington Post, concurred that the country was indeed on the verge of “actual all-out war.” But it was not the threat of the war that the isolationists had so insistently raised. The isolationists had fought for an arms embargo. They had fought against Lend-Lease, the transfer of U.S. destroyers to Britain, the occupation of Iceland and North Atlantic antisubmarine patrols. None of these issues played any part in the confrontation with Japan. The isolationists had fought against American embroilment in the European conflict; at the same time they had missed completely the real threat of war in the Pacific. Lippmann indignantly denied that there was any truth in conspiracy theories that the President had been maneuvering to engage the country in the war in Europe. To the contrary, Lippmann concluded: He [the President] has proved himself to be, whatever may be his other failings, a cool and far-sighted judge of the strategy of the war and every

Thursday, December 4, 1941 95

important move he has made has been in preparation—not for the imaginary war which the isolationists said was the duplicate 1917 but for this very real war which is now so nearly upon us. He has, it is true, often been indirect in his explanations and he has not stated openly and explicitly to the nation the whole problem, as he saw it, and his own intentions. That is regrettable, and the effect has been to cause much confusion.14 To Lippmann, the President had been negotiating patiently, searching for a way to avoid war, faced by an opposition both reckless and not so much uninformed as misinformed.15 The Post’s editorial page seconded Lippmann’s apprehensions. It surveyed the range of possible theaters of Japanese aggression and called for the thoroughgoing integration of defense plans by the Allied powers: the best chance for peace in the Pacific was to make it unmistakably clear to Japan that any further aggression would be met by a united defense. It further speculated that the Soviet Union would join in when its defense against the German invasion permitted.16 The Atlanta Constitution thoroughly approved of the President’s policy. He had asked a simple question—about Japanese troops in Thailand—and asked for a simple answer. This was the frank, honest, and open way; better than that, it was the American way, and it did not hesitate to say that the American way was the best way. To its editorialists the President’s question put Japan on the spot; she had either to explain what she was about or deliberately lose any chance of continued peace with the United States and Great Britain. According to one observer, special envoy Kurusu had brought a unique quality of politeness to the negotiations. But to The Constitution, the time for politeness had passed and the future demanded stern realism.17 * Newspaper reports and editorial opinions were a study in challenge and response. In front-page news, the Houston Chronicle reported Foreign Minister Togo’s statement that the Pacific crisis had become graver because the United States and Britain refused to understand the Japanese position. East Asia, Togo said, had sparked an unprecedented crisis. Great Britain, the United States and other countries simply refused to understand Japanese ideals and were hampering Japanese attempts to create a new order in East Asia, and indeed permanent peace and prosperity for all.18 The Chronicle addressed the issue with Texan bluntness and panache under the editorial headline “ANSWER THIS ONE, MR. TOJO.” The negotiations, it thought, must soon end. It had been a profitless discussion heading nowhere. The President and the Secretary of State had asked a simple question but one difficult to answer. The nation, it confidently asserted, was “fed up on Japan’s double dealing.” Japan had stretched American patience to the limit just as Japanese ingenuity would be stretched to the limit to show any reason for further negotiations.19

96

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

America’s Role: On the Domestic Scene Labor had gained new rights and new standing under the New Deal, not without a good deal of turbulence exemplified by the sit-down strikes of the thirties. Labor’s claims and the urgencies of the defense program were bound to collide. It was especially strikes in the defense industries that had aroused congressional concern. By a vote of 252 to 136, the House of Representatives passed an AntiStrike Bill, overriding the Administration’s request for less rigid legislation. Its proponents denied that the legislation was antilabor or a threat to labor’s gains under the New Deal.20 * In contrast to the buildup of the defense industries was the release of draftees who had served their year and were eligible for an honorable discharge. In the 30th Division 1,719 men were slated for discharge on December 10, with another 1,746 scheduled for release on March 1. The net result of discharges and transfers brought the strength of the 30th Division down to only 9,000, a sharp decline from 17,000 soldiers serving in the early fall.21 Perhaps these numbers reflected the circumstances that had moved Selective Service to “tighten up” on its classification and calls to duty. Draft boards were instructed to reexamine registrants classified 1-B who had been deferred for minor physical defects. The boards were also asked to reconsider some 19,000 single men deferred on the grounds of dependents. Another straw in the wind: the possibility of accepting some illiterates, hitherto ruled out. Parallel with the reconsideration of class 1-B was a rehabilitation plan: men with remedial physical defects could be treated by doctors and dentists at the expense of the government. This would make available many thousands of registrants who had previously been disqualified. An analysis of registrants by race illuminates many aspects of the situation of black Americans. Of white men, 20 percent were disqualified after having been approved by their local board doctor; the comparable figure for blacks was 28 percent. There was little to be proud of in these statistics. Colonel H. Cliff Hatcher, Assistant State Director of Selective Service, called the number of twenty-one-year-olds unfit for service “appalling.” He attributed it to “fast living.”22 In a more global perspective, it was announced that only 200,000 draftees were likely to be called up in the next seven months. The Army now had 1,600,000 men with plans for an army of 1,800,000 by the following June 30. Meanwhile the Army was planning equipment for a force of 3,200,000. Columnist Paul Mellon speculated that the Army would not bring in more than 2,000,000 soldiers “unless all-out war starts.”23 There were those who viewed the situation more urgently and did not wait to be called. Sixteen thousand Americans were engaged in the war as members of the Canadian forces.24 *

Thursday, December 4, 1941 97

One young woman’s sense of urgency matched that of Canada’s American volunteers. But she expressed it in an entirely different way. Velma Atwood was a twenty-three-year-old carhop at a drive-in restaurant. Unable to bear the thought of being separated from her boyfriend, she took a Frontier-model revolver and shot herself in the heart. At the hospital her condition was reported as serious. Responding to police questioning she said she feared her boyfriend, Claude Raymond Howell, age twenty-six, an escort motorcyclist for a mortuary, was about to be drafted. In a stark case of cognitive dissonance, she said she could not bear the thought of being separated from him.25

America’s Role: A House Divided Into the debate about America’s place in a world at war the Chicago Tribune dropped a bombshell. It charged that the administration was preparing plans for an army of ten million and an American Expeditionary Force of five million. It based its charge on a September 1941 report by the Army and Navy Joint Board, the high command of American forces, prepared pursuant to the President’s July 9, 1941, request to Secretary of War Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Knox to establish the economic requirements “to defeat our potential enemies.” Who were the potential enemies? The report named Germany, Italy, and occupied countries cooperating with Germany, Vichy France, Japan, Manchukuo, and possibly Spain and Portugal. The report envisioned the continuation of hostilities against this combination of enemies even if Britain and Russia were completely defeated. It saw Russia as militarily impotent by July 1942. The report projected the initial cost of such a program at $40 billion, rising to $120 billion by July 1942. At the same time, the Tribune reported on a White House conference of August 18, 1941, at which the President told congressional leaders about “secret confabulations at sea,” with Prime Minister Churchill calling for a land invasion of the European continent as the only feasible method of defeating Germany. Such an invasion, it said, could only be carried out with the aid of “a vast American expeditionary force.” The Tribune’s hero was Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, transatlantic aviation pioneer and isolationist icon. He had, it explained, been stigmatized as a defeatist, an appeaser and a Nazi sympathizer. It now insisted that the Joint Board report vindicated Lindbergh and adopted his thesis that England and the powers now fighting Germany could not defeat it. Nor were there sufficient bases in England for a successful bombing campaign against Germany.26 But the immediate problem facing a country on the verge of war in the Pacific was how the Joint Board envisioned an American response to the Japanese threat. The Board foresaw a strong defense of Siberia with such Russian assistance as might be available; a strong defense of Malaysia, an effective economic blockade, air raids over Japan, and a Chinese offensive against the forces of the Japanese occupation.27 These reports inspired incredulity. Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky rose on the Senate floor to denounce the Tribune’s story as “a deliberate falsehood.”

98

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Presidential secretary Steven T. Early indicated that there would undoubtedly be a federal investigation of how the Tribune and other newspapers were able to come by copies of the Joint Board report. It was significant that Early neither confirmed nor denied the story as reported in the Tribune. He only said that he had not yet talked to the President about it.28 Early elucidated two aspects of the Tribune’s report. He reminded his listeners that the United States operated on the basis of a free press, adding that it was the duty of the armed forces at all times to prepare plans for all eventualities. This was not to say that any single plan had been adopted much less put into operation. The Tribune embellished its charges with a powerful front-page graphic showing a group of helmeted patriots, chins upthrust, representing Chicago and the states of the Midwest firmly repelling a cloud of “War Propaganda” emitting from the Capitol dome.29 Beneath the graphic was a boxed quotation of words spoken by the President at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 20, 1940: The Republicans are seeking to frighten the country by telling the people the present administration is trying to put this nation into war or that it is inevitably drifting into war. You know better than that.30 The Tribune was consistent in its isolationist position. On the same day it released its war plans story it reported that the America First Committee, the primary isolationist organization, would campaign extensively in support of all representatives and senators who had voted against war measures, irrespective of their political affiliations. The list of scheduled speakers was headed, no surprise, by Colonel Lindbergh and included Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota; Senator Worth Clark of Idaho; William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, former Governor of Oklahoma; and, no surprise again, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who had cast the only vote against war in 1917. The intellectual integrity of the committee was vouched for by the president of Notre Dame, Reverend Clarence Manion, and its esthetic outreach by Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle, the celebrated dance team.31 * The conflicting views on American policy were exemplified by the race in Massachusetts’s Seventh Congressional District, where ten candidates vied for the seat vacated by the death of Representative Lawrence J. Connery. The three leading candidates spanned the range of policy positions. State Senator Joseph B. Harrington, who was a leader in the America First Committee, stood on an out-and-out isolationist platform. He was he said “100 percent opposed to President Roosevelt’s foreign policy and 100 percent in support of the Wheeler-Nye faction in Congress.” At the opposite pole was Thomas J. Lane, assistant Democratic floor leader in the Massachusetts Senate, who pledged his full support to

Thursday, December 4, 1941 99

the President’s foreign and domestic policy. Probably J. Fred Manning, a county commissioner, represented the opinion of many, if not most of the public in wanting to have it both ways. I stand steadfastly behind the foreign policy of President Roosevelt in getting all aid to the powers fighting the Axis without sending our boys across to fight on foreign soil. . . . He added that he would “never vote for war.”32 * For some the situation was not so simple as the alignment of America and its prospective allies against Germany and its satellites. Archbishop Michael James Curley of Baltimore issued a warning that the Soviet Union was “quite capable” of turning on the United States whenever doing so suited its purpose. It had reversed course once; it might well do so again. The archbishop did not hesitate to call Stalin the greatest murderer the world had ever known. He castigated the “moronic” Hollywood geniuses, the scions of millionaires, the university professors, and the writers who had flip-flopped from foes to friends of the Soviet Union in accordance with their instructions from Moscow. Once they had cried out for peace; now they cried for all-out war. And these included very specifically “Mrs. Roosevelt’s American Youth Congress.”33 * It was not only the prelates of the Catholic Church who inveighed against communism. In the more tranquil precincts of the editorial pages of The New York Times, communism was called an “evil force” among college and high school students, and a corrupting influence into the bargain. The nucleus of communist activity was the Young Communist League, which followed the familiar strategy of boring from within. There was nothing wrong, The Times observed, with a dislike of the Franco government in Spain or even with the supporting of lower admission charges for school dances. But behind their position on such respectable issues, the communists utterly rejected “bourgeois mentality” in its entirety. Communism, The Times wrote, was the sworn enemy of true education and, what was more, was the attempt of a minority to mislead and intimidate the majority.34 * If a fear of communism was abroad in the land, there was also a fear of its ideological twin, fascism. William A. Hamley, President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, speaking at a dinner in the Hotel Astor, said that at the end of the war the nation would have the enormous task of putting to work more than twenty-six million workers presently engaged in the defense industry. The alternative to placing fifteen to twenty million workers on WPA work and in

100

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

CCC camps was to create the necessary jobs in private industry; this was the best way to avoid fascism. If, Mr. Hamley speculated, there were on hand ten million orders for new cars in the first two years after the war, it would help enormously to bridge the gap from a wartime to a peacetime economy. It would enable the country to save its way of life and to avoid fascism.35 * In any era there have been oracles to whom journalists can reliably turn for a colorful and sometimes even trenchant quotation. In the field of heavy industry, one such was Henry Ford, who managed to combine a reputation for taciturnity with copious opinions and commentary. Henry Ford was an avowed pacifist. In a celebrated adventure he had attempted to stop the First World War with his Peace Ship. Now his production lines were humming with tanks, trucks, engines and weapons of war. When he was asked how he could reconcile his distaste for war with his company’s status as one of the very largest defense contractors, he had replied with a brevity that Calvin Coolidge might have admired: “It’s the law of the land, isn’t it?” Asked on December 3 by The Washington Post for his opinion, Ford was surprisingly literate and referred to Tennyson’s famous poem “Locksley Hall,” which foretold the silencing of the guns of war and a parliament of man, a worldwide federation. And if, Ford said, such a federation did not emerge from the war, then that war would have been nothing more than a dress rehearsal for one even more terrible. Unsurprisingly, Ford cited the United States as a “practical example” of such a federation. It had some states larger than whole countries in Europe but without Europe’s international boundary lines and without its different currencies, its customs barriers and its armies.36

Economic Indicators: Illegal Immigration Los Angeles had long been concerned with illegal immigration, especially with its financial impacts. Its City Manager calculated that there were in the county 17,500 aliens, about 80 percent of whom were Mexicans. He proposed to pay a $100 bonus to immigrants who would go back to Mexico “and start supporting themselves rather than continuing on the regular relief rolls” where they had been for several years. He feared that more than a few would collect the bonus, return to Mexico and then surreptitiously reenter the United States under a different name, thus positioning themselves again to become candidates for repatriation. According to the report, the Southern Pacific Railway had for a long time made half-price tickets available for the return of indigents to Mexico, only to see those tickets used by tourists. It recommended that any such bonus be paid in monthly installments, as a lump sum might attract abuse. He warned a good identification system was needed, if not an international protocol and a force of border rurales, to prevent repeating.37 The editorialist’s conclusions remind us how long the problem of immigration has existed, and how little has been done to address it.

Thursday, December 4, 1941 101

Life in These United States: Here and There Not all stories were concerned with momentous events, critical issues, and indeed the fate of nations. The public wanted stories of real people, appealing to the perennial human interest in the human condition. The Oregonian, pointing to the fact that 400 Oregonians had left their homes during the year to enter tuberculosis hospitals, urged its readers to support Christmas seals. Mrs. Ellen Fletcher, 108, thought to be the oldest woman in Britain, had had a narrow escape when a bomb fell in her neighborhood the previous winter. “This young fellow Hitler isn’t going to frighten me,” she said. She refused to wear her gas mask and kept busy knitting comforts for the armed forces. Enjoying a glass of beer, she was living proof that hearts of oak continued to thrive in Britain. At the Lucyle Richards trial, the jury had been out twenty-one hours. On the first ballot, seven jurors had voted for acquittal and five for conviction. The next morning (the morning of the 4th) the vote was six to six and the jury deliberated until after they had eaten lunch when the vote stood at eleven for acquittal. After asking for some of the evidence to be reread, the jury brought in a unanimous verdict of not guilty. Two jurors wept as the verdict was read but the defendant remained calm showing no emotion. She thanked the foreman of the jury and announced that she would join Taft who now appeared to be her legal husband. Asked about her plans, she said she hoped to fly bombers from American production lines to embattled Britain. Flying heavy bombers across tempestuous expanses of the wintry North Atlantic was a venture that might expose her to risks no graver than those she had faced before astride a bucking bronco or in the arms of a jealous lover. * Humor from time to time leavened the salinity of local and regional politics. In a mock rebellion, representatives of the border counties of California and Oregon gathered in a “territorial assembly” presumably to establish the new state of Jefferson. It proved to be a bloodless rebellion whose prosaic goals were to create publicity for the area and call for better highways. If there had been a vein of seriousness in the project, it soon faded and its rebels were left without a cause.38 * On the social scene, hands were joined across the sea in the matrimonial mart. Mrs. Josephine Armstrong Gwynne, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Armstrong of Glenns, Virginia, was to be married to the seventh Earl of Sefton, widely described as “one of England’s most eligible bachelors.” The Earl brought splendid possessions to the marriage, half the land on which the city of Liverpool stands. He was in addition the proprietor of the Aintree Race Course where the Grand National was run. The Earl also enjoyed distinction as Steward of the Jockey Club of Great Britain. Adorned with the stately name Hugh William Osbert Molyneux, he was a captain in the Royal Horse Guard Reserve, a graduate of Harrow and Sandhurst, and, finally, a former LordIn-Waiting to the King.

102

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

The prospective bride was not without her own connections. She had formerly been married to Erskine Gwynne, a grandnephew of the late Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. She was, in fact, a descendant of Jefferson Davis, President of the late Confederacy. The prospective bride had formerly been employed in a couture house in Paris where her first marriage had taken place. There were other distinguished heritages in the matrimonial news. Miss Ruth Berrien was engaged to Dr. Henry Morgenthau Fox, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Joseph Fox of Foxden, Peekskill, New York. Dr. Fox had graduated from Harvard and Johns Hopkins Medical School. He was a grandson of Henry Morgenthau, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a nephew of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury. Ms. Berrien, a Vassar alumna, labored on the editorial staff of Life magazine. Her antecedents included Cornelius Jansen Berrien, who had arrived in New York from Holland in 1669, and John MacPherson Berrien, Attorney General in the cabinet of President Andrew Jackson. We are left to contemplate the aphorism of Archy, the literary cockroach: “blood will tell, but sometimes it tells too much.”39 * Even customary diversions showed signs of change. More echoes of war: books advertised in The New York Times included The Devil in France by Lion Feuchtwanger and London Pride by Phyllis Bottome. Ebullient Ludwig Bemelmans turned his gaze aside from war and rumors of war with sparkling tales of the Hotel Splendide. A level of sophistication characteristic of Hotel Splendide was offered to the smokers of Phillip Morris cigarettes, who were promised a lower level of irritation and unspecified health benefits under the caption: “Finer Pleasure Plus Real Protection,” lauding “America’s Finest Cigarette.”40 At a banquet held to celebrate Fordham’s selection to play Missouri in the Sugar Bowl, the speakers were Fordham President Robert L. Gannon, S.J. and Coach Jim Crowley, one of Notre Dame’s immortal Four Horsemen. Father Gannon extolled a vision of football and of sport that has long since faded from the public consciousness, evoking the spirit of an earlier age: “We are extremely grateful to these young men and not only for their victories, but also because they have given to the country and to the name of Fordham a fine example of sportsmanship and every attribute that makes for a gentleman.”41 That times were changing was evident in a New York Times “Topic of The Times” which concluded, and not happily, that America’s national game was changing from baseball to football based on the attendance at the two sports. The Times pointed out that recently published statistics showed nearly 8.5 million spectators at 360 football games involving 74 colleges. Professional football, it added, would bring the audience beyond the ten-million mark. If comparable figures for baseball were not then and there available, The Times pointed out that in 1940 college football attendance had surpassed eight million while major-league baseball drew fewer than five million spectators. The trend appeared to The Times to be regrettably clear.

Thursday, December 4, 1941 103

Another commentator marveled at the proliferation of football bowl games. Once upon a time, he wrote, there had been the Rose Bowl at Pasadena. Then the heavens had opened up and rained bowls: the Sugar Bowl at New Orleans, the Sun Bowl at El Paso, the Cotton Bowl at Dallas, and the Orange Bowl at Miami. The commentator could envision a bowl of oranges. But who could capture the sun in a bowl or cotton that came, not in bowls, but in minute pharmacological containers? Then there was the matter of geography. Traditionally football had been played by “armored young giants in rain and mud and fog and snow.” Now they played in bowls named for roses, oranges, and sugar cane. The commentator foresaw future savage battles in the Magnolia Bowl, the Jasmine Bowl, the Oleander Bowl, and the Pineapple Bowl, all further evidence of the continuing Southern conquest of the football world.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

New York Times, December 4, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 3 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 3 Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, 7 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 4 Washington Post, December 4, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 16 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 24 Oregonian, December 4, 1941, 3 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 24 Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, 19 Washington Post, December 4, 1941, 19 Washington Post, December 4, 1941, 18 Atlanta Constitution, December 4, 1941, 6 Houston Chronicle, December 4, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 4, 1941, D2 Oregonian, December 4, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 4, 1941, 3 Atlanta Constitution, December 4, 1941, 3 Oregonian, December 4, 1941, 4 Washington Post, December 4, 1941, 5 Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1941, 2/4 Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, 10 Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, 10 Houston Chronicle, December 4, 1941, 12 Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, 1 Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, 1 Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, 18 Houston Chronicle, December 4, 1941, 24 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 3

104

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

New York Times, December 4, 1941, 24 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 16 Washington Post, December 4, 1941, 19 Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1941, 2/7 Oregonian, December 4, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 34 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 4, 1941, 36

9 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1941

A World in Flames: Continuing Campaigns Gigantic combats continued to rage across the breadth of Russia from Leningrad in the north to the Sea of Azov in the south. The Russians were maintaining heavy pressure in the south, where the Germans were rushing reinforcements from Crimea to fight delaying actions at Taganrog and in defensive lines around Mariupol, 100 miles west of Rostov where the Russian offensive had begun.1 The fog of war gave rise to prediction and its handmaiden speculation at every turn. Major General Piotr Kotoff of the Soviet tank army, bald, smiling, and stocky but radiating confidence, was one of the chief petroleum experts of the Soviet army. He opined that petroleum supplies for the German and Italian armies in Russia would be exhausted within two and a half or three months based on current operations. The enemy would then be forced to cut back its operations, especially in the mechanized and air forces. Indeed, General Kotoff thought, the Germans were already limiting their attacks because of fuel shortages and the deterioration of mechanized equipment due to poor-quality fuel supplies. In Libya, British air forces were bombing Axis troops trying to open a corridor to Tobruk. There was sporadic fighting elsewhere in Libya.2

The Threat of War: Comprehensive Plans The newspaper Hochi expressed its conviction that the ABCD states were preparing for an aggressive war in the Pacific. However much Japan might strive for peace, it would be compelled to stand up and break through its encirclement; in that case the responsibility would rest solely on America.3 Australia’s war cabinet studied comprehensive plans to place Australia on an emergency footing in the event of a Pacific war. The Prime Minister said that his cabinet had reviewed precautionary measures sufficient to meet any contingency and that further precautions would be taken as needed. The Australian cabinet

106

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

viewed with satisfaction the arrival of the British fleet in Singapore as a reinforcement of Australia’s northern defenses. In Singapore itself, it was thought that the British fleet would make Japan more hesitant to embark upon a course of aggression, and that the battleship-led British fleet had deeply affected Japanese policy, placing it on the defensive.4

America’s Role: Atlantic Engagement If the American public were fascinated observers of these far-flung combats, they also had an active role to play. In a report soon to be in the hands of President Roosevelt, it was calculated that the cost to the United States of defeating Germany would be between $120 and $150 billion. This was not in any way connected to the program alleged by the Chicago Tribune for a drafted army of ten million men and a five million–man expeditionary force for active operations in Europe. The day’s papers included the furious storm of charges and countercharges, all of which were fully and colorfully reported. There was one theater where the United States was actively engaged. The U.S. destroyers Kearney and Reuben James had both been the victims of German U-boat attacks while escorting Atlantic convoys. It was now reported that the USS Salinas, an armed tanker, proceeding in convoy about 700 miles off the Newfoundland coast had been attacked by two torpedoes, one of which had blasted a hole in the tanker’s side. Following “Shoot on Sight” orders, the gun crew of the Salinas promptly returned fire and “apparently” scored a hit on the U-boat. Salinas Captain Harley H. Cope showered praise upon his crew in which the nation might well take pride: The conduct of the personnel during the entire period was exemplary. At the time of the first explosion there was not the slightest hesitation on the part of the bridge personnel in carrying out the prescribed instructions regarding signals to be made, safety to personnel, and saving the ship.5,6

America’s Role: Deadlock in the Far East The Japanese press of the preceding days and weeks had been full of stories reporting the growing tensions between Japan and the United States based upon divergent policies and philosophies. It is therefore puzzling that on this day the newspaper Asahi characterized as a “bombshell” the disclosure of the substance of the thenpending Japanese–American discussions. Asahi focused on American insistence upon Hull’s Statement of American Principles as a basis of further negotiations. Asahi was not alone. Domei, the Japanese news agency, declared: “It is utterly impossible for Japan to accept the stipulations of the American document, . . . which cannot serve as a basis of Japanese–American negotiations henceforth.” The American principles, it said, were “obsolete” and into the bargain, “incompatible with the actual Far Eastern conditions even of bygone days.”7 Finance Minister Kaya told the East Asia Economic Council that “You are well aware of the fact that both Britain and America now are being compelled to

Friday, December 5, 1941

107

withdraw from East Asia.” Expanding his theme, he lauded the victories achieved under the Emperor, which were laying the foundation for a new order in East Asia. He added that American freeze orders and embargos were “acts of economic war” that could only serve to spur enthusiasm for this new order. But Japanese Ambassador to the United States Nomura struck a different and more conciliatory note, after a twenty-five minute visit to the State Department with his government’s undisclosed reply to President Roosevelt’s inquiry as to the massing of Japanese troops in French Indo-China. Asked by reporters about the prospects for continuing negotiations Nomura said, “As far as we are concerned, we are always willing to talk—after all, we are a friendly nation.” Nor did the Japanese envoy offer any reply to Secretary Hull’s note of November 25 outlining American principles for the settlement of Pacific problems.8 Another approach to the resolution of the impasse was a Japanese proposal for a three-month truce that might serve as a cooling-off period and allow a partial resumption of trans-Pacific trade. But continuing Japanese activity in Indo-China, and the failure to respond to President Roosevelt’s inquiry there, made such a proposal unacceptable to the United States. The resumption of trade relations while Japan was expanding its military position in Indo-China made for a one-sided proposal even if accompanied by Admiral Nomura’s remark that “there must be wise statesmanship to save the situation.” To The New York Times this seemed almost like sarcasm directed at policy makers in Tokyo.9 * Meanwhile the President was busy canvassing congressional leaders about the Far Eastern situation. They advised Congress to remain in session and to limit recesses to two or three days during the Christmas holiday period, considering the seriousness of the impasse in the Far East. The notion was bipartisan. Senator McNary, Republican of Oregon, promised to block any attempt at a recess longer than three days, while Democratic House members were advised not to travel beyond an area from which they could promptly return to the Capitol. The seriousness of the situation was underlined by Democratic House floor leader John W. McCormack of Massachusetts, who said that the Far Eastern situation had been thoroughly reviewed in connection with the defense of U.S. territory and its vital interests in the East. There were about 4,500 natives of Japan in Mexico, of whom probably 2,500 were Japanese subjects. What was the significance of the announcement by Japanese Minister to Mexico Miura that he and his second secretary, Hitoshi Satoh, had been recalled by Tokyo and would travel home with any other Japanese subjects who also wished to return?10 * As the threat of war mounted, whether in the Far East or elsewhere, military preparedness was the essential underlayment of any policy. The Congress took note of this in considering a third supplemental defense appropriation of some $8 billion. The bill, it was said, was “needed to win” and would tell Japan “that we mean business.” It may well have told more about the state of American opinion

108

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

than any number of diplomatic pronouncements. The $8 billion would go to the Army and would provide materiel for a force of 3,200,000 men. In this bitter conflict of principles, assets and arms, a straightforward conclusion could this day be drawn, and it was, on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, in these words: Foreboding statements at Tokyo and significant developments here tonight indicated an imminent major break in the Far Eastern crisis—one upon which may hang the question of peace or war.11

America’s Role: Deep Distrust at Home What did the American people think of the clash that had led their country to the brink of war? What did the American people know? They knew, in Will Rogers’s celebrated observation, what they read in the papers. We are accustomed today to lightning polls and instant analysis. The New York Times thought it important that there was “overwhelming press support” for Washington’s policy. Curiously, as Walter Lippmann had pointed out, the eyes of the isolationists were focused solely on Europe while the real danger of a real war loomed on the Pacific horizon. The Times thought that the American people were swayed by their long history of friendship with the Chinese people and their dislike for Japan’s long-standing aggression. Americans thought perhaps the ultimate hope of avoiding war lay in collaboration with the other powers—Britain, China, Russia, and the Netherlands— whose interests in peace were closely aligned with their own. Thus, The Times editorialized: there could not be the slightest doubt that the country was strongly behind the Administration in this crisis with Japan.12 Things looked different in Chicago. It was with undisguised satisfaction that the Chicago Tribune reported on the “unprecedented” response to its report the day before of “The Roosevelt administration’s secret plan for a foreign war.” Rallying to the attack, Representative George Holden Tinkham, Republican of Massachusetts, did not hesitate to say that the article was proof of the betrayal of the American republic by the Roosevelt administration. In the House of Representatives, “alarmed” representatives had delayed further consideration of the Administration’s $8 billion request for a supplemental arms appropriation. The possibility was lofted that the measure would be sent back to the Appropriations Committee. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Democrat of Montana, telephoning from Pueblo, Colorado, said he would sponsor a resolution demanding that the administration state publicly whether it had plans for “a huge AEF” in Europe. The Tribune was pleased to report that copies of the paper had swiftly disappeared from newsstands and from the Senate library when that body convened. The Tribune was further pleased to report that the story had “caused shocked street comment throughout the nation” and that in London, which showed avid interest in it, the report had stirred hopes that “the Yanks are coming again.” Readers of the Tribune would not

Friday, December 5, 1941

109

be surprised by the paper’s conclusion that so large an expeditionary force would be needed to achieve, at immense expense, its fundamental object: “to preserve the British Empire.”13 The London Daily Telegraph considered the story “a smart piece of journalistic enterprise” but one which “very nearly approached the treasonable.” Calmer heads tried to explain the report as merely a study of a possible situation, and not a plan for an actual expeditionary force. In an entertaining colloquy, Representative Cannon of Missouri opined that the story had been published to coincide with the introduction of the $8 billion supplemental appropriations bill. Representative Case, Republican of South Dakota, thought it would be more truthful to conclude that the publication coincided with the publication of the new morning paper in Chicago. The reference here was to initial publication of The Chicago Sun, a daily paper financed by Marshall Field and likely to be a determined supporter of the Administration and a well-funded rival of the Tribune. When Representative Cannon argued that the United States could not raise a 15-million-man army because existing law limited the Army to 900,000 men, the Tribune recounted, at least twenty members leapt to their feet “flourishing their newspapers” (and what newspaper and whose story?) to state that the 900,000man limitation had been removed in earlier draft extension legislation.14 On its editorial pages, the Tribune melded pessimism and accusation. It considered the strategic position of Germany as immensely strong, its army better than in Col. McCormick’s time, well supplied and able to overcome a blockade. Germany would not be defeated, the paper said, by tanks in Africa or planes in Turkey and China. The job could only be done by millions of men landing in Europe and engaging the German army at its strongest defensive line. The Army, it said, had been buying socks, sheets and blankets, and much more for an army of ten million. The Administration denounced those reports as lies. But the Tribune rejoined that the Administration wanted lies, and that sensible men had known all along what everybody now knew from the documentary evidence: There can no longer be any doubt as to what the Administration intends. We can now weigh the probable gains of an adventure in Europe against the probable cost and the balance will not be obscured by wishful thinking and downright lying about the limits of our participation. Mr. Roosevelt and those about him think that the preservation of the British Empire and the four freedoms for Chinamen are worth the lives of a million American boys and a couple of hundred million dollars to boot.15 The President hadn’t talked that way as a 1940 candidate, the Tribune concluded, and if he had, he would surely have been defeated. Amid the acrimony, a more elevated tone was sounded by Presidential Press Secretary Stephen T. Early, who observed that the American press was free with its right to publish “unchallenged.”16

110

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

FIGURE 9.1

Men waiting to enlist at recruiting headquarters, San Francisco, California.

Photo by John Collier. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LCDIG-fsa-8c33750.

Economic Indicators: “Efficiency That Will Astonish the World” Against this background, John H. Jarrett, President of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, predicted that the United States would produce the astounding number of 50,000 planes in 1942 as against production of 20,000 in 1941. If a ten-million-man army, including a five-million-man expeditionary force, was a hypothetical, what was happening on the aircraft production lines was a fact that could be measured month by month. The purpose and progress of the defense program were summarized in the platform adopted by the National Association of Manufacturers. As to the why of the defense program, the platform named those freedoms that it would defend, giving the government even more powers, if needed. Among the immediate problems were the pace of defense production, strikes, and inflation. In a stand unusual, indeed shocking for the association, it proposed government authority to plan, prioritize and coordinate defense production with, however, as little hardship as possible to the civilian economy. It was necessary for industry to work harder, and where there were shortages of materials for defense production, government must allocate and determine priorities.

Friday, December 5, 1941

111

Every strike, the association platform declared, was a gift to Hitler. But the right to strike ought not to be used to destroy the right to work or the right to employ. It recommended that no strike be called without the majority vote of the workers by secret ballot, forbidding secret strikes or strikes to resolve issues between competing unions. It called for an open shop and pointed to the dangers of inflation. It was in character that the association platform warned that taxation could wreck the nation, while at the same time it called for a federal sales tax. The more things change, the more they remain the same. The platform called for holding the public debt down, keeping a sound currency, amending securities laws, curbing unnecessary red tape and expense, and providing necessary credit for business expansion without speculation. To validate its platform the association quoted Abraham Lincoln’s famous statement about the property-less laborer who saves from his wages, buys tools, labors on his own account, and then hires others to help him, thereby inspiring a continuous cycle of improvement. The association platform finished with a flourish: American industry . . . will produce the machines and equipment needed to defend our freedom. It will do the job with a speed and efficiency that will astonish the world. American industry is proud too of its ability to meet the present challenge. It will show that the spirit of freedom is the strongest power on earth and no amount of slave labor can equal the voluntary cooperation of free men.17

Liberty and Justice for All: In the Matter of Race When Governor Eugene Talmadge of Georgia took the stump, the cry would soon arise: “Take off your coat, Gene.” When he did, he would proudly display his trademark red suspenders. His other trademark was his inveterate attachment to segregation. This put him on a collision course with the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, which had dropped the accreditation of ten Georgia institutions of higher learning on the ground of Governor Talmadge’s “unprecedented and unjustifiable political interference.”18 At the governor’s insistence, the state’s Board of Regents had dismissed Dr. Marvin Pittman, President of Georgia Teachers College, and Dr. Walter Cocking, Dean of the School of Education at the University of Georgia, on the ground that they favored the teaching of whites and Negroes in the same schools. Affected were the state’s flagship institutions, the University of Georgia at Athens and the Georgia School of Technology at Atlanta. Other institutions included the Georgia State College for Women at Milledgeville and the Georgia State Women’s College at Valdosta. Unaffected were three Negro colleges, two agricultural experiment stations and the medical and law schools. The latter two were not dropped because they had been accredited by the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association, respectively.

112

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Informed of the action, the governor pouted: “I hope that The Atlanta Constitution and The Atlanta Journal are satisfied.” He added he was proud that the university students would not be affected by the ruling.19 When the Board of Regents at first refused the governor’s request to dismiss Dean Cocking and President Pittman, the governor preferred charges against both of them, and these were examined in a brief trial the Association found to be a “mockery of democratic procedure.” Having failed before the Board of Regents, even after a rehearing, the governor sought to reconstitute the Board by obtaining resignations and appointing new members “for the specific purpose of serving the governor’s will.” The governor had other weapons in his armory. He had the right to veto any expenditure in the University system and could achieve his purpose by striking the names of nonacquiescing faculty members from the payroll. It became clear to the association that the governor was willing to exercise that power when he boldly announced that Dean Cocking would not return to the University of Georgia at the very moment when the Board of Regents was negotiating his reinstatement. The Association report did not spare the governor. It concluded: In the light of all the evidence, the Committee is forced to conclude that the University System of Georgia has been the victim of unprecedented and unjustifiable political interference; that the Governor of the state has violated not only sound educational policy but proper democratic procedure in insisting upon the resignation of members of the Board of Regents in order to appoint to that body men who would do his bidding; that the Board of Regents had flagrantly violated sound educational procedure in dismissals and appointment of staff members . . . that there can be no effective educational program where this condition exists. . . .20 It is testimony to the liberalism of youth that the majority of the students at Georgia Tech thought the action of the Association was justified. When the Student Council president called a campus meeting to examine the action and its effects, it expressed concern that many students would stay away in the next academic term. If there were no demonstrations, there were, as reported in the papers, “a flock of gripe sessions.” Sophomore Bill Harper called it a “rotten situation,” and senior J. A. Hodge opined that the people of Georgia would resolve the situation at the polls in the next year. Tom Campbell of Tullahoma, Tennessee, thought that the Georgia university system had been set back for ten or fifteen years and that he himself would not return next year “if Talmadge is still riding the rocks.” Superior Court Judge Chester A. Byars called the situation a disgrace, opining that politics would ruin the standing of Georgia schools. There were those who expressed optimism, without knowing how the situation could be righted. But it was consoling to think, with the editor of The Griffin Daily News, that the Georgia University students were “the finest youngsters in the land” who wouldn’t be discouraged by the predicament in which they found themselves.

Friday, December 5, 1941

113

Campus humorists and pranksters found a way to express their opinion. An arch on the campus was decorated with a sign which read: “Lots for sale—University being subdivided—see Eugene Talmadge.”21 Another commentary on the impact of race could be found in the announcement that 16 percent of District of Columbia draft selectees had been rejected on physical or mental grounds. In stark contrast, one in four black selectees was found unfit and one in thirty-five whites.22

Life in These United States The New York Times editorial writer was a busy man this day. He thought that the legislation in Congress limiting strikes in defense industries needed some touching up but that it contained much that was worthy. He said that beyond the slightest doubt the country was strongly behind the Administration in its dealings with Japan. He congratulated The Chicago Sun on its first day of publication, wishing good luck to a new friend in Chicago. He warned against evils inherent in defense contracting and called attention to the statement of Senator George of Georgia that taxes had reached their maximum levels and that any further increases would do severe damage to the economy. But in a lighter vein, he noted, or better celebrated, the eighth anniversary of the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol. Prohibition was a sign of that Puritanism which always lay uneasy beneath the surface of American life. The drys might still cherish hopes for a return of the ban. But perhaps Prohibition had not been all in vain. The editorialist noted that consumption of tax-paid liquor per capita had declined from two gallons per capita in 1917 to a gallon per capita in 1940. Drunkenness was no longer socially acceptable. Repeal had other benefits, and the editorialist observed that “nobody is now compelled to drink gin that would have put Mithridates out of business.” The conclusion was a sober one. Regulation of alcoholic drink was now in the hands of the individual states, which would deal with it as they and their electorates saw fit.23 * The full range of human interest was represented. In a coda to a celebrated trial, the Houston Chronicle reported that Lucyle Richards, acquitted of murder charges, was on her way to join her husband, Royal Canadian Air Force man Donald Mosier Taft.24 One cannot but stand in awe of the scale and scope of the activities of the First Lady and by the fact that she reported her activities regularly in her widely syndicated daily column “My Day.” There is an artless quality to her report of finding two hours to labor in her Christmas closet, in her efforts not to waste string or paper and in her advice never to open a package when once it has been tied. That same quality illuminates her regret that the President’s stay at Warm Springs had been cut short but that he had a wonderful dinner at the Foundation and a good sleep in his cottage. Then

114

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

there was the President’s dog Fala who had not accompanied him to Georgia and stayed behind, a pathetic and lonely object. He spent his nights in the First Lady’s room crying with little yaps to command her attention. But when the President returned, Fala “nearly wagged his tail off.” Mrs. Roosevelt’s activities for the day indicate that she was not distracted by domestic minutiae from the purposes and goals of an immensely sophisticated and accomplished woman. On this day, she would attend a sale for the blind at 37th Street and Fifth Avenue at noon. The next stop was an immigrants’ conference followed by a meeting with the Henry Street Nurses at 4:30. If she could manage it, she wrote, she would attend a concert by the celebrated black soprano Dorothy Maynor for the benefit of the Trade Union League. She hoped to be there for at least a little while, indicating that her purpose was not so much to enjoy the music as to demonstrate her support for blacks and for trade unionism. She enthused over the prospects of a women’s “land army.” Though it might not be in the province of the Office of Civilian Defense, of which she and Mayor La Guardia were national cochairs, she thought ways could be found for women to help farmers as volunteers or paid workers trained and disciplined to do outside work.25 * While the First Lady looked resolutely forward, the social world looked back to another war. The Atlanta Ladies’ Memorial Association was planning its diamond jubilee for Sunday, December 14, 1941. The purpose of the Association was to keep fresh the memory and the graves of soldiers of the Lost Cause. The event would be presided over by Miss Willie Fort Williams, whose grandfather James Ethelred Williams had been the Mayor of Atlanta from 1866 to 1868. Among its accomplishments, the Association had raised funds and erected a monument in memory of the unknown Confederate dead; this, it believed, had inspired other governments including the United States, to erect memorials for their unknowns. The Association had placed markers at historic sites indicating the battle lines of the Battle of Atlanta and it aided annually in the observances of the April 26 Memorial Day, which was not the May 30 date celebrated by the rest of the nation.26 Surely there existed in Atlanta and across the South aged veterans who had worn the uniform and followed the banners of the Confederate States of America and retained vivid personal memories of the Lost Cause. * It was a deflationary age. It is difficult to appreciate the then-current figures for taxation or defense expenditures without having some sense of the costs of daily living. A&P, a leading national chain grocer, offered beef or veal roast at 23 cents a pound, which might be accompanied by Maine potatoes at 25 cents for a tenpound bag. Green beans were offered at three pounds for 25 cents and red beans at two pounds for 9 cents. Oranges were two dozen for 25 cents, or in essence a penny an orange; lettuce was 8 cents a head. A twelve-pound bag of flour sold for 57 cents; many breakfasts could be made with a box of ten packaged cereals for 19 cents, or a twenty-ounce carton of pancake flour for 5 cents accompanied

Friday, December 5, 1941

115

by a twelve-ounce bottle of syrup at 13 cents, all washed down with Eight O’Clock Coffee, at three pounds for 57 cents. Such figures bring meaning to the prevailing minimum wage of 40 cents per hour, domestic help at $35 a month, room and board included, and the wages of skilled craftsman at the then-prosperous rate of a dollar an hour. Economically things were looking up in December 1941, but prudence and thrift in managing the family budget were needed every day.27 Similar price levels were visible across the levels of consumption and of the economy. Lovers of lobsters could find a deviled fresh stuffed lobster accompanied by fresh broccoli, Hollandaise sauce and allumette potatoes at 85 cents at all Longchamps restaurants. Browning King offered three embroidered initials free of charge on its $2 shirts, which might be worn with McCreery’s famous $35 Berkshire suits. Fashion leader Bonwit Teller offered fur-trimmed coats and suits at $94, and for the higher reaches of society one could choose from a selection of dance dresses for debutantes at $29.95. These were prosaic indicators of an economy ready to expand and meet the challenges of a perilous world.28 * If the headlines screamed death and destruction, the newspaper reader could find relief in the back of the paper where the comics reigned. There was something for everybody. Skippy was a loveable little boy who saw the world through innocent eyes. Gasoline Alley was the odyssey of the American boy growing up in the twenties and thirties. Unlike other comic characters, Skeezix aged normally with friends and adventures that led millions of boys across the country to see him as “one of us.” The adolescence of such boys was reflected in the soda fountain background and high school activities of Harold Teen. Then there were the series that reflected a humorous outlook on family life, surely including The Gumps, Mutt and Jeff and Bringing Up Father to which Jiggs and Maggie brought a pronounced Irish ethnic tone. Blondie has continued to this day, as have Dagwood’s fumblings, confusions and love of complex sandwiches. The comics were an ideal vehicle for stories of adventure—Dick Tracy in the world of crime and punishment, Buck Rogers in the twenty-first century, and the beautifully drawn Terry and the Pirates in a perilous Orient. Thimble Theater starring Popeye and Olive Oyl was in a category all its own; and critics to this day applaud the imaginative, if fractured, literacy of Coconino County’s perfect person, Krazy Kat.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

New York Times, December 5, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 7 Atlanta Constitution, December 5, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 5, 1941, 1

116

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

New York Times, December 5, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 4 Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 22 Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1941, 1 Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1941, 15 Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1941, 18 Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1941, 14 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 18 Atlanta Constitution, December 5, 1941, 5A Atlanta Constitution, December 5, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 5, 1941, 5A Atlanta Constitution, December 5, 1941, 8 Washington Post, December 5, 1941, 16 New York Times, December 5, 1941, 22 Houston Chronicle, December 5, 1941, B1 Atlanta Constitution, December 5, 1941, 8 Atlanta Constitution, December 5, 1941, 3D Atlanta Constitution, December 5, 1941, 2F New York Times, December 5, 1941, 41

10 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1941

A World in Flames The Russian offensive in the south continued to rack up meaningful gains. After overrunning some 200 villages, it broke through the German lines around Taganrog, leaving that town eleven miles behind. To the north, Russian units had gained some forty miles, then were fanning south in an attempt to cut off substantial German units. Temperatures had dropped to thirteen degrees below zero on the Moscow front, which was the scene of Russian counterattacks to relieve growing German pressure. German sources claimed to have halted the Soviet drive in the south, balancing that claim with reports of German gains before Moscow.1 Britain, no longer alone after the German attack on the Soviet Union, had addressed notes to Finland, Hungary, and Romania demanding that they cease their participation in the German attack against Russia. Having received no reply, Britain then notified them of its declaration of war. The declaration in the case of Finland was made difficult by the close relationship that nation had maintained with the United States since its independence in the wake of the First World War. While these moves did not possess any immediate military significance, they portrayed all of these nations as calculating their interests and chances in postwar treaties.2 German troops had swept victoriously through the Balkans in spring 1941. This did not end Serbia’s participation in violent battles against the invader. Heavy fighting was reported in the Morava Valley south of Belgrade and across the Danube lowlands east of the Serbian capital. The Chetniks, under Serbian general Draja Mikhailovitch, counterattacked a German army column in the mountains above Unice, destroying nine tanks and three armored cars at the same time and forcing the Germans to retreat eastward to the Morava. Meanwhile, a Chetnik unit attacked another German motorized column west of Nish in South Serbia, breaking it up and wiping out a German infantry battalion. The German response was to bring up Bulgarian and Italian divisions to harry the Serbs and reinforce the heavily pressed German forces.3

118

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

In North Africa, the Germans launched triple attacks upon El Duda, southeast of Tobruk, where its British garrison remained under siege. The attackers were reported to have suffered heavy losses that were also claimed for air strikes. These, it was speculated, might be a prelude to a new British offensive.4 Meanwhile violence flared up in Paris where a German major was shot and wounded in the Latin Quarter and another was attacked near Versailles. Naturally this led to German repression and a search for the assailants.5

The Threat of War: Immediate Danger Speculation was rampant across the Far East. In Singapore it was thought that Japan’s next move would be in Thailand, but attacks on Malaya or the Philippines were not ruled out. Observers took note of a recent military buildup in southern Indo-China, where Japanese forces were estimated at 80,000. The same reports cited motorized landing craft and long-distance bombers based in southern Indo-China. Some thought, or perhaps hoped, that the Japanese would gain control of Thailand by peaceful means, a prospect heightened by the arrival of the British Far Eastern Fleet at Singapore. They believed Japan’s task might be easier if it were enshrouded in a veil of claimed legality.6

America’s Role: Secret Maneuvers, Continuing Negotiations As the Japanese fleet secretly moved into position for the final attack on Pearl Harbor, Tomokazu Hori, spokesman for the Cabinet Information Board, lofted professions of peace and friendship. He assured the attendees at a press conference that negotiations would continue. More than that, they would continue with sincerity in the search for a common formula to resolve the situation in the Pacific. “If there is no sincerity,” he piously pronounced, “there would be no need to continue the negotiations.”7 Hori professed amazement at American misunderstanding of Japan’s Far Eastern policy. He denied Secretary of State Hull’s charges that Japan’s policy was one of force, conquest, and military despotism. Admitting that conditions in China were not “normal,” he called attention to former Prime Minister Konoye’s statement in which he had disclaimed any territorial ambitions and any indemnities. These principles he said were incorporated in the basic treaty with the Nanking regime (Japan’s puppet). President Roosevelt had asked for an explanation of the number of Japanese troops in Indo-China. In response, Hori claimed that the Japanese troops were there with the consent of Vichy. If Vichy found no fault, it was not within the province of any other power to complain. The Japan Times Advertiser, a Foreign Office organ, characterized Hull’s policy as “scarcely statesmanlike,” and as an attempt to put responsibility for any breakdown in negotiations upon Japan. The paper pushed back against certain foundational aspects of American policy. It pointed to the Monroe Doctrine proscribing European interference in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere and claimed for Japan a similar doctrine in the Western Pacific. It cited President Roosevelt’s call for

Saturday, December 6, 1941

119

freedom of all nations to choose their own forms of government without interference by outsiders. This was an ironic attempt to characterize Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere as freedom of choice for the victims of that aggression. Far from being based upon force, The Advertiser claimed that the bases of Oriental business were compromise and adjustment, but it warned that Japan would apply force when confronted with force. Characterizing Hull’s principles as “obscurant,” The Advertiser lauded Japan’s principles as of the “highest human order.” It hoped that: The American and British people will now use their influence on Mr. Hull to make some practical efforts at agreement with Japan on pacific principles instead of appealing to publicity for the purpose of discrediting the one nation that is seriously trying to avoid war.8 Count Kentaro Kaneko was an elder statesman, a Harvard-educated privy counselor. He proposed a commission of respectable and trustworthy representatives from the highest political, economic, and diplomatic circles of both nations to meet either in Japan or in the United States. Such a commission, he said, had been useful in settling disputes such as those concerning the Saint Lawrence River.9 * The Japan Institute had been established in New York three years before to advance understanding of Japanese culture and to promote Japanese studies in U.S. schools and universities. The Institute was now to be closed and its director,

FIGURE 10.1

Japanese schoolchildren pledging allegiance in San Francisco.

Photo by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of National Archives, photo 536053, DWDNS-210-G-A78.

120

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Tamon Mayeda, and his staff would be leaving in the middle of the month. The announcement was accompanied by expressions of regret and the hope of return “to continue our contribution to the promotion of human kinship in those higher realms, of thought, of culture, and of spirit to which great task we shall always be devoted.” Meanwhile the Japanese Consulate General in Rockefeller Center was busy making arrangements for Japanese nationals to return to Japan and for twenty-five Americans to return from Tokyo.10

America’s Role: Sizing up the Enemy The New York Times addressed reports of discussions between Germany and China looking to a truce that might serve the interests of the Axis. Such a “settlement,” The Times thought, would be temporary, only so long as Japan solidified her gains to the disadvantage of China. This The Times saw as “Machiavellian,” pronouncing that the United States could not preach idealism in foreign relations but use the tactics of the Axis in order to gain its ends. Along that road lay disaster. Such a policy, to put it plainly, would be double-dealing. The British people were induced to swallow a pill at Munich sugarcoated with a promise of peace in our time; the American people might not take so kindly to such an event in China. Our government has made it perfectly clear to Japan that our policy in the East is based on treaties made in good faith and unswerving loyalty to China. On those principles we stand.11 Amid the alarms and excursions of the imminence of war in the Far East, one figure remained serene and confident. Lt. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. forces in the Far East, had been a colorful, self-promoting youthful general in the First World War. He had risen to become the Army’s Chief of Staff in the 1930s and gained notoriety in the so-called Battle of Anacostia, where troops under his command attempted to eject the forlorn remnants of the Bonus Army from their makeshift quarters. Of his assignment to the Philippines he later remarked that it had been Mars’s last gift to an old warrior. In a special report to the Los Angeles Times, reporter Walter Robb characterized MacArthur as being as well prepared as a commander could be in the event of Japanese attacks in a war against the United States. MacArthur, Robb said, was a firm believer in the offensive and in the time-worn cliché that a good offense is the best defense. And that offense would come through the air. That arm, Robb opined, was a long one that could sweep to and over Japan with ease, returning to its insular bases. It could cover the South China Sea in search of the enemy’s fleet and could safeguard the area between Guam and the Philippines in collaboration with Dutch air forces in the East Indies and British forces in Malaya and Hong Kong. Robb declared that these air forces could be based in the Philippines in a campaign not involving the millions of men and the quantities of materiel seen on Germany’s Eastern Front. Instead it would rely on a fleet supported by air power.

Saturday, December 6, 1941

121

* A far more cautious view was evinced by Mrs. Vanya Oakes, a Bostonian who had spent the last ten years in China and who had written for The United Press, The North American Newspaper Alliance, and The Christian Science Monitor. Her blunt assessment: in a war between the United States and Japan, Japan would be no pushover. She found this an opinion widely held among U.S. naval officers and well-informed civilians, both British and American, in China. But she also cited the contrary opinion held by many Americans in the Philippines, and all too commonly in the United States as well, that the latter could “clean up the Japanese in no time.” “It is my opinion,” Ms. Oakes said, “that the American people are gravely underestimating the strength of the Japanese.” She called the Japanese Navy an unknown factor but said there was “plenty of it” and it had the geographical advantage of bases at home and in mandated islands and territories dangerously close to the Philippines. She warned against scoffing at Japanese air power, which under German tutelage had improved greatly in the past year. The Japanese had no intention, she thought, of backing down. Japan’s problems with its campaign in China and its economic troubles at home would not be resolved by doing nothing. Japan, she concluded, had nothing to lose and possibly everything to gain by attacking. While the rest of her analysis was shrewd and on the mark, history has shown that Japan indeed had everything to lose and lost it. But in describing the state of mind of the Japanese commanders, her opinion has been proved as sage as the rest of her analysis.12 * In the nation’s capital, newspapermen stood impatiently by while the President had his second cup of coffee with a weary Secretary of State Hull. When the President emerged after a half hour, he was described as looking “very snappy” in a new green tweed suit. A master of the press conference, the President was polite. The assembled correspondents found him mildly affable and to their disappointment “completely uncommunicative.” The President was playing his cards close to the vest.13

America’s Role: Irresponsible Disclosure Wars raged across the world and in every quarter America’s vital interests were at stake. Yet the Chicago Tribune, quoting Representative William P. Lamberton, Republican of Kansas, called its story about a huge drafted army and expeditionary force “the biggest issue before this nation.” The response was not limited to Representative Lamberton but, according to the Tribune, a storm over the plan raged in the House. The administration pushed back promptly. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson called the story “wanting in loyalty and patriotism” in a statement approved in advance by the President. Secretary Stimson’s remarks were at variance with the position taken by the President’s press secretary, Stephen T. Early, who declined to follow the lead of what the Tribune called “Eastern pro-war newspapers” into an attack on the

122

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Tribune. He defended the Tribune’s right to freedom of the press, although the government would want to investigate responsibility for the leak. The President, too, at his press conference, had declined to discuss the story. A parallel story appeared in The London Daily Mail. Correspondent Don Iddon described President Roosevelt’s plan—launched at his August meeting with Prime Minister Churchill—for a victory program costing between $120 and $150 billion to defeat Germany, at the same time revolutionizing America’s industry and way of life. It was, he said, a program that envisioned standardizing industrial equipment among the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union in order to produce the arms necessary to defeat Germany. If the program assumed a large expeditionary force in continental Europe, it did not state whether Americans would form a part of that force. The Tribune was pleased to report Iddon’s conclusion that the President’s “secret war plan” had been “established beyond all doubt.” “It had,” Iddon said, “startled the whole country.” Leading interventionists promptly demanded a thorough investigation. But the Tribune conceded that most people understood it was the government’s duty to prepare war plans in the hope that they would never be put into effect.14 On its editorial pages the Tribune sturdily supported what it believed to be its news scoop. It dismissed the premise that the plan it reported was merely one of numerous hypotheticals. It stated the war aim of the United States was “to sweep the Nazis off the earth,” which would require a ten-million-man army and a five-million-man expeditionary force. The President had not told the American people about these armies needed to conquer Nazi Germany. But the Tribune had. It had given the American people the information that the President had kept shrouded in silence. The Tribune had made the President’s intent clear: to conscript ten million men for war and to send five million abroad to fight.15 Calling the Tribune “shameless,” The Oregonian saw only the preparation by the government of plans for a variety of threatening or outright hostile situations. If it was the President’s conviction that his country might find itself at war with Germany after Russia and Britain had been defeated, then it was his obligation to prepare appropriate plans. In a slashing attack on the Tribune, it found that if treachery existed, it wasn’t in the formulation of the plan but in the Tribune’s irresponsible disclosure of it. To The Oregonian that was nothing new. The Tribune, it observed, throughout this crisis had been a sad cross for the self-respecting press of the country to bear, shamelessly coloring its news to its own purposes. And with the rest of the press adhering strictly to self-censorship where military secrets were concerned, the Tribune had rounded out its bad record with its particularly offensive revelation of what it reported to be the most secret information concerning our possible high strategy.16 The Los Angeles Times response was pithier but to the same point: both Col. Stimson and Col. R. R. McCormick, the Tribune’s publisher, should calm down.17 * The response of the business world was not in all respects what one might have expected. President H. W. Prentis, Jr., told the National Association of

Saturday, December 6, 1941

123

Manufacturers that the Bill of Rights was and had been for the past six years under steady attack. And yet, in the face of the loss of cherished liberties, many were afraid to take a public stand that might make them targets of the tax collector, the factory inspector, the Wage and Hour Administration, the National Labor Relations Board and congressional investigative committees. Germany and Russia, he said, had constitutions stating myriad rights that in actual practice were simply nonexistent. He found the same tendency in the United States where, he claimed, liberties were being denied through the extension of executive power, the abdication of a servile Congress and the tyranny of administrative law, all compounded by the reluctance of the courts to review the action of executive agencies. Prentis then cited the Declaration of Independence: “he has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people. . . .” In these offenses his audience could readily find the stuff of the New Deal. After so stem-winding an anti-New-Deal tirade, it is surprising to find Prentis in closing claiming that America’s first duty at this crucial hour was to give full support to the government’s foreign policy and its military forces.18 Speaking in a similar vein, J. Howard Pew, President of Sun Oil Company, addressing a meeting of the Congress of American Industry of the National Association of Manufacturers at the Waldorf Astoria, denied that patriotism required abolishing competitive enterprise and substituting all-powerful central control. It was necessary, he said, to preserve those thousands of small manufacturers who were threatened by defense priorities and other restrictions. He called for the Wagner Act to be amended and relief programs returned to the states. He urged economy in all nondefense government expenditures and called for the rejection of pending bills on a Florida ship canal and the Saint Lawrence Seaway, recommended the postponement of any plans to extend Social Security and launched a challenge to the defeatists who forecast the end of free enterprise at the end of the defense emergency.19

Life in These United States State and local interests occupied much space this day. In Georgia, from Rabun Gap to the Tybee Light—a poetic rendering of the geography of the state—there was a virtual uprising by citizens shocked and embittered by the suspension of accreditation of the state’s university system by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Professor J. E. Mathis was a former president of the Georgia Education Association and Superintendent Emeritus of the Americus school system. He called the situation a calamity such as had never before befallen the state. He did not hesitate to hold the governor responsible for this educational disaster. John H. Moore of Dahlonega was a significant benefactor of North Georgia College whose Moore Hall bore his name. Had he been a member of the Southern Association of Colleges Committee, he would have voted precisely as they did. Meanwhile, the governor failed to appear at his office and his aides could not say where he was.

124

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Freedom also found defenders in a New Jersey Superior Court, which reversed the conviction of nine members of the German-American Bund for making antiSemitic speeches at a Bund meeting. One of the nine was national leader Wilhelm Kunze. Declaring Kunze’s speech as revolting to any fair-minded man as it was absurd and unjust, Chief Justice Thomas J. Grogan nevertheless ruled that, to be actionable, the utterances must be such as to create a danger to the state. The court could not find that the statements of the defendants, however distasteful, were of such a character.20 A freedom that flourished vigorously, even riotously, was the freedom of religion as practiced in the diverse creeds and congregations of southern California. Surely the established churches were regularly heard from, but a review in the Los Angeles Times of sermons to be preached on Sunday, December 7, shows the theological riches that would be on offer to Angelinos on that day. At the Angelus Temple, the evangelical star of stars, Aimee Semple McPherson, would preach on “Keep ’Em Flying,” a nice topical touch. At the First Hebrew Christian Synagogue Doctor A. U. Michelson was to preside over the baptism of Jewish converts. “Lighting Your Path with Astrology” was the topic of Will P. Benjamine at the Church of Light. He would also speak on “Predictions on the Japanese Crisis.” The Christ Church of Unity was scheduled to meet at the Wilshire-Ebell Theater to hear Dr. Ernest C. Wilson preach on “Some Things I Know.” The Humanist service would be led by Dr. Theodore Curtis Abell, Director of the Humanist Society, speaking on “The Shape of Things to Come.” “The Spotlight of the Prophetic World Turned on Our Present World” would be preached by Drs. Floyd Johnson and Louis Valman at the Los Angeles Evangelistic Center, while at the Mental Science Institute in the Ambassador Hotel Theater Dr. Arthur J. Green would inspire his congregation to “Doing the Impossible.” “Death and Rebirth” was scheduled for Theosophy Hall, while at the Institute of Religious Science Dr. Ernest Holmes would discuss “Discovering the Self.” Dr. William Philip Sachs was titled as the Organizing Ministrant of the Church of the Holy Grail, where he would speak on “Intelligent Realization of the Indwelling Spirit of the Christ in the Mind and Soul of the Christian.” The Church of Natural Science did not state the topic chosen by the Rev. Vincent M. Wilson for its service the next day. Other churches announcing their Sunday programs included the Church of the New Jerusalem, the Progressive Spiritualist Church and The Assembly of Man, where the 8:00 p.m. Sunday topic would be “Creative Imagination.” At the Old Catholic service, John Howard Trimmer was to be ordained by the Rev. Edgar R. Verostek, the Old Catholic-Vicar Apostolic in California. Los Angeles had become a headquarters of show business, and the theater was a natural environment for spiritual communion. Thus, at the Doakmore Theater Dr. Clem Davies was scheduled to speak on “The Prophetic Outcome of the Nazi-Russian Struggle,” while at the Embassy Auditorium Dr. John Matthews would speak on “On Our Way to World Expansion as the Bible Predicts.” * Los Angeles was, of course, the capital of the movie industry, together with radio America’s mass medium before the advent of television with its hundreds

Saturday, December 6, 1941

125

of channel choices, long before the Internet, long before the social media. The movies were a refuge from the hardships of the Depression years and the public was titillated by the lives and romances of their larger-than-life stars. Thus there would be widespread interest in the wedding of actress Joyce Matthews to Milton Berle, not yet the Uncle Miltie of television fame. There was an international flavor to this pairing. The bride had formerly been the wife of a Col. Gomez who, in turn, was the son of the long time Venezuelan dictator. And comedian Mischa Auer had married Joyce Hunter the day his divorce became final.21 What Hollywood did best was large spectacles and one such was Mark Hellinger’s musical revue Rise and Shine, with an all-star cast that included Jack Oakie, George Murphy (a future U.S. Senator), Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan and Milton Berle. Jeanette MacDonald and Brian Ahearne were featured in a revival of the lachrymose classic Smilin’ Through, a remake of a ten-years-past version of that sturdy vehicle. The New York Times critic observed that a decade was apparently sufficient time to allow for the maturing of a new generation and for the repair of the tear ducts that had been damaged in the earlier version.22 * When it came to human interest, there was something about Houston. Thirtyyear-old Helen O’Keefe was freed on bond after being indicted for the murder of J. C. Franklin, a fifty-seven-year-old investment broker. The Houston Chronicle carefully noted that she was a blonde, which it backed up by a large and quite glamorous photograph of the defendant in a story that was bound to sell newspapers.23 Texas was a society that cherished its guns and its history. These were combined in the obituary of Thomas Early Brennan, an old-time trail driver and peace officer. Mr. Brennan’s life, the notice advised, was like a western adventure story. Brennan had been a top hand at cattle ranches and had made several drives “up the trail.” He had worked cattle throughout Texas and the Indian Territory and served as a deputy to Lee County’s infamous Sheriff Ike Sparks. He had also served as a jailer. In its appraisal the Houston Chronicle concluded that he had “made quite a record for himself.” After so colorful a career, it was something of a letdown to read that Uncle Tom Brennan had finished his days in the mundane role of an Austin building contractor.24 * Hard times and multiple crises could not overcome the natural human pursuit of happiness. That spirit was brilliantly displayed at the reception given by Brigadier General and Mrs. Sherman Miles at the Army War College Club to honor Gen. Newton Cavalcanti of the Brazilian Army. It was a colorful affair featuring the midnight blue of the uniforms of the American officers and the grey blue of the Brazilian Army. These were only two of the brilliant plumages on view at the event. Gen. and Mrs. Miles received their guests at the entrance to the second floor ballroom of the Club. Mrs. Miles’s corsage of tawny orchids lent a note of color to her flowing black floor-length chiffon gown. The tea table at the end of the ballroom held two large silver vases of pink roses, matching snapdragons

126

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

and baby’s breath flanked by candles in silver holders. The table was called an epicurean’s delight, featuring as it did heaping platters of turkey, a shrimp bowl, tiny cucumber sandwiches, and more. At the other end of the table, great urns dispensed coffee and tea. There was no holding back. A cheese table carried a wide variety and even boasted a large cream cheese boat of caviar, which, it was carefully noted, was available at few places in the nation’s capital other than the Soviet Embassy. Pouring tea were the wife of the Brazilian Ambassador and the wives of the Brazilian Assistant Military Attaché, the Brazilian Air Attaché, and the Councilor of the Brazilian Embassy, while American ladies presided at the coffee urn. The guest list included many high-ranking officers and public officials but the feature of the afternoon was the brief appearance of the former Evalyn Walsh McLean, nineteen-year-old daughter of Edward “Ned” McLean, sometime owner of The Washington Post and of the Hope diamond and its legendary curse. She had recently been married at the McLean estate to fifty-seven-year-old Senator Robert Rice (“Bob”) Reynolds of North Carolina. There was music in the air. An orchestra played gaily to the delight of the dancers who took to the floor. Surely none of those who were enjoying that night of nights had any inkling of what the morrow might bring.25 The gaieties of the afternoon were followed by even more luxurious events in New York that evening. The first Friday in December was the traditional date for New York’s Junior Assemblies in the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The list of sponsors of the event included ladies of the bluest blood who had approved the submissions of the 122 debutantes elected this year. With the debutantes came the mothers and other relatives who had subscribed for them and their escorts. The Times report of this signal social event covered two full pages, including formal portraits of many of the most prominent girls. The event was lovingly reported in extensive detail, covering the many dinners and dinner-dances that preceded the main event and listing in full the names of each of the hosts and hostesses and all of their guests. Oscar Wilde had once remarked that it was a bore to be in society but a tragedy to be out of it. Surely many readers of The Times the next morning scanned the extensive lists of the attendees for their own names, the names of others who had been present and of those who unhappily had not. Typical of the preassembly events was the dinner party given by Mr. and Mrs. William Alan Butler to introduce their daughter, Miss Mary Marshall Butler. She received with her parents in the adjoining Palm Court wearing a gown of white tulle with an off-the-shoulder neckline and trimmed with white ostrich plumes. She carried a muff of bouvardia and white orchids tipped with fuchsias. The muff and the ostrich plumes were redolent of Edith Wharton’s New York. Her mother wore gray chiffon accented with aqua blue and a corsage of lavender orchids. Even the centerpieces on the dinner tables were remarked upon—in this case pink roses, white snapdragons and lavender sweet peas. Another dinner was given in the Oval Room by Mr. and Mrs. Magruder Dent of Greenwich, Connecticut, in honor of their daughter Miss Edith Dent. Among the young men seated at this table were her brother, Frederick Dent, Quentin

Saturday, December 6, 1941

127

Meyer, Townsend Hoopes and John Lindsay. Dent, Meyer, Hoopes and Lindsay were all members of that year’s Yale freshman football team. Frederick Dent was a future Secretary of Commerce, Townsend Hoopes a future Assistant Secretary of Defense, and John Lindsay a future mayor of New York. Quentin Meyer was to die in August 1944, leading a company of Marines on the sands of Pelielu.26 Chicago, the city of broad shoulders and Midwestern heartiness, had scoffed at the social pretensions of New York and Baltimore but reported with breathless enthusiasm on its own Assembly Ball and the 800 guests who attended. The venue was exotic. The ballroom of the Palmer House had been transformed, under a large full moon, into the pavilion of an exclusive Florida hotel replete with coconut palms and what it described as a Spanish veranda. The cream stucco veranda had a Spanish tile roof or at least a very good imitation thereof. Flowers twined around the arches which supported the tile roof and beside each one stood a palm tree with green cellophane leaves and clusters of orange coconuts. The lighting added to the triumph: a green glow that shimmered through the coconuts courtesy of silver reflectors. New York ball-goers in the chaste and elegant surroundings of the Ritz-Carlton might have considered the decorative excesses of Chicago provincial. Clearly, though, Chicago was putting on the dog. It was, the Tribune said, the most exclusive party of the year. In the newspaper report, it appeared that the Chicago ladies had outdone themselves in sartorial splendor, described in sufficient detail to titillate the hoi polloi. The sounds of the music and the sight of the dancers at the New York and Chicago balls must have lingered in the memories of those who had been there and in the mind’s eye of those who only read about these gaieties. As the hands of the clock swept past midnight, the Orient would soon be ablaze in the red rays of the Rising Sun.27

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

New York Times, December 6, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 2 Atlanta Constitution, December 6, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 16 Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1941, 1/5 Washington Post, December 6, 1941, 2 Chicago Tribune, December 6, 1941, 1 Chicago Tribune, December 6, 1941, 22 Oregonian, December 6, 1941, 6 Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1941, 2/4 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 10 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 10

128

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941

Washington Post, December 6, 1941, 5 Washington Post, December 6, 1941, 6 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 16 Houston Chronicle, December 6, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 6, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 6, 1941, 18 New York Times, December 6, 1941, 12 Chicago Tribune, December 6, 1941, 17

PART III

“Day of Infamy” Sunday, December 7, 1941

11 A QUIET MORNING IN AMERICA

A World in Flames In the quiet of his home the attentive reader of his Sunday, December 7, paper would look for the latest developments in the tremendous drama being played out across Russia from Leningrad in the north to the Caucasus in the south. There were, as was so often the case in those days, conflicting reports. The Russians claimed their troops had driven eleven miles beyond Taganrog, reaching the shores of the Gulf of Taganrog and leaving a large body of Germans encircled in the pocket. The German command claimed there were no Russian forces west of Taganrog and that the Red Army drive was at a standstill. Meanwhile, it was reported that Russian armored units and Cossack cavalry were driving toward Mariupol. Mention of the Cossacks, to whom a special color attached, always heightened reader interest. Meanwhile, the Germans continued their attacks on Moscow, conceding the strength of Russian counterattacks. The reader would have noted, in the ebb and flow of the Libyan campaign, that the British appeared to have gained the initiative, but only in a series of small actions. He might also see the Admiralty announcement of the destruction of a German surface raider in the South Atlantic by HMS Dorsetshire.1

The Threat of War: Precariously Balanced But it was the critical situation in the Pacific that dominated the headlines of the Sunday morning papers of December 7. Reports of heavy Japanese troop concentrations on the borders of Indo-China had moved President Roosevelt to send a personal message to Emperor Hirohito. It was a direct appeal to avoid war in the Pacific as the result of a Japanese attack on Thailand, the strategic gateway to both the Burma Road and the Malay Peninsula.2 The President’s message was seen in an Associated Press dispatch3 as a last resort to avert what it called an “open break” with Japan. It was thought that the

132

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

President would communicate with the Emperor only when virtually all hope had been abandoned of any kind of agreement through the usual diplomatic channels. The Denver Post, reporting on the President’s message to the Emperor, superimposed atop a portrait of the Emperor this headline: “IS IT TO BE WAR? HE HOLDS ANSWER.”4 In The Washington Post, Rear Admiral Clark H. Woodward of the U.S. Navy was blunt in his assessment: In consequence, the issue of peace or war in the Pacific is precariously balanced and rapidly approaching the crisis stage. A possible break is imminent as the strain cannot last much longer.5 This was a widely held opinion. Mark Sullivan, in The Washington Post, told his readers that the nation was “extremely close to war with Japan,” and that in truth, the United States faced a world war, indeed an indivisible war in which it would not be possible to separate a war with Japan from a war with Germany.6 The Houston Chronicle reported that the negotiations between America and Japan hung in the balance; that Tokyo’s next move would determine whether there was to be peace or war.7 And everywhere there were preparations for war. In Manila, President Manuel Quezon called for the immediate evacuation of all “non-essential” civilians from Manila. The areas to be evacuated would be fixed after consultation with General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of U.S. Forces in the Far East. Singapore ordered all fighting men to their ships and barracks. Thousands came from football fields, theaters, and clubs to respond to these calls while the mobilization of Straits Settlements volunteers was completed. Australia announced that it would send ships, planes, and men to protect the Netherlands East Indies.8 The Netherlands East Indies commander, Lieutenant General Hein ter Poorten, was expansive about his military preparations. His plans for the defense of the Indies had originally been predicated, he observed, solely on the defense of its main islands. But the strength of its air arm had so grown, largely thanks to shipments of modern American planes, that the outer island would instead become the first line of defense and bases for offensive possibilities.9 There were, to be sure, more optimistic opinions. Constantine Brown, a syndicated news analyst writing in the Houston Chronicle and The Denver Post, thought that the Pacific crisis had been postponed at least for the moment. This was, he thought, a change from only a week ago, when informed Washington circles were betting ten-to-one that the guns would be heard before the end of the week. For this, he gave credit to Secretary of State Cordell Hull: Hull’s combination of high ideals and Tennessee stubbornness had enabled him to stand fast in the face of increasing Japanese pressure.10,11 Even more optimistic was Chicago Tribune columnist Harold E. Fey. He thought that Japan, facing revolution and chaos, would be unable to continue the wars it had already started, to say nothing of a new war with America. Japan was bankrupt, he claimed, in all the necessities of life at even a low level, with vital commodities virtually unobtainable. Japan had lost confidence in its leaders, who were

A Quiet Morning in America

133

running in a race the goals of which were constantly receding. The consequence of all this was that the Japanese people had arrived at a state beyond which no one could drive them further.12

America’s Role: Arduous Preparations The shadow of impending crisis notwithstanding, America was enjoying its quiet Sunday morning on December 7. But the Sunday papers were full of reports and rumors of war—other people’s wars. Noah Hampson was a steelworker from Waterbury, Connecticut. He was described in The New York Times as a little forty-two-year-old man with long graying hair and a puckish smile. He had first joined the Canadian Army, serving in France and Belgium and later transferred to the Royal Armored Corps. As the gunner of the U.S.-built tank “Sleepy,” he had bagged five German tanks in North African fighting. He was asked what he missed in Libya. “Boy, what I’d give for a drink of rye,” was Mr. Hampson’s response. Clearly he was an example of Yankee pluck and grit who would acquit himself well serving in an American uniform.13 If Mr. Hampson was engaged in a shooting war, a peaceful America was in the midst of arduous preparations for war. Recent large-scale maneuvers had shown progress that gave rise to restrained optimism. Indeed, instead of a force that could fight without disgracing itself and its traditions, General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, defined his goal as the finest army in the world. He would not be satisfied until he commanded an army that was better trained, better equipped and better led than any other in the world. This was understood to mean the German Wehrmacht that it might one day face.14 Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, writing in the Chicago Tribune, was more expansive than the notoriously reticent General Marshall. He spoke not of the future but of that day, December 7. He did not hesitate to call the U.S. Navy the finest in the world. He enlarged upon his topic: I am proud to report that the American people may feel fully confident in their Navy. In my opinion, the loyalty, morale and technical ability of the personnel are without superior. On any comparable basis, the American navy is second to none.15 He further reported a list of combat vessels under construction that included 17 battleships, 12 aircraft carriers, 54 cruisers, 74 submarines, and 197 destroyers. A young poet named Herman Wouk was inspired by the launching of one of these battleships to compose “The Rhyme of the BB-66,” which was read over the Treasury Radio Hour. The reader may judge the extent to which Wouk’s poetry, which appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, matched the inspiration behind it: It is the BB-66 That they launched today at three, The mighty BB-66 That was built to keep men free

134

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

FIGURE 11.1

See color plate section.

Poster by Thomas Woodburn. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, 2589267.

And the people’s roar wells up from the shore As she slides into the sea. He paid tribute to an ethnic roster of builders: New Englander William Lodge; Big Jake Leanevic, the Pole; Norway’s Otto Peterson; “colored Dixie Joe,” who

A Quiet Morning in America

135

was not given the dignity of a last name; and Dutch captain Paul DeVries. Though the tone was epic, the rhyming pattern and the meter—“there’s a nation’s pride in her iron side,” “there’s the Christian dream in her metal gleam” and “to defend the sod where men served God”—seemed eerily reminiscent of “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” Let us give the poet his voice and his due: Oh, when the ship goes down the ways, There’s more on her ribs than steel; The hope and love of a thousand men Are built into her keel. Strong with the blood of the free and brave, Ah, but proud she will ride to the wave For her high, clear destiny is to save Her land from a tyrant’s heel!16

America’s Role: Isolationists Holding Firm But there were those who did not wish to associate themselves with events in the tumultuous world outside American borders. Instead they wished to detach themselves and the country as best they could from those events. The America First Committee announced it would throw its full strength into the spring primary and fall election campaigns to stop America’s drift toward fascism and oneman rule. The Committee planned twenty rallies in twenty large cities. Among the speakers would be Charles A. Lindbergh, Senators Nye and Clark, and former Governor of Oklahoma W. H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray. The Committee had recently lost some prominent members, including New Dealer General Hugh Johnson and philanthropist Lessing Rosenwald, but it had gained new members among whom were the celebrated dancer, Irene Castle, and Governor Murray.17 The homeland of isolationism was the Middle West and its voice the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune’s concerns were not limited to the international arena. It took a dark view of the President and his administration. To the Tribune that day, there seemed to be those who favored a revolutionary change in American life, bringing it closer to government control than ever Lenin and Trotsky had planned in the summer of 1917. There were those, the Tribune thundered, who thought that the system of private capital had reached its limit and must be replaced by the firmer direction of government. The Tribune gloomily saw communist influence within the functions of government and its propaganda agencies, paving the way for what it called “the fulfillment of the revolution.”18

Liberty and Justice for All: Restrictive Covenants Readers of The Washington Post were informed of a significant decision by Judge Matthew F. McGuire of the District Court upholding restrictive covenants against the sale of Washington real property to “Negroes.” Mr. and Mrs. Frederic F. Hundley had acquired title to the home on which they had spent more

136

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

than $2,000 in improvements through the transfer of title from the Home Owners Loan Corporation, in a transaction in which the restrictive covenant was not mentioned. The judge nevertheless upheld the limitation, observing that the validity of such covenants had been generally upheld and that such restrictions were solemn contracts that were not to be casually set aside.19

Liberty and Justice for All: Showing the Way Herman Wouk was far from alone in his commitment to his ideals. At Bookman Technical High School in New York, a cast of 1,000 put on “Road to Freedom,” billed as “a dramatization of the age-long struggle for freedom and democracy.” It portrayed Abraham Lincoln reading the Emancipation Proclamation to a group of slaves. Benjamin Franklin was portrayed by Jerome Hymowitz, with Joseph Baumhart as Thomas Jefferson, Herbert Schmale as Patrick Henry and Burt Dror as Sam Adams, all of Midwood High School. In a related scene, Fred Schumer and Harold Grossman, both of Seward Park High School, took the parts of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, though to what effect The Times did not report.20 The same magazine section of The Times gave a panoramic view of Linden Vista in San Diego, where 3,000 houses were being built on a 1,240-acre site to be occupied by aircraft workers. A typical partially prefabricated home would extend to 720 square feet, including two bedrooms, a living room, alcove, kitchen, and bath.21 The power of war and the threat of war can often give rise to social change. The Los Angeles Times reported that the directors of the Medical Women’s Association had sent resolutions to the President asking that women doctors be admitted to serve in the Army and Navy on equal terms and with the same privileges as men.22

Life in These United States: Last Morning at Peace The urge to be a part, however tangentially, of the great events that were unfolding across the world spurred vigorous activity in the world of Society. Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt was to give a luncheon at her home to launch a Christmas drive by Young America Wants to Help, the Junior Division of the British War Relief Society, an American organization founded in 1939 to provide humanitarian aid to Britain. The funds raised since October 1940 totaled more than $150,000 and would be used to buy necessities for British children. The roster of the British War Relief Society could well be defined as the American Establishment. These are a few of the extensive membership of the Society’s committee: Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. Wendell Willkie, Mrs. Marshall Field, Mrs. John G. Winant, Mrs. E. Roland Harriman, Mrs. Learned Hand, Mrs. Vincent Astor, Mrs. Steven Vincent Benet, Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Mrs. W. Averell Harriman. Not to be outdone by the British War Relief Society, the Free French Relief Committee scheduled the Renoir Ball for December 17. This sumptuous event

A Quiet Morning in America

137

would include a reception in the Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel, a buffet supper in the Oval Room and dancing. The feature of the evening would be the presentation of a series of tableaux vivants interpreting Renoir paintings. The presenters of the tableaux were to include Miss Francesca Braggiotti and Mr. John Lodge in “Dancing in the Town”; Miss Josette Daly as “The Lady by the Sea”; Miss Helen Menken in “Lady at the Piano”; and Miss Diana Barrymore as “The Dancer.” All this would be climaxed by Miss Lily Pons, as sympathetic a representative of France as could be found in New York that evening, who would step forth from a picture frame and burst into song. Another event in the planning stage that Sunday was the Diamond Jubilee Ball celebrating President Roosevelt’s sixtieth birthday. It was to be held on January 30 at the Waldorf Astoria for the benefit of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and its Greater New York Chapter. The President was the leader and the embodiment of the New Deal. He was the champion of the Forgotten Man, not to mention the unmentioned forgotten woman. He was also the scourge of the economic royalists, the man whose fireside chats had touched the hearts of the nation and conveyed his concern for that one-third of the nation that was ill fed, ill clad and ill housed. But the President’s ties to the aristocracy from which he had emerged remained intimate, as evidenced by the organizers of this event. The honorary chairman was to be Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, presumably fresh from her labors at the British War Relief Society. She had called a meeting of her committee to be held in the Green Room of La Salle du Bois to discuss a midnight entertainment program, which would in costume, commentary, and song present highlights of the last sixty years. There was to be a Debutantes’ Committee headed by Miss Frederica de Peyster Lawrence that would be charged with the decorations. A Junior Committee would complete the organization.23 * On a lighter note, The New York Times Sunday Magazine offered a feature story on “The Quizzical College Girl.” Its study of the tweed-skirted, saddle-shoeshod, bright-eyed girls took place at Bryn Mawr College, then as now a singlegender institution. It found the girls not particularly sure of where they were heading. About a sixth of the seniors would marry shortly after graduation; a third would marry before thirty. Of those gainfully employed, three out of five would be teachers. They were not particularly engaged in the international crisis. These girls were not the determined collegians of the 1900s, the jazz extremists of the twenties or the untidy intellectuals of the thirties. They were starry-eyed but earnest, sincere, and limitlessly energetic. They were, The Times concluded, sound young people fed up with the ivory tower. They might come down with a thump but they would survive.24 * Far from the Bryn Mawr campus, far from the ballrooms of the Plaza and the Waldorf Astoria, the Houston Chronicle offered the story of the man who lived

138

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

on $2.00 a week and “likes it.” On a few leased acres, M. L. Wilson lived with his five-and-a-half-year-old grandson, his mule, his cow, and his chickens. The house, the barn, and the mule stable were valued at $1,000 but, said Mr. Wilson, “I wouldn’t trade it for the State Capitol.” He cultivated most of his own food, a rain barrel under the eaves provided water and “what campin’ and cookin’” utensils he had were more than sufficient. Mr. Wilson was, he said, a “foot-washin’ Baptist” (not to be confused with the “hard shell Baptists”) who had been called to the Lord in 1919 and had been preaching and reading his Bible ever since. He had no patience with the “money preachers” who couldn’t understand why he never took up a collection when he preached. “You gotta be a scrapper to do it and you’ve gotta have that ‘old timey’ spirit to succeed,” were sentiments which many of his fellow Texans would warmly endorse.25 * Harking back to an older if not “old-timey” era was the obituary of Philemon Tecumseh Sherman, age seventy-four, the last surviving child of General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the Army of the Tennessee and leader of the famous March to the Sea. Mr. Sherman had graduated from Yale College and the Columbia University Law School. He had served as the New York State Commissioner of Labor, becoming an acknowledged expert in the field of workmen’s compensation and unemployment insurance. He had also served on the New York City Board of Aldermen. His death brought back memories of the triumvirate of victorious Civil War generals, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, and with it the appreciation of how close in time the country was to its darkest and bloodiest years.26

America’s Role: A Charge of Treason On this Sunday, December 7, under the headline “THE STINGING TRUTH,” the Chicago Tribune ardently pursued the story of the alleged war plans it had broken in the preceding week. Henry Stimson, it said, “perhaps on the advice of his money-making crew,” had refused to answer any questions from reporters. Mr. Stimson was characterized as “an old, not to say senile lawyer” whose defense was to smear his opponents by intimating that it was unpatriotic and disloyal to publish the government’s alleged plans. The Tribune denied that publication of its story had had any adverse impact upon the defense program; nor was there anything to give aid and comfort to any enemy, actual or potential. “We have known,” it announced, “for a long time that the war party was betraying the American people.” “Now,” it said triumphantly, “we have proved it.”27 The charge was treason, as the bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor.

Notes 1. New York Times, December 7, 1941, 1 2. New York Times, December 7, 1941, 1 3. Atlanta Constitution, December 7, 1941, 1

A Quiet Morning in America

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

Denver Post, December 7, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 7, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 7, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 7, 1941, 10B Washington Post, December 7, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 7, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 7, 1941, 10 Denver Post, December 7, 1941, 3/1 Chicago Tribune, December 7, 1941, 11 New York Times, December 7, 1941, 15 Washington Post, December 7, 1941, B3 Chicago Tribune, December 7, 1941, 1/15 New York Times, December 7, 1941, SM5 New York Times, December 7, 1941, RW8 Chicago Tribune, December 7, 1941, 1/18 Washington Post, December 7, 1941, 11 New York Times, December 7, 1941, SM5 New York Times, December 7, 1941, R7 Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1941, 1/6 New York Times, December 7, 1941, SM1 New York Times, December 7, 1941, SM18 Houston Chronicle, December 7, 1941, 10B New York Times, December 7, 1941, 79 Chicago Tribune, December 7, 1941, 1/18

139

12 WHAT AMERICA KNEW

JAPANESE PLAN AND TROOP DISPOSITION November 1941

140º

160º

Defensive Perimeter Plan 1600

0

Miles at the Equator 100º

TIBET BHUTAN

PART OF CEA BURMA

40º

PACIFIC OCEAN

SOUTHERN ARMY

Hong Kong

THAILAND FRENCH INDOCHINA

PHILIPPINES

14th Army - to Philippines 15th Army - to Thailand 16th Army - to East Indies 25th Army - to Malaya

20º

Marshall Islands

Caroline Islands

MALAYA tra ma

Su

0º

GENERAL DEFENSE COMMANDO

J

CHINA

INDIA

A

KOREAN ARMYKOREA

P

CHINA EXPEDITIONARY ARMY (CEA)

A

40º

20º

120º USSR KWANTUNG ARMY MANCHURIA

N

MONGOLIA

Gilbert Islands

Singapore Borneo

NETHERLANDS

INDIES

Java

New Guinea

0º

Solomon Islands

INDIAN OCEAN 20º

AUSTRALIA 100º

FIGURE 12.1

120º

140º

160º

Japanese plan and troop disposition, November 1941.

20º

What America Knew

141

What indeed did Americans, or at least those Americans who followed the affairs of their country at home and abroad, know on that quiet noon hour of Sunday, December 7, 1941, about the position of their country and the risks to which it was exposed in a war-torn world? They knew, if they cared to know, that Japan had defied the League of Nations in its 1931 takeover of Manchuria, which then became the puppet state of Manchukuo. They were aware of the 1937 outbreak of hostilities at Shanghai and the long and continuing invasion of a China to which America, through a complex history of business, cultural and religious ties, had accorded a keen interest and a sympathy based on sincere and mutual expressions of friendship. They knew that American embargos of scrap metal and steel and later a freeze on Japanese assets in the United States had had a severe and adverse impact on the Japanese economy. They knew of Japan’s expansionist claims to a New Order in Asia, indeed a Japanese-dominated Co-Prosperity Sphere, which was clearly a euphemism for Japanese military and economic conquest. Opposed to these, they knew, were those American principles enunciated by its Secretary of State based upon the long-neglected Nine-Power Treaty, demanding Japanese military withdrawal from China and the celebrated Open Door to the China trade. They knew that Japan was a party to a Tripartite Pact with the dictatoraggressors Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. They saw preparations for war on every hand, not only by Japan in its threatening movements of troops, planes, and ships, but also in defensive preparations by the Philippines, by Singapore and the Malay States, by the Netherlands East Indies and by Australia. Moreover, their own country was engaged in a vast defense program that included never-beforeseen production of naval and merchant vessels, aircraft, tanks, a vastly expanded army, and huge housing developments to accommodate the workers who would produce all these implements of war. Most of these goods were to be shipped to Britain and to the Soviet Union, engaged in an immense military struggle with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, both readily identified as enemies of the United States. Those goods would sail under the protection of the U.S. Navy; and not only the Navy but American merchant vessels had been exposed to actual warfare on the convoy routes of the Atlantic. There was nothing secret, nothing covert about all this. Indeed, in all this America was far from being an innocent bystander or even a disinterested party. At Cavite in the Philippines, where the American Asiatic Fleet was based, General Douglas MacArthur commanded a joint U.S.–Philippine force recently reinforced by bomber squadrons that were thought capable of a wide radius of action, including Japan. More than that, the American people had been told point blank—not once, but again and again, and especially in New York the week that ended Sunday, December 7—by the reporters, by the analysts, by the pundits, by the experts, by the editorial writers, and by their own government that the United States was on the brink of war with Japan; that indeed the choice of war or peace lay in the hands of the Son of Heaven, the Emperor Hirohito, to whom President Roosevelt had on December 6 addressed a last and desperate plea to continue discussions

142

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

and step back from the brink. The Emperor’s reply might hang in the balance; but should Americans have been surprised to find themselves at war on that day? * What would America’s response have been had Japan only invaded Thailand, posing direct threats to Burma and to the British-dominated Malay Peninsula with its great fortress and naval base at Singapore? Would it have been considered in America to be simply another phase of Japanese expansion in an exotic country halfway across the world? And what if Japan had attacked Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaya, carefully avoiding direct contact with the United States? Winston Churchill had famously declared that if America went to war with Japan Britain’s declaration of war against Japan would follow in the hour. Would America have done the same for a Britain attacked by Japan? What were America’s obligations, especially those arising out of joint defense discussions held with the ABCD powers? * Whatever the answers may have been to these intriguing inquiries, there was little or no basis for believing that the Japanese would retire quietly from their China adventure, or indeed from all of their other large ambitions, leaving behind an Open Door. Nor was it plausible that the direct confrontation between two great powers, proceeding on diametrically opposite principles and policies, would simply fade away in the peaceful extension of a status quo satisfactory to none. Yes, America was on the absolute brink of war with Japan, and the American people, if they cared to think about it, surely knew it.

13 WHAT AMERICA DIDN’T KNOW

However much Americans may have known about Japan’s ambitions, aggressions, and threats to their nation, and however closely they had followed the continuing negotiations with the Japanese envoys Nomura and Kurusu, it was what Americans did not know that would determine the country’s fate.

FIGURE 13.1

Aboard a Japanese carrier before Pearl Harbor attack.

Captured photo. Courtesy of National Archives, photo 520599, NWDNS 80-G-30549; Department of Defense.

144

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

Crucial Japanese Decisions What Americans didn’t know, and couldn’t have seen reported in its press, were the decisions arrived at during the Japanese conference held on July 2, 1941, in the Imperial Presence and attended by the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the War Minister, the President of the Privy Council, and the heads of the Army and Navy. It was there resolved that the Imperial Government would seek the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and, curiously enough, world peace, “no matter what international developments take place.” It would seek to settle the China incident and to establish a solid basis for the security and preservation of the nation, including an advance to the southern region. Ominously, the Imperial Government would carry out the above program no matter what obstacles might be encountered.1 * Nor did America know that at the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941, Japan had laid down its minimum negotiating position vis-à-vis America (and England and the Netherlands). Failing diplomatic success in the pursuit of its goals and “in order to secure our national existence,” Japan would proceed with war preparations to be completed by the end of October. And what were Japan’s demands; what was its final negotiating position? Its terms: the United States, China, and Britain were to close the Burma Road and terminate any aid to the Chiang Kai-shek regime, leaving Japan with the right to station troops in various areas of China. Neither the United States nor Britain would establish any bases in the region or increase Far Eastern forces. Trade relations would be restored looking to the supply of raw materials to Japan from the Southwest Pacific. For its part, Japan would promise not to use Indo-China as a base of operations and to observe its neutrality pact with the Soviet Union. Japan’s reasoning was thus expressed: “If it did not fight soon for what it wanted, it would not be able to fight with a fair chance of victory, for the defense of its enemies would become too strong and its oil too short.” Having arrived at these policy decisions, the Emperor pulled from his pocket a piece of paper and read the following poem written by the Emperor Meiji: Since all men are brothers in this world, Why is there such constant turmoil?2 * Americans who read the papers were well aware of the resignation on October 16, 1941, of Prime Minister Konoye and his replacement the following day by hardline General Tojo. But they did not know that Japan was proceeding with further preparations for war in deep secrecy. The Liaison Conference of October 23, 1941, determined not only that the decision for peace or war must be made quickly but also identified Pearl Harbor as the principal target of the proposed attack.3 *

What America Didn’t Know

145

At the Cabinet meeting held on November 1 there were those who wished to defer any decision until the United States had entered the European war. But the Army and Navy wanted no such delay. The cabinet concluded that if Japan moved quickly, it could win; if it delayed it would lose. So Tojo prevailed: “rather than await extinction, it was better to face death by breaking through the encircling ring to find a way of existence.” 4 Once again, on November 2, 1941, the Liaison Conference determined to put Japan’s final proposals to the United States. If they were rejected, Japan would go to war.5 The Imperial Conference met again on November 5 and confirmed the decision of the Liaison Conference. It adopted a final proposal including economic equality in China and Asia, which in practice meant Japanese access to needed resources; the Japanese army to remain in China for “a necessary period,” estimated to be about twenty-five years; Japanese withdrawal from Indo-China when matters were settled in China; and a redefinition of Japanese obligations under the Tripartite Pact.6 A further iteration of these terms followed on November 20. These were not terms Secretary of State Hull was likely to find congenial. The significance of the decision taken at the Imperial Conference was enhanced when on November 30 Admiral Yamamoto sent to the fleet Secret Order No. 1 naming Xday. A message to Nomura informed him that this was Japan’s final offer. “In fact, we gambled the fate of our land on this throw of the die.”7 Japan had made its final offers. Secretary Hull responded to Nomura on November 26. He called for adherence to American principles, a nonaggression pact in the Far East and a Japanese withdrawal from China and Indo-China. This was followed on November 27 by an American ten-point statement of U.S. principles. * The Japanese reaction to Secretary Hull’s proposals was prompt. They were deemed “humiliating,” to be met by a decision for war. The November 27, 1941, decision of the Liaison Conference was confirmed by the Imperial Conference on December 1, 1941. It would be war. This time the Emperor was silent.8 Americans knew nothing of these decisions of the Imperial Conference. They were to be executed promptly. On December 2, Admiral Yamamoto radioed to the Pearl Harbor Striking Force, “Climb Mt. Mitaka.” This was the signal for the attack to proceed. Xday was set for Sunday, December 7, Hawaii time.9 The Striking Force was on the move.

Gathered in Deepest Secrecy If America was wholly unaware of these crucial Japanese decisions, it was equally unaware of the assembly of forces preparing for the attack. The Pearl Harbor Striking Force was one of the greatest fleets the world had ever seen: the aircraft carriers Akagi, Kaga, Zuikaku, Hiryu, and Soryu ; the battleships Hiei and Kirishima ; the cruisers Tone and Chikuma ; nine destroyers; and three screening

146

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

submarines well supported by eight tankers. They had gathered in deepest secrecy in the remote and lonely northern port of Hitokappu. The Striking Force was led by its commander, Admiral Chiuchi Nagumo. The date for the attack was December 8 Tokyo time, which was December 7 Hawaii time. There would be favorable moonlight and the greatest number of men aboard the American ships would be off duty. Proceeding steadily eastward, on December 3, the Japanese fleet was 900 miles north of Midway Island. December 4 and 5 were spent refueling, after which the tankers retired. On December 6, Admiral Yamamoto rallied his forces. Throughout the fleet, all the crew not at their stations below decks assembled on deck. Admiral Yamamoto then addressed them: “The moment has arrived. The rise or fall of our empire is at stake. . . .” They gave this message a thunderous reception. Looking back to a signal moment in the history of modern Japan, the flagship of the Japanese fleet ran up the Z flag, which had been flown by Admiral Togo at the great Japanese victory over the Russian fleet at Tsushima in 1905. At 1:20 a.m. on the 7th, Hawaii time, the Japanese fleet received its last message from Tokyo. It accounted for the U.S. Navy vessels moored in Pearl Harbor, among them nine battleships, three cruisers, seventeen destroyers and numerous other ships. But the most critical information was not noted: that the U.S. aircraft carriers had departed Pearl Harbor. It would be the carriers, not the battleships, which would be decisive in the war that was about to begin.

Into the Air December 7, 1941. It was a quiet morning in America. Unknown and unsuspected the Japanese fleet was 250 miles from Pearl Harbor. The moment had come. Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who was to lead the aerial assault, said to Admiral Nagumo, “I am ready for this mission.” To which Nagumo replied: “I have every confidence in you.” The first wave of attackers took off at 6:00 a.m., the cheers of the crew on deck drowned out by the roar of the planes’ engines. Soon there were 183 aircraft aloft, bearing the flaming red symbol of the Rising Sun: 40 torpedo planes, 100 bombers, and 43 fighters, with a combat air patrol of 39 planes left behind to defend the fleet in case of attack. All but the plane guard were heading straight for Pearl Harbor.10 In Oahu and Pearl Harbor that morning, there were seemingly minor dramas. The U.S. minesweeper Condor, in league with the destroyer Ward, was tracking a midget submarine just outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor. At around 7:00 a.m., the American radar-spotting station at Opama at the northern tip of Oahu identified and plotted a large flight of incoming aircraft which might or might not be a flight of B-17 bombers scheduled to arrive that day in Oahu. The private operating the radar called the targets to the attention of a lieutenant who was present for training. They relayed the message to the information center at Fort Schafer. Through a series of mistakes and mishaps nothing was done, no action was taken.

What America Didn’t Know

147

The range of this flight kept decreasing: at 7:08 a.m. 113 miles; at 7:15 a.m. 92 miles; at 7:25 a.m. 62 miles; at 7:30 a.m. 45 miles. By then the second wave of Japanese aircraft had also taken off: eighty divebombers, fifty-four high-level bombers, and thirty-six fighters. As Fuchida approached Oahu, thick clouds obscured his vision. He could scarcely believe his good fortune when he broke into the clear of perfect visibility over Pearl Harbor. It was time to signal the attack. He fired one “Black Dragon” from his signal pistol. The dive bombers circled upward to 12,000 feet, the horizontal bombers came down to 3,500 feet and the torpedo planes dropped to a level almost skimming the sea, all eager for the assault. Fuchida again signaled the attack. It was 7:55 a.m. Even before the first bomb of the second attack fell, Fuchida, confident of success, signaled to the carriers, “Tora . . . Tora . . . Tora!” “Victory!”

Notes 1. Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor: The Coming of the War Between the United States and Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 215–16 2. Feis, 264–67 3. Feis, 292 4. Feis, 293 5. Feis, 294 6. Feis, 295 7. Feis, 296 8. Feis, 329–30 9. Walter Lord, Day of Infamy (New York: Henry Holt, 1957), 19 10. Lord, 41–48

14 THE ANSWER

FIGURE 14.1

The USS Shaw exploding during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Courtesy of National Archives, photo 520590, 80-G-16871; Department of Defense.

So this was the answer to Secretary Hull’s Statement of Principles, to the President’s inquiry about Japanese troops in French Indo-China and to the President’s plea to the Emperor. It was past noon in the eastern United States and late morning

The Answer

149

farther west when at 2:22 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Washington announced the bombing of Honolulu and of Pearl Harbor. Tokyo had announced the attack more than an hour earlier, at 1:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time—3:05 a.m. on December 8, Tokyo time. It was at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time that Japan announced that a state of war existed against the United States and Great Britain. Walter Lord reports in Day of Infamy that at 2:26 p.m. Eastern Standard Time New York station WOR interrupted a Dodgers–Giants football game at the Polo Grounds with the startling report of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At a New York Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall, the attack was announced a half hour later, repeating an earlier CBS bulletin as the musicians were about to start Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1. At the end of the performance, the orchestra played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”1 By 10:00 a.m. Hawaii time, the raiders had departed and the Japanese fleet had turned homeward. The towering clouds of black smoke that had enveloped the naval base began to disperse. But aside from the shocking fact of the attack as reported by radio, the American public knew little. It would be necessary first to determine the extent of the damage, information that could not be disclosed until it was no longer useful to the enemy. The actual losses that day included the battleships Oklahoma and Arizona. The latter had been the victim of a spectacular direct hit, and in the following

FIGURE 14.2 The USS West Virginia and the USS Tennessee burning after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Courtesy of National Archives, photo 12008986, 80-G-32414; Department of Defense.

150

“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941

FIGURE 14.3

The USS Arizona burning after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Courtesy of National Archives, photo 195617, NLR-PHOCO-A-8150(29) from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library collection.

explosions its crew had suffered more than half of the American casualties of December 7. The battleships West Virginia, California, and Nevada, the only battleship to get underway that day, were sunk or beached. The battleships Tennessee, Maryland, and Pennsylvania registered severe damage, as did the cruisers Helena, Honolulu, and Raleigh, the destroyer Shaw, the seaplane tender Curtis and the repair ship Vestal. One hundred eighty-eight American planes were destroyed on the ground and 159 damaged. To achieve these staggering blows, the Japanese paid a minimal price—twentynine planes, including nine fighters, fifteen dive bombers, and five torpedo planes. Other losses included one large submarine and five midgets. The human cost to Japan was fifty-five airmen and nine midget-sub crewmen. American casualties were inversely severe: 2,403 killed and 1,178 wounded, including civilians. It was a famous victory.

Note 1. Walter Lord, Day of Infamy (New York: Henry Holt, 1957), ii

Joe DiMaggio advertising Camel cigarettes. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Stanford School of Medicine.

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.5015:38.

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, N18.2:P94.

Courtesy of National Archives, photo 5197, NWDNS-44-PA-2272 from the World War II Posters collection.

Tojo, Mussolini, and Hitler. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, 2591244.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Life Begins for Andy Hardy poster from Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.

Poster by Ben Shahn. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.4812:A-25.

Poster by Thomas Woodburn. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, 2589267.

Poster by Charlotte Angus. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC2-1108.

Poster by MacLean. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, W3.46/1:G31.

Poster by Valentino Sarra. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.5015:28.

Poster by Alexander Ross. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, FS2.26:N93/10.

Courtesy of National Archives, 513886, NWDNS-44-PA-427, Office of Government Reports.

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.409:Am3.

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, T1.107:W37/4.

Poster by Zebedee Johnson. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC2-5680.

Poster by Bernard Perlin. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.5015:15.

Poster by Allen Saalburg. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.5015:14/3.

PART IV

First Week at War December 8–13, 1941

15 MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1941

FIGURE 15.1

Sailor reading the Chicago Daily Tribune, December 8, 1941.

U.S. Navy photo. Courtesy of National Archives, 80-G-405258.

A Nation at War: Reports Pouring In Banner headlines the next day, Monday, confirmed what had been known by radio the day before—the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and assaults on other

154

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

far-flung targets, by air, sea, and land. The fate of the U.S. battleships Oklahoma and West Virginia—whether damaged or sunk—was neither confirmed nor denied, and the same was true of the destroyers and other vessels.1 From the Associated Press came reports of one ship lying on its side and four others on fire. It further reported a naval engagement off Honolulu with a Japanese aircraft carrier attacking Pearl Harbor’s defenses, complete with columns of water rising up from the sea.2 There were greater claims. The Mutual Broadcasting System reported a Japanese aircraft carrier sunk off the Oahu coast.3 In a battle of dueling claims, Japanese headquarters claimed a U.S. aircraft carrier sunk by a Japanese submarine.4 There were continuing reports of a naval engagement off Oahu and confused stories of the sinking of an American, or perhaps Japanese, aircraft carrier.5 Washington also announced damage to Army and Navy aircraft and hangars. It confirmed attacks on Wake Island, Midway, Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai. Other sources reported Japanese landings in northern Malaya and Japanese moves into Thailand.6,7 In another report, the U.S. fleet was portrayed as sweeping out to sea protected by clouds of airplanes as it searched for the carriers that had launched the attack. This was a picture congenial to Americans but unfortunately unsupported by reality. The action was not confined to Hawaii. In the reports that came pouring in, it seemed that the Japanese army, navy, and air force were everywhere swarming to the attack across the Pacific. Correspondent Royal Arch Gunnison reported from Manila that Japanese parachutists had landed in the Philippines, and together with local Japanese had seized some unnamed communities. He added a positive note: the ABCD fleet seemed successful against the Japanese invaders. There had been air attacks on the Philippine islands of Luzon and Mindanao, where General MacArthur reported little damage.8 Further attacks were recorded in Thailand.9 In northern Malaya, some 300 miles from Singapore,10 Japanese forces had seized the International Settlement at Shanghai, capturing the American gunboat Wake and destroying the British gunboat Petrel. Wake Island was under assault, as was Guam, where the U.S. minesweeper Penguin was sunk.11 In the Philippines, President Quezon spoke reassuring words: “Everything is calm and fully organized.”12 The U.S. Navy, it was reported, would be operating out of Singapore to protect shipments of tin and rubber vital to the defense effort, and immediate steps would be taken to meet the threat to China’s lifeline, the Burma Road.13 Navy officials added that its forces counterattacked from the moment the first bombs fell. They portrayed the U.S. fleet “its giant guns stripped for action,” in search of the foe, especially the aircraft carriers which had launched the attack. There was no doubt, they added, that the enemy carriers had “stolen into position under the cover of darkness.”14 What was new on Monday was the official White House statement that the American casualties at Pearl Harbor, which on Sunday had been reported to be up to 104 dead and 300 wounded,15 were now about 3,000, more than half killed.

Monday, December 8, 1941

155

And there appeared in the newspapers the first casualty lists, which would become a daily feature for the next four years. The reports continued to pour in. The White House announced a second wave of bombers that was met by antiaircraft fire.16 NBC reported that the battleship Oklahoma was afire. Domei, the Japanese news agency, claimed the Oklahoma had been sunk. There were unconfirmed reports that the battleship West Virginia had been damaged or sunk, together with 7 destroyers and 350 aircraft caught on the ground. The War Department reported 104 soldiers killed and 300 wounded, a number that would soon grow sharply.17 Hearing the first radio reports of the attack, thousands had called their newspapers for confirmation of the White House statement. One of these was The Denver Post. It reported on Monday that “laymen sat by their radios, listening to reports they simply couldn’t believe. Japan, they argued, could not be so stupid. The peace discussions were still going on. The Japanese peace mission was still in Washington. It just didn’t make sense.”18

A Nation at War: Diplomatic Documents Monday morning’s newspapers published four documents that told much about the origins of the conflict and even more about the state of mind of the contestants. Secretary Hull’s Statement of Principles delivered to the Japanese envoys on November 26 had adopted an elevated moral tone. America’s policy, it said, was based on the principles of peace, law and order, and fair dealing among nations. More specifically included were the principles of the inviolability of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of every nation; the principle of noninterference in the affairs of other nations; the principle of equality among nations, which included equality of economic opportunity; and international cooperation and conciliation in addressing disputes, which would be resolved by peaceful methods and processes.19 There had as yet been no reply to this document by the 6th when President Roosevelt addressed his last-minute appeal to the Emperor. It reflected his earlier inquiry about the presence and number of Japanese troops in French Indo-China. The President ritually invoked the right of all nations to live in peace, and cited especially peace between Japan and China. He recounted the agreement between Japan and Vichy for the stationing of a limited number of Japanese troops in IndoChina. Japan had far exceeded these limits, creating a “legitimate fear” of invasion in the Philippines, in the Netherlands East Indies and in Thailand. None of these countries, the President said, could sit for long on a keg of powder. The President offered to obtain assurance from them not to attack Indo-China, and, yes, assurance from China as well, thus obviating the need for Japanese troops to defend the Vichy colony. He called for the elimination of military threats and in the present “definite emergency” to find ways to dispel the dark clouds, a sacred duty in the name of humanity to prevent further death and destruction in the world.20 Not surprisingly, the long-sought Japanese reply to Secretary Hull, delivered by the Japanese envoys while the bombs were falling on Oahu and on the U.S.

156

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Pacific Fleet, took a mirror-opposite position to Hull’s statement, both as to the facts and the principles. It was, it said, the immutable policy of the Japanese government to ensure the stability of East Asia and to promote world peace, enabling all nations to find their proper place in the world. The note then cited the fundamental grievance—measures by the United States and Britain to aid China, “an important subject” obstructing Japan’s efforts to establish peace there. The note declared that U.S. insistence that Japan not support any regime other than Chungking disregarded utterly the existence of Japan’s Nanking government, thereby “shattering the very basis of the present negotiation” and disregarding, too, “Japan’s sacrifice in the four years of the China affair.” It castigated the Hull principles as utopian in the light of the realities of the world’s actual condition. No, the United States was accused of catering to Chungking and keeping Japan at war with China. The belated conclusion: it would be impossible to reach agreement.21 The Japanese note lauded Japan’s fairness and moderation and willingness to apply principles of nondiscrimination to commerce with all nations, China included. But it was clear that China was the rock against which all other considerations shattered. The fourth document in this futile exchange was the Emperor’s Declaration of War. He spoke of his nation’s desire for ages eternal to cultivate friendship and prosperity with all nations. The war was “truly unavoidable” since China, which had failed to comprehend Japan’s true intentions, had caused trouble, and disturbed the peace of East Asia, forcing Japan to take up arms. The Emperor charged the United States and Britain with supporting Chungking against Japan’s efforts to establish neighborly intercourse and cooperation with the rival Nanking regime. In short, Britain and France wished to dominate the Orient. They were increasing their military preparations and obstructing peaceful commerce. This included direct severance of vital economic ties, gravely threatening to Japan. The Emperor praised Japan’s patience and conciliatory spirit in the face of action that would nullify its efforts to establish peace and prosperity in East Asia. For its continued existence and self-defense there was no recourse but the appeal to arms, which would eradicate the sources of evil, establish enduring peace in East Asia and preserve the glory of the Empire.22 Thus starkly were the issues drawn that led to Japan’s attack and subsequent declaration of war against the United States and Britain. In his final meetings with the Japanese envoys, Secretary Hull had stood by the principles that had animated his note of November 26. In a statement dated December 7, the Secretary of State expressed his outrage at the Japanese reply: I must say that in all my conversations with you [the Japanese envoys], during the last nine months, I have never uttered one word of untruth. This is borne out absolutely by the record. In all my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge than I never imagined until today that any government on this planet was capable of uttering them.23

Monday, December 8, 1941

157

A Nation at War: The President Addresses the Nation Meetings at the White House had filled the evening of that fateful Sunday, December 7. Amid shattering events in the Pacific the President had met with the cabinet in the Oval Room at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. He had already conferred with advisor Harry Hopkins, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, and Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark. Congressional leaders arrived at 9:00 p.m. Texas Senator W. Lee O’Daniel—whose election had been celebrated with a rendering by the Lightcrust Doughboys of his campaign song “Pass the Biscuits, Pappy”—had not been invited to the meeting. But he came anyway, he said, “to make sure that Texas is represented at the conference.”24 The conference closed after 11:00 p.m. and an official announcement was issued. It stated that the President and his advisors had reviewed the available facts and that the President’s message to Congress had not yet been written. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn was asked if the President would ask Congress for a declaration of war. “He didn’t say,” was the answer. Would Congress support a declaration of war? “I think that is one thing on which there would be unity,” Rayburn replied.

Crew of the USS Wichita listening to President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” address to Congress, December 8, 1941.

FIGURE 15.2

Courtesy of Naval History and Naval Command, photo 80-G-464088.

158

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

House Minority Leader Joseph Martin echoed the thoughts of many when he said: “There is only one party when it comes to the integrity and honor of the country.”25 Senator Connelly of Texas announced that the President would address a joint session of Congress at 12:30 p.m. on Monday, December 8. The events of December 8, 1941, were chronicled with passion and precision by a great reporter, James Reston, writing in The New York Times: The United States went to war as a great nation should—with simplicity, dignity and unprecedented unity. There were absent the deep divisions of 1776, 1812, 1861, 1898 and 1917. If the atmosphere of the Capital was grave, it was free from doubt.26 At noon the President emerged from the White House on the arm of his son James. The President wore the formal attire of another era—a frock coat and striped trousers. His son was in his Marine Corps uniform. In the car headed for the Capitol were the President’s wife Eleanor, his mother, Mrs. James Roosevelt, his acting secretary, and his military and naval aides.27 A crowd of more than 2,000 had gathered on the Capitol Plaza. It was a confident, patriotic crowd, seething with righteous indignation. They came from all walks of life, singly and in groups, women and children, students and businessmen, in a public spirit, leaving their homes, their classrooms and their businesses behind. Three hundred Metropolitan Police were deployed around the Capitol, and Marines with fixed bayonets stood at its entrances. Modest hand-clapping gave way to a roar as the President’s car arrived and turned into a side entrance.28 Members of the cabinet arrived in the House of Representatives at 12:28 p.m. At 12:30, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn rapped his gavel and announced: “The President of the United States.” After an instant of silence there was a growing crescendo of applause which ended abruptly when the speaker again rapped his gavel. It was at that moment that the President appeared. The ovation that greeted him, applause and cheering, was greater, observers said, than any he had received in the past eight years. After a brief prayer, the President spoke to the assemblage and to the array of movie cameras amid and under their glowing lights.29 The President’s address was brief, only six and one-half minutes. If the President was brief, he was eloquent. He described the Japanese attack, which he said had been deliberately planned during fraudulent negotiations. He did not hesitate to tell hard truths: the attack had done “severe damage” to American naval and military forces, and “many, many American lives had been lost.” He recited the litany of Japanese assaults across the Pacific. He assured the American people that however long it took, they would in their righteous might win through to absolute victory. Thunderous cheers greeted many a moment of the address, none more than when Roosevelt railed against the treachery that would ensure the date of this transformative event would live in infamy.30

Monday, December 8, 1941

159

“Seldom, if ever in an address to Congress,” Reston reported, “has the President judged the temper of the representatives of the people better than he did in this speech.” The vote in the Senate, which followed at 1:00 p.m., was unanimous. The House acted swiftly at 1:31 p.m.; the enrolled resolution was signed by Speaker Rayburn at 3:14 p.m. and by Vice President Wallace at 3:25 p.m. It was signed by the President only forty-five minutes later. In the House only one vote had been lacking for unanimity. As she had twenty-four years before in 1917, pacifist Jeannette Rankin, Representative for Montana, uttered only the word “No” when the roll was called. Her vote was greeted with hisses, and she later sought refuge from a swarm of reporters and cameramen in a telephone booth.31 The President’s radio address to the nation displayed some of his important qualities as a war leader. He did not shrink from the facts: So far the news is all bad. We have suffered a serious setback in Hawaii. Our forces in the Philippines, which include the brave people of that commonwealth, are taking punishment but they are defending themselves vigorously. The reports from Guam and Wake and Midway Islands are still confused but we must be prepared for the announcement that these three outposts have been seized. The casualty lists of these first few days will undoubtedly be large.32 He confessed to what he did not know: the exact damage, clearly serious, to the Navy at Pearl Harbor. Nor could he say how soon that damage could be repaired. But he assured the American people that they would know the facts when they had been officially confirmed and when they would not give valuable aid to the enemy. The President reviewed the history of aggressions, not only by Japan starting in 1931 but also by Germany and Italy. Remember, he said, whether or not there are formal declarations (and there had not been), Italy and Germany consider themselves as much engaged in war with the United States as with the Soviet Union. The United States had been right, he said, in the shipment of war materials to nations resisting Axis aggression. The defense of any country resisting aggression was in the long run the defense of the United States. He announced important economic policies: war industry to operate on a seven-day week and new capacity for these industries. He had faith, he said, in the stamina of the American people. The nation was at war, indeed the most tremendous undertaking in American history. To serve in the armed forces of the country was not a sacrifice but indeed a privilege. He closed with the assurance that the country would accept no result save victory, final and complete.33 The country paused in its daily round of activities to listen and to reflect upon the President’s speech. Fifth Avenue, an avenue of flags on many an historic occasion, was alive with red, white, and blue banners. The city suspended its regular routines so that all might listen. Five thousand gathered in City Hall Park to hear

160

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

the speech through loudspeakers. The crowd joined in the applause and in the cheers that emanated from the Capitol, none more so than that in response to the President’s charge of Japanese treachery. With bared heads the crowds stood to attention to the strains of the National Anthem.34 Throughout the city crowds gathered wherever there was a radio, in a store, a restaurant, a bar, a taxi. Courts were adjourned. In Kings County Court Judge Samuel Leibowitz had installed a radio. When the speech ended, a court attaché placed an American flag front and center in the courtroom and the judge led the solemn assemblage in the Pledge of Allegiance. This was the pattern in crowded courtrooms, in Justice Jacob Pankin’s Washington Heights Magistrates Court, in Magistrate Peter Abeles’s court where he was joined by Magistrate William Klapp from the Traffic Court.35 At City College classes were suspended while 12,000 students listened to the President’s address. They sent a telegram to the President backing him and offering to serve “as students.” The president of the student council, Elliot Bredhoff, urged all-out support for the defense program; afterward the students bought $300 worth of defense stamps. At Brooklyn College 5,000 undergraduates listened to the historic address. An announcement, before President Roosevelt spoke, of the sinking of two Japanese ships was met with jubilant cheers. College president Harry Gideonse told the students that it was a matter of living up to their ideals. They should, he said, show their patriotism by faithfully devoting themselves to the tasks demanded of them in their college lives.36

A Nation at War: Editorial Turnaround It was only the previous day, Sunday, before any knowledge of the bombs falling on Pearl Harbor, that the Chicago Tribune, referring to its report of a vastly increased American army and a five-million-man expeditionary force, had printed this accusation: “We have known for a long time that the war party was betraying the American people. Now we have proved it.”37 The Tribune’s turnaround was swift and complete. Its Monday edition showed a single man bearing the label “every American,” saluting a large wind-whipped American flag beneath the caption “At Your Service.” War had been forced on America, the Tribune editorialized, by “an insane clique of Japanese militarists” and there had come to pass what so many had worked so hard to prevent: Recriminations are useless and we doubt that they will be indulged in. Certainly not by us. All that matters today is that we are in the war and the nation must face up to that simple fact. All of us, from this day forth, have only one task. That is to strike with all our might to protect and preserve the American freedom that we all hold dear.38 The New York Times spoke with the same voice as so many editorial writers of the day. There was only one possible answer to Japan’s attack, and that was an

Monday, December 8, 1941

161

immediate declaration of war. “The United States has been attacked. The United States is in danger. Let every patriot take his stand on the bastions of democracy.” The Times made two other points. It characterized as a myth that the President had been “trying to drag us into war.” The Times did not impugn those who had believed the myth; it had questioned only their judgment. The second interesting point was the insistence by The Times that the country’s greatest danger was that posed by Hitler’s Nazi regime. The real battle, it said, would not be fought in the Far East but on the English Channel. And it warned that the United States would be openly and formally at war with Germany well before the war across the English Channel had been finished.39 The New York Daily News said that neither the American nor the Japanese people wanted this war. “But now that we are in it, there is nothing for us to do but to see it through with everything we’ve got.”40 The New York Daily Mirror called for silencing any voices of disunity and endorsed Steven Decatur’s pronouncement of a century ago: “Our country, right or wrong.” The Boston Herald made a perceptive comment. The attack on Hawaii, it said, had done something that neither an invasion of Thailand nor even an assault on the Philippines could have done. It had united the nation as no presidential proclamation or congressional act could. “It is war now, grim and to the death,” The Baltimore Sun solemnly declared, adding this warning: “Let no American think that this is a one-ocean war. . . .”41 To The Washington Post, the country’s peaceful efforts had been rebuffed in a response violating every canon of honor and decency. The nation would address the grim task that lay ahead. “From this task there can be no retreat, no faltering. The command is forward.”42 To The Atlanta Constitution the attack on Pearl Harbor called for an end to quibbling. In its surprise attack, Japan had forced our hand; the country could no longer be a benevolent neutral but must fight back to the utmost of its ability.43 The Houston Chronicle agreed that it would not be long before the United States was at war with Germany and Italy, and anyway, it would be useless to defeat Hitler while allowing Japan “to gobble up half the world.”44 The Los Angeles Times called for an end to internal dissension and debate, “to the foolish if well-meant isolationist obstructions” and, above all, “an end in the efforts of disloyal, self-seeking labor misleaders to hamstring our arms program.”45 The paper was cheerfully optimistic about the prospects of victory. It pronounced Japan’s formidable navy outgunned, outweighed, and out sped by the combined fleets it would face. Her need for air defense at home would keep Japan’s air fleet busy and hence less threatening to our own forces, adding that the Japanese army would be of little use in a predominantly naval war. It went on to say that Japan could easily be blockaded and was poorly placed to carry out a long war.46 An Associated Press story in the Houston Chronicle agreed with this low estimate of the effectiveness of Japanese air power. Confident observers, it said, believed that Japan’s air force could not play any major role in a Pacific War. Japan, it

162

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

said, lacked first-line airplanes, it was shy on pilots and had long depended on the United States for aviation fuels. By way of contrast, the United States had the finest fleet aviation in the world. Other problems for Japan were its accident rate in both civil and military aviation, which was the highest in the world. And finally, the article proclaimed, that the performance of Japanese planes could not match that of comparable U.S. planes.47 Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana had been a leader of the isolationist cause. His response was typical of that of so many of his colleagues: “The Japanese have chosen war. We must all exert our energy, not only to win, but to give the Japs such a whipping that they will not want war again. . . . The only thing now is to do our best to lick the hell out of them.”48 * Optimism was prevalent, the Los Angeles Times found, in a series of man-on-thestreet interviews. Horace Goodrich, twenty-seven, a service-station attendant, said: “We should be able to clean up on those fellows in six weeks or less.” Irene Noble, thirty-five, was a candy store clerk: “They asked for it. I feel certain we can whip the pants off them. And it shouldn’t take very long.” Restaurant chef Anthony Terminello, twenty-five, agreed: “Once we start fighting it won’t last long. I don’t think that the Japanese will be able to hold out long.” Mrs. Lillian Oliver, forty, a housewife concurred: “I think the job of beating the Japs won’t take long. There’s one very important development the war will bring—it probably will mean an end to labor strikes for a long time to come.” There were thoughtful, even prescient responses such as that of Maurice Sundahl, twentysix, an upholsterer: “Lord help those Japanese when our planes begin dropping bombs on some of those paper and wood cities. They’ll start an inferno that will spread over all Japan. It won’t last long.” Madeline Evans, eighteen, was a member of the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps of America. She was ready to go, she said, if she could be of help. Brigadier Guy Pace, thirty-nine, of the Salvation Army said: “I am a man of peace. But not a man of peace at any price.” The Japanese attack, he thought, would promote unity. He looked to all to aid the government in resisting aggression. Georgia Grant, twenty, a theater cashier, spoke for America when she said: “They’ve had it coming for a long time and, well, let’s give it to them.”49 * Amid the air of optimism there were those who had grave concerns. Like many newspapers, The Atlanta Constitution experienced a rush of telephone requests for information about the fate of family members and close connections. Hoke Smith, the son of a prominent Atlanta attorney, was reported to be serving aboard the destroyer Barker in the Far Eastern squadron based at Cavite outside Manila. That fleet of aged vessels, few in number, relics of an earlier war, would soon be wiped out in a series of naval battles in the Pacific seas. Athletes always command special interest and respect; Lt. Commander Walt Godwin, a former All-Southern football guard at Georgia Tech, was reported serving in the Pacific.

Monday, December 8, 1941

163

No story could be more poignant than that of the Cox family. Mrs. Cynthia Cox was in Manila to bring her grandchildren home to Denver. The mother of the two-year-old twins, Cynthia Ann and Henry Harris, Jr., had recently been killed in an automobile accident in Manila; their father was an officer in the U.S. Army in the Philippines. They could hardly envision on that Monday morning the fate that awaited them. The Denver Post reported on “socially prominent Denverites” in Hawaii, among them Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. Gates; in her picture she was further referred to as a “widely known Denver matron.” The family had planned to spend the winter in Hawaii. Besides the crème de la crème, other Denverites in the islands included the manager of the Denver Club, a sugar chemist, an engineer for the U.S. Public Highway Administration, several physicians, the assistant manager of an Army housing project at Hickam Field in Honolulu, a professor of agriculture, and a pair of honeymooners whose plans clearly had not included bombing and strafing.50

A War of Nerves For one group, the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor was excruciating. These were Japanese nationals and Americans of Japanese descent. In New York special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), reinforced by city detectives, rounded up Japanese nationals; they were sent to Ellis Island to be held pending further action in Washington. Police went directly to the Japanese Consulate at Rockefeller Center. They escorted Consul General Morishima and his staff to their homes, instructing them not to leave without police in attendance.51 In Georgia, all Japanese nationals were ordered to stay at home. The guard at the Atlanta Municipal Waterworks and at defense manufacturing plants was doubled and the Commanding General of the Fourth Corps Area directed manufacturers to take all possible precautions against sabotage.52 TWA Airlines announced the barring from its flights of any Japanese national or person suspected of being a Japanese national. Both American and United Airlines received orders that they were not to transport Japanese.53 In Los Angeles there was a roundup of “Orientals, mostly Japanese,” who were detained under guard behind a fence at the Sixth Street ferry landing in San Pedro. Gun crews were readying .50-caliber antiaircraft guns at plane factories in the area, while Navy patrol boats turned back a fleet of Japanese fishing boats which were re-entering Los Angeles Harbor.54 Howard Nomura, a Portland pharmacist and President of the Japanese American Citizens League, expressed the anguish of his position: “This is something we hoped and prayed would never happen. As far as the Nisei [second-generation Japanese] is concerned we know our lot is going to be a tough one.” He could only rely, he said, on the fairness of Caucasian Americans to help them through. “At best our position is not good—we look like Japanese and nothing can be done about it. We only ask for the chance to show we are good Americans.”

164

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Nomura said that his League would report suspicious Japanese activity to the FBI; and he noted that at that moment, there were as many at 300 to 400 Americanborn Japanese serving at Fort Lewis, Washington, in the U.S. Army.55 If the attack on Pearl Harbor preempted war news of the day, still there were reports of a tank battle raging in the Tobruk corridor in Libya and Russian breakthroughs in the German lines before Moscow.56 In the Pacific gasoline had been poured on a world in flames.

Liberty and Justice for All: In the Matter of Race However sensational the news from the Pacific, there would still always be a place for human-interest stories. As a new war erupted, Mrs. Martha Jordan Muller of Chicago looked back at another war now fully lodged in history. She had once owned fifteen slaves, willed to her by her father when she was only twelve. Celebrating her 101st birthday at the home of her granddaughter, she claimed to have seen Abraham Lincoln when she was twenty-one. He was, she said, “the homeliest man I ever saw.”57 In Los Angeles, a special branch of the YWCA had been established in a black community of 15,000 persons in 1920. That community had now grown to number more than 50,000. This “special branch” of the YWCA served “negro girls and young women.” Its facilities were now inadequate and a banquet was held at the Ambassador Hotel to raise funds for a newer and larger building. The living Lincoln that Mrs. Muller remembered had long since taken his place in history but the separation of the black and white races was still a vivid, socially approved reality in the Los Angeles of 1941.58

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 8, 1941, 2 Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, 8 Houston Chronicle, December 8, 1941, 7A Washington Post, December 8, 1941, 2 Houston Chronicle, December 8, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 Denver Post, December 8, 1941, 1 Denver Post, December 8, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 14 Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 Denver Post, December 8, 1941, 15 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 10 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 12

Monday, December 8, 1941

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

New York Times, December 8, 1941, 10 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 2 Atlanta Constitution, December 8, 1941, 7 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 9/5 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 8 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 9, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 8, 1941, 8 Atlanta Constitution, December 9, 1941, 8 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 39 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 39 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 64 Chicago Tribune, December 7, 1941, 1/18 Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 22 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 5 Washington Post, December 8, 1941, 14 Atlanta Constitution, December 8, 1941, 12 Houston Chronicle, December 8, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1941, 2 Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1941, 2 Houston Chronicle, December 8, 1941, 7A Houston Chronicle, December 8, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1941, E Denver Post, December 8, 1941, 13 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 8, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 8, 1941, 4A Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1941, 3 Oregonian, December 8, 1941, 9 New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1 Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, 19 Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1941, 2/4

165

16 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1941

The War of Nerves The President’s brave words notwithstanding, and despite the airy optimism of some and the patriotic responses of almost all, a state of grave apprehension settled over the country. The shock and awe of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the repetitive Japanese assaults across the Pacific and Southeast Asia reverberated in the national psyche. An uncertain nation wondered where the enemy’s next blow would fall, and it seemed to find the answers on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. In San Francisco, Brigadier General William Ord Ryan of the Fourth Interceptor Command announced that a large number of unidentified aircraft had approached the Golden Gate Monday evening but that they had been turned back. The General did not say by whom and by what means. What he did say was that “They came from the sea, were turned back, and the Navy had sent out three vessels to find where they came from.” He didn’t know, he said, precisely how many planes there were but it was a large number. Other Army sources estimated the formation as two squadrons of fifteen planes each. “They got up to the Golden Gate and then turned about and headed southwest,” General Ord added. Asked whether he thought these were Japanese bombers, the General replied: “Well, they weren’t Army planes, they weren’t Navy planes and you can be sure they weren’t civilian planes.” He dismissed reports that it had been only a test, firmly declaring this was the real thing. Lieutenant General John L. Witt of the Fourth Army and the Western Defense Command confirmed General Ryan’s report. He said the “enemy units” had been detected north and south of San Francisco Bay, possibly over Mare Island and Fort Barry. “I don’t think there’s any doubt they came from a carrier,” he said. But carriers move and the American interceptors had been unable to track the enemy planes back to their carrier. They might not have been bombers, Witt observed, but reconnaissance planes reconnoitering and gathering useful information.1,2,3

Tuesday, December 9, 1941

167

San Francisco police ordered a blackout at 6:20 p.m. Air-raid warnings began to sound at 6:50. Under a prearranged system fire trucks cruised through the streets sounding their sirens. An all-clear at 7:30 p.m. was followed by a second blackout before most lights could be turned on again. In the Marina district near the Presidio, soldiers knocked on doors ordering householders to douse all of their lights. The blackout was less than a complete success. Many neon signs continued alight, including a large sign advertising personal loans directly across the street from the Associated Press office. A mobile antiaircraft search light blazed into action on a San Francisco beach and soon after the Army Air Corps brought fifteen others into action illuminating the skies between the Golden Gate and the southern boundaries of the city.4 In Seattle, like General Ryan in San Francisco, Brigadier General Carlyle Wash of the Second Interceptor Command dismissed doubt it had been a real raid, stoutly maintaining, “I wouldn’t black out all of this territory for nothing.” Meanwhile, the entire Pacific coast from British Columbia to San Diego prepared for possible raids. The Eleventh Naval District ordered a blackout, advising citizens to stay at home, remain calm and listen to police broadcasts. Two great aircraft manufacturing plants, Vultee and North American, were blacked out and their night shift released from duty; graveyard shifts were ordered not to report. Lights were out in Portland, Oregon, where huge shipbuilding plants were closed, as were theaters, and motor traffic halted at 10:30 p.m. In such an atmosphere, rumors flourished, including one that women pilots had taken part in the Pearl Harbor attack.5 * The East Coast was primed for action, too, with 40,000 civilian observers called out to man 1,300 posts in thirteen states and the District of Columbia. The stations would be manned twenty-four hours daily. At Mitchel Field on New York’s Long Island, the Air Force sent up combat air patrols and also maintained a ground alert with interceptor planes spotted on the runways with engines warmed up and ready to take off. It was, the Air Force said, ready to meet any enemy.6,7 The specific purpose of these arrangements was to make sure New York didn’t become another Pearl Harbor. While the 62nd Coast Artillery of Fort Totten, Queens, installed antiaircraft artillery at various points around the city, police and fire departments agreed upon a series of air-raid warning signals. Special attention was paid to giving the city’s 800,000 public school pupils sufficient time to reach their homes.8,9 New Yorkers were admonished by radio reports to keep calm. They did. In Washington, Secretary of State Hull issued a warning to the nation to be on the alert for a surprise attack. But he emphasized that the warning was not connected to current reports of enemy planes approaching the Eastern Seaboard.10 Unconfirmed reports of the approach of enemy aircraft triggered the alarm at the Quonset Naval Base where civilians were evacuated, and officers and men sent to their Rhode Island battle stations. Boston sources reported “official word” of the approach of enemy aircraft, and civilian employees there were evacuated from the Boston Navy Yard. As in New York, schools were evacuated and children sent home. One assumes that there was a certain joy mixed with apprehension

168

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

at this turn of events. At the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company near Boston, its 18,000 employees were evacuated as the Massachusetts Civilian Air Raid Warning Service manned its high observation towers throughout the region in cooperation with the Army. Additional precautionary measures were taken throughout the New York metropolitan area. New York’s Idlewild Airport was shut down while Coast Guard planes patrolled the area. The Coast Guard warned of incendiary bombs along New York’s waterfront, its warehouses filled with millions of dollars of arms and supplies.11 * This vast and varied response to the perceived threat was, except as practice, in vain. The enemy aircraft, so often reported, were never seen and their existence never confirmed. War and rumors of war are inseparable. Clearly these events conveyed to large blocks of the U.S. population a heightened appreciation of the war into which they had now been thrust. New York City had the jitters. A mysterious Mr. Reilly had telephoned to report a Japanese-looking man carrying a heavy bag who, walking out of Pennsylvania Station, had declared: “This will take care of the station.” Detectives rushed

“I Am an American”: a Japanese-American’s grocery store in Oakland, California, December 8, 1941.

FIGURE 16.1

Photo by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62–23602.

Tuesday, December 9, 1941

169

to search the station’s baggage rooms for the hypothetical bomb. In the event, neither the bomb, the Japanese-looking gentleman nor the mysterious Mr. Reilly could be found.12 Citizens found varied ways to express their indignation and anger at the Japanese attack. Yonkers was upset. Hedda Bahtsin, a Russian-born antique dealer there, gathered together all of the objects in the shop bearing a “Made in Japan” label and proceeded to smash each and every one with an axe and a hammer. Placing the large pile of shards in his show window, he explained them with a sign declaring: “This is our stock of Jap goods.”13 In Seattle, a crowd of a thousand shared Bahtsin’s emotions. But he had only destroyed his own property. The Seattle mob, for a mob it was, streaming through the city’s downtown, hurled rocks, bottles and tin cans at some thirty shop windows that were illuminating the surrounding darkness of the blackout. A rock smashed the window of a small jewelry store. Into it rushed a young man who triumphantly emerged holding high not jewels but the offending light bulb. The crowd then turned to looting, throwing some of the merchandise into the streets while other items disappeared into the pockets of the rioters. The outnumbered police were totally unable to control or direct the movements of the mob. When the crowd finally subsided, Seattle’s downtown was missing merchandise and littered with broken glass; but not a single light remained shining.14 Los Angeles was the home of the largest Japanese community in the country. If the city’s response was more peaceable than Seattle’s, its treatment of its Japanese businesses was peremptory. Officers of the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Bank, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office moved in to shut down all Japanese banks, department stores, produce houses, and saloons in Little Tokyo. Only a few drug stores and markets remained open. The doors of the Yokahama Specie Bank and the Sumitomo Bank, both Japanese owned, were padlocked. The two Japanese newspapers were also shut down, and No Parking signs were scattered throughout Little Tokyo to prevent gatherings of curiosity seekers who might turn hostile or even violent. The inhabitants of Little Tokyo for the moment were bereft of their stores, shops, markets, indeed of the necessities and conveniences of daily life, and were left to ponder their fate during a new and adverse dispensation.15 In such an atmosphere, it was not only Japanese Americans who suffered. In San Francisco, Mrs. Marie Sayre was shot by a guard when the car in which she was a passenger did not heed the guard’s signal to stop.16

America at War: Causes for Concern By Tuesday, December 9, the smoke of battle had cleared and the Japanese Navy broadcast its claims of victory. It claimed the sinking of two battleships, the 31,800-ton West Virginia and the 28,000-ton Oklahoma. This report was true, as was the report of damage to four other battleships. Japan also claimed the destruction of some 300 U.S. aircraft in Hawaii and the Philippines. This also was a fact. What was not true was the claim that a Japanese submarine had sunk an American aircraft carrier off Honolulu. It was the great good fortune of the

170

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Americans, and a great disappointment to the Japanese, that the American carrier fleet had been at sea, safely distant from the destruction at Pearl Harbor.17 The U.S. Navy was tight-lipped in its assessment of the damage it had suffered. It announced that one old battleship had capsized. That was the Arizona, which remains in Pearl Harbor today as a monument to the events of the date of infamy. It also announced that a destroyer had blown up; that was the USS Cassin. Several other smaller ships were damaged. This was far from a complete accounting of the twenty-two U.S. Navy vessels sunk or severely damaged. The same communiqué admitted “a large number of planes” destroyed in the attack and a toll of 3,000 casualties divided equally between the dead and the wounded. The Japanese news agency Domei was quick to claim “magnificent early gains” that would give Japan domination over the Pacific. Any forces that the United States could bring to bear, it added, would be “utterly inadequate” to achieve any success in an encounter with the Japanese fleet, which it announced, correctly, had suffered no losses.18 In all its history, the United States had never endured such a defeat. In fact, in the era of the modern battleship, it had never lost one. In December 1941, the navies of the world still counted their strength in the big-gun, heavily armored behemoths of the battleship line. Naval strategists concerned themselves with the balance of battleship power, harking back to the day when the battleships of the Royal Navy and the German High Seas thunderously clashed at Jutland. In this reckoning the U.S. Navy had seventeen battleships prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Japanese twelve. If only six U.S. battleships had been sunk or disabled at Pearl Harbor—and they were—the Japanese fleet would gain numerical superiority over the U.S. Navy.19 What was not appreciated that day in December 1941 was how quickly the battleship would be relegated to a secondary role in the immense naval battles about to take place. The great age of the aircraft carrier and its attendant task force was dawning. * It was natural that passions should be aroused in Washington. A reporter asked Senator Tom Connelly of Texas if it was true that he had “given unshirted hell” to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox at the last evening’s White House conference. The wary senator would neither confirm nor deny, but he did ask a question: “Where were our airplanes and patrols in Honolulu? Up in Baguio?” In translation the snide reference was to a popular Philippine resort area.20 Senators David I. Walsh of Massachusetts, Chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, and Representative Carl Vinson of Georgia, Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, called on the Navy Department for a detailed investigation of the Hawaiian disaster. In any such investigation the burden would undoubtedly fall upon Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.21 * Meanwhile, the conflict was spreading across the globe. As Churchill had long said it would, Britain immediately declared war on Japan. Japanese planes raided

Tuesday, December 9, 1941

171

Hong Kong’s mainland Kowloon enclave. Further attacks were imminent but the Hong Kong garrison remained confident that the situation was “developing according to anticipations.”22 The British were also reported as mopping up Japanese landings in Malaya, another front where British optimism would soon evaporate. Japanese had by now taken over Thailand and captured and disarmed the U.S. Marine guard at the Peiping Embassy.23

America at War: A Massive Response The response of the American people to the Pearl Harbor attack was best exemplified by the immense wave of recruits that surged into the recruiting stations of all of the services across the whole country. New York was typical. Outside the recruiting stations were long lines of those who had spent the night waiting for the doors to open. It was hours earlier than usual when indeed they did and they stayed open until long past normal closing hours. The Navy had to call for additional physicians to conduct examinations and applications for commissions were being received at five times the normal rate, indeed at the rate of one every four minutes. The mood of the crowd was one of cheery confidence best expressed by this sentiment: “The Japs asked for it and they’re going to get it.” They were, it was often said, anxious for “a crack at the Japs.” Faced with 2,000 eager prospective recruits, in an attempt to manage the crowd, Navy recruiters ordered a thousand men home to return later; but no one wanted to leave, and the order was soon rescinded. In Houston, the long waiting lines held all ages from schoolboys with books under their arms to veterans of the World War and even of the Spanish-American War. The crowd was portrayed as “seething with anger and determination to help their nation defend its shores and to beat down the Empire of the Rising Sun.” In Scranton, Pennsylvania, Mayor-elect John F. O’Brien was one of the first in line at the Navy recruiting office. “No old Navy man can take this sitting down,” he said. In New Haven, Connecticut, volunteers included Alan Bartholemy, captain of the 1941 Yale football team, and Chapman W. Schanandoah, an Onondaga Indian whose tribe was one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy that had opposed Selective Service. Earl Garvin of Houston was an ex-Marine with twenty years’ service who brought sixteen medals to the recruiting station “to prove he had what it takes.” Major John D. O’Lilly sent Garvin’s application to Washington assuring him that it would receive prompt action. In San Antonio, Travis Cotton had been exempted from the draft. “I waive the exemption,” he told the recruiter. “Put me on the first train to Tokyo.” And Horace W. Crouch of Fort Worth, a vermin exterminator applying for a Navy aviation post, remarked: “I want to exterminate some Germans,” a sentiment unusual on a day when all eyes and hearts were focused on Japan.24,25 None were more eager to serve than the 250 convicts at the Utah State Penitentiary who petitioned Governor Herbert H. Maw for a release enabling them to enlist in the U.S. armed forces against Japan.26 At the other end of the scale was Texas Representative Lyndon B. Johnson, who had recently been nosed out in a race for a U.S. Senate seat by Senator W. Lee O’Daniel. Johnson, a Lieutenant

172

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, wrote the President with a copy to the Secretary of the Navy, “urgently requesting my Commander In Chief to assign me to active duty with a fleet.” “I am a member,” he said, “of the U.S. Naval Reserve. When I vote to send your boy to war, I will leave my seat to go with him.”27 It was a testament to the times that the long lines at the recruiting stations did not include women. That would await another generation. But women rushed to volunteer and crowds besieged the New York headquarters of the American Red Cross and of the Office of Civilian Defense, which was described as a “madhouse.” The roles assigned to women were traditional. The Red Cross established six new sewing units and a nursing service. For the more adventurous, there was a Motor Corps.28 Other assurances of feminine dedication to the cause included the resolution adopted by the faculty of Vassar College: We, the president and the members of the faculty of Vassar College, in a deep sense of the gravity of the national crisis, reaffirm our loyalty to the country and pledge our unstinted support through the course declared by Congress. Insofar as our skills and our special training may prove useful, we wish to offer them to the service of the nation as a whole.29 Similar sentiments were expressed by the Portland Advisory Council for Negroes in a letter to the President by Dr. DeNorval Unthank, assuring him that its members would carry out his least and greatest command. The letter went on to express complete confidence in the present safety and in the ultimate victory of the nation.30 Such sentiments crossed religious lines. The annual report of the President to New York’s Congregation Emanu-El was delivered by Vice President Sydney B. Herman in the absence of its president, Lewis L. Strauss, who was on active duty with the Navy. The report asserted confidence in the religious truths upon which the country was founded, truths which neither men nor nations could destroy.31 Joining in the almost unanimous wave of national opinion, the forces of isolationism did not engage in recriminations or accusations. If not its titular reader, Charles A. Lindbergh had been the most public face and strident voice of isolationism. He issued this statement from the America First Committee headquarters in Chicago: We have been stepping close to war for many months. Now it has come and we must meet it as united Americans regardless of our attitude in the past toward the policy our government has followed. Whether or not that policy has been wise, our country has been attacked by force of arms and by force of arms we must retaliate. Our own defenses and our own military position have already been neglected too long. We must turn every effort to building the greatest and most efficient Army, Navy and Air Force in the world. When American soldiers go to war it must be with the best equipment that modern skill can design and that modern industry can build.32

Tuesday, December 9, 1941

173

General R. E. Wood, America First’s national chairman, pledged its support to the nation: This committee was organized to oppose America’s involvement in European and Asiatic wars. Its counsels and advice were rejected at each step by the government. But the time for discussing that is past. We are now at war. It is the duty of the government to prosecute that war with all the energy of the nation. It is equally the duty of every citizen to stand behind the government to the uttermost in that task.33 To which former President Herbert Hoover added: The President took the only line of action open to any patriotic American. He will and must have the full support of the entire country. We have only one job to do now and that is to defeat Japan.34 * Japanese Americans had a special stake and a special vulnerability in the nation’s response to the Pearl Harbor attack. In Los Angeles the Anti-Axis Committee, representing seventeen different chapters of the Japanese-American Citizens League, issued the following statement through Chairman Fred Tayama: The United States is at war with the Axis. We shall do all in our power to help wipe out vicious totalitarian enemies. Every man is either friend or foe. We shall investigate and turn over to authorities all who by word or act consort with the enemy. We must and will mobilize maximum energies to facilitate America’s war program. We must not play into the enemies’ hands. Every loyal American must be permitted to render his services. The enemy will try to sabotage our usefulness by inciting race hysteria. Let us be vigilant. The die is cast. We face the issue with grim determination. America, we are ready.35 The Los Angeles city schools took such sentiments to heart, advising calm to its 300,000 students. They would deal realistically with unfounded rumors, many vicious, embarrassing to loyal Nisei students who might come to school with trepidation. The board counseled principals to face any problems openly and honestly, calling assemblies where necessary to make appropriate explanations. The spirit in the schools was best expressed in these words: “The children are Americans, and we owe them a square deal.”36 * All wars at all times involve excruciating moral and ethical issues deeply felt by ministers of religion. At a meeting of the Chicago Congregational Union in the Palmer House, Dr. Ernest Graham Guthrie, General Superintendent, said that

174

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

the business of Christ’s church could not go on as usual. It would require deeper depths and more heroic heights from those who knew and loved the million Christian leaders and people of Japan. Dr. Georgia Harkness of Garrett Biblical Institute urged the church to continue its task under any circumstances and maintain fellowship among Christians across international boundaries and interests. At a meeting of Lutheran pastors, Dr. Charles F. Boss, Jr., agreed with Dr. Guthrie that the church must be above the battle, that the church must not be used in preparation for war but instead in the promulgation of peace. The character of war, he said, was not changed by the fact that America was in it. Dr. Boss had been a member of the Ministers’ No War Committee, which would continue to function he said, but under a new name.37 Most telling was Dr. Boss’s invocation that the “church adhere to its basic position and not bless war or call it holy.” The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace had a proprietary interest in peace. It had once adopted a resolution commending the administration

FIGURE 16.2

“Going down with colors flying.”

Cartoon by Rollin Kirby. By permission of the Estate of Rollin Kirby Post. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-129793.

Tuesday, December 9, 1941

175

for its efforts to find a peaceful solution for U.S.–Japanese antagonism. Now it condemned Japan for “a betrayal of one of the most fundamental principles of international law.”38 Another organization whose principles collided brutally with reality was the National Council for the Prevention of War, the oldest American pacifist organization. It said plaintively that it had worked for twenty years to prevent the disaster of war. Under drastically changed circumstances, the Council said it would, without obstructing the war effort, emphasize programs for the study of a negotiated peace and postwar reconstruction. Acknowledging that the war could end in victory, in general exhaustion or through a negotiated peace, the Council opted for peace through negotiation at the earliest possible moment that negotiations became feasible.39 That time never came.

America at War: Broadsides As is normal in wartime, both sides invoked the blessing of the Deity upon their arms. The Los Angeles Times headlined its editorial in these terms: “We Will Triumph—So Help Us God.” The declaration of war, it said, had removed any obstacle to achieving “the victory which the President solemnly pledges shall, with God’s help, ultimately crown our untarnished shield.” 40 Bullocks, a downtown Los Angeles department store, expressed similar sentiments in a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times. Surmounting a Star-Spangled Banner were these words: “We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.”41 Other editorial writers adopted the closely related theme of righteousness; The Washington Post’s leading editorial was headlined “Righteous Might,” echoing the Houston Chronicle’s “In Their Righteous Might”42 and The Oregonian’s “Ours The Right and the Might.”43 In a more secular response, The New York Times editorial was captioned “United We Stand,”44 while the Chicago Tribune echoed that theme under the less emotional headline: “Japan’s Perfidy Unites the American People.”45 Broadsides amplified these sentiments. The Council for Democracy, under the chairmanship of radio broadcaster and analyst Raymond Gram Swing, took a fullpage ad in The New York Times to declare: We shall not abandon our Democratic faith, either during this war, or when this war is done. No matter what we must face, we mean to see that Democracy shall live and grow. The issue is grimly plain. But we shall go forward—not in vengeance, not merely to destroy, but to build a free world for all men.46 In another full-page New York Times ad, the department store John Wanamaker issued a “Call to Arms. . . . ringing today in the ears of every single American in this land. To men, to women, to youngsters and oldsters alike—every single one of us has his part to do.” So, cloaking commerce with a mantle of patriotism,

176

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Wanamaker’s announced its Lowered Price Policy, which would require more careful shopping to avoid the costly and wasteful return of goods. Patrons were advised to carry home small packages and, for the Lowered Price Policy to succeed, to pay certain charges for services formerly free. Winning the war, Wanamaker advised, wasn’t simply a matter of loading and firing a gun. It went farther and deeper than that and shopping Wanamaker’s Lowered Price Policy could be viewed as a significant form of patriotism.47 China had always enjoyed the favorable opinion of large segments of the American public. One reason was the powerful group of advocates who had pleaded its cause in the long war with Japan. Speaking for China, a full-page New York Times advertisement for United China Relief headlined: “You Can Help a Great People . . . and Help Beat Japan.” The list of supporters named in the ad was impressive. Pearl S. Buck was the mega-best-selling author of novels of Chinese peasant life. Henry Luce placed his publications, Time, Fortune, and Life in enthusiastic support of China and the Chinese. William C. Bullit had been U.S. Ambassador to China. Paul G. Hoffman, the President of Studebaker; financier Thomas W. Lamont; advertising man Raymond Rubicam; movie maker David O. Selznick; 1940 presidential candidate Wendell Willkie; and John D. Rockefeller III all subscribed their names to support China’s cause. The National Advisory Committee of United China Relief contained another glittering list of supporters headed by honorary chairman Eleanor Roosevelt. Its membership included Miss Katherine Cornell of the stage; Mrs. Dwight W. Morrow, mother-in-law of Charles Lindbergh; America’s sweetheart Mary Pickford Rogers; Yale president Charles Seymour; journalist Vincent Sheehan; novelist of Indiana life Booth Tarkington; steel man Myron C. Taylor; Mrs. Herbert Lehman, wife of New York’s Governor; New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia; author and news reporter John Gunther; financier Felix Warburg; and historian James Truslow Adams. Zoo curator Roy Chapman Andrews was a fitting addition to this star-studded list.48 Henry Luce was China’s greatest and perhaps most influential champion. It was, therefore, coincidental that in the same edition of The Times as the United China Relief ad there appeared the obituary of his father, the Reverend Dr. Henry Winters Luce. A longtime Presbyterian missionary in China, Dr. Luce had been president of Yen Ching University in Peiping, a founder of Shantung Christian University, a leader in the movement for unifying the boards of Christian colleges in China and a leader, too, in educating American religious leaders in the study of Asiatic civilizations and cultures.49 There had been an intimate connection between the life and career of Henry Winters Luce and Henry Luce’s championing of China as the fulcrum of U.S. policy in the Far East.

America at War: War with Nazi Germany Although all eyes were focused on Japan and its rampaging conquests, there was a keen appreciation that Japan was not the only game in town. Georgia Representative Carl Vinson expressed this succinctly: “We should have extended the war declaration to all three aggressor nations.” In his opinion, Congress

Tuesday, December 9, 1941

177

was ready to act since participation in the conflict with Germany and Italy was “inevitable.” We might as well, he said, finish the job.50 Germany, Italy and Japan shared not only dictatorial regimes and histories of aggression. They were in fact united as parties under the September 27, 1940, Tripartite Pact binding each party to come to the aid of another party that was under attack. This raised the question of the meaning of the word “attacked” in Article III of the Pact. Germany claimed in 1941 that its attack on the Soviet Union had preempted a Soviet attack on Germany, which would qualify as an attack under the Pact. The Japanese had not then accepted that invitation to declare war on Russia. It was now speculated that the parties to the Pact would enter into another new deal guaranteeing a declaration of war on the United States in the coming spring with the aim of reducing or totally stopping Lend-Lease deliveries to Britain. It was in the ancient tradition of wars of conquest that it was bruited about that Japan might be rewarded in the event of an eventual declaration of war against Russia by being allowed to keep Eastern Siberia as far to the west of Irkutsk Province as she could conquer.51 In Berlin, a German government spokesman could not tell where a German policy might tend but promised that a “clarifying document” would “soon” be issued. A hint of future action might be found in an announcement of the cancellation of an opera performance in the Kroll Opera House, a customary venue for important announcements by the Nazi hierarchy.52 If, for the moment, the Nazi leadership remained silent as to Germany’s further course of action, it did allow that they were impressed by the size and speed of the Japanese attack; and they paid tribute to the Japanese armed forces “for their traditional bravery and military strength.”53 German reticence notwithstanding, there was a well-founded suspicion in Washington that Hitler had pushed Japan into war with America in order to lessen its support of Britain, and there was a sober appreciation of how unlikely it was that the United States would fight one member of the Axis openly in the Pacific while not engaging in what was essentially the same war with another Axis partner in the Atlantic.54 A gauge in the state of relations between the United States and Japan’s other Axis partners could be found in the FBI roundups of aliens, not only Japanese, but also Germans and Italians, citizens of countries with which, for the moment, no state of war with the United States existed. Although several Japanese and a few Italians were arrested, it appeared that the action was concentrated on Germans, the object of search and arrest in parts of Connecticut and in San Francisco. The FBI staff indicated that its orders had come direct from the U.S. Attorney General’s office. The scene did not lack for drama. In New York the arrested aliens were taken to the Barge Office on the Battery, from which they would proceed to Ellis Island. The Barge Office was surrounded by Coast Guardsmen carrying rifles with bayonets fixed while police cars cruised back and forth in front of the building. Such actions would contribute to an atmosphere of the inevitability of further hostilities.55 At this date, one thing was clear: the nation was united as it had rarely been before. Whatever the extent of the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor, the unity of the American nation would one day tilt the scales fatally for Japan. It was

178

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

therefore a pregnant question asked by Harold Brayman of the Houston Chronicle. What if Japan moved southward—or in many other available directions—without engaging the United States? What would America do in the case of a Japanese takeover of Malaya, Thailand or the Dutch East Indies? America had stood aside observing, but not engaging itself against, German conquests of Poland, of France and now of Russia. There had been intense sympathy for blitzed and besieged Britain, but no one had seriously suggested direct military intervention. The truth was that America had never in reality made up its mind; now Japan had made America’s mind up for it, and the country waited to see how far and on how many fronts it would be engaged.56

A Widening War Winston Churchill was as good as his word. He had always said that the day the United States entered the war, it would be followed the next day by Britain’s declaration of war against America’s enemies. So it was that on December 8, 1941, Great Britain declared war against Japan and in parallel Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the Free French, Yugoslavia, and several South American countries issued their declarations of war on Japan. In this round robin of declarations China declared war on Germany, Italy, and Japan, which, of course, had been in an actual state of war against China since 1931. This dramatic expansion of the war’s dramatis personae enabled the American people to take a proprietary interest in the expanded war. No longer was it “their war.” It had become “our war.” Thus it would give satisfaction to American newspaper readers to learn that the German armies, which had embarked with such panoply on the invasion of Russia, and after immense initial victories of encirclement had captured Russian forces by the millions, were now stopped, frozen solid on the front before Moscow. Reports from Italy confirmed that there would be no further German offensives until springtime. The tables were indeed turned as Soviet forces attacked the German lines in Eastern Crimea and the Caucasus, while gaining important ground around Taganrog.57 In Libya, Axis forces were fighting a rearguard action against British attacks from three directions.58 On the home front the Supply Priorities Allocation Board, the nation’s top economic planning authority under the leadership of Vice President Henry Wallace, was preparing to submit to the President its gigantic “Victory Program” calling for expenditures of some $4 billion a month in 1942 and 1943—this in a time when a billion dollars was really a billion dollars. This was no longer a “defense program”; it was now a “Victory Program.” Its purpose was stated: To bring every possible man, machine and material into an all-out production effort to repulse the Japanese and continue Lease-Lend aid to other nations resisting the Axis. From now on every action by this Board and by the related civilian agencies of the government must be keyed to one goal—complete victory in this war which has been thrust upon us.

Tuesday, December 9, 1941

179

The Board noted the emphasis to be placed on four-engine bombers “capable of blasting the Japanese fleet far out in the Pacific and of carrying the war to the highly inflammable cities of the Japanese island itself.” It was curious that the attention of the Report’s authors was so firmly fixed on Japan, relegating the far greater struggles in Europe and in Africa to Lend-Lease aid. There was no doubting the scale of the plan. In the first eighteen months of the defense program, expenditures had run to $15 billion a month; that spending would then be accelerated to a monthly $150 billion in the next year. Out would be automobiles, washing machines, and refrigerators, indeed almost all consumer durable goods. With defense plants running on a seven-day, 160-hour week the foundations were being laid for the great logistical victories of the years to come.59 Key to the success of this effort would be the unstinting collaboration of the trade union movement. Its spokesmen in New York and across the nation, representing millions of unionists, called for the cessation of labor strikes and a total dedication of labor unions and their members to the success of the war effort.60 The shift in emphasis to defense production is reflected in the transition in automobile advertising displayed in The New York Times of December 9. While Nash Motors still advised prospective buyers to GO IN SUMMER COMFORT at twenty-five to thirty miles per gallon in Weather Eye air conditioning, Chevrolet asked the pregnant question: WHY PAY MORE? It was Plymouth that pointed toward the future. It proclaimed that in the BATTLE OF DETROIT and in the race for the production of war machines, the auto industry would be the shock troops. PLYMOUTH BUILDS FOR AMERICA’S SECURITY, it announced, and for a strong national defense via bomber parts, tank parts, and antiaircraft gun parts, as well as military vehicles. A STRONG AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY IS THE BACKGROUND OF AMERICA was Plymouth’s mantra.61 If it was the avowed determination of the nation to subordinate civilian goods to military production, still there was relief in the report that supplies of women’s hosiery were ample. There was a curious turn of events. After decades of beige and suntan shades in women’s stockings, the new trend was to dark colors, including black, “formerly associated mainly with burlesque queens and barmaids.”62 * They were an ill-sorted pair—labor leader Harry Bridges and Los Angeles Times managing editor L. D. Hodgekiss. They had been convicted, one for writing and the other for publishing materials that a lower court held to be contempt. At a moment when freedom was under attack across the world, it is heartening to read the opinion of Justice Black reversing the judgment below in ringing terms: “. . . the likelihood, however great, that a substantive evil will result cannot justify a restriction upon freedom of speech or the press.” He could find no suggestion in the Constitution that freedom of speech and of the press bore an inverse ratio to the importance or timeliness of the ideas expressed: Here, for example, labor controversies were the topics for some of the publications. Experience shows that the more acute labor controversies

180

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

are, the more likely it is that in some aspect they will get into court. It is therefore the controversies that command most interest that the decisions below would remove from the arena of public discussions.63

Human Interest However perilous the times, there is—and was—always room in the press for a human interest story. Mrs. William Howard Taft was the widow of the twentyseventh President of the United States. Her chauffeur on the afternoon of the 7th was visiting a friend in the Japanese Embassy. “Oh baby,” he later reported, “are those Japs swilling whiskey! They must have put away about ten cases of the stuff last night. They insisted that I join them.” The two then went for a ride, returning to the Embassy when the chauffeur insisted he had to leave promptly. “I was on enemy territory wasn’t I?” But the FBI arrived first, detaining the chauffeur with the Embassy staff. The FBI orders were: “Nobody’s coming out. Everybody in there stays there.” “But,” the driver protested, “I’m Mrs. Taft’s chauffeur.” “I don’t care if you’re Ben Hur’s chariot driver,” the FBI agent responded. “You stay inside.” It took some time and some doing to secure the release of the amiable chauffeur, but it was accomplished. The reporter on the story observed that Mrs. Taft was, after all, not only the widow of a president but also the mother of Senator Robert Taft of Ohio.64 In New York, a headline bore the caption “One Surprised Japanese.” It was a consular aide caught in the act of removing papers from a cabinet in the Chicago consulate; confidential papers had already been burned.65 In time of war a moment of respite pleases: Longchamps restaurant offered a Beef Stew Special at 85 cents and urged preceding it with a 30-cent Double Thrill Cocktail.66 The analogy to sports was inevitable. New York Times sports columnist John Kieran wrote as a philosopher of sport: “In the terrific game now being played, the U.S. has two varsity teams, the Army and the Navy. The game is on. . . .”67

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

New York Times, December 9, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 9, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 9, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 1/8 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 27 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 24 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 36

Tuesday, December 9, 1941

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 16 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 1/4 Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, 8 Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 1 Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 11 Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 11 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 38 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 10A Denver Post, December 9, 1941, 9 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 6A New York Times, December 9, 1941, 43 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 17 Oregonian, December 9, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 44 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 44 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 44 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 1/19 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 19 Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, 13 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 33 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 11 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 2/4 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 2/5 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 2B Oregonian, December 9, 1941, 22 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 3 Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 27 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 17 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 29 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 29 Atlanta Constitution, December 9, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 16 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 4 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 11A New York Times, December 9, 1941, 40 Houston Chronicle, December 9, 1941, 11 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 36 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 36 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 36 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 43 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1941, 1/10 Denver Post, December 9, 1941, 9 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 37 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 9, 1941, 49

181

17 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1941

War in the Pacific: Grave Tidings Much had been made of the arrival in Singapore of the British Far Eastern Fleet battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales, which were constituted as Force Z. It had been speculated that they would change the balance of power in the area, moving Japan from the offensive to the defensive. The battleships were representatives of the old order of sea warfare. The Repulse, 31,000 tons, had been completed in 1916, just weeks too late to participate in the Battle of Jutland. It had once been the fastest capital ship in the world. In contrast, HMS Prince of Wales was the newest of the new. It had been commissioned only on January 19, 1941. In August it had conveyed Winston Churchill to a Newfoundland rendezvous with President Roosevelt; and in the initial engagement with the German battleship Bismarck it had scored a hit that later proved fatal. The British commander, Admiral Tom Phillips, was as well known for his short stature as for his tall oratory. His fleet set out from Singapore, he said, looking for trouble. He found it. The Japanese sighted the British fleet at 11:30 a.m. on December 10 (10:30 p.m. on December 9, New York time). Japanese aircraft massed for the attack. They sank the Repulse, which had no air cover, just two hours later at 2:29 p.m. The Prince of Wales lasted little longer. Absorbing direct hits, she listed to starboard and plunged to the bottom at 12:50 p.m. She now lies deep under the South China Sea. This was a stunning blow to Allied hopes; and it was a historic first—the sinking of a capital ship by aerial action. It ushered in the new era in naval history where the aircraft carrier would reign supreme. * Meanwhile Japanese forces were on the attack across Southeast Asia. In the Philippines there were reports of Japanese troop landings at Vigan on the west coast

Wednesday, December 10, 1941

183

of Luzon, 200 miles north of Manila; at Aparri, 200 miles further north; and at Lubang Island south of Manila. U.S. Commander General Douglas MacArthur issued a communiqué claiming heavy damage by U.S. bombers scoring hits on three transports of which one later capsized. The battle raged on land and sea and in the air as Japanese planes blasted American air bases near Manila.1 In Northern Malaya, Japanese forces were pressing strongly against Kota Bharu, which saw bitter night fighting for possession of the airport. Twenty-five Japanese troop transports were seen sailing south down the coast of Thailand. Other Japanese forces were advancing in the Singora-Patani areas.2 In Hong Kong, British forces claimed the successful rebuff of Japanese attacks by “searing artillery fire” from strong mainland defenses that brought the Japanese assault to a halt. However thrilling these claims, it remained clear that Hong Kong, like Midway, Guam, and other isolated garrisons, had little chance of survival against the overwhelming force of the Japanese attacks.3 Meanwhile, there were unconfirmed reports of large-scale naval engagements in the South Pacific. The speed and scope of the Japanese operations were breathtaking for a public unprepared for such grim tidings. The President met these reverses with brave words, that the U.S. Navy still maintained supremacy in the Pacific, its initial losses notwithstanding. He decreed as “fantastic” Japanese claims of naval supremacy. They were, he said, rumors and propaganda. But he prudently blended his positive assurances with a large dose of realism, affirming, as he had in his address to the nation, that the struggle would be long and hard and even that the attack on Pearl Harbor could be replicated. Indeed, he said, both of the country’s coasts had become front lines in the struggle.4 Such reports were met with anger and bewilderment and nowhere more so than in the nation’s capital. Senator David Walsh of Massachusetts and Representative Carl Vinson of Georgia, chairmen respectively of the Senate and House naval affairs committees, had met on Tuesday with Chief of Naval Operations Harold B. Stark to be briefed on developments in the Pacific. Stunned by what Vinson and Walsh heard, the House Naval Affairs Committee called Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox to appear before it on the morrow, in secret session. The Secretary, out of town, told the committee he would appear a day later, Thursday the 11th. It was inevitable that the Navy would be charged with being asleep at the switch. Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan called for court martial of five ranking military and naval officers who had commanded at Pearl Harbor. Vinson riposted that Dingell’s demand was “a cheap effort to get newspaper publicity.” He was quickly joined by others. This was no time, said Vinson, to rock the boat. There was, he said, not a scintilla of evidence to indict men who had dedicated their lives to their country. The same issues were urgently discussed in the Senate, where the events of Sunday were labeled a “debacle.” There were those who said that Pearl Harbor, far from being the Gibraltar of the Pacific, had been rendered useless, leaving the islands at the mercy of Japan. It had only been shortly before the Japanese attack that Secretary of the Navy Knox had broadcast his claim, that the Navy was ready as never before. Senator Tobey of New Hampshire stingingly recalled that claim. If, as had been reported,

184

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

a large part of the Pacific fleet had been wiped out at Pearl Harbor, the American people and their representatives in Congress needed to know it; there was no hiding facts the enemy surely knew. Senator Walsh attempted to dampen the passions surging through the Senate: In my opinion, we should not show any disposition to direct the Commander in Chief or to criticize what has been or what ought to have been done up to now. And I personally hope that whatever the President says, it will arouse the American people to a realization that we are at war, that we must stand united, that we must cooperate as one man and wage war to the end that nothing short of a magnificent triumph and victory will result.5 Senator Tom Stewart of Tennessee, however, thought the time had come for a little constructive criticism. It was a familiar formula. A mistake had been made, the Senator said. The state of nerves inside and outside the Senate might be measured by Senator Stewart’s wild assertion that beyond being useless, Pearl Harbor was probably by now completely in the possession of the Japanese. There was another dimension to the situation, Stewart pointed out. The country had not only been attacked by “a bunch of yellow devils.” Behind everything he saw the hand of Adolf Hitler and his German government. The same thing, he said, that had happened in Honolulu could happen “upon the sacred soil of our own country” (as if Hawaii had suddenly been disassociated from the United States of America).6 At a meeting of the House Naval Affairs Committee, Representative Vinson joined in the accusation that someone had been asleep, someone responsible for the defenses of Pearl Harbor. He specifically sought an inquiry as to the physical fitness of the naval high command with specific respect to sixty-four-year-old Admiral Hart, Navy Chief in Manila. Proving that the prewar debates between isolationists and interventionists had not ended with the onset of war, Representative Emanuel Celler of New York declared that the isolationists ought to issue an apology to the President for their accusations that he had tried to lead the country into war.7 Amid the turmoil, Senator Vinson maintained his calm and his conviction that “Congress can’t fight this war.” He added, “The job should be left to men who were trained to do it.” “If the Navy,” he said, “has suffered casualties at Pearl Harbor, there’s just one thing for us to do—buckle up our belts and make a determined effort that will win the war that much sooner.”8 The passions, and yes the ignorance, that inspired these exchanges are understandable given the curtain of silence that had descended over Pearl Harbor, and reports of enemy aircraft carriers off the West Coast, none of which were claimed sunk.9,10

The War of Nerves The President had said that both America’s East and West Coasts were the front lines of this war. It was in this belief that The New York Times published a set of

Wednesday, December 10, 1941

185

rules for conduct in an air raid since, for the moment, an air raid was the only feasible means of attack on either coast. The first rule was coolly magisterial: remain calm and do not be frightened. This was a salutary injunction to prospectively frightened people. Other rules followed: • • • • • • • •

Seek shelter in an interior portion of the nearest building. Motorists should park their cars as soon as possible and go to the nearest building. Obey orders of proper authorities. Avoid the use of telephones but keep the radio turned on. Put out the lights and pull down the shades to avoid giving direction to enemy planes. Turn off gas and electric service if possible. If bombs should fall, lie down as far away from windows as possible. Don’t believe rumors; wait for official notices.

The rules closed as dispassionately as they began. The public was advised to use common sense and not become alarmed.11 These rules were put to the test on Tuesday afternoon when air-raid alarms sounded in New York City and a part of the East Coast, responding to reports that enemy aircraft were approaching New York City from the Atlantic. The first alarm was sounded at 1:30 p.m., lasting until 1:47 p.m. A second alert sounded from 2:04 to 2:41 p.m. The experience of Pearl Harbor was in mind as army interceptor planes took to the air from Mitchel Field on Long Island, to avoid being caught on the ground in a surprise attack. The Army interceptors were joining the Navy’s own coastal patrol. This was a serious business. On the fringe of New York City families of all Mitchel Field personnel were evacuated, and troops on the ground were issued gas masks, steel helmets, and rifles in preparation for battles against parachutists or the much-feared fifth columnists. Radio beams on the East Coast were turned off to avoid giving invaders navigational help. Coast Guard and antiaircraft units were at the alert as were New York’s police and fire departments. Air-raid wardens went to their posts. Ready for incendiary attacks, they were supplied with fire carts containing sand, stirrup pumps, asbestos gloves, and long-handle shovels. Special wardens took up their stations on the roof of the Paramount theater in Times Square. Special attention was paid to potential high-value targets, including Long Island aircraft factories, Connecticut industrial cities, and shipbuilding plants along the New England coast. The reaction across New York City was varied. The Bronx was reported as baffled, Brooklyn “just a bit tense.” The Lower East Side was portrayed as alternatively indifferent and confused. Harlem retained its reputation for nonchalance as did Little Italy for volubility. At Clinton and Grand streets Yussel, a pretzel peddler, raged in a confrontation with an Irish patrolman, refusing to seek shelter so long as he had pretzels to sell.

186

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

FIGURE 17.1

See color plate section.

Poster by Charlotte Angus. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC2-1108.

A million New York City schoolchildren were sent home. But by and large, the public took the situation calmly, obeyed orders, and followed the instructions of police and the military. There was neither panic nor hysteria nor were there the traffic blockages that had been expected. Even so, at various times people crowded into the streets. Others, not heeding the warning to stay away from windows, opened them and scanned the skies for enemy raiders. The New York Times offered a vignette which captured the spirit of the day:

Wednesday, December 10, 1941

187

In at least one fashionable East River apartment women wardens had a field day. They ran through the building, breaking up early bridge games and routing late sleepers. Soon the halls were filled with women in dressing gowns, with cold cream on their faces, and other women clutching dachshunds and other assorted pets, all converging on the agreed “safety floor.” New York was at war.12 And what of the air raid? Happily it had all been a false alarm. A chain of miscommunication had been started by a man who telephoned First Army headquarters on Governor’s Island, saying he had heard a report of approaching bombers on a Washington, D.C. radio broadcast. He had simply asked whether or not the report was true. What did the Army do? Calling not on its own resources, or those of the Navy or the Coast Guard, it called the Associated Press. The Associated Press, in turn, told the War Department that it had no report of enemy planes. Meanwhile, at Mitchel Field, the inquiry was misunderstood as a warning, sending its interceptor planes into action.13 The Army made an embarrassed effort to maintain its reputation. Major General Herbert A. Dargue, commander of the First Air Force, said that even if it had been a false alarm, it had been given under credible circumstances, and that if it happened tomorrow the Army would do the same thing. In San Francisco Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, commanding the Fourth Army, was neither as kind nor as objective as General Dargue. He stated without qualification that Japanese planes had flown over San Francisco. He added: I am frank to say that it may have been a good thing if bombs had been dropped—to wake this community up to the seriousness of the situation. Death and destruction are likely to come to this city at any moment. I am not telling you that I can prevent bombs or air raids in this city. Reinforcements are coming, and when they arrive we will be in a better position to do so. General DeWitt said that he was prepared to talk to people who would understand the gravity of the situation and act upon it. But as long as the rest of you are here, I will speak frankly. The blackout last night was not satisfactory. The people do not seem to appreciate the fact that we are at war. “Lights must go out,” he demanded. “If I can’t knock it into your heads with words, I’ll turn you over to the police for them to knock it in with clubs.” “We were in imminent danger last night.” “Why those bombs were not dropped I do not know.” Absent the right steps, there would be death and destruction in San Francisco. Nor should anyone think, he said, that he or his colleagues would ever call a false alarm.

188

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

In closing he reinforced his conviction: Those planes were over this community. I mean Japanese planes. They were tracked and followed out to sea.14 San Francisco was at war. The situation was less frantic in Los Angeles. The blackout there was only partial, covering the harbor area and industrial centers. But there had been no blackout ordered for the downtown area or Hollywood,

FIGURE 17.2

“Just in case.”

Cartoon by Rollin Kirby. By permission of the Estate of Rollin Kirby Post. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-127296.

Wednesday, December 10, 1941

189

where Christmas lights twinkled gaily through the evening mist. Suitable air-raid warnings were limited by the fact that in the whole area there was only one siren of any strength. It was on the roof of the Los Angeles Times building. Its only prior use had been for New Year’s Eve and civic fetes. Repairing deficiencies in the Los Angeles air-raid precautions must have been on the agenda of Fiorello La Guardia, National Director of Civilian Defense, who had arrived in town with his Assistant Director: the First Lady. Mrs. Roosevelt advised housewives to black out kitchens first. It would be difficult, she observed, because they could go to bed or sit in the dark but they couldn’t cook without light.15 The bombs and the attacks were real that day in Manila, which was aswarm in rumors that a fifth-column conspiracy had used false air-raid alarms and light signals to mark ground targets. It was also speculated that the raiders had come from an aircraft carrier that had been sunk off Zambales Province, 100 miles from Manila.16 One place where there were neither doubts nor false alarms was in the lines at the recruiting offices for all of the services. As an instance, the Navy said that in New York it had handled 2,000 applications for active duty in a twenty-four-hour period beginning Monday morning. At noon the next day there were still approximately 1,500 men waiting in line. By way of contrast, Navy records showed only 142 applications on the first day after America’s entry into the First World War. David Coward of Brooklyn, twenty-four, who had served three years in the Coast Artillery—two of them in Chinese refugee camps—was a realist. “We have a tough job on our hands,” he said. “I know the Japs are good. You can beat them into the dust and they come out of the ashes. They are the most fanatical fighters I ever have seen.” Barrie Fowler, seventeen, when asked why he was enlisting, said tersely, “So I can see Tokyo.” The draft would ultimately satisfy the manpower needs of global war. But the rush of recruits to the colors was a stirring evocation of the national mood and furnished to the armed forces large numbers of those who would be most motivated to serve and to serve well.17

An Expanded War? In Berlin, “usually well-informed circles” were buzzing. According to them, Germany would soon declare war on the United States. The declaration would be based upon an interpretation of Article III of the Tripartite Pact, which obliged signatories to come to the aid of a partner who had been attacked. The claim would be made that President Roosevelt had himself provoked the Pacific War, and that the United States had maintained an aggressive and hostile attitude toward Germany. It would cite the un-neutral occupation of Iceland by the United States, its escorted Britain-bound convoy voyages, its “shoot on sight” orders and the earlier repeal of the Neutrality Act. For the moment, in this diplomatic stand-off, the initiative lay with Germany. The calm, almost detached, attitude on its part was evidenced by the absence of crowds or demonstrators at the gates of the American Embassy, where a lone policemen stood guarding the Pariserplatz entrance in the rain.18

190

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Tokyo was not so coy. According to its spokesman, Japan had asked Germany to declare war on America.19

America at War: Editorial Declarations There had been air-raid alerts on both coasts and wide swaths of cities and country had been blacked out. A true account of the losses at Pearl Harbor was not yet available. The losses there had undoubtedly been severe, but were they critical? The Japanese were on the attack across Southeast Asia and particularly in the Philippines. Amid these multiple causes for concern the Los Angeles Times editorialized: “LET’S NOT GET RATTLED.” It asked theoretically, what if a few bombs were indeed dropped over West Coast cities? The Times pointed out the difficulty of mounting a sustained operation against American targets 6,000 miles away. And it asked, could a Japanese fleet reach America’s shores undetected, especially after the alarm sounded at Pearl Harbor? This was all cool common sense. “But if it does happen,” the Times urged its readers, “let us show this hit-and-run enemy that we can take it—and give it back with interest.”20 The Atlanta Constitution seconded the motion. Its editorial was headlined: “BEWARE OF PESSIMISM.” It allowed for the possibility that Japanese naval and air strength were greater than had been thought and further, that American losses had been more than expected. “The Japs got the jump on us it must be admitted.” “The nation must be prepared to hear bad news.” It was better, the editorial advised, to expect the worst, stay the course and eschew pessimism on the way to a certain victory.21 The Chicago Tribune’s editorial that day was a simple declarative: “WE ARE AT WAR.” Its editorial was as ferociously bellicose as it had previously been isolationist. Self-respecting young men will lose no time in getting out of slacker jobs and into uniforms. Older men can easily be found to replace them. The burocrats [Colonel McCormick was devoted to simplified spelling] who are too old to fight should cease running around the country and return to such duties as they are capable of performing. The place for the self-respecting young men was in the Army, the Navy, or the Marine Corps. There they would be trained to meet and defeat the enemy. Americans would have to stand up to the Japanese and perhaps the Germans—something, the inveterately anti-British Tribune said, the British had signally failed to do. The Tribune called for a purge of incompetent generals and Pinafore admirals and presciently signaled the change in the balance of power between naval and aerial forces. Not content to advise against pessimism, the Tribune sounded a certain trumpet: The nation is at war and its young men are eager to play their part. They don’t want and don’t need to be coaxed and coddled. They will welcome a

Wednesday, December 10, 1941

191

stern, driving unremitting discipline and they will glory in it. All they ask is a keen, capable, fighting leadership.22 Under the headline “A CALL TO DUTY” The New York Times adopted a more philosophical tone. It saw the cultural and moral values of civilization faced with destruction, not only by Japan, but by a Germany as yet not at war with the United States.23

Economic Mobilization The war would drastically impact America’s motorists, as automobile manufacturing plants converted to produce tanks, military vehicles and aircraft, and gas rationing loomed on the horizon. There was still vibrant activity on the used-car lots, as seen in the classified advertising in the Houston Chronicle.24 There were nameplates—Graham, Hudson, Terraplane, Plymouth, Studebaker, and Packard—that have long since gone to the great dealership in the sky. Transportation was relatively cheap. The economy-minded buyer could pick up a ’34 Studebaker Six Sedan for $65. The car was advertised to “run fair” with “good tires.” “Runs fair” was an unusually candid assessment in the used car business and the good tires might be likened to the compliment paid to a stout lady that she had pretty ankles. For $95 you could buy a Graham Six Sedan modestly advertised as “satisfactory transportation.” The same price would buy you a ’34 Hudson Six Sedan. Credit was easy to obtain. Bond Auto Loan offered a $575 loan that would pay all but $20 for the purchase of a 1940 Ford V-8 Sedan. A 1936 Buick Sedan with a radio and new paint could be had at $245 and financed with a $275 Bond Auto Loan. From the $65 Studebaker to a 1940 Packard Sedan equipped with radio and heater at $695, there seemed to be a car and a price for almost everyone.25 The mobilization of American industry for war can be appreciated in a single classified advertisement in the Chicago Tribune. In large type seldom seen in the classified section it advertised “AIRCRAFT JOBS” in far-away San Diego. “Skilled men needed for national defense orders.” Tool designers were offered $277 a month with tool makers and wood pattern makers paid $1.80 per hour plus overtime. The advertiser assured applicants that it had two years of steady work on its backlog. Hires would work forty-five hours a week, including five hours of overtime with an extra bonus for night work. As an added inducement, the San Diego Home Registration Office would help hires find suitable housing. Their travel expenses would be refunded at an interview at which they would be required to provide proof of U.S. citizenship and pass a physical examination. Anyone already engaged in defense work would not be eligible for hire. In other ads, electrical engineers, engravers, estimators, grinder hands, and washers were all in high demand. The ads specified white cooks, dishwashers, and dry cleaners. The only ad that crossed the color line was for a “porter—colored” who would command good pay if experienced.

192

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

It is an ancient adage that nothing happens until someone sells something. An advertiser who appealed to salesmen earning less than $40 a week tempted them with a proposition that would enable four men to make a lush $75 and up weekly. The most unusual offering of the day was for a man and wife without children to move into an unfurnished apartment on the premises of a children’s amusement park. The man would be required to care for eighteen ponies and assist in the maintenance of the grounds, while the woman would be asked to work in the park, during the summer months only. Long before there was a McDonald’s, there was a steady demand for hamburger men, a category including grill men, counter men, house men and sandwich men.

Life in These United States: Life Goes On The excitements of a world at war could not suppress America’s devotion to the world of sport. A picture in the Los Angeles Times featured baseball All-Star Hank Greenberg, the Detroit Tigers heavy hitter, who had recently been released from the Army after serving his year as a draftee. The caption writer noted that the $50,000-a-year outfielder and batting champion would be reduced to Army pay.26 * Nor did war stop the news of people and society. The Atlanta Constitution noted the passing of a member of one of the most prominent of all Georgia families, Judge John S. Candler. His brothers included Bishop Warren A. Candler of the Southern Methodist Church and Asa G. Candler, founder of the Coca-Cola Company. Obviously a rising star, at age twenty-one the judge had been elected a member of the Board of Stewards of the Epworth Methodist Church in Edgewood, Georgia. At twenty-three he was appointed Solicitor-General of the Stone Mountain Circuit, of which he was later elected judge. He then sat on the Georgia Supreme Court. His interests had included not only religion but education; he had served on the board of trustees of Emory University, LaGrange College, Wesleyan College, and Young Harris College. His vigor was testified to by the fact that he had buried two wives and was survived by a third.27 There was news of a younger generation in Atlanta. “Staggering the Stag Line” was no new sensation for Larue Mizell who, it was reported, had been the center of attention ever since she was old enough to don an evening dress. Her brunette beauty was said to stand out even among the dazzling ranks of the 1941–42 Debutante Club. Much appreciated were the fascinating personality and the boundless energy of one who was born with the proverbial silver spoon. However caught up in the social world, Larue attended the Atlanta School of Interior Decoration. Readers were informed that she was a graduate of North Fulton High School, a member of the Pi Pi Sorority, the Pirate Club and the Girls’ Circle of the Tulula Falls School.28 * There was always an audience for news from the world of the silver screen. A picture of comedian Lou Costello with two bathing-suited beauties was standard

Wednesday, December 10, 1941

193

fare; the girls’ lavish display of legs was in that era known as cheesecake.29 The irrepressible Mickey Rooney, star of the Andy Hardy series, was to wed Ava Gardner, daughter of Mrs. J. B. Gardner of Rockridge, North Carolina.

America at War: As We Go Marching On It was only three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but in that brief period there had been a complete sea change of opinion. The New York Times pictured Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, noting that he had been among the fiercest of the critics of the President’s foreign policy. He was now an all-out advocate for total war.30 In the most dramatic about-face of them all, columnist Westbrook Pegler, the most acidic enemy of the New Deal, wrote, under the headline “Roosevelt Was Right”: No American has more angrily detested and suspected most of the internal operations of the New Deal, but no American more admires now the tenacious bravery of President Roosevelt in his war policy than this author of many criticisms of the Roosevelt Administration.31 The President, he said, had already made up his mind that the country would have to fight for its life against Germany and Japan. He had then set about preparing the American people for war lest they be caught unarmed or spiritually unprepared. The President, Pegler said, had fought almost alone and had been widely denounced for his efforts. But the President had stood by his convictions where a weaker man would have given way and hidden behind excuses. It was that conviction that belied the charge that he was a war-monger who was selling out America to the British.32 Long lines of volunteer recruits kept pressing against the doors of the recruiting stations in numbers never before seen. Yet however enthusiastic the volunteers, there would be need for manpower far beyond the first wave of eager would-be warriors. Congress acted promptly. The House and Senate Military Affairs Committees prepared legislation extending the period of service for all who were then wearing the uniform through the duration of the war and six months thereafter. They would be available for service outside the Western Hemisphere, overturning all previous limitations. The Committees proposed neither to lower the draft age of twenty-one to eighteen nor to expand it from twenty-four to forty-five years. It was, nevertheless, widely expected that the draft ages would be extended at an early date.33 America was girding up its loins. Millions of men, though not yet marching, were being propelled to unknown destinies and fates of which they had no inkling.

Notes 1. Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1941, 1 2. New York Times, December 10, 1941, 1

194

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Oregonian, December 10, 1941, 2 Houston Chronicle, December 10, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 7 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 7 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 7 Atlanta Constitution, December 10, 1941, 10 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 20 Washington Post, December 10, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 14 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 14 Washington Post, December 10, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 10, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1941, 21 Washington Post, December 10, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 2 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 9 Oregonian, December 10, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 10, 1941, 12 Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 24 Houston Chronicle, December 10, 1941, 11 Houston Chronicle, December 10, 1941, 11 Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1941, 23 Atlanta Constitution, December 10, 1941, 10 Atlanta Constitution, December 10, 1941, 18 Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1941, 17 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 8 Washington Post, December 10, 1941, 17 Washington Post, December 10, 1941, 17 New York Times, December 10, 1941, 1

18 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1941

FIGURE 18.1

See color plate section.

Poster by MacLean. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, W3.46/1:G31.

196

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

An Expanded War: Hitler Speaks Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering spoke the truth in introducing Hitler before the Reichstag in Berlin on December 11. The war, he said, had now become in the truest sense of the word a world war. Turning to Hitler he pleaded: “Fuehrer, speak to us.” When Hitler spoke, it was in terms of injured innocence of which he was a past master. He was, he said, loyally fulfilling his obligations under the Tripartite Pact in view of America’s attack on Japan. He told the cheering Reichstag: I thank all of you. You have heard with eagerness that at last one state, a first-class power, has risen against this violation of the rules of decency. Not only Germany but all the decent people in Europe are deeply satisfied with the Japanese challenge against the American power.1 This was all, he said, part and parcel of British attempts to encircle Germany: only a blind man could have failed to see Russian preparations for its attack on Germany. He reverted to one of his favorite images—the Greeks defending civilization against the onslaught of the Persian hordes. Not only had Russia attacked Germany. With all of its resources the United States had been engaged in an attack on Germany. Had Hitler been misreading the Chicago Tribune? To achieve his goals, Hitler boasted, he was the head of the strongest military force in the world, of the strongest air force and of the most gallant navy. To December 1, the Reichswehr had captured more than 1,800,000 prisoners, destroyed or captured 21,391 guns, 22,541 aircraft and 21,291 tanks. It was winter alone that had stayed the achievement of the final victory but in the coming summer “nothing will be able to stop the German advance.” He laid out his grievances against the United States. Germany had never possessed a North American colony; it had never adopted an antagonistic attitude toward the United States, but its sons had given their blood fighting for liberty in the United States. Germany had never waged war against the United States. Instead America had entered the First World War in 1917 for reasons since proven to be spurious. The Fuehrer catalogued events and actions he claimed as hostile to the Third Reich: the President’s “quarantine the aggressors” speech of October 5, 1937; the freezing (oddly enough) of French assets; the sale of fifty destroyers to England, the landing of American troops in Iceland; and America’s Atlantic operations against the German U-boat fleet. All this, he claimed, was due either to hatred or a desire to take over the British Empire. Germany was fighting, he assured his audience, not only for herself but for the entire European continent. Enlarging upon his theme, Hitler thanked God for the opportunity given to him and to the German nation, to his generation, to write a page of honor in the long history of Germany: I must thank Providence for putting me at the head of the German nation in this war which will decide the fate not only of Germany but of Europe and the entire world throughout the next five hundred to a thousand years.2,3,4

Thursday, December 11, 1941 197

Hitler broached familiar themes. The two men responsible for the enmity between the United States and Germany were Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. There was between Hitler and Roosevelt an unbridgeable gulf. Roosevelt was the product of privilege with all the advantages of a wealthy upbringing; Hitler had come from a small, very poor family and always had to make his own way. Hitler closed with a pro forma denunciation of the Jews as the cause of all evil. It was anticlimactic when he informed the Reichstag that the German Ambassador to the United States would ask for his passport on the morrow, establishing a state of war between the two countries.5 As was expected, Italy’s declaration of war followed promptly in the wake of Germany’s. From his balcony overlooking Rome’s Plaza Venezia, Mussolini told the Italian people that it was a day of solemn decision, one that would usher in a new course in the history of continents. The Tripartite Pact, he boasted, gathered around its colors a force of 250 million determined men. One man, one man only, a real tyrannical democrat, through a series of infinite provocations, betraying with a supreme fraud the population of his country, had wanted this war and had prepared for it day by day with diabolical obstinacy. It would be a privilege, he said, to fight in Italy’s cause: Tomorrow, the Tripartite Pact will become an instrument of a just peace between the peoples. Italians! Once more arise and be worthy of this historical hour! We shall win.6 The diplomatic niceties proceeded in a frigid atmosphere. Secretary of State Hull would not receive Dr. Hans Thomsen, the German Chargé d’Affaires, but delegated the task instead to the Chief of the European Division, Ray Atherton. He in turn told Dr. Thomsen what everyone knew: they were only formalizing the reality of a European war that matched the Nazi regime against a free American civilization. In Rome, Italian Foreign Minister Count Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, called for the American Chargé d’Affaires, George Wadsworth, and informed him that Italy considered itself at war with the United States.7 President Roosevelt responded quickly to the German and Italian declarations of war. In his message to Congress, he said that what had been long known and long expected had finally taken place. The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire world, he said, now were moving toward this hemisphere: Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization. There was danger, he warned, in delay. He called for a rapid and united effort by the peoples of all the world to ensure a victory of the forces of justice and righteousness over the forces of savagery and barbarism.8

198

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Almost immediately, the Senate acted and this time the vote was unanimous. In subsequent action, Congress removed any restrictions on the use of U.S. forces anywhere in the world. The issue of an American expeditionary force was finally determined. There would be one, or many, though they might bear different names in different places at different times.9 So it had come to pass. America was at war, a war on two oceans and the seven seas, a war that would be waged on a hundred fronts, verifying Reichsmarschall Goering’s assessment that it was truly a world war. America now faced two extraordinarily powerful military machines, those of Germany and Japan, aided by Italy and a motley crew of secondary powers. Yet the American people had never arrived at the conscious decision that they must go to war against these forces of evil as they were surely known and shown to be. In the long decade starting in 1931, the American people had stood by as Japan ravaged China. They were sympathetic, yes; but expressions of support were moral more than material. America had waged economic warfare against Japan with its export prohibitions and economic freezes. But the thought of an American-initiated assault on the Japanese Empire would have evoked only horror in the American public. Similarly, America had watched, albeit with dismay and disgust, the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. It had stood aside at the time of the Anschluss, and the Munich Agreement. It had remained a spectator as Germany crushed its

FIGURE 18.2

President Roosevelt signing Declaration of War against Japan.

Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62–15185.

Thursday, December 11, 1941 199

British and French enemies and offered the equivalent of tea and sympathy when London was burning. A strong isolationist movement had argued that America had no stake and no place in European conflicts; and the farthest the “interventionists” would go could be fairly described as “all aid short of war.” The American position could be likened to that of a bystander who, urging another to take on a fearsome bully, offers to hold his coat.

An Expanded War: Challenge and Response In this newly expanded war there was good news from North Africa. Commonwealth troops had definitively raised the siege of the Libyan port of Tobruk. The retreating Germans were harried by British mobile columns and by air attack. Against this assault, German plans to make a stand at El Adem collapsed. Adding to the pressure, South African armored car units and mobile columns of the East Kent Regiment swinging southwestward from Tobruk attacked the enemy’s right rear. Allied forces also captured the coastal supply point of Gambut; and in operations north of the Bardia-Tobruk road they found 27 abandoned tanks, raising to 109 the number of German tanks captured or destroyed in the past seven days.10 In Russia, the Germans, having proclaimed the end of offensive operations for the winter, announced that they were withdrawing to shortened winter lines for tactical reasons.11 It was upon the Pacific, however, and the maelstrom of Japanese attacks there that American eyes were focused. Early reports seemed favorable. The Army announced that a Philippine army division had repelled Japanese attacks 180 miles north of Manila. Indeed, the army confidently announced that the Philippine situation was “completely in hand.” British reports sounded an equally confident note. Under the headline “BRITISH JOLT FOES” it was reported that British forces had beaten off two attacks at Hong Kong. The situation had been “stabilized.” Two boatloads of Japanese attempting a landing had been sunk by British machine-gun fire, and the rest of the party wiped out on the beach. British reports attributed these severe losses to effective artillery fire.12 Other reports were more ominous: that Japanese troops and parachutists had won footholds on the Northwest Luzon coast despite the assault of Army and Navy fliers on a six-ship troop convoy. Meanwhile, Japanese aviation in the form of four-motor bombers levied a prolonged assault on the Manila area. Huge columns of smoke were seen spiraling up from the Nichols Air Depot and big fires were ignited at the Cavite Naval Base. American interceptor planes rose to the defense in the four separate attacks of the afternoon. The boom of antiaircraft guns was mixed with the rattle of machine guns from the fighting planes. Eyewitnesses reported Japanese planes trailing plumes of smoke and others slanting seaward, then disappearing.13,14 These combats gave rise to conflicting claims. Japan boasted that it had obliterated the U.S. Asiatic Fleet and in addition had smashed the main Pearl Harbor– based forces of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. In addition to the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, Tokyo claimed the sinking of two U.S. battleships, two U.S. aircraft carriers

200

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

and U.S. submarines and auxiliary vessels. Certainly in the battered Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor there was ample evidence of the destruction or the disabling of more than two battleships. As to the destruction of the American aircraft carriers, however devoutly wished by the Japanese Admiralty, none had yet been engaged in active combat.15 Then there were persistent rumors that the German battleship Tirpitz was operating off the coast of Malaya and that German aviation had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack.16 Of one thing there was no doubt. American casualty lists, printed daily in the press, were lengthening. Behind each one there was a story. Once such casualty was Louis Schleifer of Newark, New Jersey. On the Monday after the Pearl Harbor attack, his parents received a letter from their son at his station at Hickam Field Pearl Harbor enclosing $45. “Don’t save it! Spend it!” he urged. “I might never get home to use it.” In the next mail the family received a notification from the War Department that their son had been killed in action during the Pearl Harbor attack.17

The War of Nerves On this fourth night after the Pearl Harbor attack, the mood on the U.S. West Coast was one not simply of jitters, but of serious and well-grounded apprehension. In Los Angeles, the Fourth Interceptor Command ordered a three-hour blackout of southern California and part of Nevada on reports of “unidentified” planes over the area for more than an hour. An hour later, the planes were reported heading southward in the direction of the San Diego Naval Base. But no one heard the sound of aircraft motors and Army and Navy searchlight crews in the vicinity scanned the skies in vain. The alarm had been given at 8:10 p.m.; the “all clear” was sounded at 11:08. Air-raid workers, including police, fire, air-raid wardens and Boy Scouts, had quickly moved to their posts, patrolling the streets to order the dousing of any remaining lights. Results were reasonably satisfactory, and Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz announced that the blackout had been 90 percent effective.18,19 On the East Coast, where 300 interceptor planes had been sent up and Army and Navy establishments and industrial plants evacuated, Major General Herbert A. Dargue, commanding the First Army Air Force at Mitchel Field, confirmed that no planes indeed had been detected and Major General Francis B. Wilby, commanding the Army First Corps area, said that U.S. planes, not properly identified, had probably been the source of the alarm. But, he saw no harm in the incident and for the Army some good. The Army had taken the same precautions as it would have in the case of an actual attack.20 If the air-raid alarms had indeed been false, the blackouts were not without casualties. Traffic accidents on darkened streets sent an unusually high number of patients to the General Police Hospital and in Long Beach and other areas near the harbor, more deaths had been charged to the blackout. When reports of “enemy aircraft” overflying California cities were issued by competent authorities, corroborative evidence was bound to spring up from all quarters. In Washington State, two long brush fires were seen burning six miles from Port Angeles. Police said that the fires had been shaped liked arrows pointed

Thursday, December 11, 1941 201

along the Strait of Juan de Fuca toward Puget Sound, the Bremerton Naval base and Boeing aircraft factories. State patrolmen searched in vain for fifth columnists who might have set the fires. “We believe that they were deliberately set and we have several hot clues that may lead to the perpetrators.”21 California police believed that lights had been flashed from the ground to Japanese planes making reconnaissance flights along the California coast. “An alert woman” who remained unidentified observed flashing lights, took moving pictures of them and delivered them promptly to agents of the FBI, who ran the film looking for code words and other clues. Federal agents were soon on the ground searching the area in which the lights had been seen. Many reported seeing flares that may or may not have been shooting stars. It lent authenticity to the remarks of as well informed an observer as New York Mayor La Guardia, who declared: “It has happened, it is happening, right here.”22 If, as reported by the Houston Chronicle, America’s Pacific coast was buckled down “in grim earnest” to intense preparations to repel any invasion, then it was natural that any activities of Japanese or perceived Japanese would be the subject of alarm. Thus, in San Francisco, a Japanese was arrested while he was taking pictures in the Twin Peaks area overlooking the Golden Gate.23 The New York Times reported an investigation of Japanese espionage on the West Coast that had been suppressed for fear of embarrassing diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan. The report was now said to reveal that fishing boats by the hundreds, long accustomed to operating off Los Angeles, had been converted into minelaying craft and, what is more, equipped with highpower radio and manned by officers of the Japanese Navy. Equally to the point, the Japanese had photographed and charted American military and naval bases on the mainland and on Pacific islands in great detail. These charts showed cruising ranges of military and naval aircraft and were supplemented by photographs of U.S. naval vessels in varied types and formations. Japanese truck gardeners played a prominent role in producing food in the Los Angeles area. There was a concern that their farms were located adjoining or uncomfortably close to defense-related installations, including oil storage tank farms, airplane factories, shipyards, and dry docks.24,25 For fear that the produce from the Japanese truck farms might have been poisoned, tests were conducted without positive results. Alien custodian officers were in the process of being appointed to take charge of these Japanese farms. Los Angeles grocery shoppers might be relieved to know that except for carrots, beets, and turnips, there was no shortage of vegetables in the markets.26

America at War: Repercussions Although Congress had responded to hostile declarations of war one vote shy of total unanimity, and although there was no doubt as to the overwhelming support and indeed enthusiasm for the war that had been thrust upon America, still there were bound to be criticisms, complaints and even outrage over the course of events that had brought the country to its present pass. And there

202

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

were. Characterizing the attack on Pearl Harbor as a “disaster that’s almost unspeakable,” New Hampshire Senator Tobey charged that it had been caused by “dereliction and inefficiency” in the Navy. His bill of particulars was extensive: warning systems had not been working; battleships were at anchor with no steam up (although in fact the battleships had been moored to piers and not at anchor). He called for a new naval commander, in stinging terms—a commander who believed in efficiency rather than publicity. But when challenged by Senator Lucas of Illinois, who demanded to know the source of Tobey’s facts, Tobey admitted he had made no effort to verify what he had been told by unidentified sources.27 The questions of who knew what and when about the Japanese attack surfaced almost immediately after the event. Representative Clare Hoffman of Michigan alleged that a dispatch from Chungking, China, published in a newspaper owned by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, had contained a full warning of the Japanese attack. But, he said, it had been ignored. The message, he claimed, had contained a warning that there might be a break with Japan over the weekend. The correspondent garnished his article with an anecdote in which an officer of a U.S. gunboat told him: “It’s going to happen tonight.” These questions remain the topic of lively inquiry and discussion up to the present day.28 In a time of tension and popular excitement, there will always be those who take things into their own hands. The Japanese cherry trees in blossom gracing the borders of the Tidal Basin in Potomac Park were one of the nation’s capital’s premier springtime sights. Over Wednesday night four of these famous trees had been cut down. Two of them had been part of the initial gift of the Japanese government. It was, said the Park Department, “an act of vandalism the only result of which was the destruction of beauty in the national capital.” The Department thought that the deed had been done by “misguided individuals, probably youths” and it asked all residents of the city to participate in the protection of parks and park values in a time of wartime emergency.29 There will always be newspaper space for glamour, especially when it is allied with royalty. In this case it was the glamorous red-headed Princess Sophie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfuerst, the divorced wife of a Habsburg prince. She had been a close friend and associate of Captain Fritz Wiedemann, formerly German General Counsel in San Francisco and before that Adolf Hitler’s World War I company commander. The Princess had been arrested by the FBI as a dangerous alien and expelled from the country as undesirable. She was believed to be in Mexico. Amid these excitements the state of Georgia was on the alert. It placed its State Defense Corps on active duty and dispatched an unspecified number of units to undisclosed destinations throughout the state. Once more it was at locations from the Rabun Gap to Tybee Light that the Corps was scattered. The Georgia Corps would operate in close coordination with General Omar N. Bradley at Fort Benning, who had requested the Corps’ transfer to active duty.30 A trial blackout the next week by the Georgia Defense Corps could relieve the Army of significant responsibilities.

Thursday, December 11, 1941 203

There were echoes of the past in a letter to the President from General of the Armies John J. Pershing, who had commanded American troops in the War of 1917–18, the results of which lay at the roots of the present conflict. The General wrote: Dear Mr. President: All Americans today are unified in one ambition—to take whatever share they can in the defense of our country. As one of those millions, I hasten to offer my services in any way in which my experience and my strength to the last ounce will be of help in this fight. In supreme confidence that under your calm and determined leadership we will retain our balance despite foul blows. I am faithfully yours, John J. Pershing31 The President’s stately response showed that he was well grounded in the courtesies of high office. He wrote to Pershing: You are magnificent. You always have been and you always will be. I am deeply grateful for your letter of December 10. Under a wise law, you have never been placed on the retired list. You are very much on the active list and your services will be of great value. Always sincerely, Franklin D. Roosevelt32 There was a footnote to this exchange. John W. Smallwood had been Pershing’s chauffeur in France and sought to reenlist. He passed the physical examination but was far in excess of the thirty-five-year age limit. Ardent recruits came from all stations of life. Bob Feller, twenty-three, Cleveland’s top pitcher and a future Hall of Famer, was sworn into the Navy as a Chief Boatswain’s Mate by former world heavyweight champion Gene Tunney. “He wants to be where the action is,” Tunney said.33 In Salem, Oregon, Clare Jarvis, forty-six, was shown taking his physical examination. He had served in the Navy during the World War as a Chief Pharmacist’s Mate. He was joining the Navy, again, to serve with his son, Clare Jarvis, Jr., a navy petty officer first class who was home on leave at the time. There were those who had stood against war and participation in it out of a deeply held principle. In the rush to war, they had been left stranded by the ebbing tide of pacifism. In New York the Fellowship of Reconciliation adopted a resolution: The fact that our beloved country has been drawn openly and fully into war does not alter our own opposition to all war and our refusal, insofar as we are free to determine our own course, to take any part in war measures.34

204

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

Members of the Fellowship, it said, would do nothing to sabotage or obstruct those who were performing duties that they regarded as a patriotic obligation. A far better way, the statement said, was nonviolence and reconciliation; but it did not venture to propose how reconciliation and nonviolence would be achieved with those who had levied the attack of December 7 and their Nazi and Fascist partners. The Fellowship was on sounder ground in stating that it could not recognize the right of any man to silence the preaching of any faith rooted in the great Jewish-Christian prophetic tradition.35 On the opposite side of the continent, in Portland, Oregon, local chapters of the America First Committee and the Ministers’ No War Committee were disbanded. The America First Committee had claimed a membership numbering in the thousands; while the No War Committee counted twenty-five ministerial members. But Dr. Paul Cotton, chairman of both groups, observed that their purpose had been to prevent war, and that there would be no point to meetings during war. But Dr. Cotton did not go quietly into the night. I believe that the principles of the America First Committee have been vindicated by recent events. We have built our organization upon the platform of ‘defend America’ and we have opposed sending our vital war equipment to Britain and Russia; and if the administration had followed our program many of our boys killed in action might be alive today.36 These sentiments certainly were not shared by the masses that gathered at the doors of the recruiting stations.

America at War: The Pundits Pronounce In these dark days, the American people turned to the syndicated pundits for analysis, comfort, and consolation. Kirke L. Simpson set the scene with baseball imagery: the Japanese had put up a lopsided first inning score, but in the end only the last inning score would count. Yes, the Japanese had sent the Prince of Wales and the Repulse to the bottom of the sea. Yes, the Japanese were on the attack across the Pacific, but these successes could not mask Japan’s critical weakness in the necessities of modern war—oil and war metals. What is more, Japan lacked the industrial capacity for long-range mastery on land, sea, and in the air to maintain such widespread attacks, and Japanese supply lines would be in peril across broad expanses of the Pacific. This was prescient: the U.S. submarine forces of World War II indeed crippled Japan’s productive capacity and troop movements.37 Walter Lippmann did not spare his readers. The nation, he said, had been grievously wounded by a combination of Japanese treachery and its own blindness. The United States was not facing a feeble and contemptible little enemy on the distant shores of Asia, he warned, but the most carefully prepared, highly organized and shrewdly directed combination that had ever set out to conquer the world. It was, he continued, truly a world war that could end only in victory or defeat. If the United States were indeed defeated there should be no illusions that it would

Thursday, December 11, 1941 205

be treated honorably or mercifully. The price of defeat would be nothing less than the invasion and occupation of the North American continent if ever British and American sea power failed to protect it.38 In his address to the nation, President Roosevelt had laid down two rules for the disclosure of war information. It would be released only after it had been verified by responsible sources, and it would be released only if the heads of the War and Navy departments believed that it would not “lend aid and comfort to the enemy.” The New York Times’s Arthur Krock argued for a narrow interpretation of “aid and comfort to the enemy.” He compared the fact that days after the Pearl Harbor attack the extent of damage to U.S. naval units was still unknown while the British had promptly announced the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. In many cases, Krock argued, the United States was withholding information that the Japanese already knew. He admired the British principles of disclosure designed solely to prohibit the leakage of military information, a system never designed to curb criticism of government policy or official blunders.39 Naval expert Hanson W. Baldwin engaged in the then-current game of counting battleships, concluding that the combined British–American fleets still maintained superiority. He recognized the potency of air power—America’s aircraft production rate, its manpower, and its resources were infinitely larger than those of the Axis powers. Its great industry, which would have to be transformed into the great dynamic strength of planes, ships, and guns, would eventually tell.40

America at War: Editorial Voices The syndicated columnists were stars in the journalistic firmament, visible and known to the public. Their colleagues, the editorial writers of the daily newspapers, labored in anonymity but probably tracked public opinion in their markets more faithfully. We are not surprised to find the editorialists of the Chicago Tribune grumbling that the battleship was obsolete, which the Navy didn’t know. They inveighed against the “stupid aging bureaucrats” of the Navy Department who lacked imagination and understanding of the true character of warfare today. This message could be stated simply: throw the bums out.41 Before the war could be won on the seas or on the battlefields, the Tribune advised, it must be won in Washington. The New York Times agreed that this was an air war in which the airplane was the master of the battleship; but it expressed this opinion in a less contentious tone.42 The Atlanta Constitution was cautious. “DON’T CRITICIZE TOO SOON” it headlined on its editorial page. In its opinion too little was known of the facts in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack to warrant any conclusions.43 The Washington Post’s editorial headline was “DEFEND THE DISTRICT.” Sensibly it pointed to the fact that the nation’s capital, which was the nexus of the entire war program, was almost totally undefended. It needed air-raid shelters, firefighting equipment, bomb-fighting equipment, emergency medical supplies and more. The reason, the editorial said, was simple. It was a lack of funds that were desperately needed and the sooner the better.44

206

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

To the Houston Chronicle, the Pearl Harbor attack and the declarations of war that followed had one profoundly positive effect. The air is clear. All hesitation and dissension is gone in America and the country is united as it has never been throughout its history. Every American is ready. Yes, eager to do his part. There can be no doubt as to the outcome. The ultimate victory would be a victory for liberty, justice, and humanity than which there could be no greater cause.45

Economic Mobilization As important as manpower was the productive capacity of the country. William S. Knudsen, Director General of the Office of Production Management (OPM), announced a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day week at all shipyards and in plants producing heavy bombers, aircraft, guns, tanks, and munitions to achieve the supply of “whatever is needed, in the quantities required” for the defeat of Japan. Strategic materials might be in short supply; to assure their availability it was predicted that orders would soon be issued for the seizure of all stocks of tin, rubber and other products imported from the Far East, thus offsetting Japan’s effort to interdict such supplies. The program would go into effect as soon as available labor supplies had been achieved.46 Effective immediately was an order by Donald N. Nelson of the OPM, ending the sale of new automobile tires until December 22 in order to forestall panicbuying and hoarding. The order applied to tires not only for autos but for trucks, buses, motorcycles, and farm implements, whether at wholesale or retail. Another order would sharply reduce the manufacture of new passenger cars. Surely nothing could more poignantly bring to the attention of the American public that the country was truly at war than a prospective limitation on its inalienable right to drive to its heart’s content.47,48 How far these limitations would penetrate into America’s daily life was exemplified by the ordered limit after February 1 on production of coin-operated gambling machines, jukeboxes, and other coin-operated devices, curtailing production by 75 percent. This was not a small industry. It counted some 12,000 employees in its heartland, the Chicago area. The aim was to conserve steel, and the hope was that manufacturers of coin-operated devices would switch their production to defense materials.49

Life in These United States: As Time Goes by Deeply conscious as they were of the profound impact the war would have upon them, the American people carried on their daily lives in the first week of war much as they had done in the last week of peace. At the Palace Theater in New York, the popular duo of Bing Crosby and Mary Martin appeared in The Birth of the Blues. In a review closely attuned to the argot of the day, it was described as “a film straight down the groove—a blend of jump-and-jive music that should

Thursday, December 11, 1941 207

make the ‘hip cats’ howl with some sweet bits of romantic chanting that should tickle the ‘ickies,’ too.” 50 Other “photo plays,” as they were then called, included Gary Cooper as World War I hero Sergeant York and Abbott and Costello in Keep ’Em Flying. Loew’s State featured William Powell and Myrna Loy in Shadow of the Thin Man and, in person, Artie Shaw and his big band.51 Houston offered a classic, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, plus “Our America at War” by The March of Time. Admission was 55 cents to the orchestra, whites only, and 44 cents in the balcony for the “colored” audience.52 The same ticket prices were in effect in another Houston presentation, “Stage and Screen Follies,” which promised “Harlem’s Hottest Saturnalia of Wanton Rhythm and Brown Skinned Models.”53 There was romantic news from Hollywood. Film producer Howard Hawks was seen cutting the wedding cake with his bride Nancy Gross. Luster was added to the ceremony as Gary Cooper gave the bride away.54 * War or no war, Christmas was in the air and the nation’s retailers were ready for it. In Houston a full-size Western Flyer bicycle could be had for $22.95 and a rubber-tired red wagon for $2.65. Christmas items included a tree stand at 29 cents, red cellophane wreaths at the same price, a set of eight tree lights for 59 cents, for the boys a microscope set at $2.50, for the girls a thirty-onepiece tea set at 59 cents. In tune with the times, the same merchant offered “Army” automatic cap guns at 48 cents, and at 15 cents a “realistic” olive-green Army helmet that would enhance the authenticity of war games played in the vacant lots and on the streets of an America at war.55 * We have learned some useful lessons since 1941. One such lesson is exemplified by a full-page Philip Morris cigarette ad in The Oregonian headlined in gigantic black letters: “YOU CAN’T HELP INHALING BUT YOU CAN HELP YOUR THROAT.” But, the display continued, all smokers inhaled sometimes. Eminent doctors, it assured the public, had compared five leading cigarette brands and found that the others averaged more than three times the irritants of Philip Morris, an irritation that lasted more than five times as long. If you smoked Philip Morris, its maker claimed, you had good protection and freedom from worry about smoking problems. Change now, it urged, to a cigarette that tastes better and is better for you. This was combined with an eyecatching graphic of the iconic “CALL FOR PHILIP MORRIS” bellboy.56 For the nation’s smokers this was an age of innocence.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

New York Times, December 12, 1941, 14 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 8 Denver Post, December 11, 1941, 5 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 4

208

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

New York Times, December 11, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 3 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 11, 1941, 11 Atlanta Constitution, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 10 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 20 Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1941, 5 Denver Post, December 11, 1941, 10 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 10A New York Times, December 11, 1941, 20 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 10 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 24 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 10 Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1941, 2/2 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 16 Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1941, 3 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 30 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 4 Atlanta Constitution, December 11, 1941, 35 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 12 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 12 Oregonian, December 11, 1941, 17 Oregonian, December 11, 1941, 2 Oregonian, December 11, 1941, 14 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 26 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 6 Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1941, 14 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 26 Atlanta Constitution, December 11, 1941, 22 Washington Post, December 11, 1941, 18 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 20A New York Times, December 11, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 30 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 39 New York Times, December 11, 1941, 39 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 39 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 39 Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1941, 22 Houston Chronicle, December 11, 1941, 11 Oregonian, December 11, 1941, S4

19 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1941

FIGURE 19.1

See color plate section.

Poster by Valentino Sarra. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.5015:28.

210

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

America at War: Upbeat Reports Readers of the Friday papers awoke to tales of glory. According to official reports the Japanese fleet was in flight to escape an encounter with the U.S. Navy “somewhere in the Pacific.” There was more: a Japanese battleship sunk, as were a cruiser and three destroyers. Another Japanese battleship had been gravely damaged by aerial action off Luzon while supporting an attempted landing at Aparri on the north Philippine coast. The second battleship was identified, like the Haruna, as Kongo class.1,2 An Atlanta Constitution picture of the Haruna bore the caption: “The Japs thought she was pretty tough, but that was before she tangled with Uncle Sam.”3 Meanwhile, the small Marine garrison on Wake Island not only continued to hold the Japanese attackers to a standstill but fought fiercely back, sinking a Japanese light cruiser and destroyer. In the words of the President, the Wake Island garrison “was doing a perfectly magnificent job.” 4 All this was hailed through an Associated Press dispatch as “the first down payment on the Pearl Harbor score and . . . a fighting answer to the Berlin-Rome declarations of war.”5 Equally glowing reports depicted America’s successes in the Philippines. Indeed, it was reported that defensive forces in the Philippines had “smashed every Japanese effort to set landing forces firmly ashore, save possibly for one new thrust by parachutists.” At Aparri, Japanese invaders were driven back to the seacoast and the whole region surrounding the fort had reverted into American hands. According to a U.S. Army spokesman, the situation was completely in hand and mopping-up operations were proceeding.6 A more balanced appraisal came from correspondent Dewitt MacKenzie, who had bought into the assumption that reinforcements on land, sea and air would shortly be forthcoming; until then our “knight-champions” were capable of holding their own. He reported General MacArthur’s terse statement: “We shall do our best.” He enthused over the “grand job those Marines are doing on the little isle of Wake—darn their tough hides!” But he recognized that the Philippines were a “tough place.” Japanese troops ashore in northern and southern Luzon, heading toward Manila, represented a serious threat.7 Auguries of success are common in all wars, else why would the parties fight? Thus, the Associated Press reported on this day: Many hard American blows were falling upon the Japanese assailant in the Pacific. In that vast theater of early tragedy—where the invader had won initial successes by springing without warning—the news was no longer of American disaster, but of American victory.8 News was positive from other Southeast Asia fronts. A British stand was stemming the Japanese drive into Malaya. The fighting above Singapore was depicted as “well under control” with losses lighter than expected. Meanwhile British planes kept a close watch on the Malayan coast for further Japanese troop movements and bombed Japanese landing force footholds in the northern jungles. At

Friday, December 12, 1941

211

the same time, British forces in Hong Kong were repelling new assaults.9,10,11 A harbinger of things to come: Japan lost nine planes that were attempting to ram their objectives, in essence suicide attacks.12

America at War: Meanwhile, in Congress At Thursday’s vote in Congress on the declarations of war against Germany and Italy, eyes were focused on Jeanette Rankin of Montana who had on Monday been the sole vote cast against the declaration of hostilities with Japan. She waited nervously through the long roll call, clasping and unclasping her handbag. When “Rankin of Montana” was finally reached, it seemed as if she had not responded. So small had been her voice that the clerk had to call a second time for her vote. This time she quietly voted “Present.” When the roll was called a second time for the declaration of war on Italy, Ms. Rankin responded, this time with a firm “Present” vote. Unlike Monday’s vote, the incident passed without the anger and the booing to which she had been subjected on Monday. After casting her votes, she retired to a cloak room and was eating an apple and drinking milk when the House voted to remove the ban on sending American armed forces anywhere they might be needed in order to gain a final victory.13 Huge numbers of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and other combatants would be required to achieve victories in the wars that had just been declared. This was the responsibility of Brigadier General Lewis R. Hershey, Director of the Selective Service System. He would ask for the registration of all men and, for the first time, of all women from eighteen to sixty-five years of age, aggregating in all some twenty million who, in addition to serving in the armed forces, could also work in factories, in civil defense or in noncombatant capacities. This would release large numbers of men for active military service. Even the thought of registering and classifying women for noncombatant service, a first in the American history, testified to the seriousness of the country’s situation.14 More readily understood and accepted was Hershey’s call for 10,000 volunteer nurses. It was to be expected that the debacle at Pearl Harbor, the extent of which was still unknown, would arouse anger mixed with disbelief. These could be found on the floor of the U.S. Senate where Senator Tobey of New Hampshire was still emitting howls of rage. He demanded a full accounting of American losses, including ships, planes, and facilities. He did not hesitate to call for the dismissal of Navy Secretary Frank Knox who had so recently assured the public of the Navy’s readiness. The Pearl Harbor ships, he charged, did not have steam up; their “listening devices” were not working. “In all good conscience,” Senator Tobey declaimed, “how can we sit by and fold our hands and say ‘we must not ask for the details when the ships were lying at anchor with no steam up and its listening devices not in operation and then 3,000 American boys are dead today?’”15 He demanded a responsible Secretary of the Navy and not an irresponsible functionary more concerned with talks and magazine articles. Senator Lucas of Illinois riposted that Tobey’s angry denunciations were nothing more than “billingsgate, harangues and floor talk.” He for one would not

212

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

FIGURE 19.2

See color plate section.

Poster by Alexander Ross. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, FS2.26:N93/10.

condemn anyone until the facts were known. By his own admission, Senator Tobey did not know the facts. A different response came from Senator Walsh of Massachusetts, Chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee. Projecting a more statesmanlike persona, he was confident that any charges of neglect of duty would be placed in proper hands.

An Expanded War: Churchill Addresses the Commons In this dark hour Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons with a review of the war as he saw it. As he had in the past, so now he brought to the House grave tidings about the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. This former naval person and sometime first lord of the admiralty intoned:

Friday, December 12, 1941

213

In my whole experience I do not remember any naval blow so heavy or as painful as the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse on Monday last. But he sought to reassure Parliament and the British people that the combined naval power of Britain and the United States was still superior to that of the Axis naval powers. There was a “very hard period” to go through that would require a new surge and a new impulse. He was not fearful of the end. It would come as 130 million people in the United States settled down to their wartime roles, including a flow of munitions vastly in excess of what had been delivered to date. He passed a Churchillian judgment: Just handfuls and cliques of wicked men and their military or party organizations have been able to bring these hideous evils upon mankind. It would indeed bring shame upon our generation if we did not teach them a lesson which will not be forgotten in the records of a thousand years.16

America at War: Expressions of Patriotism Whether the tidings were good or ill, the United States shared a community of spirit. There was in the nation’s largest city a calm born of a firm determination to see it through, however long it might take. Patriotism was in the air, and loyalty through the omnipresent flags was its handmaiden. Whether in schools or stores, factories or private homes, there was no question of the will and the spirit of the American people.17 If determination was the order of the day, it was not in the spirit of the American people to be unrelievedly solemn. Often that spirit was aided by a certain vein of humor in their responses to the war crisis. At the Greater New Orleans Poultry Show, Japanese silky chickens became involuntary patriots as their pure white feathers were dyed red, white, and blue. In Cincinnati, Ohio, Gordon P. Reif, and Sterling Cramer, Jr., were inspired by a picture of the first Japanese battleship sunk by U.S. forces. They formed a club, each member of which agreed to buy one 25-cent defense stamp for each 1,500 tons of enemy war vessels sunk. The initial levy produced a kitty of $5. When Mussolini declared war against the United States, the citizens of Italy, Texas, did not take it lying down. This small Texas town declared war against Italy, an act beyond its powers. More practically, its leaders met to change the town’s name. Anthony Mosolino of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, had won the Italian War Cross in the First World War. He sent his decoration to the U.S. War Department with the instructions: either send it to Mussolini or throw it away. Christmas trees and decorations bearing a Japanese label were useful targets for venting patriotic emotions. John Rallis of Bristol, Connecticut, tossed his madein-Japan Christmas decorations into his furnace. “If we can’t get American-made decorations,” he said “the tree will stand as she is.” In East St. Louis, Illinois, labor unions demanded the removal of street decorations made in Japan. This patriotic

214

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

effort achieved irony when it was found that the ladder truck used to remove the decorations had been made in Germany. It was inevitable that it would happen somewhere in America. Members of a club in Kodiak, Alaska, took a no-shave pledge until the defeat of Japan. Patriotism could be long-term. In Philadelphia, Mrs. Caleb Fox, Jr., chairman of a Red Cross group, received a half-knitted sock from a middle-aged volunteer. She was looking for matching yarn to complete the sock. Noting that the sock was an off-shade, Mrs. Fox asked when it had been started. “During the First World War,” the volunteer replied.18 Good humor did not always prevail against patriotic gore. The National Theater of Washington, D.C., cancelled its scheduled presentation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.19 There were many tales of unusual recruits and unusual recruitments. In Denver, a “sizzling mad” old soldier managed to reenlist at sixty. William J. Horan of Waterbury, Connecticut, had been released shortly before the Pearl Harbor attack because he had passed age twenty-eight. “Go home and forget about the Army,” he had been advised. He then bought his own ticket for the trip back to Camp Blanding in Florida in an effort to rejoin his old outfit, Company F of the 102nd Infantry Regiment. Army officers thought they could accommodate him. Emotions did not always rule the day. Seichi Yamada was the American-born halfback of the Pacific Lutheran football squad. As a gesture of friendship and regard, his teammates presented to him the game ball used in Pacific Lutheran’s victory over Central Washington College.20

The War of Nerves: Civil Defense Whatever the news from the fighting fronts, the nation remained on high alert. In Portland, Oregon, the blackout was continued from 1:30 a.m. to 7:45 a.m., creating problems for early risers. There was a benefit to the blackout—a considerable reduction in the number of automobile accidents.21 Irrepressible Civil Defense czar La Guardia offered matter-of-fact instructions for behavior in the face of an enemy attack. First and foremost, keep cool. Don’t run, don’t scream. Don’t believe rumors. Know the warning signals. “We can do it. We will do it, if we stay calm and cool and strong and alert.” Stay at home. Don’t throw water on an incendiary bomb. It will only cause it to explode. He offered the comforting thought that an incendiary would burn for only about 15 minutes if left alone. Select an air-raid warden for your home. “Mother makes the best,” he advised. Put out lights. And by the way, turn off all gas furnaces and appliances. Lie down. The best place is under a good strong table, the stronger the better. If your house is hit, keep cool. Answer tappings from rescue squads. Again keep cool. “Just keeping cool hurts the enemy more than anything else you can do.” And make sure to stay away from windows for obvious reasons. Our own antiaircraft will inevitably shower an area with shrapnel so stay in your refuge room. “Above all, keep calm. Stay home. Put out lights. Lie down.” Repetition could only reinforce these instructions.

Friday, December 12, 1941

215

And finally, there were a million needs in the civil defense effort which men, women, and youths could effectively serve. America was on the alert. America was serious. America was keeping its cool.22 The nation’s concerns spread beyond its borders. There were reports of the appearance of bands of armed Japanese nationals in Baja, California. Other reports had Japanese fishing vessels putting in at harbors and inlets along Baja’s lengthy coasts. Amplifying these reports were estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior of about 4,500 Japanese subjects resident on the west coast of Mexico and scattered through northern Mexican states contiguous to the United States. Suspicion was rife that these Japanese residents might be part of a major fifth-column movement that Mexican President Lazaro Cárdenas was preparing to face.23 Meet and fitting. Those adjectives could be applied to the memorial planned for the hundred sailors of the U.S. destroyer Reuben James who had lost their lives in an encounter with a German U-boat. The service would be held in Boston aboard the USS Constitution. If ever there were an iconic U.S. Navy ship, it would be “Old Ironsides,” victor of several engagements in the War of 1812 and the subject of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous poem.24 A common theme arising out of the excitements of the week was the responsibility of the individual citizen. The message was: yes, it’s about the country but in the end it’s about you. A full-page advertisement by the United States Rubber Company in The Washington Post showed twelve action pictures of ships, planes, guns, tanks, and aircraft, in each case noting where rubber was essential to the functioning of these implements of war. Each individual was charged with the responsibility of conserving, using frugally, and taking care of the nation’s vital rubber resource.25 In another full-page advertisement in the Chicago Tribune, Wieboldt Stores of Chicago told all of its managers and employees that they must “obey the orders of our civil and military authorities promptly and completely regardless of whether we think they interfere with our jobs or hurt the business.” This was only a part of the duties laid out by the company’s president. “It is our duty to adjust ourselves cheerfully and completely to the war order of things.”26 Even America First, the leading isolationist organization, called for full support of the war effort. Its aim, it announced, was summed up in a single word: victory. But its president, General Robert E. Wood, could not resist the dispatch of a Parthian arrow: “Our principles were right,” he proclaimed. “Had they been followed, war could have been avoided.” Wood expressed the laudable hope for respect for the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and concluded with a warning against secret postwar treaties and the meshing of America into the imperialism of others. He called instead for a just and lasting peace.27 The Keep America Out of War Congress at New York’s Town Hall adopted a feistier tone. There had been defections from its originally scheduled program. Dr. Henry Noble MacCracken, the president of Vassar College who had been scheduled to speak on “No A. E. F.” had declined to attend. John T. Flynn, an eminence of the America First Committee, was out of town; poet Michael Strange was indisposed and a scheduled skit by playwright Morrie Ryskind was deleted from the schedule.

216

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

But Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas was cheered when he attacked British and American imperialism and, like General Wood, opined that if his and the Congress’s policies had been followed, the war could have been averted. He sounded a theme that would have a long life: “If we get out of this,” Thomas said, “America should stop the business of trying to play Lord God Almighty around the world for a nickel.”28 What the American people thought and felt amid the changing realities of the day is reflected in the pages of the newspapers, both in the editorials themselves and in letters to the editor. Charles Stuart Dennison wrote to The New York Times to express his concern over the coverage and reach of the air-raid alert system. New York subways, he said, ran in shallow canals that had been covered over thinly. In this, he said, they were unlike the deep-dug Underground of London. In New York, he speculated, subways could become death traps. Arthur J. Hedges applied a lighter touch in writing to the Chicago Tribune, proposing the “JIG [Japan, Italy and Germany] IS UP.” On the same editorial page William Walter Scott opined that if the Emperor of Japan were indeed the Son of Heaven, he would prefer to go to another place.29 The Atlanta Constitution was succinct. Its response to the German and Italian declarations of war: “So what.”30 To The Denver Post: “The Mask’s Last Tatters Fall Off.”31 The Houston Chronicle viewed the war news as taking a favorable turn in the Pacific and especially in the Philippines. We have drawn blood, it intoned. This was only the beginning.32 The Chicago Tribune adopted a high-minded, not to mention self-satisfied, posture. Its war policy, it virtuously announced, would be to give the public the truth and into the bargain the leadership needed to win the war. There was a strain of injured pride in the Tribune’s pronouncement that its warnings had gone unheeded and that with adequate preparation the war could have been avoided. The Tribune did not state how; but it extended its thanks to all who had stood with it when the message was unpopular.33 The New York Times was in hearty disagreement with the Tribune. Adopting the President’s words, it editorialized that Pearl Harbor was our rendezvous with destiny; that the months since Dunkerque had given America time to prepare; but in the end, no power could have averted the final struggle. “What was known and expected has simply happened.”34 In a nation recovering from the ravages of the Great Depression, Christmas budgets were still pinched. In Washington, People’s Drug Stores offered Wrist-OCrat wristwatches at $1.98, Yellow Bowl pipes and tobacco pouches at $1.00, and Evans pocket lighters at 98 cents. Better-heeled givers could have their choice of Agfa Pioneer cameras at $3.65. Who would be able to resist Braeburn miniature chocolates at $1.19 for a four-pound box, or for the thrift-minded four pounds of Woodridge chocolates for $1.00? At a price that soared far above People’s modest offerings was a Remington electric shaver at $17.50, “The Gift He’s Proud to Show His Buddies.”35 High spirits could be sustained at low prices. Clark’s Monogram five-year-old rye or bourbon was selling at $5.50 for three full quarts. For an elegant touch,

Friday, December 12, 1941

217

there was 1928 extra dry French champagne at $3.79 a fifth. Other elegancies on offer included Cinzano vermouth at $1.49 for a large bottle, Duff Gordon sherry, $1.29 a fifth and, for the connoisseur, Peter Dawson Old Curio Scotch whiskey at $4.09 a fifth. Rationing lay in the future but prudent buyers were taking advantage of favorable prices and availability.36 Books advertised in The New York Times continued to feature the wars of the world in all of their protean dimensions. The Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang published A Leaf in the Storm, a Novel of War-Swept China. Buyers could learn from Lt. Colonel Woodburne E. Remington in Cross Winds of Empire why Japan was attacking the Philippines. Sven Hedin’s Chiang Kai Shek would enable the reader to know the man leading China; and in Total Espionage Kurt Reiss warned that German and Japanese spies were everywhere. For literary relief from the stresses and strains of world war, Louise Andrews Hunt’s Mrs. Appleyard’s Year was advertised as warm, humorous, hilarious, nostalgic, and tender.37

Life in These United States: As the World Turns In the world of 1941 there was society and there was Society. However small a segment of the population they were, the news of the doings of Society was carefully noted and lovingly recorded, if not in the tabloids, then in the major metropolitan dailies. And society was deeply interested in the doings of Society, whether out of envy, curiosity or ambition. Perhaps Society occupied a place similar to that of movie stars and athletes—it was interesting if not particularly useful to be in the know. Whether in the august New York Times or across the nation in rural weeklies, the urge was similar. People liked to know what other people were doing, an interest that did not require personal acquaintance. There was no older mantra in the newspaper business than “Names Make News.” There was undoubtedly a widespread interest in news of the prospective wedding of Pamela Tower, the great-granddaughter of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and of former Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney, and niece of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, to Jay Ketcham Secor, a graduate of Hotchkiss and Yale and captain of Yale’s polo team.38 Another athlete in the news was Marjorie Manners, a member of the 1936 Canadian Olympic Ski Team, who was married to Oscar S. Straus II, grandson of former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Oscar Straus, and of Daniel Guggenheim, philanthropist, and industrialist.39 These were established names. Eyebrows were undoubtedly raised at reports of the prospective wedding of Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt to Pat DeCicco. Vanderbilts did not often wed spouses whose name ended in vowels. Denver had its own “Smart Younger Set” who would join together in a holiday portrait fete hosted by Mary Jane Metcalfe, seen gazing soulfully at the newspaper reader in her formal portrait.40 The news of Society was not always cheerful, and Society was not all of one mind about the stressful issue of divorce. In this case it was the divorce sought by Mrs. Anthony Bliss, who was the daughter of Marshall Field, on grounds of

218

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

cruelty. Mr. Field, heir to a department store fortune, was the former owner of the liberal New York newspaper PM and of the newly hatched Chicago Sun.41 * Among notable deaths on the international scene was that of the fifth Duke of Wellington, great-grandson of the Iron Duke. It was his custom annually to celebrate the anniversary of Waterloo by presenting to the King of Spain a miniature Napoleonic standard. Among his perquisites was the right to remain in the presence of the King of Spain while wearing a hat. * The early weeks of December saw the conclusion of the college football season and the naming of the All-American team. Wide readership was assured for the Los Angeles Times’s full display of 1941’s leather-helmeted All-Americans.42 And to kindle the spirit of a nation at war there were the songs of war. Civil War Union troops had marched to the refrain of “John Brown’s Body.” There was a lighter touch in the Spanish-American War to which memories were summoned by the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” George M. Cohan had furnished the mood music for America’s World War with “Over There” and “Give My Regards to Broadway.” In a new war, audiences would flock to see the musical This Is the Army, where a wispy Irving Berlin, outfitted in a First World War campaign hat, high-collared tunic and wraparound puttees, reprised in a quavering voice his 1917 classic “Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” It told the tale of the sleepy recruit who, when awakened by the insistent bugler, dreams of the day when: I’ll put my uniform away And move to Philadelph-i-a And spend the rest of my life in bed. This time Tin Pan Alley snapped to attention and went to work with a will. The outpouring of songs in the first weeks of the war included “The Sun Will Soon Be Setting For the Land of the Rising Sun,” “You’re a Sap, Mr. Jap,” “The Japs Won’t Have a Chinaman’s Chance,” “Taps for the Japs” and “We’re the Guys to Do It.” None of these songs has registered in the historical consciousness, but “Goodbye, Mama, We’ll See You in Yokohama” may faithfully have recorded the spirit of the long lines that curled around the recruiting offices.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 12, 1941, 2 Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 12, 1941, 3

Friday, December 12, 1941

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 16 Atlanta Constitution, December 12, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 1 Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 16A Denver Post, December 12, 1941, 4 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 6 Atlanta Constitution, December 12, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 10 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 16 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 17A Denver Post, December 12, 1941, 6 Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 17A Oregonian, December 12, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 21 Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 12A New York Times, December 12, 1941, 52 Washington Post, December 12, 1941, 12 Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, 18 Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, 16 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 26 Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, 18 Atlanta Constitution, December 12, 1941, 21 Denver Post, December 12, 1941, 2/14 Houston Chronicle, December 12, 1941, 2B Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, 18 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 24 Washington Post, December 12, 1941, 11 Washington Post, December 12, 1941, 17 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 31 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 32 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 32 Denver Post, December 12, 1941, 25 New York Times, December 12, 1941, 52 Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1941, 1/19

219

20 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1941

FIGURE 20.1

See color plate section.

Courtesy of National Archives, 51388,6 NWDNS-44-PA-427, Office of Government Reports.

Saturday, December 13, 1941

221

America at War: Optimism Over Asia The Navy had been close-mouthed about its own losses in the attack on Pearl Harbor. It had admitted the sinking of the battleship Arizona and unspecified damage to other vessels. The Japanese had claimed, in addition to the Arizona, damage to two other U.S. battleships. The truth was that the U.S. battle line had suffered even more serious damage, which it would take many months to repair. The Navy was evidently following the President’s advice not to disclose information that would lend aid and comfort to the enemy; but that the United States had suffered a severe defeat, including up to 3,000 deaths, was clear to all. The public had rallied in near unanimity to the nation’s cause. In the face of an initial defeat there was a hunger for more positive news that would sustain the country’s self-image as a perennial winner. This the armed forces supplied in quantity. Thus, The Oregonian headlined: FOE FLEET IN FLIGHT FROM NAVY It offered the subheadline: “Nipponese Decline To Fight.”1 This report was confirmed by Admiral Thomas Hart, commanding the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. A Japanese battle fleet, he said, had fled to avoid contact with an American fleet off Manila. This was not all. Admiral Hart announced that the Japanese had yet to face one of the most powerful American arms, its submarines. In a sunny forecast he added: “When the news comes, it should be big news. When a torpedo hits anything it stays hit. But a submarine is like a big game hunter with an elephant gun who sits hour after hour, day after day, awaiting his prey. Sometimes it takes a long time to get results.”2,3,4 In addition to reports of Japanese fleets turning and running from American warships, the Army reported a continuing string of successes. It told of rebuffing attempted Japanese landings on the Luzon west coast, wiping out the invaders. General Douglas MacArthur’s communiqué said that mopping-up operations in the Lingayen area had been completed and that there had been no Japanese gains or other landings reported. This was a second Japanese attempt to gain a foothold in Luzon that had been smashed in intense defensive battles. Buoyed by such reports, Admiral Hart was in excellent spirits at his press conference. He was a generous foe. He commended the Japanese pilots for their formation flying and accuracy. With pardonable pride he claimed that no Japanese battleship had been seen within sight of the Philippine coast and he wisely cautioned against rumors claiming each Japanese ship hit was a battleship.5 Reports were encouraging on other fronts. The gallant Marine garrison of Wake Island continued its vigorous defense. British and Empire troops were reported as turning back Japanese attacks on Hong Kong and in the northern

222

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

reaches of Malaya. A Dutch destroyer claimed 4,000 enemy troops killed as it sank four Japanese transports.6

America at War: First Heroes of the New War America cherishes its heroes. From these combats America found and eagerly embraced its first heroes of this new war. It was General MacArthur who sorrowfully announced the death of Army Air Force Captain Colin P. Kelly, Jr., who had scored three direct hits on the Japanese battleship Haruna, leaving that vessel consumed by flames. A 1937 graduate of the United States Military Academy, Captain Kelly left behind his widow and his eighteen-month-old son Colin P. Kelly III. “He was a marvelous officer,” Captain Kelly’s widow said. “I know he would have wanted to die in action.” The captain had all of the attributes of an American hero. He was a combination of Irish blood and Southern sunshine, who enjoyed the best qualities of both heritages. At West Point he had played football, run cross-country, and boxed. Versatile, he sang in the Cadet Choir. He was the advertising manager of The Howitzer, a student publication. An expert at the pistol, he was also a member of the Cadet Players, producers of an annual show. His father, an electrician in a local coal mine, was modestly brief: “I am proud that he did his part for his country.”7 There was a solemn tribute paid to Captain Kelly at the annual dinner of the Ancient Order of Hibernians at New York’s Hotel Commodore; the hero was honored with a two-minute silence followed by the sounding of “Taps.” Admiral Hart was pleased once more to be the bearer of glad tidings when he announced that Navy pilot Lieutenant Clarence A. Keller, Jr., had sighted the Japanese battleship Kongo, or a battleship of her class, off the northwest Luzon coast. He had maintained contact in the face of fierce antiaircraft fire. Other planes arrived and, joined by Lieutenant Commander J. V. Petersen, they pressed home the assault under heavy fire, scoring at least one hit and a probable two. The ship, they reported, was definitely out of control and seriously crippled. Keller had been appointed to the Naval Academy after studying at Wichita University. He was married with one child, a daughter. This was not the first occasion in which Keller had maintained his focus in a difficult situation. Flying his plane close to the water, he had driven sharks away from a group of shipwrecked Greek sailors off the Virginia capes until they could be rescued.8 Boyd D. Wagner of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was typical of American boys fascinated by aviation. He read voluminously on the subject and built model airplanes, one of which won a contest sponsored by the Junior Birdmen of America. His reward was a flight from Johnstown to Philadelphia to meet his idol, Charles A. Lindbergh. It was in the air over Aparri that he distinguished himself when attacked by five Japanese pursuit planes. According to his citation, he shot down two of the planes and destroyed five more aircraft left burning on the ground. The press, as usual, was interested in domestic details, which his family was glad to supply. His mother said she was doubly happy that her son was both honored and safe. “I just

Saturday, December 13, 1941

223

feel happy,” said his grandmother. “I was sad that Boyd was in the war, but I am glad he did something.” According to press reports, he indeed did.9

A World in Flames: Other Fronts There was action this day in other theaters of operations. In the Mediterranean, British and Dutch destroyers sank one Italian cruiser and left a second burning from stem to stern. Taking into account another Italian cruiser that was believed to have been sunk the day before by a British submarine, that would mean that an entire flotilla of three Italian cruisers had been sent to the bottom.10 The Soviets announced a decisive victory before Moscow where they recaptured more than 400 towns and villages, defeating German armies north and south of the capital.11 And in Libya, the British continued to advance westward beyond Gazala, which was still held by the enemy.12 The position of France in a world at war continued to be ambiguous. The country was now divided into two zones, one occupied and the other unoccupied but certainly not free. The United States continued to maintain diplomatic relations with the Vichy government, which it regarded the legitimate government of France. The ambiguity was heightened by the American seizure of fourteen French ships in American ports. These included the luxury liner Normandie, the most recent French contestant for the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic. No reason was given and no comment was made.13

The War of Nerves Of all of the great American cities, San Francisco was the most apprehensive about aerial attacks. For the third night, air-raid signals sounded, this time at 7:24 p.m., blacking out the city for two hours and thirty-four minutes until the all clear at 9:58 p.m. “Unidentified airplanes” were the cause. The press called the blackout weird. It reported that dogs had howled, and “people were running around like wild.” Elmer Combs, the booking steward at Central Emergency Hospital, said that the institution could not begin to handle the flow of accident victims caused by the presumed air raid. The thrusting beams of searchlights against the night sky had formed a fitting background for this agitated response. There were some, however who maintained their sang-froid. “We haven’t received any official reports of enemy planes or bombs,” a police official with a taste for irony said, “but the first we would know about that would be when they were dropped.”14 In the absence of any recent air-raid alert, New York City issued stringent blackout rules in the event they should be needed. In addition to shutting off all exterior lights and screening all interior lights, the authorities urged people to stay at home and keep off the streets. They advised motorists to pull over to the side of the highway, to extinguish all lights, close the car, and seek shelter. Pedestrians were told not to attempt to cross a street and to proceed to and remain at a safe place. Meanwhile, the city’s radio stations engaged to reserve time daily for dissemination of air-raid information.15

224

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

The Commander-in-Chief: Press Support Amid these excitements the press rallied to the support of the Administration. The Washington Post thanked heaven that appropriate defense plans had been prepared: To whom is the credit due for this policy? To nobody but our President. This country, now that it is confronted by the stark facts, has reason to be grateful to the President for his prescience. He saw the war coming

FIGURE 20.2

See color plate section.

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.409:Am3.

Saturday, December 13, 1941

225

long before it came in 1939. He foresaw the time when Japan would carry out the obligations of the Axis Compact. As a result this nation is ready as never before to meet the mighty shock of the Japanese attack.16 The Chicago Sun agreed: there had come to pass all that the President had foreseen and feared and worked against, all that other men had refused to hear. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was succinct and grammatically pure: “It’s we or they!” it said. And, according to The Des Moines Register: “It’s not going to be a picnic.”17

America at War: Moral Questions Support for the President showed how keenly he was attuned to the thoughts and feelings of the American people and how ably he could communicate their own thoughts and feelings to them. In this period of extreme crisis he found time to write this letter to the American Bible Society: I am certain that the American Bible Society, with unfaltering spirit, will continue its great work of making the word of God available to all people, even those in the uttermost ends of the earth. And as Universal Bible Sunday approaches, let us pray God to hasten the day when acceptance of His word will change the hearts and minds of men and make the kingdom of this world in truth and fact the Kingdom of God.18 Further evidence of the solemn response of the American people was to be found in the sermons to be preached on Sunday, December 14, in New York. They were concerned to emphasize the churches’ responsibility to keep American morals high. In a more practical vein, one clergyman was to preach on “How to Behave in an Air Raid.” Other sermon topics were: “Keep Calm, Pray, Work,” “Watch Ye, Stand Fast, Be Strong,” and in a gentler sensibility: “We still believe in Christmas.”19 It was not only the President and the clergy who were sensitive to the moral issues the war might raise. The Oregonian editorialized that indiscriminate bombing by the Japanese would be indecisive. On the other hand, indiscriminate bombing of the great cities of Japan, Tokyo, Kobe, and others could easily be decisive. The Japanese, The Oregonian said, had already demonstrated that they had no scruples against indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations. They had abundantly proved it in China: But their intelligence department is well acquainted with American repugnance for that kind of warfare. They will try to defeat us with our own conscience if they can do it. And our own Army and Navy will have to decide very soon whether that is to be permitted.20

226

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

This was prescient, and the answer would one day be found in the ruins of Germany and Japan, especially at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Diversions In the world of culture, results were announced of the latest sales at Parke-Bernet Galleries. A Degas pastel “Danseuses dans les Coulisses,” which got the highest bid, was sold to the Gallery of Modern Art in New York for $2,400. Modigliani’s “Portrait of Madame Hebuterne” was knocked down at $925, an advance over the $575 commanded by Derain’s “Woman In Green Dress.” Other sales noted were Vlaminck’s “Claire de Lune” at $550, a Renoir lithograph “Enfants Jouant a La Balle,” $400, and an 1820 Georgian inlaid mahogany sideboard at $280.21 Lecture platforms offered a blend of high culture and current affairs. At New York’s Town Hall, J. Allen’s topic was to be “My Trouble with Hitler.” Varian Fry, U.S. Consul in Marseilles, led the discussion at a Foreign Policy Association Meeting. His vital role in assisting victims of Nazism to escape its clutches was not yet known. The Union for Democratic Action held a luncheon in honor of labor leader Walter Reuther. “Leonardo Da Vinci, Man of the Renaissance” was the subject of a talk by H. H. Arnason at the Frick Collection, while natives of Quakerdom celebrated at the Pennsylvania Society Dinner at the Waldorf.22 An editorial writer at the Chicago Tribune displayed rare cultural knowledge in observing that Britain’s Order of the Garter had been withdrawn from sometime member Emperor Hirohito. The caption of the editorial, “Getting Hirtie’s Garter,” echoed the title of a popular 1921 comedy, Getting Gertie’s Garter.23 * Of all the shining stars of sport in the twenties and the thirties, the brightest was Babe Ruth, icon of the national game. He was shown in a photograph in The New York Times in his oft-played role of inspiration for American youth, this time among pediatric patients at the New York Hospital for Joint Diseases.24

America at War: A Desire to Serve But the dominant concern of the American people was the war and their desire to serve, both as civilians and in the armed forces. In New York City the Civil Defense Volunteer Office was swamped with men and women who wanted to know how they could best serve their country. Perhaps it was the first air-raid alarm that had precipitated the stampede. At any rate, the prospective volunteers found themselves at offices lacking trained personnel, basic equipment, and funds. The mission of the Office was to act as a clearinghouse for 10,000 volunteer slots that would be available in the Civil Defense system. The first task was to assemble and train interviewers to make the requisite assignments. It would take two weeks, the Office estimated, to get the whole operation up and running smoothly.25

Saturday, December 13, 1941

227

It was a familiar sight—the long lines in front of recruiting-station doors. The same rush occurred at many military installations where former and discharged soldiers urgently sought reenlistment. Whether on foot or by wheel, on they came, men who had been discharged because of age, medical condition or dependency. One of these was William H. Selby, recently discharged from the 114th Infantry because of defective hearing. The sergeant, thirty-two and married, had spent the last twelve years as a postman in West Collingswood, New Jersey. His old unit had been training in South Carolina. Selby drove from his home to South Carolina to plead his case with the regimental executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Boone. That officer was unable to accommodate him, so Selby drove back to his New Jersey home having used his vacation for the trip. He then wrote to the President asking his help in reenlistment. “I guess the President never got to see my letters,” he said. “I don’t think they got past his secretary or I’d have heard from him and not from them.” The sergeant was insistent: “I’ll come back as a private. I expect that. I don’t care about the rank. My hearing ain’t too bad. It ain’t bad at all.” Having failed in his quest with the regimental executive officer and the President, Selby turned to the regimental chaplain for support. A crowd of his former buddies agreed that he was “a swell guy” who ought to be given a waiver. One hopes that it was granted.26 At Fort Devens, Massachusetts, the 16,000 men of the First Division, the Big Red One, were awaiting orders for transfer, quite possibly to locations outside the continental United States. This is the division that would spearhead America’s attacks on North Africa and Sicily in 1942–43 and in Normandy in 1944. One thought was foremost in the minds of the soldiers of the First, the topic of all discussions, enshrouded in the intrigue of the unknown. “Where do we go from here boys, where do we go from here?”

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Oregonian, December 13, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1941, 1 Oregonian, December 13, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 13, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 1 Houston Chronicle, December 13, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 8 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 12 Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1941, 1 Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1941, 2/4 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 17

228

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941

New York Times, December 13, 1941, 17 Oregonian, December 13, 1941, 8 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 19 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 19 Chicago Tribune, December 13, 1941, 12 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 11 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 12 New York Times, December 13, 1941, 16

PART V

First Sunday at War December 14, 1941

21 ALL IN IT TOGETHER

FIGURE 21.1

See color plate section.

Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, T1.107:W37/4.

232

First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941

What Did We Know? A week after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor the American public still knew very little about the extent of the damage and losses. The Navy had released reports of major damage to two battleships, the USS Oklahoma and the USS West Virginia, and the loss of a destroyer and a minesweeper. The Japanese had claimed the sinking of the battleship Arizona and severe damage to eight ships. The President had warned that U.S. outposts at Midway and Wake Island would probably fall and that there had been heavy loss of life on Oahu. But, he said, the government would release news only when it could be confirmed and never when it would aid the enemy. Perhaps it was the lack of knowledge that gave rise, in the week following the attack, to a strangely positive outlook. The Marines were still holding out on Wake and Midway, a gallant struggle to which the public thrilled. From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli, it was said that perhaps no Marines had ever fought a tougher fight than the “battered stubborn” men of Wake. Under steady air and naval attack they had fought continuously, even in the knowledge that there was no hope of reinforcement and that in the end they would be crushed by the overwhelming weight of the enemy forces. Indeed, it was perhaps the hopelessness of their endeavor that cast a brilliant light on fighting qualities from which the whole nation gained a surge of inspiration. Reports from the Philippines were almost uniformly upbeat. The Sunday papers carried the story of the Philippine Army wiping out Japanese forces that had gained a foothold in western Luzon. A communiqué from General Douglas MacArthur, categorized as terse and undramatic, reported the mopping-up operations in the Lingayan area had been concluded. This report was embellished in the Los Angeles Times as an American victory that “sent the Japs into headlong retreat.” This was consonant with reports in the Los Angeles Times that the Japanese landing parties had been driven back into the sea in the Lingayan area; indeed that the hard-bitten defenders of the Philippines “had struck a telling blow at Nippon” by chopping off and wiping out a seaborne enemy spearhead thrust ashore north of Manila. The same paper offered a colorful tale of hundreds of Japanese paratroopers swooping down in the mountains of north central Luzon a hundred miles north of Manila. They were aided, it was reported, by land troops from an unknown source. All this was reported on his return to Manila by a proclaimed eye witness, Francisco Villasuera, a civilian technician who had accompanied the troops to install communication facilities. He offered colorful details. Many of the parachutists, he said, were killed while dangling from their parachutes; some carried small tanks of gasoline, presumably to start fires. The encounter was said to have lasted for several hours. The Philippine troops fought “vigorously, bravely and well,” in hand-to-hand combat in which only a few shots were fired. What should have alerted any informed reader to question this stirring report was the finale—that, outnumbered, the Japanese had finally

All in It Together

233

surrendered. Americans, civilians, and military alike, would soon learn what any knowledgeable observer of Japanese culture and history already knew—Japanese troops do not surrender. After these glowing reports, the War Department communiqué was surprisingly uninformative. It said the Japanese ground activity on Luzon was sporadic and unimportant.1 What was active was the air war. On Saturday, U.S. fliers had “smashed hard” at Japanese raids on Manila.2 Together with antiaircraft barrages, they had forced the enemy fliers, flying in tight formation, to overshoot or undershoot their targets. But there was a cost on the ground, some 75 dead, 300 wounded and extensive wreckage in an area of three miles around Nichols Air Field.3 Many U.S. fliers were cited for their gallantry and for their success in the defense of the Pearl Harbor attack. Lts. Kenneth Taylor of Hominy, Oklahoma, and George Welch of Wilmington, Delaware, had attacked a formation of six enemy planes; each shot down two. Not content with this bravura entry into aerial combat, Lt. Welch took off again, engaged two Japanese fighters and “with maneuvers worthy of a veteran fighter” shot both of them down. Again and again there were reports of fighting against the odds. Lt. Gordon Sterling of West Hartford, Connecticut, did not hesitate to take on another formation of six Japanese fighters and destroyed one of them. Lt. Phillip Rasmussen of Boston, Massachusetts, provided a spectacular show for spectators at Scofield Barracks, who watched the duel between the American and his foe, climaxed by the fiery descent in flaming wreckage of the enemy plane. Favorable news came from Batavia, the capital of the Netherlands East Indies. One of its navy’s submarines had sunk four Japanese transports off the coast of Thailand, leaving some 4,000 Japanese soldiers to die in shark-infested waters. The Netherlands Navy further reported liquidating a Japanese settlement on the east coast of Borneo, interning the settlers. The capital city was arming the Staatwach, the City Guards, against enemy parachutists and fifth columnists.4 Japanese forces were on the attack at other key points. The British were portrayed as resolutely holding their ground and battling the invaders to a standstill in northern Malaya. British antiaircraft batteries and aircraft were credited with shooting down nine enemy planes. All was quiet in Rangoon, Burma, where an air-raid alert passed without incident.5 Earlier in the week, British forces were repelling two enemy assaults against Hong Kong,6 although the Japanese claimed that Hong Kong’s fate was sealed.7 It would not be long before many of the sunny reports were shown to be less than the whole truth. As defensive bastions fell in Malaya, Hong Kong, in the Netherlands East Indies and the American-held islands of Wake and Midway (as the President had warned), and as the “sunken” Japanese battleships later proved themselves very much afloat, the Philippines would soon become the scene of defeat and tragedy for the American and Philippine defenders. Perhaps the clearest-headed appraisal came from Prime Minister Tojo. He warned the Japanese people not to be intoxicated by their initial victories. They must be prepared, he said, for a long war and all that goes with it, to suffer any

234

First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941

form of hardship in the name of self-defense and righteousness. For the moment, he would appear to have been the farthest-seeing prophet.8 While the attention of the American people was riveted on events in the Pacific, wars were being fought on a grand scale in Russia and in Africa, where America’s allies were also reporting favorable results. After holding the front before Moscow until the Germans retired to winter positions, the Soviets expected no new attacks to be launched until the spring. The Russians had now opened a new drive from the besieged city of Leningrad where, it was reported, the Germans were in full retreat.9 In Libya, the Germans were also in retreat under effective British air attacks. In a hugely important naval battle where control of the Mediterranean was the prize, the Royal Navy sank the Italian cruisers Zara, Pola, and Fiume and numerous small craft.10

“We Won’t Be Beaten” Would the rush to the recruiting stations on Saturday, December 13, have been tempered had the aspiring soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines known how truly grim the situation was and would soon prove to be? Long lines of New York volunteers stood outside in the rain and snow at offices that opened at 7:30 a.m. and would stay open as long as possible to accommodate the applicants. There had been expectations that the numbers would fall off on Saturday. But the opposite had proved to be the case. Perhaps many came whose workday schedule held them back until Saturday. The stand of the Marines on Wake Island had inspired many to enlist in a Corps that was in the forefront of the battle. Surely there was a special quality to the gallant underdogs, flinging wellpublicized defiance against a foe who must in the end prevail.11 There was another institution whose activity mirrored that of the recruiting stations. That was the New York Marriage License Bureau, which experienced the greatest Saturday in its history with applications double those of any other Saturday of the year. The applicants included an interesting range of humanity: messengers, stock clerks, porters, elevator operators and . . . lawyers. Among them were William F. Dicks, a student at the Roosevelt Aviation School at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, and Virginia French; Raymond Rogers Foltz, a pilot in the Royal Air Force, and Clare Smith, a stenographer; and Captain Solomon Mizroch of the Army Medical Corps and Miss Muriel Gottheimer. These three men and their fiancées were clearly serious about their part in the war.12 Enthusiasm ranged across all ages and conditions of life. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, William T. Knight, Sr., forty-four, was a veteran of service in both the U.S. and Royal Navies in World War I who had found time to sire thirteen children. His son William, Jr., was at the time serving on a U.S. aircraft carrier. “We talked it over at home,” Knight said, “and we agreed that I should enlist to help Billy fight the Japs.” No mention was made of Mrs. Knight, Sr., except that she was at home with her youngest, age eighteen months.13 Nor was age a barrier to Denver’s “sizzling mad” Earl Hancock. He was an old cavalry sergeant who had served in the Philippine Insurrection and in the First

All in It Together

235

World War. The age limit for first enlistments was thirty-five, but Hancock was not to be denied. He produced “more honorable discharge papers than a broker has bonds” and demanded his rights. For an old soldier who could pass the physical examination, the recruiting officer, Major Thomas F. Mishue, an old cavalryman himself, said there was no age limit. And indeed, Hancock passed the physical before doctors “who could scarcely believe their stethoscopes.”14 The war held special fascination for the young. At the Fannin Elementary School in Houston, the members of the Paul Revere Club, who were sponsored by the DAR and selected for their good conduct and excellent grades, made joke books for the soldiers who would have been bemused and amused if the elementary-school jokes ever arrived at any intended destination.15 Houston was a veritable beehive of patriotic youth. Four-year-old Richard Spinks was gathering pennies from family and friends to be deposited in his world globe tin bank and exchanged for defense stamps bought from the equally patriotic Houston Chronicle delivery boy.16 Locked into poses of seriousness and determination and photographed in their Smokey the Bear hats and neckerchiefs, the Boy Scouts of Houston’s Berring Memorial Church Troop 21 had by Saturday collected 3,700 pounds of wastepaper in their assigned district. They might have felt a special sense of participation: their Scoutmaster had been in the Army for a year. With some of the proceeds they bought an $18.75 Defense Bond at the Guardian Trust Company. Perhaps the most imaginative youthful patriot was Joseph Reid of Flushing, New York. A twelve-year-old seventh grader at P.S. 162, he was already a section air-raid leader at his school. But by his own account he “wanted action.” Young Reid had followed closely the radio news from Pearl Harbor. He had thought about it all night and the next morning he made up his mind. He wrote a letter to the Navy seeking to enlist as a “cabin boy.” As he told reporters: “I wanted to go in the Navy because I wanted to get back at the Japs and the Navy is chasing them. I read in Treasure Island how the one job on a ship for boys under the age of a regular sailor is cabin boy and I thought I’d try for that.” He wrote the letter and mailed it on his way to school. He didn’t tell his mother what he had done. It was one of those well-intentioned untruths; he told her instead that it was a letter to Santa Claus. His grandmother had mentioned boys as young as sixteen enlisting. Would his mother grant such permission if he were sixteen? “She would” she said, “if they would take him.” “I wouldn’t want to spoil that kind of spirit,” she said.17 It was an eternal lament among the young. “By that time,” Joseph said, “the war will be won.” He received a prompt and gracious reply from Admiral Adolphus Andrews commanding the Third Naval District. One thing that would bring an American victory, the Admiral wrote, was the American spirit. It was just that spirit that had moved Joseph to offer his services to the nation and his mother to offer her consent. If the Navy couldn’t accept this patriotic offer because of Joseph’s age, his willingness to serve, and his mother’s willingness to consent would be an inspiration to all “in the grim work that lies ahead.” Surely, through school, church, and

236

First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941

Civilian Defense, the admiral assured him, he would find work consistent with his courage and his Americanism.18 If Joseph Reid was barred from service by reason of his age, Margaret Lyle Crouter was frustrated by her gender. The wife of a Navy commander, she was the sponsor of a new naval vessel; but out of concern for secrecy neither the name or type of vessel nor the place of its christening could be divulged. She smashed a champagne bottle across the bow and cried: “I christen you blank.” As the ship slid down the ways, she shouted after it, “. . . and dammit, I’d serve upon you if they’ll let me.” Dabbing her eyes, the commander’s wife added: “I didn’t mean as a cook, either.”19 This was the spirit behind a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle headlined “LET’S GO TEXANS.” Uncle Sam, it said, needed 180,000 flying cadets. It was a chance to serve their country and to master the world’s “most interesting occupation”—a portal to action, excitement, and thrills.20 The Los Angeles Times offered a different take on patriotic duty. A full-page ad proclaimed “MORALE IS A WOMEN’S BUSINESS.” The advertiser was Revlon and the product was Revlon nail enamel. How a woman looked, it advised, affected family, friends, even passersby on the street. “To them a woman’s beauty stands for courage, serenity and a gallant heart . . . all the things that men need so desperately in these days.” So the time spent in a woman’s favorite beauty salon every week wasn’t selfish or frivolous. It was a part of her job of morale. It was a woman’s way of saying “WE WON’T BE BEATEN.”21 Another patriotic advertiser was Ritz Camera Centers in Washington, D.C., which told the readers of The Washington Post that giving generously to loved ones was the American way. Ritz Camera Centers made a solemn pledge: “If you want cameras for Christmas, Ritz has them ‘BUT BUY DEFENSE BONDS FIRST.’”22 It was probably less than a matter of cause and effect, but reported sales of defense bonds in the District of Columbia spurted that week.23 In the nation’s capital, blackouts did not halt plans for the President to light the National Community Christmas Tree on the south grounds of the White House. Selected to deliver greetings to the President were Eagle Scout Jay Robert Thrower, eighteen, and Girl Scout Louella Boyd, sixteen. The decorations on the tree were of course to be red, white, and blue. An audience of 10,000 was expected, all of whom, led by a mixed choir of a hundred voices, would join in community singing. The program would begin at 4:30 p.m. with an invocation by a prominent clergyman and the singing of three carols. All this would precede the appearance of the President, who would then give a seven-minute address. Radio listeners throughout the nation were urged to join in the community singing. Not that there weren’t warnings of hardships and losses to come. The archisolationist publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Colonel Robert McCormick, painted a stark picture of the horrors of war and the need for stern training and strict discipline in the armed forces. It was by these qualities, he proudly assured his readers, that America had not only won the 1918 Battle of Cantigny (where he had been himself then notably present) but indeed the First World War. Germany had won great initial victories because her enemies had not learned the lessons

All in It Together

237

of modern war. And if, he declared, America had gone to war two years ago, its armies would have been as helpless as those of our allies in 1939 and 1940. It was fortunate, that “time was obtained for the lessons to be driven home,” for them to become so clear that “no old man, steeped in the past, could ignore them.” And who had “obtained” those two years so that today the country would know what arms were needed and how to use them? Readers of the Chicago Tribune might have more than an inkling of those to whom the credit was due.24 The day belonged to the new men. Two of the new men promoted to the temporary rank of colonel were Matthew B. Ridgeway, who would in 1944 command the 101st Airborne Division in its D-Day assault, and Norman Cota, whose imperturbable bravery on Omaha Beach would rally his 29th Division troops amid the chaos of the beach and would win him the Congressional Medal of Honor.25 As the wreckage in Pearl Harbor still smoldered, there was unfinished business to be done. In the House of Representatives, John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, demanded that court-martial proceedings be brought against the Pearl Harbor commanders: General Walter Short, Chief of the Hawaiian Department; Major General H. H. Arnold, Deputy Chief of Staff for Air; General George H. Brett, head of the Army Air Force; and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander of the Pacific Fleet. To this Representative Bullwinkle of North Carolina responded that it was time for members to keep their feet on the ground, and to defer action until they knew the facts.26 For the moment it was the Navy’s war. On this Sunday after Pearl Harbor, The New York Times published a stirring tribute to the Navy under the heading “The Navy Takes Up the Challenge.” The Navy mourned its dead but “confident and unafraid,” it was utterly determined to smash the enemy forces. The Navy had risen from defeat before. It was Captain Lawrence who in defeat had spoken the Navy’s signature message: Don’t Give Up the Ship. Then there were the traditions of the sea, the traditions of wind, sea and stars and that particularly American daring, cocky and assertive, that came from both the great cities and from the windswept plains of America. The size of the Navy and of the naval establishment, sustained by the country’s immense industrial capacity, would back up those who would carry on the Navy’s ultimate tradition, devotion to duty and valor.27 The U-boats would be continually in action off the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast, at first with great success in 1942; but by 1943 they would be under control. There would be several instances of German spies and saboteurs infiltrating the coasts and borders of the United States. Japanese submarines would lob futile shells on locations in Oregon and southern California, and a submarine-launched aircraft would drop harmless bombs, again in Oregon. Japanese fire balloons would fail to ignite Northwest forests, succeeding only in killing a curious child. There would be no other attacks on the U.S. mainland in the course of the war. None of this could, of course, be known in December 1941. The fate of other cities, Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, and especially London under the blitz of 1940–41, were vivid in the memory of all those who followed the progress of the war. America had to make itself ready.

238

First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941

FIGURE 21.2

See color plate section.

Poster by Zebedee Johnson. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC2-5680.

The War of Nerves: Civil Defense At the head of the U.S. Civil Defense effort was the colorful, hyperactive reform mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, appointed on May 20, 1941, as director of the National Office of Civil Defense, with none other as his deputy than the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. She was one of the few who for energy and versatility could match the five-foot-two-inch fireball Mayor, who sometimes conducted the municipal orchestra, who during a newspaper strike read the comics to the children on the radio and who shut down the burlesque theaters of 42nd Street, where a wit reported that the celebrated ecdysiast, Margie Hart, ground to a halt. As well as the national, La Guardia also led the New York City effort. The city was divided into 152 zones containing 1,515 sectors, manned by 115,433 air-raid wardens. To these were added the fire departments, and an auxiliary corps of 200,000 volunteer firefighters, trained at their local stations to handle incendiary bombs.

All in It Together

239

Their duties were not only to fight fire but to police strategic areas, render first aid, clean up debris, rescue trapped victims, provide emergency transport, and maintain utilities and services. Trained by the Red Cross, women had varied roles to play in canteen services, as nurses’ aides, clerical workers, and social workers, and in the production of surgical dressings—a gender division that reflected the culture of the time. This organization was repeated up and down the Atlantic coast where 40,000 civilian observers were posted at 1,300 locations from Maine to North Carolina.28 There had been enough false alarms. To avoid conflicting air-raid alarms, Brigadier General John McConnell was named by the Army, the Navy, and the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware as the sole authority for giving air-raid alarms over a broad swathe of territory around New York City. The American people had only in the last week been propelled into war. The Civil Defense system gave them in their thousands a serious role to play and a sense that the war was not simply oceans and continents away, but that it could at any time find them in their very homes and everywhere they lived and worked.29 All these preparations had not happened overnight, or indeed in the weeks since the Pearl Harbor attack. La Guardia had two years before considered the threat of aerial attack serious. He had appointed a fifty-two-year-old city architect, Harry M. Prince, to study the problem and the lessons of the war in Europe. All this had proceeded in absolute secrecy, lest the effort become the object of derision by those who couldn’t conceive of the possibility of a transoceanic attack. So the plans were ready when La Guardia was officially assigned to head Civil Defense. Perhaps it was on the Pacific coast that proximity to the war and exposure to danger were most keenly felt. San Francisco proclaimed itself ready with an evacuation plan extending over an area of one hundred miles to the northwest and fifty miles to the south. The plan, said Max D. Lillienthal of the Civilian Defense Council, provided for pre- and postdisaster evacuations. The city itself was organized into a hundred precincts, each with an evacuation leader. They would in turn be supervised by sixty-three company leaders and eleven battalion chiefs. Priorities were set: first, family units providing their own shelter and transportation; then family units with children of school age and without predetermined shelter; and then family groups with children under school age. The authorities said that the earlier blackouts had compared favorably with those in London and Berlin. There would be, they announced, no false alarms. They reminded the citizens that sand for use against incendiary bombs would be available at 200 vacant lots throughout the city. But the assurance was given: there was no need for panic and no need for any individual action for the time being. To this was added: “We want every citizen to know that a workable, complete plan is ready to function should the necessity arise and in that respect San Francisco is ready.”30 Yet there was more to be done. During earlier blackouts, two safecrackers had been hard at work in East Bay. Public sensitivity to crime is often reflected in the severity of the sanctions applied. The state of mind of the California population may be gauged by the request by Judge George J. Steiger of the Superior Court to the Legislature to enact the death penalty for persons convicted of armed robbery during a blackout.

240

First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941

Bermuda was closer to the war zone than the coastal United States. Air-raid precautions were simpler there. Carriage drivers were advised, in the event of an air-raid, “to unhitch their horses and tie them up.”31 Information, advice, and opportunities to participate were widely disseminated. Typical was The Washington Post’s full-page spread listing the preparatory steps: Know your air-raid warden and your duties; prepare your home with a perfect blackout; set up a refuge room, a blacked-out room with a cot, blankets, radio, reading and recreation materials, food and refreshments, first-aid kits, flashlights and matches; stock up on implements of defense such as a hose, a bucket of water, and again, sand for incendiaries. There were a myriad of services to be performed, all needing energetic volunteers. At the top of the list were air-raid wardens, then auxiliary police, and for serious business, bomb squads and auxiliary firemen who would be supported by fire wardens. The good citizens of the capital were invited to join rescue squads for which one had to be “absolutely fearless.” Then there were the Medical Corps, the Nurse’s Aide Corps, the Driver Corps, the Emergency Food and Housing Corps, the Decontamination Corps, messengers, and road repair crews. What to do in a raid? Readers were advised to cut off the gas, go to the refuge room and, if an air-raid warden, report for duty. What to do about children? Talk as little as possible about the war, especially with the radio on at meal times; make them as self-sufficient as possible and give them useful tasks to perform. What about air-raid shelters? Here, curiously, readers were told that they had proved of little use in Britain. Was this because none were readily available? How long would they have to get ready for a raid? Theoretically, twenty minutes but . . . it all depended. Why didn’t the District have air-raid sirens and other defense equipment? The classic answer: “Lack of money as usual.”32 In addition to her duties as Deputy Director of the Office of Civil Defense, the First Lady, who regularly expressed her views on a wide variety of topics and issues, spoke as a mother and grandmother. She told the Tacoma Defense Council that parents should help their children avoid the onset of fright psychosis by making a game of bombings. She did not say what games, or how to play them. But she was proud to tell an anecdote about her youngest son, an ensign in San Diego, who was teaching his two-year-old son to say “Boom, boom” every time he heard the explosions from practice firing at the Navy base. “Now,” Mrs. Roosevelt reported, “the child thinks he is creating the explosion and is delighted every time he hears one.” By this method, she concluded, “the child would not be frightened when there is a real bombing.”33 Nerves remained touchy in many quarters. Off the Atlantic coast there were reports of naval vessels sighting an unidentified dirigible, causing a blackout across the giant Norfolk, Virginia, Navy base.34 No harm was done. But in Chicago, there was tragedy. Harry Dudley, sixty-seven, and his son-in-law Otto Gehrling, forty-nine, were peacefully hunting ducks when they veered too close to the Coast Guard cutter Wilmette. A sentry twice ordered the hunters to halt; he then fired warning shots. When the two men failed to heed the orders, a Marine and two Coast Guardsmen opened fire, killing Dudley and wounded Gehrling, whose boat was found to have ample duck-hunting gear.35

All in It Together

241

Blackouts and other civil defense actions might occur from time to time, and individuals like the duck hunters could be the victims of special circumstances. But there was one area that involved absolutely everyone. There seemed to be a reflex action in times of stress and confusion, to stock up, especially on food. Indeed the Office of Civil Defense had counseled a food supply in the refuge room of American homes. Stocking up was one thing; hoarding was quite another. Colorado Governor Ralph Carr announced an urgent appeal against food hoarding. In this he was moved by requests from the Colorado Retail Grocers Association and the Colorado Chain Stores Association. They told the governor that food was in ample supply, that there was no reason to fear shortages. There was no need for excess buying, the Governor said. “Our people,” he counseled, “should resist the temptation to get unduly excited, especially about matters that are in as good shape as our food supply.”36

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1941, 1 Oregonian, December 14, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 14, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 11 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 38 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 1 Washington Post, December 14, 1941, 12 Washington Post, December 14, 1941, 1/2 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 58 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 57 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 57 Denver Post, December 14, 1941, 24 Houston Chronicle, December 14, 1941, 1D Houston Chronicle, December 14, 1941, 10C New York Times, December 14, 1941, 58 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 58 Houston Chronicle, December 14, 1941, 2 Houston Chronicle, December 14, 1941, 78 Houston Chronicle, December 14, 1941, 15 Washington Post, December 14, 1941, 3 Washington Post, December 14, 1941, 25 Chicago Tribune, December 14, 1941, 1/4 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 48 Denver Post, December 14, 1941, 1 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 41 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 10A Houston Chronicle, December 14, 1941, 10A New York Times, December 14, 1941, 63 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 63 Washington Post, December 14, 1941, B2 New York Times, December 14, 1941, A/3 Oregonian, December 14, 1941, 4 Atlanta Constitution, December 14, 1941, 12D Denver Post, December 14, 1941, 24

22 A FIRST CLASS TEMPERAMENT

America at War: The Defense of Liberty The editorial writer of The New York Times took as his theme on the Sunday after the Pearl Harbor attack the closing words of the President’s address to Congress “for liberty under God,” words he said were worth remembering and repeating. To The Times there was no doubt where responsibility for the war lay. For the history books and for posterity, it asserted: America’s slate was clean. America’s response was grounded in religion. The Declaration of Independence had named God as the fount of liberty. The American people, “a queer compound of doubts and dreams,” were capable of an exaltation inspired by a sense of divine destiny. “We have still in us,” the writer concluded, “the makings of evangels and crusaders”; nor was there any doubt that in the end the crusaders would prevail.1 The Washington Post counseled flexibility of mind as the prime quality of an effective response to war, and especially to those sometime isolationists who had grasped and accepted a new reality, a reality in which there were no longer isolationists and interventionists, only Americans united in defending their liberties and homes against a formidable and treacherous foe.2 The Houston Chronicle took as its keynote the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. It was the liberties proclaimed by the Bill of Rights that were the motivating factors in the country’s commitment to victory. The enemy would take advantage of the Bill of Rights in their efforts at espionage and subversion; but victory without the full exercise of the Bill of Rights would mean defeat. A nation of 130 million was united by its dedication to this charter of liberties.3 Indeed, Bill of Rights Day would be observed throughout the country on the morrow, Monday. The President was scheduled to speak on all radio networks between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Meanwhile, Vice President Henry A. Wallace would place a wreath on the tomb of George Mason, the author of the Bill of Rights, at his home, Gunston Hall in Fairfax County, some twenty

A First Class Temperament

243

miles south of Washington. Virginia Governor James H. Price would make the principal address there. In an afternoon ceremony at the Library of Congress, Attorney General Francis Biddle and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish would be the speakers. It was the latter at whose insistence the Office of Civil Defense had become the principal promoter of this celebration. Other observances of the Bill of Rights were at Faneuil Hall in Boston, at Mount Vernon, and at the New York grave of Peter Zenger, historic defender of freedom of the press.4

Liberty and Justice for All: Race and Religion All of these events were reported in The Atlanta Constitution. In the same edition, in a poignant aside, appeared the Urban League Bulletin whose stated purpose was “to chronicle the worthwhile things done for, by and with the Negro as a basis for increasing racial goodwill and understanding.” The Bulletin reported the rapid organization of a defense bond campaign among Negroes, reflecting patriotic enthusiasm on the part of the Negro people, especially in their educational centers. The presidents of colleges and universities and high school principals were to lead the campaign, which would include a payroll allotment plan. There was always a delicate racial balance. Statewide committees were being organized. The Urban League decried the fact that in some communities membership was along separate racial lines. This, the Bulletin said, was “an unfortunate procedure at a time when we are proving that democracy has the right because of a democratic foundation on which it is erected.” In a day of widespread segregation in the armed forces—the Marine Corps did not take blacks and in the Navy they were confined to service as officers’ stewards—the Urban League Bulletin had the grace to say: All people who are interested in preserving and defending the democratic way of life ought to be able, during these critical days, to work in unison and as a unit rather than to be divided into racial or geographic segments.5 There was another group marginalized by the onrush of events—the Japanese Christians. Their plight caused concern to American Protestant churches who wished “to maintain mutual sympathies behind the barriers of war.” Dr. James Thayer Addison, Secretary of the Department of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church, offered a prayer endorsed by the Reverend Henry St. George Tucker, the Presiding Bishop: “. . . that in these days of war, the bonds which unite us with our fellow Christians in Japan may not be broken.”6

Life in These United States: Helping the War Effort The Los Angeles Times took a decidedly less high-minded approach. It urged that nothing be omitted in celebrating the oncoming Christmas in which, in the onset of a new prosperity, “Santa’s reindeer will have a record load to haul.”

244

First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941

It gloried in the fact that the national income had reached some $100 billion a year with cash in circulation of some $11 billion and that the year’s retail trade had increased by a staggering 20 percent. High wages had produced a new level of cash in consumers’ hands. “Much of this is in the hands of people who for the first time in a decade have funds in excess of bare living needs.” So, the editorialist proclaimed, when Americans spent wisely for Christmas they were helping the war effort in myriad ways. They were providing employment, reducing the numbers who might otherwise call on public assistance, and increasing federal tax revenues. In the end, a happy Christmas would be an immense boost to the country’s morale: “Psychologically, at least, there is not a better bomb shelter than a Christmas tree.”7 The Oregonian was in full agreement in the imperative of keeping Christmas. It represented what the nation and practicing Christians were fighting for. The enemy, it said, was no Christian, whether in the literal or in the spiritual sense, and

FIGURE 22.1

Christmas, Army-style, 1941.

Courtesy of U.S. Army Center of Military History, holiday photo collection, history.army.mil/ photos/Holiday/SC126784.jpg.

A First Class Temperament

245

he could impose no greater defeat than by erasing Christmas. Not a single gift, not a single carol, not the smallest Christmas tree ought to be sacrificed to those who would destroy not only Christmas but Christianity itself.8 There never had been a thought of not going forward with holiday tradition in Chicago’s impoverished Back of the Yards district. Local organizations had amassed three tons of candy, $350 worth, for the stockings of children who might have little else. The needy would be given $10.00 merchandise gift certificates, a modest bonanza in an economy where $39.95 could buy two men’s suits. The offer was extended this year to members of the military who, in addition to the candy, would also be given a carton of cigarettes. Santa’s delegate in all of this seasonal work was Isaac O. Goldstine, Secretary of the sponsoring fund and a leader in both the Lion’s Club and in the local Businessmen’s Association. He was in his seventh year as chief organizer and fundraiser. When his tread was heard at the door, it was said, the targeted businessman could only grin and throw up his hands in the face of an irresistible appeal. In the opening week Mr. Goldstine had personally brought in $500. The committee added a finishing touch to its program. “To give it swank,” the gifts were to be delivered by uniformed messengers from the telegraph companies.9 * War would not stop the social whirl in the nation’s capital. One mother declared: “We’re not cutting off a thing in our younger set parties.” It was, she said, a matter of morale. The hostesses had sons and daughters at college and none could tell what they might face before the war was over. “We’re going to give them all the fun we can,” she added, “while we can.”10 Another holiday event that was not cancelled was the Smith College musical comedy Ladies on the Loose in which the Smith coeds were joined by Amherst men. Six of the players from the Chicago area were shown in the Tribune in all their holiday finery, a glowing testament to youth and joy. They were Keith Shay of Highland Park, Harline Ward of Wilmette, Margaret Jon of Winnetka, Robert Jarchow of Evanston, Nancy Hoffman of Winnetka, and Nancy Davis of Chicago, who would one day become Ronald Reagan’s and the nation’s First Lady.11 * With the West Coast in a state of anxiety, the question was not whether the Rose Bowl football game between Duke and Oregon State should be played but where. The Pasadena event was cancelled after game officials met with Fourth Army Commander General John J. DeWitt, not a usual party to such deliberations. In the event the game was played at Duke Stadium in Durham, North Carolina. No dirigibles over the Atlantic troubled the contest, which Oregon State won, 20 to 16.12

The Commander-in-Chief: Calm and Resolute Great men and great tyrants bestrode the thundering stage of a world at war. Adolf Hitler had let loose the dogs of war first in the East in Poland, in the West in France and then in the East again in Russia. Stalin had raised gigantic forces

246

First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941

that no sooner melted away than they were replaced by new sacrifices on the altar of war and tyranny. Churchill had, by character and courage, held the pass when others had fallen, and under him his nation had stood alone. But to the American people, recovering from the shock of December 7, setting off in an optimistic spirit that grim future events, sacrifices and tragedy to come would belie, the greatest of them all was and would be the President and Commander-in-chief, Franklin D. Roosevelt. This is how he appeared to two thoughtful and informed contemporaries. Ernest K. Lindley, writing in The Washington Post, appraised the President’s performance. He had seen the President hundreds of times, he wrote, and while the country went around in a sort of daze, the President was “magnificently calm and resolute.” The crisis was far greater than that of 1933. The President had indubitable charm, though he was not without annoying traits and faults of character. But his character had been tempered by his personal ordeal of twenty years past when he had declined to accept a life of comfortable invalidism, and emerged from the shadows into the full glare of public life. Lindley painted an inspiring view of the President: “[He] is in fighting fettle, his resolution undaunted by adversity and his judgment calm and clear.”13 If, as some would have wished today, the President did not appear in public in a wheelchair, his disability was still widely known. Frank L. Kluckhorn, writing in The New York Times, noted his need when walking, if indeed it was walking, to lean on someone’s arm. He referred to the President’s near-fatal illness that still handicapped him. But, Kluckhorn wrote, the President was a fighter, courageous, stubborn, acute. He was exceptionally well qualified to serve as Commander-in-chief. He had faced and handled the crisis of the past nine years; he had valuable knowledge of the armed forces dating from his service as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. But what counted above all was his character and his temperament. In the heyday of the New Deal, the President had sometimes seemed happy-go-lucky with a bravado that had now been replaced with a solemnity and courage that reflected inner tranquility and self-confidence. There had been a hardening in spirit and body. His face appeared as carved in granite, head held high, chin thrust out. In the end it came down to a matter of temperament. Mr. Justice Holmes had appraised the President shortly before he took office in 1933. “A second class intellect,” he had said, “but a first class temperament.” The President now faced the toughest job in the world. “But,” Kluckhorn concluded, “Mr. Roosevelt, because of his temperament, takes it in his stride.”14 And despite its many divisions a mere two weeks before, the same might now be said of the nation as a whole.

Notes 1. New York Times, December 14, 1941, 4/8 2. Washington Post, December 14, 1941, B6 3. Houston Chronicle, December 14, 1941, 6B

A First Class Temperament

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Atlanta Constitution, December 14, 1941, 3B Atlanta Constitution, December 14, 1941, 12D New York Times, December 14, 1941, 3 Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1941, 2H Oregonian, December 14, 1941, 28 Chicago Tribune, December 14, 1941, M3 Washington Post, December 14, 1941, IV Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1941, 23 Oregonian, December 14, 1941, 1 Atlanta Constitution, December 14, 1941, B7 New York Times, December 14, 1941, 1

247

EPILOGUE Americans All

FIGURE 23.1

See color plate section.

Poster by Bernard Perlin. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.5015:15.

Epilogue

249

The strange optimism that pervaded the U.S. press in the week after the Pearl Harbor attack soon faded into harsh reality. Japanese forces, seemingly unstoppable, swarmed to the attack in Malaya, where the direst surrender in British history took place at Singapore. Japanese troops overran Thailand and the Dutch East Indies, while the Japanese Navy swept the combined naval forces of the United States, Britain, and the Dutch East Indies from the Java Sea. The last of the Allied forces to hold out were at the Philippine fortress of Corregidor, where the beleaguered garrison was forced to surrender on May 6, 1942. Yet only six months after Pearl Harbor, a remarkable reversal of fortunes took place. Admiral Nagumo, seeking to finish off the U.S. Navy in the waters around Midway Island, met the American fleet under Admiral Nimitz there on June 4, 1942. An attack by American torpedo bombers failed utterly, with the loss of all but one attacking plane. But the next attack, by American SBD Dauntless dive bombers, caught the Japanese aircraft carriers in the midst of refueling and rearming. In a space of minutes, three Japanese carriers were engulfed in flames, total wrecks, while a fourth was pursued and sunk on the following day. The lost carriers were the Kaga, the Soryu, the Akagi, and the Horyu, the very ships from whose decks the attack on Pearl Harbor had been launched. This was the decisive battle of the Pacific War. A single squadron of dive bombers, far fewer than the Few of the RAF who had defended Britain, achieved a stunning victory, leaving Japan on the defensive for the rest of the war. It would take five years of hard fighting, a bitter slog through island fortresses in the Central Pacific, and the long journey from the Solomon Islands across New Guinea and into the Philippines, until at last, with the final battle of Okinawa and the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the surrender of Japan, final and unconditional, took place. Emblematic of Japan’s defeat was the battleship Haruna. Far from having been sunk by the gallant Captain Kelly, America’s first hero of the Second World War, as was reported, it fought an active wartime career. It covered the Japanese invasions of Southeast Asia and Guadalcanal, and took part in the climactic naval battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. It ended the war ingloriously bombed and sunk at its moorings, at Kure Naval Base, on July 28, 1945. When America entered the European war, Axis forces were menacing Europe from blitzed London to the gates of Moscow. In the West hard fighting was to be required from the shores of Morocco across North Africa and Italy and from the beaches of Normandy through France into the heart of Germany. In the East the war was fought across vast expanses of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to crush and utterly defeat the Nazi empire. In addition to standing fast alone in 1940, Britain had made extraordinary contributions to the victory in many theaters of action. The Soviets had borne the brunt of the war against Germany, suffering and inflicting the greatest portion of the butcher’s bill. The Pacific War was almost exclusively American. Americans, too, dominated the war in Western Europe, and the Soviets were sustained by American supplies

250

Epilogue

of arms and armaments, trucks and planes, boots, and food, without which they might have been vanquished. All this was achieved by the deep and profound unity of the American people, a unity sweeping away the divisions and the rancor of the past. The contributions of the American home front were prodigious. Without them victory was not possible. A few statistics will testify to the scope of the American achievement. In the war years America produced 324,750 military aircraft of all types (the Soviet Union 143,145 and Britain 131,549) versus a total of 119,307 for Germany and 76,320 for Japan. In aircraft carriers, the decisive weapon of the Pacific War, the United States built 141, including “Jeep” carriers built on merchantman hulls, versus 16 for Japan. Here indeed was the measure of the dedication and passion of the American people meshed with the technical genius of the nation. In surveying this vast effort, military, naval, civil, and industrial, it must be borne in mind that the American people had never made up its mind to engage in all of these wars so far from its own borders and heartland. There is no doubt that American boycotts and embargos had pressed a Japan attempting to build the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. But the Japanese attack on America was a deliberate decision in the pursuit of long-held ambitions. It has been observed in the long-running debate about the origins of the First World War that whatever else may have been said, no one could claim that Belgium had attacked Germany. In a like vein no one could say that the United States had attacked Japan. Indeed, a peaceful Japan had nothing to fear from America. But Japan was far from peaceful with its ten-year campaign of aggression in Asia. What one could say is that nothing could more effectively have united the American people than the attack on Pearl Harbor, which finally laid to rest the bitter debate between isolation and intervention, between America’s nineteenth century and its twentieth. So, too, America had adopted a stance vis-à-vis Germany and its allies of “all aid short of war.” Surely there was Lend-Lease. Surely there was the occupation of Iceland; the swap of bases for destroyers; and the orders to the Navy, convoying goods to the nation’s friends and allies, to shoot on sight. But even after December 7, America had not yet arrived at the decision to make war against Germany and its allies on the European continent and wherever else it might find them. It took Germany and Italy to do that by declaring war against the United States. Germany was Japan’s partner in the Tripartite Pact; and there is little doubt that the sensational Japanese success at Pearl Harbor had encouraged the German leadership to believe that this was an opportune time to dispose of an America they hardly knew and whose war potential they disbelieved. In another reversal of fortune, the British Empire had entered the war rich and it emerged impoverished. America had entered the war Depression-poor and emerged richer than it had ever been, richer than all the others. America had not entered the war in pursuit of these riches. It had not entered the war inspired by dreams of empire. Unlike the Germans, the Japanese and the Soviets, it had

Epilogue

FIGURE 23.2

251

See color plate section.

Poster by Allen Saalburg. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library World War II poster collection, Pr32.5015:14/3.

cherished no dreams of world domination. Its prowess on the battlefield and on the production lines promoted America into a superpower, untouched at home while both its allies and adversaries found themselves amid ruins. All this happened not because of deliberate plans and programs that America had created, then executed. It came about as it did because of the most significant reversal of them all: the metamorphosis of a bitterly divided America, rooted in its past, into an America united by patriotism, across all its divides—north and south, east and west, rich and poor, old and young, male and female, white and black—looking outward toward the future, together. Americans might argue

252

Epilogue

among themselves; but when challenged, they rose to the occasion as one, facing the world, and the future, with a single voice and a steely determination. Paperboy or FDR himself, debutante or farm girl, old soldier or new recruit—they all proved, by some kind of alchemy, to be made of the same metal. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans didn’t know themselves. Afterward, they did. The few days around the attack were truly a crucible: they galvanized Americans into a discovery of their own identity as Americans all. The credo of pulling together, of unity across all boundaries, forged in those few fateful days, became a proud part of what it meant to be American. It has been ever since.

A NOTE ON SOURCES

The Newspapers In a certain sense the eight notable newspapers from whose pages the drama of The Crucible of a Generation is reported were themselves players in the drama. Accordingly, a brief account follows for each paper of its history, its character, its personality, its tone and temper, its orientation and reach. Circulation figures are taken from the 1941 edition of N. W. Ayer & Son’s Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals (Philadelphia). Only two of these newspapers, The Atlanta Constitution and the Houston Chronicle, had endorsed President Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. In a broader view, it has been estimated that the U.S. press was overwhelmingly in favor of Willkie’s Republican candidacy in 1940—by a 72 percent to 28 percent margin. On November 30, 1941, The New York Times could claim to be, as indeed as it could today, the nation’s newspaper of record. Its storied boast, boxed and prominent on the front page of every issue was and is “All the News That’s Fit To Print.” Perhaps it was the fullness of its content and the seriousness of its style that earned it the nickname the Gray Lady of American journalism. Its 1941 average daily circulation was 477,385, far less than the 1,948,754 of the mass-market tabloid New York Daily News. But the influence of The Times was measured, not only by the breadth, but by the depth of its reporting. Founded and continually published since 1851, the paper had been acquired in 1896 by Adolf Ochs, publisher of the Chattanooga Times. Control has remained in family hands since then. The Times was not as rigid in its political outlook as some of its journalistic colleagues. In 1932 and 1936 it had supported Roosevelt for president, but in 1940 it endorsed the Republican candidate, Wendell Willkie; it would back Roosevelt again in his 1944 run against Thomas Dewey. The Washington Post, founded in 1877, had colorful associations. To promote the paper, John Philip Sousa composed his celebrated “Washington Post March.” The paper was acquired in 1905 by John Roll McLean, owner of the Cincinnati

254 A Note on Sources

Enquirer, and also the owner of the celebrated Hope diamond with its mysterious curse. Lacking confidence in his playboy son, Edward “Ned” McLean, on John McLean’s death in 1916 he put the paper into a trust. The wayward son broke the trust to the detriment of the paper, which descended into a bankruptcy in 1933 from which it was bought by Eugene Meyer, a Washington financier. The Washington Post remained in family hands until purchased by Jeff Bezos of Amazon in 2013. Located in the nation’s capital, the Post has been thought of from time to time as a semi-official organ, despite its 1941 average daily circulation of 132,089. Perhaps it was this status that lay behind a long-time policy of not making endorsements of political candidates. In the matter of taking a political stance, there was no diffidence about the Chicago Tribune. Founded in 1847, it was in 1941 the flagship of American isolationism under the editorship of the irascible Colonel Robert R. McCormick. The Colonel and his newspaper were ardent foes of the President, the New Deal, and all that went with it. That the President was running for an unprecedented third term in 1940 only stoked the Colonel’s ire. The political views of the newspaper were not confined to its editorial columns. It was thought that they flavored the paper’s news reporting. It was typical of the Tribune’s orientation that it called itself “The American Paper for Americans.” It also liked to identify its radio station by the letters WGN, in tribute to “The World’s Greatest Newspaper.” Its 1941 average daily circulation of 1,076,866 was as broad as the Midwestern territory it covered. It pioneered advice columns and comic strips and was a champion of modified spelling. The Atlanta Constitution was founded in 1868. Its succession of distinguished editors included Henry W. Grady, spokesman for the “New South,” and Ralph McGill, one of the few Southern newspaper editors to support the civil rights movement. One of its literary distinctions was to have published Joel Chandler Harris’s stories of Uncle Remus. Its 1941 average daily circulation of 122,021 covered all of Georgia’s 159 counties. Its Southern and liberal orientations made it natural that the paper would endorse the President in the 1940 election. The Denver Post had humble beginnings. Founded in 1892, it suspended publication in August 1893. It was resurrected in 1894 by owners who supported Democratic President Grover Cleveland. In 1895 the paper was sold for $12,500 to Harry Heye Tammen, owner of a curio shop, and Frederick Gilmer Bonfils, a lottery operator. Neither was a journalist or newspaper man, but they understood that sensational stories sold newspapers. Tammen died in 1924, Bonfils in 1933. Bonfils’s daughters Helen and Mae became the principal owners of the paper. The Post’s 1941 average daily circulation was 156,800. Curiously for the voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire, The Post did not endorse candidates, because for fifteen years, including 1941, it had no editorial page. The Houston Chronicle, founded in 1901, was a relatively new entry in the newspaper world of 1941. Its founder, Marcellus E. Foster, had been a newspaper reporter for The Houston Post. Having invested in the Spindletop oil gusher, he used $30 of his investment returns to start the Chronicle. The paper rose to

A Note on Sources

255

eminence and Jesse H. Jones, a local businessman, built a new office and plant for the paper in exchange for a half interest. Jones acquired full ownership in 1926, and in 1937 transferred ownership to the Houston Endowment, Inc. He remained publisher until 1954. During his tenure, the Chronicle regularly endorsed Roosevelt for president, in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. Nevertheless, what was later stated of the paper in the 1950s was equally true in the 1940s: “The Chronicle generally represented the very conservative political interests of the Houston business establishment. As such, it eschewed controversial political topics. . . .” Its 1941 average daily circulation was 117,082. That Jesse Jones served as Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Commerce from 1940 to 1945 may well have affected that policy. So widespread were the activities, public and private, of Jones that he was jocularly referred to by the President as Jesus H. Jones. The Oregonian was first published in 1850, filing its claim to be the oldest continuously published newspaper on the West Coast. Its 1941 circulation was 138,517 and was, as it always has been, statewide. Oregon was once a rock-ribbed Republican state known as the Vermont of the West. That reputation was confirmed by the fact that the paper endorsed every Republican presidential candidate in every federal election until 1992. The Los Angeles Times was founded in 1881. In 1882, Harrison Gray Otis became editor. He passed control to his son-in-law, Harry Chandler, who was, in turn, succeeded by his son, retaining family control through the twentieth century. The Times’s principal interest was in promoting the growth and prosperity of southern California. Its politics were conservative. The 1940 election was no exception; the Times endorsed every Republican candidate up to and including Richard Nixon. Whether as a matter of conviction or expediency, the Times stopped making political endorsements after that election. With a 1941 average daily circulation of 215,137, the Los Angeles Times was the leading newspaper by circulation in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Other Sources The brief narrative of Japan’s decision to go to war is based upon The Road to Pearl Harbor: The Coming of the War Between the United States and Japan by Herbert Feis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953). The summary sketch of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is based upon Walter Lord’s classic Day of Infamy (New York: Henry Holt, 1957). The figures for World War II aircraft and other military production are provided by Wikipedia.

INDEX

Abbott, George 53 Abbott, William “Bud” 208 Abele, Peter 160 Actors’ Equity Association 74 Adams. C. E. 79–80 Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce 110 Ahern, Brian 54 air raids 184–9, 200, 223, 238–41 Akagi (aircraft carrier) 145, 249 Allen, Fred 86 Althoff, Helen 32–3 America First Committee 59, 98, 135, 172, 204, 215 American Bankers Association 52 American Bible Society 225 American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Biro Bidjan 76 American Communist Party 74 American Friends of Yugoslavia 65 American Institute of Public Opinion 11 American Legion 12, 74 American Magazine 57 American Weekly 37 Amory, Cleveland: The Last Resorts 30; The Proper Bostonians 30; Who Killed Society? 30 Anderson, Judith 53 Anderson, Maxwell 53 Ando, Rikichi 45 Andrews, Adolphus 10, 235 Andy Hardy series 84, 193 Anti-Axis Committee 173 anti-British sentiment 75 Antoneri Fireworks Company 76

Arbitration Committee 52 Arlington Street Unitarian Church of Boston 48 Armstrong, George 101 Armstrong, Mrs. George 101 Army and Navy Joint Board report 97 Army and Navy Journal 58 Arnold, H. H. 237 Arrival of Buyers 63 Arsenic and Old Lace (Kesselring) 53 Asahi (newspaper) 106 Askew, Frank 79 Association of Gold Star Mothers of Future Veterans 12 Astor, Mrs. Vincent 136 Atkinson, Brooks 39 Atlanta Constitution : “Beware of Pessimism” 190; debutantes 86–7; domestic servant notices 35; editorial turnaround 161; educational equality editorial 51; Japanese bluff 73; “Makes the Most of What She Has” 34; nation at war 205; opinions/editorials 95; passing of John S. Candler 192; picture of Haruna 210; political interference of Georgia institutions of higher learning 112; “The Pulse of the Public” 78; requests for information about family members 162–3; response to German and Italian declarations of war 216; Roosevelt visit to Warm Springs 18–20; stories from 5; “War imminent in vast Orient” 71; war predictions 58 Atlanta Journal 112

258 Index

Atlanta Ladies’ Memorial Association 114 Atlantic battles 90, 106 Atlantic Charter of Freedom 60 Atlantic System, The (Davis) 39 Atwood, Velma 97 Australia 56, 71, 72, 92, 94, 105–6, 132, 141, 178 Badt, Mrs. Ernestine 23–4 Bahtsin, Hedda 169 Baldwin, Hanson W. 22–3, 205 Baltimore Bachelors Cotillion 65 Baltimore Sun 161 Barkley, Alben 97 Barrett, Cynthia 31 Barrett, Frederic 31 Barrett, Leonard Rutledge 31 Barrett, Mrs. Frederic 31 Barrymore, Ethel 37, 53 Bartholemy, Alan 171 Baruch, Bernard M. 26 Bendel, Henri 87 Benet, Mrs. Steven Vincent 136 Berlin Diary (Shirer) 39, 53, 86 Berlin, Irving 218 Best Foot Forward (Abbott) 53 best-seller list 53, 84 Biddle, Francis 66, 243 Bill of Rights Day 242 Birth of the Blues, The (Schertzinger) 206 Bismarck 182 Bliss, Mrs. Anthony 217 Blitz, the 8 Blood Sweat and Tears (Churchill) 39 Bluebird, The (Maeterlinck) 38 Blythe Spirit (Coward) 53 book reviews 38–9 Boss, Charles F., Jr. 174 Boston Herald 161 Bottome, Phyllis 38, 102 Boyd, Louella 236 Braggiotti, Francesca 138 Brayman, Harold 178 Bredhoff, Elliot 160 Brett, George H. 237 Brevard, Mrs. John 15 Bridges, Harry 179 British War Relief Society 51, 76, 136 Broadway 53 Broadway Temple Methodist Church of New York 48 Broderick, Helen 84 Brooks, John, Jr. 12 Brooks, Wayland 74

Brown, Constantine 132 Brown, Irene 33 Broy, Mrs. Cecil Norton 11 Bryn Mawr College 137 Buck, Pearl S. 176 Bullitt, William C. 176 Bull, Robert Lee, Jr. 31 Bundles for Britain 51, 65 Burma Road 9, 21, 43, 72, 93, 131, 144, 154 Burton, Martha 87 Byars, Chester A. 112 Byington, Spring 84 Camp Elliott 22–3 Camp Seward 22–3 Canada 72–3, 84–6, 87, 90, 96, 97, 113, 133, 217 Candle In the Wind (Anderson) 53 Candler, John S. 192 Cannon, Clarence 109 Cantor, Eddy 86 Capin’s Department Store 63 Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (Beeson) 37 Cárdenas, Lazaro 215 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 174 Carrollton town budget 80 Carr, Ralph 241 Case, Francis H. 109 Castle, Mrs. Vernon 98 Castle, Vernon 98 casualty lists, American 200 Cathedral of St. John the Divine 10, 16 Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia 5 Chamberlain, William Henry 38 chambermaids 35 Chase, Mary Ellen 53 Chekov Theater Players 67 Chiang Kai Shek (Hedin) 217 Chicago International Livestock Exposition 32–3 Chicago Sun 109, 113, 225 Chicago Tribune: advertisement by Wieboldt Stores of Chicago 215; “Aircraft Jobs” 190; Army and Navy Joint Board report 97–8; Baltimore Bachelors Cotillion 65; charge of treason 138; diversions 226; editorial turnaround 160; isolationism xii, 14–15, 48, 98; “Japan’s Perfidy Unites the American People” 175; letters to editor 216; nation at war 205; opponents of President’s policies 58–9;

Index

patriotic duty 236; pictures of pets and Betty Grable 37; “The Red Carpet” 48–9; report on cost of war 106; request for supplemental arms appropriation 108–9; response to German and Italian declarations of war 216; stories from 5; threat of war 132; war effort 109; war preparations 133; “We Are at War” 190 Chikuma (cruiser) 145 China: declaration of war on Germany 178; defeat of Germany and 109; informed of discussions in Washington between President and Japanese Ambassador 92; Japanese campaigns of aggression in xii, 9, 15, 58, 72, 108, 118–19, 141, 144–5, 155–6, 198, 225; joint declaration of cooperation 45, 93; object of Japanese diplomacy 58, 73; public opinion in favor of 20, 176; puppet government 18; reports of discussions between Germany and 120–1; United States aid to 21; United States Marines out of 51; United States Navy protecting interests of 154; youth of 75 Chocolate Soldier, The (Romberg) 54 Chodorov, Jerome 39 Christ Church, Methodist 48 Christmas retail items 207, 216 Churchill, Mrs. Winston 21 Churchill, Winston 8, 21, 39, 60, 68, 71, 90, 97, 170, 178, 182, 212–13 cigarettes 23, 102, 207 Citizen Kane (Welles) 207 Citizens Committee for the Army and Navy 23 Civil Defense 214–17, 226–7 civil-defense army 23 Civilian Technical Corps 27 Clark, D. Worth 32, 98, 135 Claxton, Allen E. 48 Cleland, Gail 67 Cleveland, Mrs. J. Luther 32 Cloete, Stuart 84 Cocking, Walter 111 Coffin, Henry Sloane 47 Colbert, Claudette 54 college students 12–13 Columbia Broadcasting System 39 Columbia University: Law School 138; School of Commerce 13 comics 38, 115 Commerce Bulletin 13 communism 74–5, 99

259

compulsory military service 68, 96 Connell, Frances 65 Connell, Mrs. Phillip G. 65 Connell, Phillip G. 65 Connelly, Tom 73, 158, 170 Connery, Lawrence J. 98 Constant Wife, The (Maugham) 37 Coolidge, Grace G. 35 Coolidge, Mrs. Calvin 12 Cooper, Gary 84, 207 Corbett, Leonora 53 Corn Is Green, The (Williams) 37, 53 Costello, Lou 208 Cota, Norman 237 Cotton Bowl 103 Cotton, Paul 204 Cotton, Travis 171 Council for Democracy 175 court-martial proceedings 237 Courtship of Andy Hardy, The 84 Coward, Noel 53 Cox, Cynthia 163 Cramer, Sterling, Jr. 213 Crawford, Cheryl 67 Criswell, Taylor 79 Cronin, A. J. 53 Crosby, Bing 207 Cross Winds of Empire (Remington) 217 Crouch, Horace w. 171 Crouter, Margaret Lyle 236 Crowley, Jim 102 culture xiii Curley, Michael J. 99 Curtin, John 56 Dali, Salvador 40 Daughters of the American Revolution 32 Davis, Forrest 39 Davis, Mrs. Dwight 12 Day of Infamy (Lord) 149 debutantes 30–1, 34, 65, 86–7, 192 December 1, 1941: arts and entertainment 53; economic indicators 52–3; Op-Eds 48–52; storm signals 43–4; threat of war 44–7; voices of clergy 47–8 December 2, 1941: arts and entertainment 67–8; economic indicators 62–5; human interest stories 66–7; opinions/ editorials 58–60; political wars 60–1; race issues 61–2; social spectrum 65–6; threat of war 56–7; war preparations 55–6 December 3, 1941: arts and entertainment 84–6; def lationary times 78–81;

260 Index

economic indicators 76–7; human interest stories 82–4; opinions/editorials 74–6; social spectrum 86–7; sport 86; threat of war 71–4 December 4, 1941: economic indicators 100; fight fronts 89–91; human interest stories 101–3; opinions/editorials 94–100; threat of war 91–4 December 5, 1941: Atlantic battles 106; deadlock in Far East 106–8; economic indicators 110–11; human interest stories 113–15; opinions/editorials 108–9; race issues 111–13; threat of war 105–6 December 6, 1941: continuing negotiations with Japan 118–20; human interest stories 123–7; irresponsible disclosure 121–3; sizing up enemy 120–1; threat of war 118–20; world in flames 117–18 December 7, 1941: charge of treason 138; restrictive covenants 135–6; social spectrum 136–8; threat of war 131–3; war preparations 133–5; world in flames 131 December 8, 1941: diplomatic documents 155–6; editorial turnaround 160–3; President addresses nation 157–60; race issues 164; reports of naval engagements 153–5; war of nerves 163–4 December 9, 1941: causes for concern 169–71; human interest stories 180; opinions/editorials 175–6; response to Pearl Harbor attack 171–5; war of nerves 166–9; war with Nazi Germany 176–8; widening war 178–80 December 10, 1941: economic mobilization 191–2; expanding war 189–90; human interest stories 192–3; opinions/editorials 190–1, 193; war in Pacific 182–4; war of nerves 184–9 December 11, 1941: challenges and response to expanded war 199–200; economic mobilization 206; Hitler speaks 196–9; opinions/editorials 204–6; repercussions 201–4; war of nerves 200–1 December 12, 1941: Churchill addresses Commons 212–13; Civil Defense 214–17; expressions of patriotism 213–14; social spectrum 217–18; upbeat reports 210–11; U.S. Congress 211–12 December 13, 1941: desire to serve as civilians and in armed forces 226–7;

diversions 226; first heroes of new war 222–3; optimism over Asia 221–2; other fronts 222–3; press support 224; war of nerves 223 December 14, 1941: Civil Defense 238–41; patriotism 234–7; very little known about war 232–4 Defense Bonds 22 defense buildup xiii, 110–11 defense contracts 26 Defense Savings Stamps 22 defense spending 26–7, 76–7 deflationary times 78–81 DeGolyer, Everett Lee 62 Dennett, Tyler 20 Dennison, Charles S. 216 Denver City Council 62 Denver, Colorado 64 Denver Post : editorials on naval force 15; “The Mask’s Last Tatters Fall Off” 216; President’s message to Emperor Hirohito 132; report on radio reports of attack 155; report on “socially prominent Denverites” in Hawaii 163; response to German and Italian declarations of war 216; retail sales 25; stories from 5; threat of war 132; troop training maneuvers 23 Derby, Judith Q. 30 Devil in France, The (Feuchtwanger) 102 DeVries, Paul 135 Dew, Frank xiv, 83–4 Diamond Jubilee Ball 137 Dingell, John 183, 237 diplomatic documents 155–6 Disney Organization 84–6 domestic servants 34–5 Dominick, Gayer G. 32 Dominick, Mrs. Gayer G. 32 draftees 96 Drum, Hugh A. 22–3 dry-cleaning industry 26 Duchin, Eddy 68 Dudley, Harry 240 Dulles, Alan Welch 65 Dulles, Mrs. Alan Welch 65 Duranty, Walter 39 Early, Steven T. 98, 109 East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere xii, 7 economic mobilization 191–2 Eddy, Nelson 54 Edman, Irwin 39 educational equality 51–2

Index

Eighteenth Amendment, U.S. Constitution 24, 113 Elder and Johnston Co. 63 Eliot, Samuel Atkins 48 Ellis, Elmer 39 Emergency Advisory Council for Negroes 62 Empire State Cleaners and Dyers 26 Empire State Express 64 employment ads 27 enemy aircraft 166–8, 200–1 England Bros. Co. 63 E. N. Joslin Co. 63 Epiphany Episcopal Church 11 Equal Rights Amendment 27–8 Evans, Madeline 162 Evans, Maurice 53 Fadiman, Clifton 53 farm families 33–4 Farthest Reach: Oregon and Washington (Ross) 38–9 fashion 87 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 163–4, 177, 179, 201, 202 Felduishiny, Victor 76 Fellowship of Reconciliation 203–4 Ferber, Edna 53; The Land Is Bright 53; Saratoga Trunk 53, 84 Feuchtwanger, Lion 102 Fey, Harold E. 132 Field, Marshall 217–18 Field, Mrs. Marshall 136 Fields, Joseph 39 Fifth National Youth Anti-War Congress 51 Filene’s of Boston 63 First Army (U.S.) 22 First World War Industries Board 26 Fitzgerald, Shirley 83 Flannelly, Joseph F. 47 Fleischer, Wilfred 20 Fletcher, Ellen 101 Flory, Vera 15 Flournoy, Matt 77 Flynn, Errol 54 Flynn, John T. 215 Fontaine, Joan 53 food costs 64–5, 114–15 Ford, Henry 100 Fortune (magazine) 20, 176 For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway) 84 Fosdick, Harry Emerson 59 Foster, Stephen 23 Fountainheads of Freedom (Edman) 39

261

Fourth Corps (U.S. Army) 22 Fourth Interceptor Command (U.S. Army) 200 Fowler Progress Club 15 Fox, Mrs. Caleb, Jr. 214 France 6, 9, 34–5, 52, 74, 91, 97, 133, 156, 178, 203, 223, 245, 249 Franklin, Emily 65 Franklin, John Merryman 65 Franklin, Mrs. John Merryman 65 Free French Relief Committee 136–7 Freidel, Melvin 40 Fuchida, Mitsuo 146–7 Gahagan, Helen 12 Gannon, Robert L. 102 Gardner, Ava 193 Garrett Biblical Institute 174 Garvin, Earl 171 Gates, Charles C. 163 Gates, Mrs. Charles C. 163 Gehrling, Otto 240 George, Walter 73, 77 Germany: Britain’s war effort 21; declaration of war xiv; its armies retreating from Rostov 54, 68; its attacks on Moscow 131; its declarations of war on United States 197; its operations in Eastern Front 90; its war machine 90; in retreat from Soviet Union 234; in Tripartite Pact 141, 177, 189–90, 197; and war in North Africa 43, 46, 71, 89, 118, 133, 199, 249 Gibson, Charles Dana 32 Gideonse, Harry 160 Gillette, Guy 19 Girl Scouts 23 Godwin, Walt 162 Goering, Hermann 8 Golden Lantern Restaurant (Denver) 64 Goldstein, Israel 76 Goodrich, Horace 162 Gordon, Lewis 77–8 Gore, Albert 26 governesses 34 Grable, Betty 37 Grand Coulee Dam 37 Grant, Cary 53 Grant, Georgia 162 Grant, Hugh C. 57 Great Britain 6–8, 15, 21, 72, 75, 90, 170–1 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere xii, 21–2, 144, 250 Great Neck Estates, Long Island, NY 35

262 Index

Greenberg, Hank 192 Green, William 52 Griffin Daily News, Georgia 112 Gunnison, Royal Arch 154 Gunther, John 53 Guthrie, Ernest Graham 173 Gwen, Edmund 53 Gwynne, Josephine Armstrong 101 Gyllenhaal, Charles P. 13 Hamley, William A. 99–100 Hand, Mrs. Learned 136 “Happy Days Are Here Again” (Ager/ Yellen) 24 Hardwick, Cecil 53 Harkness, Georgia 174 Harriman, Mrs. Averell 136 Harriman, Mrs. E. Roland 136 Harrington, Joseph B. 98 Harris, Cynthia Ann 163 Harris, Henry, Jr. 163 Harrison, Carter 14, 49 Harrison, Mrs. Kirk M. 87 Hart, Margie 238 Hart, Thomas C. 56, 221, 222 Haruna (battleship) 210, 222, 249 Harvard University 13 Hatch, Carl A. 61 Havilland, Olivia de 54, 84 Hawks, Howard 207 Hayes, Helen 12, 53 Hedges, Arthur J. 216 Hedin, Sven 217 Hellman, Lillian 53, 67 Hellzapoppin (Olsen and Johnson) 67 Herman, Sydney B. 172 Hershey, Lewis R. 211 Hickerson, Loren 13 Hiei (battleship) 145 High Kickers (Jessel) 53 High Standard Manufacturing Company 76 Hill of Doves, The (Cloete) 84 Hirohito, Emperor of Japan 131, 141, 226 Hiryu (aircraft carrier) 145 Hitler, Adolf 5, 8, 12, 15, 16, 47, 141, 177, 183, 196–9, 245 HMS Devonshire 56 HMS Dorsetshire 131 HMS Prince of Wales 182, 199, 205, 212–13 HMS Repulse 182, 199, 205, 212–13 Hochi (newspaper) 57, 92 Hodgekiss, L. D. 179 Hoffman, Clare 11

Hoffman, Paul G. 176 Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfuerst, Sophie 202 Holland, William Dutton 35 Hollingsworth, Margelee xiv, 82 Hollywood 84–6, 192–3 Home Guard (Great Britain) 68 Home Owners Loan Corporation 136 Hoover, Herbert 49, 59, 173 Hopkins, Dianna 66 Hopkins, Harry 57, 66, 157 Horan, William J. 214 Horyu (aircraft carrier) 249 Houston Chronicle : “Answer This One, Mr. Tojo” 95; automobile advertising 190; Carrollton town budget 80; defense of liberty 242–3; delivery boy 235; domestic servant notices 35; editorial turnaround 161–2; expansion of Japanese war 178; Far Eastern crisis 21; human interest stories 137; “Let’s Go Texans” 236; “ Oil leasing spreading in East Texas.” 62; Oldsmobile advertisement 68; price controls 27; response to German and Italian declarations of war 216; stories from 5; “In Their Righteous Might” 175; threat of war in Asia editorial 49–50; war preparations 132, 201 Howell, Claude Raymond 97 Hull, Cordell 9–10, 45, 48, 56–7, 91–2, 145, 148, 155–6, 167, 197 Hundley, Frederic F. 135 Hundley, Mrs. Frederic F. 135 Hunt, Louise Andrews 217 Hutchins, Robert Maynard 59 I Have Loved England (Miller) 39 immigration 100 Imperial Conference (Japan) December 1, 1941 145 Imperial Conference (Japan) September 6, 1941 144 Inside Latin America (Gunther) 53 interceptor planes 200 Investment Bankers Association 61 isolationism xii–xiii, 14–15, 16, 48, 98, 135 Is Tomorrow Hitler’s? (Knickerbocker) 39 James, F. W. 40 Janney, Hennita Blackfan 31 Janney, J. Allison 31 Janney, Mrs. J. Allison 31

Index

Japan: aggression against Chinese “democracy” 15; air attacks on Philippine islands 154; attack of Honolulu and of Pearl Harbor 148–9; attacks across Southeast Asia 182–3; British declaration of war 171, 178; crucial decisions 144–5; diplomacy 73–4; diplomatic documents 155–6; foreign policy 92–3; France cedes control of Indo-China empire to 9; Pearl Harbor Striking Force 145–7; in Tripartite Pact 141, 177, 189–90; war in China 58 Japan Advertiser (Tokyo newspaper) 20 Japanese Air Force 58 Japanese American Citizens League 163, 173 Japanese Americans 163–4, 173 Japanese businesses 169 Japanese espionage 201 Japanese truck gardeners 201 Japan Times Advertiser 57, 92 Jarrett, John H. 110 Jarvis, Clare 203 Jarvis, Clare, Jr. 203 Jean’s Style Shop 63 Jelke, Jane 65 Jelke, John F. 65 Jelke, Mrs. John F. 65 Jessel, George 53 Jewell, Edward Alden 40 J.H. Williams & Company 76 job advertisements 34–5, 190–1 Johnson, Chic 53, 67 Johnson, Hewlett 84 Johnson, Hugh 135 Johnson, Lyndon B. 171 Jones, Alfred P. 16 Junior Assemblies 30, 126 Junior League 87 Junior Miss (Chodorov & Fields) 39 Kaga (aircraft carrier) 145, 249 Karloff, Boris 53 Kauffman, George S. 53 Kaya, Okinori 106 Kaye, Danny 53 Keep America Out of War Congress 215 Keller, Clarence A., Jr. 222 Kelly, Colin P., Jr. 222, 249 Kelly, James F. 31 Keys of the Kingdom, The (Cronin) 53 Kieran, John 179

263

Kimmel, Husband E. 237 King, Charles L. 87 King, Newton 79 Kirishima (battleship) 145 Kleist, Paul Ludwig von 54, 90 Kluckhorn, Frank L. 245–6 Knickerbocker, H. R. 39 Knox, Frank 57, 97, 133, 170, 183, 211 Knudsen, William S. 206 Koht, Halvdan 38 Konoye, Fumimaro 17–18, 144 Kremlin and the People, The (Duranty) 39 Krock, Arthur 94, 205 Kurusu, Saburo 21, 57, 143 Kuznick, Joseph V. 74 labor disputes 52 Laburnum Grove (Priestley) 53–4 Lady In the Dark 53 lady’s companion 35 La Guardia, Fiorello 73, 93, 176, 214, 238–9 Lahm, Frank 46 Lamberton, William P. 121 Lamont, Thomas 176 Land Is Bright, The (Kauffman and Ferber) 53 Lane, Lola 23 Lane, Thomas J. 98 Lansing, Robert 48 Larchmont Gardens 35 Last Resorts, The (Amory) 30 Laurin, Pierre 20 Lawrence, Gertrude 53 Leaf in the Storm, A (Lin) 217 League of Nations 141 League of Women Voters 32 Leanevic, Jake 135 LeBlanc, Georgette 38 Lee, Mary 78 Legion of Decency 47 Lehman, Herbert 10 Lehman, Mrs. Herbert 176 Leibowitz, Samuel 160 Leighton, J. A. 49 Lend-Lease bill 77 Let’s Face It (Porter) 53 Liaison Conference of October 23, 1941 144–-5 Life (magazine) 20, 176 Lillienthal, Max D. 239 Lincoln, Abraham 136, 164 Lindbergh, Anne Morrow 59

264 Index

Lindbergh, Charles A. 11–12, 49, 59, 97, 135, 172 Lindley, Ernest K. 246 Lin, Yutang 217 Lippmann, Walter 73, 94–5, 109, 204 Little Tokyo 169 “Locksley Hall” (Tennyson) 100 Lodge, Mrs. John 138 Lodge, William 134 London Daily Telegraph 109 London Pride (Bottome) 38, 102 Longstreth, Mrs. Bevis 31 Lord, Walter 149 Los Angeles Times: air-raid sirens on roof of building 189; automobile advertising 179; call for end to internal dissension and debate 161; celebrating Christmas 243; “ Let’s Not Get Rattled “ 190; managing editor L. D. Hodgekiss. 190; man-on-thestreet interviews 162; “Morale Is a Women’s Business” 236; report on directors of the Medical Women’s Association 136; reports on battles in Philippines 232–3; review of sermons to be preached on Sunday 124; special report on MacArthur 120; sport 192, 218; stories from 5; war preparations 108, 136; “We Will Triumph—So Help Us God” 175 Lowder, Mrs. R. D. 15 Lowered Price Policy 176 Lucas, Scott W. 211 Luce, Henry 20, 176 Luce, Henry Winters 176 Lukas, Paul 53 MacArthur, Douglas 56, 132, 141, 154, 183, 210, 221, 232 Macbeth (Shakespeare) 53 McCormack, John W. 107, 109 McCormick, Cyrus 35 McCormick, Leander 35 McCormick, Robert E. 35, 236–7 McCormick, William G. 35 McCormick, William S. 35 MacCracken, Henry N. 215 McGill, Ralph 20, 31 McGraw, John 86 McGuire, Matthew F. 135 Mackenzie, Dewitt 46, 73, 210 MacLeish, Archibald 68, 243 MacMurray, John V. A. 65 MacMurray, Mrs. John V. A. 65 McNair, Lesley J. 22, 46

McNary, Charles L 107 Maeterlinck, Maurice 38 Malaya: British forces in 120, 210, 222, 233; Japanese campaigns of aggression against 7, 72, 118, 142, 178; Japanese landings in 154, 171, 183, 249; preparations for war in 56, 71; rumors of German battleship off coast of 200 Manners, Marjorie 217 Manning, J. Fred 99 Manning, William Thomas 10 marriage announcements 31–2, 87 Marshall, George C. 133, 157 Martin, Joseph 158 Martin, Mary 207 Mason, George 242 Maugham, Somerset 37 Maw, Herbert H. 171 Maxwell, Elsa 86 May Company 80–1 Maynor, Dorothy 114 McConnell, John 239 Mencken, H. L. 39 Merman, Ethel 53 Meyer, Eugene 66 Meyer, Mrs. Eugene 66 Middle East, British forces in 7, 72 Milland, Ray 54 Millay, Edna St. Vincent 12 Miller, Alice Duer 39 Miller, Merle 74–5 Ministers’ No War Committee 174, 204 Miro, Joan 40 Mishue, Thomas F. 235 Mitowsky, Hyman 26 Mizell, Larue 192 modern art 40 Molyneux, Hugh William Osbert 101 Monmouth College 33 Morehouse, Ray 77 Morgan, Ann 30, 51 Morgan, J. P. 30, 66 Morgan, Junius S. 30, 66 Morgan, Mrs. Junius S. 30 Morrow, Edward R. 68 Morrow, Mrs. Dwight 11 Mosolino, Anthony 213 Mothers Mobilized For America, Inc. 75 movies 47, 84, 125, 206–7 Moxley, Albert S. 37 Mr. and Mrs. Cugat (Rorick) 84 Mr. Dooley’s America (Ellis) 39 Mrs. Appleyard’s Year (Hunt) 217 Muller, Martha Jordan 164

Index

Munich Playground (Pope) 39 Murphy, Adrian 39–40 Murray, William H. 98, 135 Museum of Modern Art 40 Mussolini, Benito 141, 197, 213 Nagumo, Chiuchi 146 Nagumo, Chuichi 146, 249 Nakano, Seigo 71–2 Namesake Towns Destroyers Committee of the English Speaking Union 76 Nassau Sovereign 13 National Advisory Committee of United China Relief 176 National Association of Manufacturers 77, 110–11 National Community Christmas Tree 236 National Conference of Christians and Jews 242 National Council for the Prevention of War 175 National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis 137 Natwick, Mildred 53 Nelson, Donald M. 14, 206 Neuberger, Richard L. 37 Neutrality Act 189 Newspaper Days (Mencken) 39 New York Central Railroad 64 New York Daily Mirror 161 New York Daily News 161 New York Herald Tribune 20 New York Marriage License Bureau 234 New York Sun 4 New York Times: Arrival of Buyers 62; automobile advertising 179; Baltimore Bachelors Cotillion 65; books advertised in 102; “A Call to Duty” 190; change of opnions on war 193; “Christmas Buying Off to a Good Start” 25; concern for Japanese penetration into Thailand 72; dangers of communism 99; defense of liberty 242–3; defense spending 76; domestic servant notices 35; editorials in 16; editorial turnaround 160–1; Eleanor Roosevelt 37; events of December 8, 1941 158; “The International Situation” 10; Japanese– American negotiations 107; legislation limiting strikes in defense industries 113; letters to editor 49, 64–5, 74–5; magazine section of 136; nation at war 205; “Navy Takes Up the Challenge, The” 237; “Our Marines Out of China”

265

51; “overwhelming press support” for Washington’s policy 108; on pessimism of United States negotiators 94; presence on desert battlefield 55–6; President’s performance. 246; pundits 205; “Quizzical College Girl, The” 137; report on investigation of Japanese espionage 201; response to German and Italian declarations of war 216; rules for conduct in air raid 184–5; shipbuilding 25; sport 102–3; Sunday newspaper 4, 5; threat of war 44–5, 92, 94; troop training maneuvers 23; “United We Stand” 175; war preparations 133; wedding reportage xiii, 31–2, 217; “You Can Help a Great People . . . and Help Beat Japan” 176 New Zealand 72, 178 Nichi Nichi (newspaper) 72, 93 Nichols, Morris 31 Nimitz, Chester W 249 Nine O’Clocks 31 Nine-Power Pact 9 Noble, Irene 162 Nomura, Howard 163 Nomura, Kichisaburo 46, 57, 92, 107, 143 Noorsworthy, Mrs. T. M. 87 No Other Road to Freedom (Stowe) 39 Normandie (ocean liner) 223 North Africa 6–8, 43, 46, 68, 71, 89, 118, 133, 199, 227, 249 Norway: Neutral and Invaded (Koht) 38 November 30, 1941: arts and entertainment 38–40; dispatches from Op-Ed Wars 13–16; domestic relations 34–5; economic indicators 24–7; Equal Rights Amendment 27–8; home economics 35–6; human interest stories 36–7; local geography 37–8; pronouncements and positions 9–10; social spectrum 30–4; spiritual counsels 10–12; stand-off 17–22; Sunday newspapers 4–5; threat of war 12–13, 22–4; world at war 6–9 Now, Voyager (Prouty) 84 Nye, Gerald P. 49, 98, 135 O’Brien, John F. 171 O’Daniel, W. Lee 157, 171 Odlum, Floyd 15 Office of Production Management (OPM) 26, 77, 206 O’Hanlon, Virginia 4 Oldsmobile advertisement 68 O’Lilly, John D. 171

266 Index

Oliver, Lillian 162 Olsen, Ole 53, 67 O’Mahoney, Joseph C. 28 O’Mahony, Joseph C. 61 Open Door policy 9, 45 Operation Barbarossa 8 opinions/editorials: December 1, 1941 48–52; December 2, 1941 58–60; December 3, 1941 74–6; December 4, 1941 94–100; December 5, 1941 108–9; December 9, 1941 175–6; December 10, 1941 190–1, 193; December 11, 1941 204–6; November 30, 1941 13–16 Orange Bowl 103 Oregonian: American Weekly supplement 37–8; “Blueprint for an Empire” editorial spread 37; celebrating Christmas 244; cigarette advertisement 207; comics 38; editorial on Mothers Mobilized For America, Inc. 75–6; “Foe Fleet in Flight From Navy” 221; hamburger editorial 52; moral questions on bombing 225; “Ours The Right and the Might” 175; photo spreads 82; stories from 5; stories of real people 101; U-boat attack 75–6; war preparations 122 Otis Elevator Company 76 Ott, Mel 86 Out of the Night (Valtin) 84 Paassen, Pierre van 53 Pace, Guy 162 Panama Hattie (Porter) 53 Pankin, Jacob 160 Pappenheimer, Jack 87 Pappenheimer, Mimi 86–7 Parker, Cecilia 84 Parran, Thomas 39 patriotism 87, 213–14 Peace Vigil 11 Pearl Harbor: aboard Japanese carrier before 143; account of losses at 190; bombing of Honolulu and xiii, 138, 148–50, 159–61, 170, 199–200, 221, 232, 250; call for court martial of military and naval officers who had commanded at 183–4, 237; Congressional reactions to attack 201–2, 211–12; fliers cited for success in the defense of 233; identified as principal target of proposed attack 144; impact of bombing on Japanese nationals in United States 163–4; initial reports 153–5; letter from son killed in attack 200; response of American

people to attack on 171–5; rumors of women pilots taking part in attacks on 167; secret maneuvers of Japanese fleet 118; Striking Force xii, 145–7, 249 Pegler, Westbrook 193 Pershing, John J. 203 Peterson, Otto 135 Pettit, Karl Dravo 30 Pettit, Mary Estelle 30 Pettit, Mrs. Karl Dravo 30 Philippines 154, 199, 210, 221, 232–3 Philipson, Irving J. 10 Phillips, Tom 182 Pilkenton, Ruth 87 Pittman, Marvin 111 Pitts, Fern 67 Plain Words About Venereal Disease (Parran & Vonderlehr) 39 political wars 60–1 Poorten, Hein ter 132 Pope, Ernest R. 39 Porgy and Bess (Gershwin & Heyward) 67 Porter, Cole 53 Portland Advisory Council for Negroes 171 Potts, A. L. 18 Price Administrator 26 price controls 26–7 Price, James H. 243 Princeton University 12 Producto Machine Company 76 Proper Bostonians, The (Amory) 30 Prouty, Olive Higgins 84 pundits 204–5 Qualters, Tommy 18 Quezon, Manuel 132, 154 race issues 61–2, 77–8, 96, 111–13, 164 Radcliffe College 37 radio programs 67–8, 86 railroads 52–3, 63–4 Raine, John 31 Raine, Mrs. John 31 Rallis, John 213 Ramsey, George H. 32 Rankin, Jeannette 98, 211 Raskin, Saul 40 Rasmussen, Phillip 233 Rathbone, Beatrice 66 Ravenstein, Johann von 56 Rayburn, Sam 157–9 Reading I’ve Liked (Fadiman) 53 real estate 35–6 recruiting stations 234–5

Index

Red, Walter Scott 87 Reid, Joseph 235–6 Reif, Gordon P. 213 Reiss, Kurt 217 Remington, Woodburne E. 217 restaurant food 64–5 Reston, James “Scotty” 158 retail sales 25 Reuther, Walter 226 R. Hoe and Co., Inc. 76 “Rhyme of the BB-66, The” (Wouk) 133–4 Richards, Lucyle xiv, 83–4, 113 Richardson, Mrs. Tom 33–4 Richardson, Tom 33–4 Ridgeway, Matthew B. 237 Riggs, Tommy, Jr. 12 Rings on Her Fingers (Mamoulian) 84 “Road to Freedom” 136 Roberton, Frank 15 Roberts, Jack D. 49 Robinson, Evelyn King 30 Rockefeller, John D., III 176 Rogers, Mary Pickford 176 Rogers, Will 4, 108 Romberg, Sigmund 54 Rooney, Mickey 192 Roosevelt administration 14 Roosevelt, Eleanor 23, 37, 66, 113–14, 158, 176, 189, 238, 240 Roosevelt, Franklin D.: accused of treason xiii; addresses nation 157–60; as calm and resolute 245–6; Diamond Jubilee Ball 137; inquiry as to massing of Japanese troops in French Indo-China 107, 148; labor disputes 52; personal message to Emperor Hirohito 131; plea to continue discussions 141–2, 155; press support 224–5; remarks at service of Cathedral of St. John the Divine 10; rendezvous with Churchill 182; response to German and Italian declarations of war 197; responsible for the enmity between United States and Germany 197; rules for disclosure of war information 205; scrap metal and iron embargo 9; talks with Japanese envoys Nomura and Kurusu. 68; visit to Warm Springs 18–20, 45, 98, 113 Roosevelt, Mrs. James 158 Roosevelt, Mrs. Kermit 136 Roosevelt, Mrs. Ralph M. 32 Roosevelt, Nancy D. 30 Roosevelt, Ralph M. 32

267

Roosevelt, Theodore 30 Rorick, Isabelle Scott 84 Rose Bowl 103 Rosenwald, Lessing 135 Ross, Nancy Wilson 38–9 rumors 168–9 Runyan, Isabel 31 Runyan, Mrs. Paul 30 Rural Electrification Administration (REA) 60 Russell, Archibald Douglas 31 Russell, Mrs. Archibald Douglas 31 Russell, Isabel Doolittle 31 Ryan, William Ord 166 Ryskind, Morrie 215 Saint Patrick’s Cathedral 47 Sanders, W. B. 18 Saratoga Trunk (Ferber) 53, 84 Satoh, Hitoshi 107 Sayen, Frederick R. 31 Sayen, Mrs. Frederick R. 31 Sayen, William, III 31 Sayre, Marie 169 SBD Dauntless (scout plane/dive bomber) 249 Schanandoah, Chapman W. 171 Schleifer, Louis 200 Schriner, Samuel A., Jr. 12 Scott, Joseph 51 Scott, William W. 216 Secor, Jay K. 217 Selby, William H. 227 Selective Service Training and Service Act 22 Selznick, David O. 176 Senior Service Scouts 23 Sergeant York (Hawks) 207 Seymour, Charles 176 Shelton, Frances 34 Sherman, Philemon Tecumseh 138 Sherman, William Tecumseh 138 shipbuilding 76–7 shipyards 25–6 Shirer, William L. 39, 53, 86 “Shooting of Dan McGrew, The” (Service) 135 Shore, Dinah 86 Short, Walter 237 Sikorsky, Igor 59 Simpson, Kirke L. 204 Skinner, Cornelia Otis 53 Skylark (Sandrich) 54 Smallwood, John W. 203

268 Index

Smith, C. G. 18 Smith, Hoke 162 Smith, Robert Aura 16 Sockman, Ralph 48 Sons o’ Fun (revue, Olsen and Johnson) 53, 67 Soryu (aircraft carrier) 145, 249 Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools 111–12 Soviet Power, The (Johnson) 84 Soviet Union: decisive victory before Moscow 223; effects of war against Germany 249; engaged in defensive battles with Germans 74, 131; Germans in retreat from 234; its battles against Japan 7; its operations in Eastern Front 90; its troops pursuing German armies retreating from Rostov 54, 68; Operation Barbarossa 8; in Tripartite Pact 177 Spellman, Francis J., Archbishop of New York 47 Spinks, Richard 235 spiritual counsels 10–12 sports 66, 86, 102–3, 149, 217, 218 sportscasters 67 S.S. Coamo xiv Stalin, Joseph 5, 14, 245 Staples, Henry Lee 12 Steiger, George J. 239 Sterling, Gordon 233 Stevens, Risë 54 Stewart, Mrs. Eugene 15 Stewart, Tom 183 Stimson, Henry L. 97, 121 St. Louis Post-Dispatch 225 Stone, Mrs. Harlan F. 65 Stowe, Leland 39 Strange, Michael 215 Strange Woman, The (Williams) 84 Straus, Oscar 217 Straus, Oscar S., II 217 Strauss, Lewis 172 Sugar Bowl 102–3 Sulzberger, Mrs. Arthur Hays 136 Sun Bowl 103 Sundahl, Maurice 162 Sunday newspapers 4–5 Superior Linen Company 76 Supply Priorities Allocation Board 178–9 Surrealism 40 Suspicion (Hitchcock) 53 Swing, Raymond Gram 175 Synthetic Cleaners Committee 26

Taft, Donald Mosier 113 Taft, Mrs. William Howard 179 Taft, Robert A. xii, 59, 179 Talmadge, Eugene 111 Taniguchi, Tsuneji 93 Tarkington, Booth 176 Tayama, Fred 173 Taylor, Deems 53 television programs 67 Terminello, Anthony 162 Terry, Bill 86 That Day Alone (van Paassen) 53 They Died with Their Boots On (Walsh) 54 Third Army (U.S.) 22 This Is the Army (Berlin) 218 Thomas, Elbert 59 Thomas, Lynn C. 58 Thomas, Norman 216 Thomas, Shenton 56 Thrower, Jay Robert 236 Time (magazine) 20, 176 Tinkham, George Holden 109 Tirpitz (battleship) 200 Tobey, Charles W. 183, 202, 211–12 Togo Shigenori 45 Tojo, Hideki 9, 10, 18, 19, 21, 47, 233 Tone (cruiser) 145 Total Espionage (Reiss) 217 Tower, Pamela 217 trade union movement 179 Trading Day 79 transatlantic passenger trade 26 treason 138 Treasury of Gilbert & Sullivan, A (Taylor) 53 Trimble, Mrs. F. H. 15 Tripartite Pact 141, 177, 189, 197 troop training maneuvers 22–3 Tucker, Henry Saint George 10 Tucker, Sophie 53 Twelfth Night (Shakespeare) 67 Two-Faced Woman (Cukor) 47 U-boats 75, 90, 237 United China Relief 176 United States Rubber Company 215 University of Iowa 13 University of Pennsylvania 13 Unthank, DeNorval 62, 171 Urban League Bulletin 243 U.S. Army 27, 43, 46, 109, 145, 199 U.S. Coast Guard 140, 168, 185, 187 U.S. Congress 21, 211–12 U.S. Constitution, Eighteenth Amendment 24, 113

Index

U.S. Department of Commerce 25, 27 U.S. House of Representatives 21, 26 U.S. Marines 18, 51, 127, 158, 210, 232, 234 U.S. Navy xiv, 43, 145, 154, 170, 183, 210, 237 USS Arizona 149, 150, 170 USS Barker 162 USS California 150 USS Cassin 170 USS Condor 146 USS Constitution 215 USS Curtis 150 USS Helena 150 USS Honolulu 150 USS Kearney 90, 106 USS Maryland 150 USS Nevada 150 USS Oklahoma 149, 154, 155, 169 USS Pennsylvania 150 USS Raleigh 150 USS Reuben James 75, 90, 106, 215 USS Shaw 150 USS Tennessee 149, 150 USS Vestal 150 USS Ward 146 USS West Virginia 149, 150, 154, 155, 169 USS Wilmette 240 Valtin, Jan 75, 86 Vanderbilt, Cornelius 217 Vanderbilt, Gloria M. 217 Vanderbilt, Mrs. Cornelius 136, 137 VanSchaick, Mrs. George 32 Vassar College 12, 171 Veterans of Future Wars: founding of 12; Home Fires Division 12; Ladies Auxiliary of 12; Washington Post story on 13 “Victory Program” 178 Vinson, Carl 170, 183–4 Vonderlehr, R. A. 39 Wagner, Boyd 222–3 Wallace, Henry A. 158, 178, 242 Walsh, David I. 170, 183–4 Wanamaker, John 175–6 war effort 109, 243–5 Warm Springs Foundation. 19 war preparations 55–6, 133–5, 249–52 Wash, Carlyle 167 Washington Post : advertisement by United States Rubber Company 215; advice on air raids 240; on attitude of U.S. negotiators 94–5; “But Buy Defense Bonds First” 236; carrier boys selling

269

Defense Savings Stamps 22; college students 12; defense of liberty 242–3; editorial turnaround 161; Ford opinion 100; human interest stories 82; nation at war 205; “Peace or War in the Pacific?” 72; portrayal of Secretary of State Hull 92; President’s performance. 246; report on Veterans of Future Wars 13; restrictive covenants 135; “Righteous Might” 175; stories from 5; support of Administration 224–5 Watch on the Rhine (Hellman) 53, 67 Webb, Clifton 53 wedding reportage 31–2, 101, 217 Welles, Orson 207 Welles, Sumner 57 Western Flying (magazine) 58 We Testify (Schoonmaker and Reid) 59 Wheeler, Burton xii, 11, 49, 59, 109, 162, 193 Wheeler, Mrs. Burton 11 Whitney, Hazel 51 Whitney, William C. 217 Who Killed Society? (Amory) 30 Wide World News 46 Wieboldt Stores of Chicago 215 Wiedemann, Fritz 202 William H. Block Co. 63 Williams, Ben Ames 84 Williams, Betty 67 Williams, Gladstone 73 Williams, James Ethelred 114 Williams, Noah 67 Williams, Willie Fort 114 Willkie, Mrs. Wendell 12, 136 Willkie, Wendell 176 Wilson, M. L. 138 Wilson, Woodrow 48, 197 Winant, Mrs. John G. 136 Windborn, A. C. 84 Windswept (Chase) 53 Winter, Thomas D. 60–1 Wisconsin Daily Cardinal 12 Witherow, William T. 77 Witt, John L. 166 Women’s Division of Fight For Freedom 12 women’s suffrage 28 Wood, Edward, Lord Halifax 57 Wood, Peggy 53 Wood, R. E. 173, 215 Wood, Robert 59 Woollcott, Alexander 37 World’s Iron Age, The (Chamberlain) 38

270 Index

Wouk, Herman 133, 136 Wren, Christopher 10 Wright, Wilbur 46–7 Yale University 13, 138 Yamamoto, Isoroku 146 Young America Wants to Help 136

Youth Committee Against War 51 YWCA 164 Zaharoff, Lucien 58 Zell, Harry Von 86 Zenger, Peter 243 Zuikaku (aircraft carrier) 145