Crucible of a Generation
Page 28
pean 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 Commit-
tee, 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 trep-
idation. 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 main-
tain 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 inter-
est 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 organi-
zation. 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, with-
out 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 senti-
ments 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 full-
page 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 suc-
ceed, 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 Low-
ered 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 Chi-
nese 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 champion-ing 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 conf lict 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, Tri-
partite 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 com-
ing 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 pol-
icy 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 State
s entered the war, it would be followed the next day by Britain’s dec-
laration 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 coun-
tries 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 Rus-
sian forces by the millions, were now stopped, frozen solid on the front before
Moscow. Reports from Italy confirmed that there would be no further Ger-
man 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 rear-guard 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 Wal-
lace, was preparing to submit to the President its gigantic “Victory Program” call-
ing 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 produc-
tion 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