December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  From corner to corner of the country, pledges of fidelity to the war effort came from labor groups, corporations, Filipinos in Los Angeles, “Americans of Korean descent,” and the Japanese-American Citizens League.117 The Japanese diplomats in many of the consulates in the United States were truly astonished at their country’s actions, and many openly questioned their own government. The Japanese Consul General in San Francisco, Joshio Muto, called the attack “unimaginable.”118 Kenji Nakauchi, the general consul in Los Angeles, actually apologized for his country’s actions. “What can I say except that I am quite sorry!” When asked about roundups and internment camps, he said he saw “no reason why thousands of Japanese should be imprisoned.” Nakauchi pointed out that Germans and Italians in Vancouver were not imprisoned when Canada went to war with the Axis powers.119

  Ashamed of his country’s actions, one Japanese national attempted hari-kari by cutting himself with “a pocketknife and with a needle.” Matsuabo Matushita told police, “My country has done wrong attacking the United States of America.” It was reported, “[T]he wounds were slight.”120

  A news report in the Evening Star said, “It is extremely difficult for Americans to distinguish their enemy, the Japanese, from their friends, the Chinese,” according to a Smithsonian anthropologist, Dr. Ales Hrdlicka. Only after a period of time, he said, can Anglos tell the difference by “facial expressions, mannerisms and ways of speech.” He said they, along with Filipinos, “all came from the same Mongoloid stock and have the same general physical characteristics.” Several Chinese in Washington had been embarrassed since the war started by being mistaken for being Japanese. A Chinese reporter arrived at the White House with a note pinned to his lapel that read, “Chinese reporters—not Japanese—please.”121

  In New York, Chinese-Americans received buttons to wear to distinguish them from Japanese nationals. The blue buttons were distributed by the United Chinese Relief and proclaimed, “Thumbs up for China.” It was reported that “many Chinese, mistaken for Japanese, had been mishandled.”122 A full-page ad appeared, sponsored by United China Relief calling for the defeat of Japan. Officials of the organization included Pearl S. Buck, John D. Rockefeller III, David O. Selznick, Wendell L. Willkie, and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt.123

  The FBI seized the offices of Japan’s Consulate General on Fifth Avenue to “begin impounding papers and records.” Morito Morishima, head of the office, was interrogated by the agents and his possessions examined. In those, agents with the “alien and sabotage squads” found “twenty film negatives of scenes in New York and Washington,” including “the Washington monument, bridges in Washington and New York, and the New York skyline . . . and one that appeared to be of a dam or reservoir.”124

  Attorney General Biddle, concerned over the “wholesale arrests” of Japanese aliens, issued a statement saying that only the FBI could make such arrests125 and any suspicion of nefarious activities should be reported to the local FBI office. U.S. attorneys were instructed to pass the message along to state and local authorities to let the FBI handle the Japanese roundup.

  Apparently the FBI had been making lists of Japanese aliens for months.

  Across the country there was an outpouring of volunteers. Dozens of armed men showed up at the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles, reacting to an erroneous radio story that said the Civilian Defense Council asked them to come forward.126 Units of the State Guard were activated, and the Armory in Los Angeles was put under twenty-four-hour guard.127 The Motion Picture Producers Association “made available scores of studio trucks for the detail.”128 New York police were overrun when they put out a call for airplane spotters, and “40,000 civilian observers” went on “24-hour duty” in “13 East Coast States.”129 The acting mayor of New York, Newbold Morris, told listeners they could expect a “‘token visit’ from Axis bombers at any time.”130

  The navy’s intelligence office in Los Angeles was sealed up tighter than a drum, and the uninvited were turned away, albeit politely. But down the hall were the navy’s public relations offices, whose doors were wide open. “Well, after all, there is a difference between the Navy’s intelligence office and its publicity bureaus,” a reporter wryly noted.131 However, with the new flood of enlistees, what the navy needed more than anything else were good typists.

  The navy banned cables to and from Hawaii and the Philippines, and Uncle Sam banned outright the sending of any news whatsoever to Japan, Germany, Italy, and Finland.132 The Service also asked the press to take care in stories given to them by the next of kin about servicemen who had been killed or wounded, or about the location of their current billet. And never were the names of ships to be published in connection with any sailor. “Voluntary censorship” was bandied about, but the government also warned of enforcing the 1918 Espionage Act.133

  State and local agencies swung into service quickly, motivated as much by fear, anger, and disinformation as patriotism. Defense preparations were being organized in every city, town, village, and hamlet of America. Volunteer guards were placed around utilities. Judges and magistrates swore in citizens to pledge to defend America. Police stations were swarmed with volunteers. A volunteer auxiliary police force was forming in Los Angeles, with thirty thousand citizens wanting to sign up.134

  The dome to the state house in Sacramento was blacked out, and all forest lookout stations went on a 24/7 basis.135 The Boulder Dam was also put under twenty-four-hour guard, and Route 93, which crossed over the dam, was closed to traffic.136 New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, head of Washington’s Civil Defense program, issued a six-point program for “civilians in areas subject to possible aerial bombing.” Rule Number One was “Keep Cool. Above all, keep cool. Don’t lose your head.”137 People stopped working to listen to war news, colleges let students out of class to listen to speeches by FDR, and pedestrians gathered around parked cars to listen to the radio. The war was everywhere and was quickly being injected deeply into the body politic of America.

  And yet life went on. Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood gossip columns appeared nationwide, Americans went to movies, went to work, went to church, went on with their lives, albeit with a shadow looming over all people and all activities.

  “There’s a war on!” was a refrain that was only beginning to be heard. Movie theatres began to paint over the upper lights of their marquees in order to lessen the chance of them being seen from the air. People were spending a lot more time looking up in the sky. Women’s silk stockings—“a prized possession this year”—were still available at J.J. Haggarty Department Store in Los Angeles, but this wouldn’t last.138

  Nash was touting their newest car, claiming it would get “25 to 30 miles on a gallon!” and had air conditioning.139 Marriage announcements and marriages and Christmas parties continued. Advice columns, such as “The Gentler Sex” by Malvina Lindsay, informed women readers of “the desperate wife who decides to have an affair because of her husband’s infidelity.”140 It foreshadowed the sea change in sexual attitudes and activity on the home front, when men went off to war and left their wives and girlfriends behind. After the war, when confronted with pregnant wives, many returning GIs never properly did the math and assumed that the babies were theirs.

  Meanwhile, frostbite sailing races were still being held on the Chesapeake, Christmas shopping went on, women still bought fashionable shoes, men bought pipes and trench coats and “snoots” at Macy’s and jewelry for their wives at Garfinckel’s department store, accidents happened involving drivers and pedestrians. The Women’s Pages (later known in the post-war world as “Style” sections) carried new recipes and fashion tips. One advice columnist, Dorothy Dix, admonished her female readers, “Men are slaves to beauty, yet when they marry they pass looks up.”141 Babe Ruth signed a movie deal with Metro-Goldwyn Mayer to appear in a film about his former teammate, Lou Gehrig.142

  Yet there would be a real and tangible and permanent change in America. “Textiles, wool and cotton goods will become scarce,” cited the Wall
Street Journal.143 The paper noted that soon leather would also be in short supply.

  The paper forecast what no one else in journalism had yet. A radical change in America was coming. “War with Japan means industrial revolution in the United States. The American productive machine will be reshaped with but one purpose—to produce the maximum of things needed to defeat the enemy. It will be a brutal process. It implies intense, almost fantastic stimulation for some industries; strict rationing for others; inevitable, complete liquidation for a few.”144

  Americans would also have to learn to do without or with less—or find another source or substitute—of products that had come in from the Far East. “Primarily, these are rubber and tin. Secondarily, there is coconut oil, tungsten, chromium, copra, tung oil, palm oil, manila hemp, jute, graphite. Sugar too.145 Civilian use of Copper, Lead, Zinc and other vital metals to disappear.”146 The nonmilitary use of copper, as an example, was prohibited or severely curtailed for “building supplies and hardware, house furnishings and equipment: dress accessories: jewelry, gifts and novelties: burial equipment: automotive, trailer and tractor equipment, and a miscellaneous list which runs from fire-fighting apparatus, toys, beauty parlor equipment, barber shop supplies, bicycles, chimes, bells, keys, and a host of other items.” Five hundred and fifty thousand tons of copper would be needed for shell casings and cartridges in 1942.147

  Chrome would also shortly be curtailed. It was used for automobile bumpers, bun warmers, toasters, coffee thermoses, irons, and had dozens of other nonmilitary applications. Welders, who had threatened a strike, now called for burning their American Federation of Labor membership cards.148

  American housewives tossed in the sponge when told there would be a severe curtailment of sponges. Not only would the war cause disruption in supply, but a blight in the Atlantic had wiped out whole beds. Back then, sponges were not made synthetically.

  During the American embargo of Japan, the administration had decided not to include oil, as the country was wholly dependent upon oil imports from the United States and cutting it off might cause too much shock to the Japanese economy. All bets were off now, on that score, but no matter. Because of frugal policies, Japan had a stockpile, according to estimates, of up to a two-years’ supply of the precious liquid.149

  The shipping schedules for commercial ships were radically changed to suit the new priorities. First, they would no longer be published in the newspapers. Second, the war effort took priority. Also, because of the war conditions in the South Pacific, it would take twice as long for merchant ships to traverse the distance due to the presence of Japanese submarines. Also, the military expected a 50 percent reduction in the transport of nonmilitary items.150 The government announced “secret plans” to secure defense factories from saboteurs under the Plant Protective Service.151 Aviation fuel took a front seat to refined gas for the civilian population. Because of the high performance nature of aircraft engines, they required additional lead in the gas to prevent what could be dangerous engine knocking, which meant the American car driver could look forward to their engines knocking for the duration of the emergency.

  The industrial might of America had been ramping up for the past year, due to Lend-Lease, but now it would be turned up several more notches. A beneficiary of American generosity was the Free French government led by Charles de Gaulle, which a day after everyone else declared war on Japan.152

  Yet there was a spiritual change to the country as well. “The tentacles of a great crisis are reaching down into the hearts and minds of all the people. And the full measure of the impacts upon the nation can be determined only with realization that a great international crisis has come to force readjustments in the lives and thoughts of all individuals.”153

  The attack changed American attitudes and outlooks forever. Since the end of the Great War, America had become an increasing isolationist country, and it was reflected in her policies of high tariffs and tight immigration policies, as well as the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. Americans told themselves that they were protected by two great oceans and nothing could ever befall their homeland. Columnist Walter Lippmann called the image of us sitting comfortably isolated and protected by the oceans a “deadly delusion.”154

  The war in Europe often seemed very far away, with little impact on the daily lives of American citizens. But now, there was a new unity in the land not seen in its history. The factionalism that had been a hallmark of Americanism had dissipated. “Behind this determination stand not alone the members of our government. Behind it, dedicated with them to the extirpation of the counterpart in the Pacific of the criminal architects of ruin, pillage and slaughter in Europe, stand a people united as never before.”155

  It was war. “This is the World War in the complete and literal meaning of the words—a war which can end only in our victory or in our defeat.”156

  Deep in some newspapers of America it was reported that German embassy officials in Washington were burning papers as “bits of charred paper floated down” to the street. A truck arrived to deliver brown wrapping paper. A “society reporter” visited the embassy, and the charge d’affaires, Hans Thomsen, said, “Have you come to say goodbye?” To which she replied, “Well, have I?” Thomsen demurred, only saying it was “a little premature.”157

  In Berlin, an official of the Third Reich told the Associated Press that his country was preparing to issue a “clarifying statement” on the war between the United States and the empire of Japan.158 The spokesman said America had been the aggressor in the Pacific, and according to the terms of the Tri-Partite Pact, Germany and Italy were duty bound to come to the assistance of their ally. Secretary of State Cordell Hull jumped into the fray and said he, too, had heard rumors that Germany was about to declare war on America.159 The White House announced that FDR was going to address not only the Pacific but Europe in his radio broadcast, including a “Nazi pattern.” Elaborating, the Washington Evening Star reported, “There was a strong implication . . . that Mr. Roosevelt’s words tonight will be virtually a declaration of war against Nazi Germany.”160

  And then a reporter for NBC, David Anderson in Stockholm, broadcast a story in which he “predicted” Germany would declare war on the United States “within a few hours.”161 He elaborated, saying that American embassy officials in Berlin were already evacuating. And unconfirmed reports said a meeting was planned the next day in the Reichstag. A performance in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin was canceled because this was where the Reichstag met.162

  CHAPTER 10

  THE TENTH OF DECEMBER

  “US Warships in Battle Off Manila, Berlin Says”

  Sun

  “Roosevelt Sees a Long, World-Wide War;

  Japanese Invade Luzon, Fight in Manila;

  2 Big British Warships Sunk, Tokyo Says”

  New York Times

  “Japs Sink Two British Dreadnaughts”

  Birmingham News

  Franklin Roosevelt appeared in good spirits and good health to the reporters who filed into the Oval Office. FDR was dressed in a grey suit, white shirt, black tie, and black armband for his mother, Sara, who’d died the previous September. “He was smoking a cigarete [sic] in an ivory holder . . . and he chatted smilingly with correspondents.”1 “He looks fine,” one reporter whispered to another and it was noted “there were no haggard lines in his face. His color was good. There was about him a calm confidence.” Another was heard to say, “He thrives on activity—and he has plenty of it now.”2

  He’d been confined to a wheelchair for years, only occasionally using the painful leg braces when in public. In all of his years in the presidency, he’d only been photographed in the wheelchair maybe three times. Secret Service men routinely confiscated photographs and negatives, and the White House press corps was in on the cover-up, berating new members not to photograph the crippled and confined president.3

  The security around FDR had increased appreciably, as reporters were asked repeatedly to show their press
credentials before being allowed into the briefing with the president.4 Yet by that evening during a long radio broadcast, the wear and burden of the war and the long day showed in his face. The stress of the war years with its never-ending long days and long nights, combined with his endless smoking of Camel cigarettes, contributed mightily to FDR’s decline in health. Several years into the war, a young reporter assigned to the White House beat was appalled during his first day on the job when he realized the haggard, sallow-skinned decrepit man sitting before him was the president of the United States.5

  But at the dawn of the war, and flexing his new powers, FDR issued a proclamation saying that “all alien enemies are enjoined to preserve the peace . . . and to refrain from crime against the public safety and from violating the laws . . . and to refrain from actual hostility or giving aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States.” It was also noted that “violators [would] be interned.”6 Japanese subjects were prohibited from leaving Hawaii, and local military commanders in the battle zones were given wide latitude to imprison those they deemed a threat.7 Nationals from all three countries who were in America were “liable” as far as the government was concerned, especially Japanese because “an invasion had been perpetrated upon the territory of the United States by the Empire of Japan.”8

  The edict put a halt to the process for nearly 500,000 Japanese, German, and Italians wanting to live or stay in the United States. J. Edgar Hoover was keeping FDR apprised of the FBI’s efforts, via Maj. Gen. Edwin M. Watson. “I thought it might be of interest to the President and you to have the inclosed [sic] charts before you, which show the number of Japanese, German and Italian aliens taken into custody by the FBI as of December 9. This gives the exact location of the number apprehended and places at which they were apprehended.” The memo was accompanied by a detailed chart of the forty-eight states, denoting pickups.9