December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  The America First Committee began to quickly melt away, as all now previous isolationists, issued statements supporting the war and the president, and denouncing Japan. The group’s inspirational leader, Charles Lindberg, in Chicago—ground zero for the isolationist movement—issued a terse (and some thought) ungracious statement. “We have been stepping closer 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 now turn every effort to building the greatest and most efficient Army, Navy and air force in the world.” The famed aviator then took his family to Martha’s Vineyard and went into seclusion, accepting neither telegrams nor phone calls.171

  The National Committee of the Communist Party, headquartered in New York, also issued a statement supporting the United States.172

  A Christmas charity drive for children sponsored by NBC, the Star newspaper, and the Warner Brothers Theaters was “suspended . . . because of the war.”173 The federal government and military installations went into lockdown mode, and only those carrying special passes could be admitted. National Airport went on a “wartime basis” as “special attention was being paid to anti-sabotage patrol.”174 Attention was also being paid to gas lines, water lines, and electrical plants to guard against sabotage. All across the country, War Emergency Committees and Regional Defense Councils and the like were hurriedly organized.175

  At 11:00 p.m. on December 7, a partial blackout was ordered for Washington, but it looked more like a “dim out” to officials. “Residents—at least some of them—did as they were requested and snapped off lights in their homes or pulled the shades down.” But much of Washington was still brightly lit, from the great chandelier in the White House to the U.S. Capitol.176

  Mrs. Roosevelt, in her weekly Sunday evening radio broadcast, had called on American women to “rise above their fears” and support their sons in the services and help support the morale of their families. “Many of you all over this country have boys in the services who will now be called upon to go into action. You cannot escape a clutch of fear at your heart and yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.”177

  The First Lady told her listeners that she, too, had a son in harm’s way. “I have a boy at sea on a destroyer. For all I know he is on his way to the Pacific.” Mistakenly, she also said that the president had been meeting with the Japanese diplomats at the very time when Japan was attacking. In closing, she said, “To the young people of this nation I must speak tonight. You are going to have a great opportunity—there will be high moments in which your strength and your ability will be tested. I have faith in you! Just as though I were standing upon a rock, and that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens.”178

  General Motors declared it was putting all its plants on “full war status.”179 The United Brotherhoods of Welders, Cutters and Helpers—which had scheduled a nationwide strike for the following week—called it off.180 The War Department issued orders to defense contractors that workers in those plants “be required to work as many additional hours as is necessary to get the day’s work done. Additional overtime work and second and third shifts must be arranged. Our production must be put on a 24-hour-a-day basis.”181 The War Department also ordered all defense plants to take steps to ensure that sabotage did not befall them.

  Soon, there would be plenty of work for all Americans. Pearl Harbor was the final nail in the coffin of the Great Depression; shortly, the problem wouldn’t be creating enough work—it would be finding enough workers.

  In Abilene, Texas, “the only Japanese soldier in the 45th Division was a prisoner in the Camp Barkeley stockade today. He is doing six months at hard labor for desertion. Headquarters said he refused to tell a court martial where he had been during two months absence.”182 In Panama and Alaska, and at a military installment in Sacramento, blackouts were ordered. Antisubmarine netting was spread across the San Diego harbor.183 Over one hundred Japanese civilians were picked up in the Canal Zone, in part because the canal was an inviting target for sabotage. The Japanese minister demanded their release, but it fell on deaf ears.184

  The naval base at Puget Sound announced it would shoot down any plane flying overhead. All private aviation was canceled in the United States by the Civil Aeronautics Authority and licenses were suspended. Only commercial and military planes were allowed aloft.185 Fishing boats in San Francisco harbor were ordered to stay at anchor, and the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge were turned off. On the Bay Bridge, cars were allowed to pass except those containing Japanese. These were stopped and questioned. The new water aqueduct in Los Angeles was put under guard. Cargo ships in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other West Coast harbors were “bottled up.”186

  The downtown area of the city was clogged with traffic, but citizens were warned to stay at home. “Then came a reaction as truly American as apple pie.” The word on the street was, “They started it—we’ll finish it!”187 Four thousand antiaircraft troops were deployed around the city, and the navy ordered a blackout of the harbors at Long Beach, San Pedro, and Wilmington. The city also ordered the darkening of street lights188 and . . . airfields landing lights were turned off. “Black-outs, wild rumors of ‘approaching aircraft’’’189

  Reeves Field was closed around 11:30 a.m. on the seventh “as word of the attack on Honolulu was received. Gates to the field were closed, all leaves were cancelled, all visitors were banned and those within the gates were subject to questioning before they were permitted to depart.”190

  A national call was issued for volunteer amateur radio operators and airplane spotters. The first request the government made of the ham radio operators was to switch off their crystal sets to clear the airwaves so Washington officials could better monitor enemy transmissions from inside the United States.191

  The real story of the events in Washington, Tokyo, and the Pacific were only beginning to emerge by December 8 and would not be entirely unraveled for some time. In short, the Japanese military attacked unarmed civilians and unprepared and unaware military outposts without first declaring war. The time in Washington was 1:05 p.m.

  Secretary of State Cordell Hull had been in conferences Sunday morning with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Secretary of War Henry Stimson for three hours, beginning at 9:45 a.m. At 1:00 p.m., Japanese ambassador Nomura requested an immediate appointment with Hull.192 The fourteenth part of the long message from Tokyo had arrived and it concluded, “The Japanese government regrets to have to notify hereby the American government that in view of the attitude of the American government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.”193 It could be interpreted many ways, and only one as a declaration of war. Countries had broken off negotiations in the past, had withdrawn envoys, all without going to war.

  The meeting was set for 1:45, but Nomura and fellow diplomat Kurusu were fifteen minutes late. They then cooled their heels in Hull’s outer office for another fifteen minutes. The meeting started at 2:15 and lasted only ten minutes. The pair presented an ultimatum from their government.194 Just before meeting with Nomura and Kurusu, Hull learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor in a startling phone conversation with the president.195 The meeting, suffice it to say, was short and unpleasant. Time magazine said the statement they’d delivered was “an incredible farrago of self-justification and abuse.”196

  The Japanese envoys departed, curiously photographed smiling, while surrounded by dozens of scowling reporters and photographers,197 though it was not clear the diplomats knew that their country had attacked America. These photos became infamous, further inflaming the already inflamed American populace. Most people didn’t follow the diplomatic interplay between the two countries, t
he boycotts, the invasions, or the subtle and not so subtle military moves. Then came a declaration by the emperor of Japan, Hirohito, which was picked up, translated, and then broadcast by NBC radio. Surprising no one, Hirohito told his listeners, “We by the grace of Heaven, Emperor of Japan and seated on the throne of a line unbroken for ages eternal, enjoin upon thee, our loyal and brave subjects. We hereby declare war upon the United States of America and the British Empire.”198 From there, Hirohito made his case against America and England while crafting essentially a “pep talk” for the Japanese people. Servicemen—many of them sailors—teemed Times Square and other city gathering places where they read newspapers, some anxious to go to war with Japan. “‘We can whip them in no time,’ was a common remark sailors made.”199 Of course, none of these young men had ever been to war, nor did they realize the Japanese population had been making sacrifices since the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and the Japanese troops were battle-hardened from that incursion as well as the invasion of China in 1937.

  The Japanese had, by best estimates, somewhere between three and five thousand fighter planes and sixty-six divisions or 1.8 million men in uniform, not including the twenty divisions occupying Eastern China as well as others in Indochina, Formosa, and other locales. Also, “the Japanese fleet [was the] world’s third largest,” consisting of “eleven capital ships with [others] nearly ready; eight or nine aircraft carriers plus three carriers converted from merchantmen; forty-four to forty-six cruisers . . . about 126 destroyers and sixty-nine or seventy submarines, some of them large craft of long range probably now operating in the Eastern Pacific.”200 The Japanese had a hell of a fighting force and no one was going to “whip them in no time.”

  Most Americans could not find Pearl Harbor on a map before December 7, 1941. One congressman lamented that Pearl Harbor should have been put in the middle of the United States rather than the middle of the Pacific. The Washington Post made reference to “Bickam Field,”201 while the New York Times called it “Hickman.”202 It was Hickam Field.

  But Americans did understand fair play and playing by the rules. Fair play was ingrained in Americans, as was American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. Editorials across the nation freely used the adjectives “sordid,” “deceitful,” “consummate duplicity,” “perfidy,” “treachery,” “unscrupulous,” and others far worse.

  All made it abundantly clear to their infuriated readers that Japan had declared war after attacking America. While most of the immediate information coming out of the White House was inaccurate, their initial estimate of the dead in Hawaii, three thousand was fairly correct.203 None of the names of the American ships hit by the Japanese were released by official sources.

  Roosevelt—at least outwardly—took the crisis in stride. “Deadly calm” was how Eleanor Roosevelt described him. “He was completely calm. His reaction to any event was always to be calm. If it was something that was bad, he just became almost like an iceberg, and then there was never the slightest emotion that was allowed to show.”204 Secretary Morgenthau suggested more protection for FDR, but he balked. “You’ve doubled the [White House] guard,” said the president. “That’s all you need.”205

  Editorially, every paper in the country called for American victory and denounced the Japanese in the harshest and sometimes most personal terms. The Los Angeles Times called the Japanese a “mad dog . . . a gangster’s parody.” The Philadelphia Inquirer called them “war-mad.” The St. Louis Globe Democrat accused Tokyo of “international rapine.”206

  A palpable rage against the Japanese was everywhere. “Let the Japanese Ambassador go back to his masters and tell them that the United States answers Japan’s challenge with steel-throated cannon and a sharp sword of retribution. We shall repay this dastardly treachery with multiplied bombs from the air and heaviest and accurate shells from the sea.” The author of this “bombastic” statement was seventy-four-year-old Tom Connally of Texas, a member of that deliberative body known as the United States Senate.207

  American boys had grown up playing cowboy, and the rule was you didn’t shoot anyone in the back, even an Indian. Boys did not sucker punch other boys. You gave your opponent a chance to defend himself. American girls had grown up learning good manners and the rules of life. Dirty play and breaking the rules was frowned upon. Chivalry and good manners reigned in American culture in 1941. Men held doors for ladies. Ladies acted like ladies. Men and women abided by the rules of courtship and life. It was the America way. Now, Americans were storming mad. “We’ll mop them up,” said one. Another said, “I’ve got a brother somewhere on the Pacific. . . . I just hope he gets three or four of those yellow rats.” Yet another said, “Now we’ve got to go get those yellow rice eaters.” Mrs. A.V. B. Gilbert of Clifton Road in Atlanta said, “The Japanese are despicable people.” Barney Oakes, a salesman said, “The Japs will find those were expensive warships they sank.”208 American public opinion was uniformly anti-Japanese, to say the least, and some of it quite ugly.

  The Japanese had not played by the rules. They had assaulted America without provocation, without declaring war. They had deceitfully attacked America on a Sunday, and in 1941, America was for all intents and purposes a Christian country.

  The lead editorial of the Los Angeles Times pulled no punches. “Japan has asked for it. Now she is going to get it.”209

  CHAPTER 9

  THE NINTH OF DECEMBER

  “New York Has Two Air Raid Alarms;

  Planes Reported Near”

  Birmingham News

  “Frisco Drives Off Japanese Raiders”

  Boston Globe

  “Pacific Battle Widens; Manila Area Bombed”

  New York Times

  “More Planes Off Frisco, New Raid Alarm Sounded”

  Sun

  Two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was in a panic.

  A war that had been oceans away now appeared to be on the country’s doorstep. News stories raced across the United States of more imminent assaults, including on New York.

  “The great metropolitan area of New York City was put on an air-raid alert twice within an hour shortly after noon Tuesday amid varying unconfirmed reports of an imminent attack by hostile planes,” ran the Associated Press wire. “The vast stretch of Long Island from the city to Montauk Point also braced itself for the reported possible attack. A million school children in New York and thousands on Long Island were sent home. Army planes took to the air after the first alarm was sounded. . . . We have information that a squadron of planes is headed toward Long Island. Make all necessary preparations, if identified as enemy planes,” heard police patrolmen on their car radios.1

  No one seemed to know where the reports of the unidentified planes came from. Citizens were confused, not knowing what the sirens were for, and others claimed they didn’t hear the sirens. But this did not stop city fathers from going into a full-fright lockdown. Many New Yorkers, however, took it in stride, ignoring the air-raid sirens, going about their business. In Times Square, people took a decidedly “so what?” attitude. It was much the same in Brooklyn, Queens, and Harlem.2

  A policeman boarded a bus full of passengers and told them they had to get off and take shelter, but no one moved. Stymied, he said, “What was I to do? Use my gun on them?” A pretzel vendor got into an argument with another police officer who ordered him off the street, but the vendor, with hot wares to sell, won the argument, not budging.3 “Spotters” were looking in the sky, armed with field glasses, looking in vain for enemy fighters. Cops tried to get people off the streets and into shelters, while civil defense volunteers tried to get customers in department stores and restaurants to lie down on the floor.4 “In at least one fashionable East River apartment, women volunteer wardens . . . ran through the building, breaking up early bridge games and rousing late sleepers; soon the halls were filled with women in dressing gowns, with cold cream on their faces.”5

  Military planes at Mitchel Field took off, searching for ene
my planes. Radio beams that planes “rode” into airports were shut off. The New York Times said planes were guarding the city for “air raids,” antiaircraft guns had been deployed, and the police and fire departments were trying to figure out how to efficiently notify the eight hundred schools in the area.6 The paper also published a special feature, “What to Do in an Air Raid.”7 New York City did not have air-raid sirens in any of the five boroughs, so a Rube Goldberg operation involving the sirens on police squad cars and fire engines, in concert, was employed.8

  Unsubstantiated rumors continued to wash all over America. A story opened in the Los Angeles Times, “As battle comes close to the Pacific Coast . . .”9 Boston also went on the alert, thinking it, too, was under imminent attack. The “approach of enemy planes” was heard broadcast over the radio. “New Englanders suddenly were confronted with the possibility that the war was about to burst on them with terrible realism.”10 Sirens in Beantown wailed for over an hour.

  Civilians were barred from the Boston Navy Yard. Area schools were closed and children sent home. The Coast Guard “cancelled all liberty” on reports that enemy planes were headed for Boston.11

  In New York, guardsmen stepped up their patrol of the harbor, on the lookout for “incendiary” bombs.12 The docks were covered with armaments and one well-placed bomb could send the whole thing up. Fourteen thousand workers at the Bethlehem Steel Company at Quincy, Massachusetts, shipyard were sent home. Antiaircraft guns were deployed along the New England coastline.13 Teachers in the Boston schools were reported crying. “Conditions of near-panic were reported in several places . . . [amid] wild rumors that the Japanese were in New York, among other rumors.”14 Cars, headed for Boston, were halted in Cambridge.15