December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  A new and wholly ugly car was rolled off the assembly lines, the Crosley. “For Maximum Defense Economy, it costs 2/3 less to buy . . . up to 50 miles on a gallon . . . up to 40,000 miles on tires.” The car sold for $447 but could be driven off the lot for just $149 down. It was being sold in Washington by the Manhattan Auto and Radio Co.98 The car looked like it was made out of paper mâché.

  A new cereal was unveiled, and to help boost sales they were selling two for one. The advertising claims suggested it did everything except cure the heartbreak of psoriasis. And it “sticks to your ribs!” too. What was this wonder food? “Shaped like cute little doughnuts . . . they stay crisp in milk.” Its name was Cheerioats. Breakfast cereals were often marketed as edible medicine cabinets—to wit Kellogg’s All-Bran: “The better way to treat constipation due to lack of proper ‘bulk’ in the diet is to correct the cause of the trouble with a delicious cereal . . . eat it every day and drink plenty of water.”99 The brainchild of Will Keith Kellogg, prepackaged cereals such as All-Bran and Toasted Corn Flakes were considered nutritional innovations.

  Virtually every newspaper of the era pitched a miracle cure for baldness. “More than a quarter million persons have retained or regained good heads of hair by the reliable, proven Thomas method.”100 If Christmas cheer got to be too excessive, Americans could always turn to Phillips Milk of Magnesia, so they could “wake up clear headed after too much smoking, drinking, late eating.” Apparently “alkalizing” one’s “overindulgence” was the ticket.101

  The scrap paper drive initiated in Washington just a day before and implemented mostly by children was a huge success. The tykes brought in tons of paper to recycling centers with the proceeds to go to local schools and PTAs.

  In New York, the heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Louis, was looking forward to a title defense fight with Buddy Baer, brother of Max Baer, whom Louis had defeated several years earlier.102 Both Louis and Baer had something to prove, Louis, the African American and Baer, the Jewish American.

  The Atlanta Constitution announced as part of the Christmas celebration it would serialize the Charles Dickens manuscript The Life of Our Lord. Dickens had written it for his children and read it to them each Christmas, but asked that the book not be published until the last of his children had died. In 1933, the last of his children, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, had passed away after a long and successful life.103

  In Bogata, Colombia, the offices of the “anti-Nazi committee” were burglarized, and money was stolen that had been “collected during Anti-Hitler Week.”104

  In North Africa, British tank commanders still talked confidently of defeating Rommel, the “Desert Rat,” but they would first have to involve Rommel in their plan, as he’d been pushing them all over North Africa and they were retreating right along the coast all the way to Egypt. Time may have been against Rommel however, as the British navy’s goal was total control of the Mediterranean so they could interdict German supply ships with impunity. The Germans were rushing supplies via plane and ship. Daily reports of the tank battles in North Africa often contradicted themselves, but both sides agreed that Rommel had crushed the New Zealand tank division aiding Great Britain.

  Military service could be downright hazardous for the enlistee or draftee, but it could also be dangerous for the members of the Selective Service Board. In Athens, Georgia, former Major League pitcher William Austin “Cy” Moore struck the chairman of the local draft board when he questioned whether Moore’s parents had given false documents as to their dependency on their son.105 It could also be dangerous for the loved ones of potential inductees. In Los Angeles, a twenty-three-year-old carhop shot and seriously injured herself, greatly distraught that her boyfriend might be drafted.106

  As with other newspapers around the country, the Boston Daily Globe reported on new assignments by troops and war equipment. “The newly organized Tank Destroyer Tactical and Firing Center has been stationed temporarily at Ft. George C. Meade, Md. according to a War Department announcement.”107 One G.I. from up north was so pleased with southern hospitality in Farmville, Virginia, he exclaimed, “If anybody mistakes us for southerners now, it will be ok.”108 Army chaplains were in short supply and a call went out for more men of the cloth to put on khaki and camouflage.

  New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dedicated a new building in his city designed to house military personnel. He said that America was not “bluffing,” that it may have been fooled in the “last World War” but would not be again. “We do not know what will happen tomorrow, next week or next month, but the United States Navy stands ready.”109

  The Globe also reported on new military construction with great fanfare. “The United States submarine Halibut, 40th undersea boat to be built at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, was launched today. . . . Today’s launching was the sixth of the year and establishes a new record for submarine construction. In 1940, there were four launchings. As soon as the ways were clear today, workmen began laying another keel in Uncle Sam’s defense program.” The story also detailed all the military brass in attendance at the yard in New Hampshire.110 Yet another story detailed again how America expected to meet its goal of fifty thousand airplanes produced in 1942.111 The military budget, it was announced, was almost $68 billion.112

  When it came to telling America’s enemies everything about the military, the Los Angeles Times was no slacker. A story went into great depth about “air raid defense exercises” planned for the area in mid-December. It would involve hundreds of planes, as well as ground personnel and spotters. The planned drill was “similar to those in New York and other eastern cities during the last few months.” . . .”113

  “Taking part in the aerial portion of the tactical problem will be scores of planes from the 20th Pursuit Group, Hamilton Field, using P-40s and the 17th Bomber Group, McChord Field, Washington, in B-25s. The planes, it was learned, will fly as theoretical enemies as well as interceptors. Across a huge, kidney-shaped filter board, 120 women, plotters and tellers, will filter the information and pass it on to the information room.”114

  On tour was the typing champion of America, “a plump, brown eyed girl” who could rattle off 150 words per minute, setting a per-hour record that had never been broken. “Miss Margaret Hamma” of Brooklyn was on a publicity tour to promote the new IBM electric typewriter.115

  Actor Joseph Cotton reported that his car was stolen. Forty-eight hours later, it was discovered at the bottom of his pool. He’d failed to set the brake and it rolled backward, unnoticed.116 The Los Angeles Times was celebrating its sixtieth anniversary.117 The paper had seen much, and by 1940, the population of the city was just over 1.5 million citizens, and in 1939, water began to arrive at the city via the new Colorado River Aqueduct. That same year a heat wave kept the city hot under the collar, as the daytime temperature averaged “around 107 degrees for days and days.”118 The paper also reported on the “Latin American Queen” picked for the Rose Tournament Parade: Juanita Estela Lopez, “olive-skinned and dimpled . . .”119

  In San Jose, a frustrated husband filed for divorce because his wife would not stop listening to the radio. His wife “Eva wouldn’t clean the house, care for the children, cook my meals or talk to me,” complained Max Barrott. Judge John D. Foley “awarded Barrott the divorce and his wife the radio.”120

  Knowledgeable observers tried to make some sense of Japan’s actions. London had made it clear that any incursion into Thailand meant war with the British and that meant war with America as well. It would mean fighting a multifront war with countries that had more industrial capacity than Japan did.

  “Japan is facing international economic siege and she is very vulnerable. If there was ever a country that needed to live on terms of peaceful trade with the rest of the world, it is Japan. Japan Proper has a population of 73,000,000 packed into an area less than that of California and far less rich in its material resources. Scarcely able to sustain herself in foodstuffs, she is heavily dependent upon imports of other
raw materials. For such industrial and military necessities as petroleum, iron, steel, aluminum, lead, zinc, copper, tin, machine tools, wool and cotton she relied chiefly upon the United States, the British Empire and the Netherland Dutch Indies, nations which are now enforcing against her a rigid economic blockade.” Imports from the United States had shriveled to nothing, from $18 million in September of 1940 to $500 in September of 1941. The country was also cut off from U.S. credit and the country lived and died by trade.121

  “Japan, in the grip of her militarists, has chosen to seek the will-o’-the-wisp of economic self-sufficiency by the path of military aggression. Now, after four years of exhausting war, she finds her economic and industrial life strangling. She has made the tragic error of following a course of military aggression irreconcilably opposed to that kind of world. She can expect relief only when her national policies again permit peace-loving nations to do business with her, without risk to themselves, and in good conscience.”122

  Because of her own policies and myriad mistakes, Japan was now desperate. Washington was openly talking about a naval blockade of Japan, in cooperation with the British. “In that case . . . the Roosevelt Administration would be disposed to ask Congress for an outright declaration of war, rather than to wage an undeclared fight.”123

  The peripatetic First Lady, tireless champion of social causes, was out and about as usual, appearing on national radio shows of her own including a “Town Hall Meeting of the Air” broadcast over NBC. Her cohost was the famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White. The topic they addressed was “What Must We Do to Improve Health and Welfare of the American People?”124

  While giving a speech in New York at a “symposium on ‘Recent Immigrants and National Defense,’” Eleanor Roosevelt assured the audience that if war came, “aliens with good records . . . need have no anxiety about being placed in United States concentration camps should this country declare war against their homelands.”125 Italian, German, and Japanese Americans were relieved.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE FIFTH OF DECEMBER

  “U.S. Proposals Downed by Japs”

  Nevada State Journal

  “Japanese See Talks Continue”

  Standard Examiner

  “Tokyo Envoy to Mexico Ordered Home

  as U.S.-Japan Crisis Grows”

  The Sun

  Scientists discovered in December of 1941 that the sun was 100,000 miles farther away from the earth than previously thought. Rather than the formerly believed 92,897,416 miles, Dr. H. Spencer Jones, astronomer royal at the Greenwich Observatory in Great Britain just outside of London, calculated Sol was actually 93,003,000 miles from Terra Firma. Dr. Jones also made some discoveries about asteroids, which other scientists referred to as “the lice of the heavens.”1 Astronomers also enlarged their knowledge about sunspots.

  During this time, astrophysical research was gathering momentum in an intriguing area: black holes. In a new line of exploration that was dismissed by the scientific old guard as erroneous and fanciful, more imaginative scientists were theorizing that when a star collapsed after a supernova, it created a sufficiently dense mass from which even light couldn’t escape, deforming the fabric of space and time.

  Despite the war, German and British astronomers continued to exchange information.2 The world may have been on the brink of annihilation, but it was also on the brink of exciting new discoveries with enormous, lasting implications.

  Science was advancing in others areas as well. In Los Angeles, an amateur “ham” radio operator, Karl E. Pierson, said he had developed important technology to quiet the static heard over broadcast receivers. Pierson had gained fame previously when he had been one of the last to hear transmissions from the lost aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, “on her fateful around-the-world flight in 1937.” He also claimed to have received transmissions from Earhart after her plane went down.3

  Because of the aluminum shortage in America, a new, strong, and flexible material was being perfected: plastics. Some scientists predicted a bright future for the revolutionary new synthetic product and for young men going into the business of polymer and acetate development. “Someday . . . bathtubs, caskets, automobiles and airplane sections may be made of plastic.”4 Plastic automobile bodies were also envisioned, but at the time, the material was mostly dedicated to the war effort.

  Scientific advancement also extended to diet. Nutritionists in England, for instance, discovered that Rose hips were “20 times richer in vitamin c—the anti-infective vitamin—than orange juice, now scarce because of the war.” The Ministry of Health initiated a “harvest of the hedgerows . . . to garner 500 tons of the rose fruit to be converted into a tasty health-giving syrup.”5 And scientists in Australia were working to perfect powdered beef and in one instance, a six year old can of powdered meat came out in a perfect condition.

  Dr. Karl Menninger, head of the American Psychoanalytical Association, produced a report explaining that man sought war because it was “a way to gratify subconscious desires to destroy and kill.” Elaborating, Dr. Menninger said, “War appeals to people for the same reasons that the Fascist philosophy appeals to people. It stimulates the wish to exert power over other people, to be aggressive, dominant commanding, possessive.”6

  Science was also unfortunately improving man’s ability to make war in the air, on the high seas, and over land. The American military announced the development of a fantastic new gun that could shoot down “anything that can fly and that is expected to prove a major factor in the war against Hitlerism. ” The announcement was made by Brigadier Gen. G. M. Barnes before a meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in the Hotel Astor in New York City. “Quantity production . . . will begin next month. The new weapon has a caliber of 4.7 inches or 120 millimeters. The characteristics of the gun are a carefully guarded military secret, but General Barnes discussed its history,” reported the New York Times. Barnes elaborated, “Reports from abroad indicate that 90 per cent of the bombing over England and Germany has been carried out at altitudes not exceeding 12,000 feet” and the new gun would be effective “at higher altitudes, using a heavier and more effective projectile.” So as to leave no doubt, Barnes went into even further detail for the benefit of casual readers and not so casual readers such as Nazi and Japanese spies. Then General Barnes turned it over to Colonel L. B. Lent, chief engineer of the National Inventors Council, who “told the meeting that some ‘revolutionary’ new weapons submitted to the council were under test and development and ‘someday soon may be heard from in tones not pleasant to the Axis powers.’”7

  Unfortunately, a 70-ton “flying boat” built for the government by the Glenn L. Martin Co. caught fire and then ran aground in Baltimore harbor while conducting sea and air trials. A propeller flew off and hit the fuselage, causing the mishap, and the plane was badly damaged as other parts of it caught fire. The plane had been named Mars.8

  For the first time in months, Washington was drenched by a really good gully washer, and a strange rainbow shone over the city for a brief time. The temperature on December 5 was unusually warm for the season—it was in the sixties.9

  Because of better sanitation, including treated water and the improved methods of handling sewage and trash, American life spans had rocketed up in just a few short years. At the turn of the century, the average life expectancy for an American was around forty-four years of age, but by 1941, it had gone up to sixty-six years for women and sixty-three years for men.10 And yet, Americans diet was still questionable, as 50 percent of draftees were rejected, mostly due to poor nutrition, which was attributed to substandard household income. A Gallup poll found that four in ten American families were bringing in less that $25 per week and, as such, could not afford enough food. The residents of 12million households went to bed hungry every night.11

  There was still too little work to go around.

  Many eyes were now on Thailand and war seemed to move closer. “To most Americans, Thailand is still Siam. Th
e name conjures pictures of white elephants, temple dancers and pagodas, rather than clashing empires. England declared months ago that Japanese invasion of Thailand would produce immediate collision with the armed forces of the British Crown.” Japan propagandists continued their drumbeat that Thailand was threatened by outside forces. It was much the same argument Hitler made before invading Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Czechoslovakia, declaring he would be subjugating them for their own good.12 The Japanese also claimed the number of troops they were sending into Indochina had been grossly exaggerated and besides, they claimed, Thailand was a Buddhist country and thus anti-Chinese, and they, the Japanese, were there to protect Thailand.13

  Syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann declared, “For the first time, the country is now on the verge of actual, all out war.” Lippmann was the de facto voice of the “reasonable” establishment; his word carried clout. He saw another war coming for America not because of Lend-Lease or because of FDR’s order to naval ships to fight back in the Atlantic, but because a fight with Japan would provoke America into jumping into the whole shooting match. In this, his was a voice both accurate and rare. He excoriated the isolationists and America First Committee for misunderstanding the situation in the Far East while focusing all their arguments on Europe.14 Others saw Lippmann as little more than a shill for the Roosevelt administration when it came to intervention.