The nation’s capital was expanding its scope and realm of inquiry. “The Department of Justice turned its attention today to disloyal Americans,” which the Boston Evening Globe referred to as “potential Benedict Arnolds.”105 The Los Angeles Times called them “quislings.”106
The notion of Nazi spies let loose in America became a preoccupation of not just the FBI but also of popular culture. This was epitomized by the release of the farcical, “You Nazty Spy!”, a Three Stooges short subject film, produced by Columbia Pictures in January 1941, in which the hapless ringleader Moe Howard actually performed an astonishingly realistic imitation of the führer. As far as these three Jewish former vaudevillians were concerned, satire was the best way to answer the absurdities of Nazism.
Now that war was official, the movie moguls in Hollywood—the vast majority of them Jewish—eagerly embraced what they saw as their patriotic duty and shed any inhibitions they may have had about taking on Germany. These immigrants (mostly from poor provinces in Russia) also saw the war effort as their golden opportunity to prove their bona fides as assimilated American citizens. Americans were about to be inundated with a sea of flag-waving, patriotic celluloid, much of it stridently propagandistic.
The phrase “Fifth Columnists” kept coming up in news dispatches. The expression had its roots in the Spanish Civil War and referred to subversive elements inside a country who were working with outside agitators or revolutionaries. The worry in America was that Fifth Columnists were working clandestinely to help the Axis Powers through sabotage and subversion. But Biddle said that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had assured him there were no Fifth Columnists operating in the United States.107 Yet in Miami, officials discovered a train trestle wired to explode with dynamite, its wires and batteries set to detonate.
The Justice Department contradicted itself and said that no lawful American could be arrested, though for what it was not specific.108 It also decided to suspend the naturalization citizenship of over 450,000 Japanese, Germans, and Italians born in America.109
Tensions mounted in the country, and sometimes it seemed as if everyone was a suspect. Brush fires on the coast of Washington State were suspected by local police to be signal fires for approaching planes. “The fires were in the form of arrows” pointing to a naval base and Seattle.110
No one was yet using the word “paranoia” in describing Americans after December 7. After all they’d gone through in just a scant several days, their skittishness was understandable. The Navy Department announced it had mined the New York Harbor and warned commercial vessels to take care while approaching and departing the port.111 It also announced that due to the constrictions of war, fallen sailors and marines would be temporarily buried “where they died . . . They will be buried with full military honors.”112
The nation’s capital was just as skittish. In addition to armed navy guards posted at all federal buildings, machine-gun nests went up around town as well, including on the Memorial Bridge, which connected the town to Arlington National Cemetery and Virginia. Civil-defense units were organized in all cities, big and small, all locales nationwide.113 In Atlanta, “Immediate organization of an Atlanta Emergency Defense Corps, dedicated solely to the protection of the lives and properties of Atlantans” was urgently reported by the Atlanta Constitution.114 To answer the propaganda campaigns being ginned up by Tokyo and Berlin, it was urged “that men trained in public relations and publicity work [could] constitute a counter-force against subversive propaganda.”115
Though under martial law, military and civilian officials were incrementally loosening things in Hawaii. Stores had begun to open, and though the naval facilities of Ford Island and Hickam Field were smoldering still, there was only light damage to civilian areas. A phone call was even allowed from a man on the islands to his brother in California, but it was closely monitored by navy censors. “He was given permission to talk to his brother on condition that nothing was said about the weather, military conditions on the island, cables, letters, or the war in general.”116
Following the scares of two days earlier, newspapers began publishing guidelines for the dos and don’ts of civilian defense. Helpful tips included “Don’t believe or spread rumors . . . Don’t mention air raids in the presence of small children . . . Don’t rush into the street if an air raid should come.”117 A columnist for Baltimore’s The Sun told readers, “Fear is one of the most contagious of diseases, and the individual should remember that, if he breaks down, the man next to him is very likely to follow suit.”118
Other news stories contained helpful suggestions on “How to Teach Yourself to See Better in Blackouts.” “Blackout seeing is practically the reverse of daylight seeing. It is done not only with a different part of the eye—but with a different and special set of nerve endings.”119 It was urged that children’s energies be focused on “knitting and dishwashing.”120 And, “Don’t expect all news to be good. We are at war. Mistakes and accidents are inevitable, some battles may be lost.” At this point and for some time, all American military battles would be lost.121
Only four days into a great new world war, America was losing. Terribly.
So it was well-received news when the songwriters of America began churning out quickie songs to boost the national morale. “Tin Pan Alley’s batteries, featuring saxophone and fiddle rather than bugle and drum, are ready to open fire on Japan.” The papers reported that thousands of songwriters were flooding the offices of song publishers with tunes like, “You’re a Sap, Mr. Jap” and “The Jap Won’t Have a Chinaman’s Chance” and “Good Bye Mama, We’ll See You in Yokohama.” The president of Broadcast Music, Inc., which put out the call, was Sam Lerner, who had a slightly more famous brother, Jay.122
Anti-Japanese sentiment was manifesting itself in other ways as well. The annual Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington was changed instead to the “Oriental Cherry Blossom Festival.” Vandals also cut down four Japanese cherry trees, originally planted in 1912 as a gift from Tokyo, along the Tidal Basin in the nation’s capital. Inscribed on the trees was “To Hell with the Japanese.”123 Two of the destroyed trees had been planted when Mrs. William Howard Taft attended the ceremonies commemorating the gift. When FDR ordered the building of the Jefferson Memorial in 1939, some outraged Washington women chained themselves to the trees one cold morning because some would have to be bulldozed before the memorial could be built. An enterprising government staffer took steaming pots of coffee to the tree huggers, who drank the proffered liquid happily and excessively. The staffer then waited for nature to take its course at which time the bulldozers moved in.124
Department stores across America were taking Japanese products off their shelves, “some of which were destroyed and the remainder placed in storage. Some merchants were rebuked by patrons for displaying ‘Japanese’ goods, which were, however, Chinese, as proved by the ‘Made in China’ label. Dance bands were not playing ‘Japanese Sandman.’ At the Freer Gallery of Art, Nipponese paintings, sculptures, and representations were removed. The gallery had been “world famous for its Oriental collection.”125
G.C. Murphy, a national chain of five-and-dime stores, was one of the first to remove all their goods manufactured in Japan. At another, Woolworth’s, a clerk laughed about burning up a Santa Claus made in Japan.126
Other welcome news that helped distract Americans was that Hollywood was continuing to churn out flicks. Walt Disney, a genius and true American original who had invented the color cartoon and feature-length cartoon, had just released Dumbo when his studio was commandeered by the military on December 8. (It was adjacent to the vital Lockheed air plant, and his site was needed as a primary defense station.) He halted most other work at his studio to finish his next feature-length cartoon Bambi before accepting a commission from the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics to make twenty animated training films. These were the first in a flood of Disney films in aid of the war effort (both live-action and cartoons).127
Greta Garbo a
nd Melvin Douglas were starring in a new racy comedy, Two-Faced Woman (it proved to be a flop and Garbo’s last movie),128 and gossip columnists spotted Walter Pidgeon, Richard Ney, and Greer Garson taking a respite from the filming of their new British wartime movie, Mrs. Miniver.129
Baseball legend Babe Ruth was headed to Hollywood “to play in the Lou Gehrig picture [Pride of the Yankees]. It will be an enriching experience, no doubt,” said the Bambino.130 A new comedy was released, Look Who’s Laughing, starring Edger Bergen, the famed ventriloquist and actor, and popular comedic actress Lucille Ball. Millions of Americans went to the movies each week to see cartoons, serials, newsreels, and feature presentations—in 1941, the greatest source of popular visual entertainment.
But these distractions did not negate the horrific reality unfolding across the globe. After announcing their “death pact,” the three Axis allies strengthened their agreement by also announcing a “no separate pledge.” In essence, “the agreement bound them not only to make war indissolubly together, but also to make peace after it in a common front.”131 FDR also made a pact, but with Chiang Kai-shek and his forces in China battling the occupying army of Japan. He told the generalissimo they had a “common enemy.”132
The speculation that German planes had been used at Manila and in other battle zones was regularly dispelled now as experts began asking rational questions, including how the planes would have gotten to the Far East anyway, what with the British naval blockade and the very remote possibility they had been flown all the way from Germany to Japan. It was established shortly thereafter that no German planes or pilots had participated in any battle in the Pacific, nor had four-engine bombers been used at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. The Germans weren’t needed, as the Japanese seemed to be doing a thorough job all by themselves.
Manila, Luzon, and other parts of the Philippines were under sustained and numbing attack by round-the-clock Japanese bombing, despite the whistling-past-the-graveyard talk of “Dugout Doug” MacArthur.
The psyche of the country was badly battered. Since the morning of the seventh, all the news had been dire, except Roosevelt’s spectacular declaration of war against Japan. The daily reports of Nazi gains, of British losses, of false alarms, of casualty reports, of rumors, innuendo, gossip, indecision, inaction, roundups, cancellations, and detentions, were wearing down a population that had been battered for over a decade since the onslaught of the Great Depression.
At the end of 1941, just when—for the first time since 1929, unemployment had dipped below 10 percent,133 when war seemed a faraway proposition and when America had two oceans to protect her—an unwanted war had overrun the country. Now, even the White House was undergoing evening blackouts, and plans were made to move the original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution from display in the Library of Congress to a secure location in Maryland. The documents creating the very foundation of the government were put in hiding, as officials feared their destruction by bombs or saboteurs.134 Hiding one’s government was not cheery news. Mrs. Roosevelt hated the wartime precautions utilized in the White House, especially the long and dour blackout drapes.135
Apartment buildings on the East and West Coast were organizing their basements as bomb shelters, complete with stocked food and toys for children. The Seventh Wonder of the Modern World, the Panama Canal, was closed each evening.136 Preparations were going forward for the construction of bomb shelters in the greater Los Angeles area. One proposal was for shelters to be no more than 300 feet apart from each other.137 Yet another air-raid warning struck terror into Southern California. At night, unidentified planes flew over the entire coast was blacked out, and radio stations went off the air after announcing the raid. “Anti-aircraft and machine gunners scrambled to their weapons at Ft. MacArthur, which was promptly placed on an ‘alert’ basis.”138 The planes went unidentified and no bombs fell.139
During the state-wide blackout, car accidents were reported, and several drivers were killed as a result. Airplanes headed for Los Angeles were diverted to other cities, as the radio beam at the airport had been turned off. The fact that a noisy electrical storm happened along at precisely the wrong time did not help Southern Californians’ jittery nerves.140 New York had experienced three false air-raid warnings in just a couple of days, including one during rush hour on the morning of the tenth.141 The city was still trying to clean up the mess and the confusion, even as hotels in the five boroughs were making their own plans for air raids.142
Across the country, Americans were asked to stay off the telephone line, so as to not tax the phone system. Far more stringent sacrifices and huge mistakes would follow shortly. Government officials in New England sheepishly announced that they had frankly botched the faux air-raid alert of several days earlier.143 Citizen confidence in government was waning in some quarters.
The news of the war and the incompetence of America would get worse, much worse, before it got better.
CHAPTER 12
THE TWELFTH OF DECEMBER
Army Death List from Hawaii
Reaches 155, Still Incomplete
The Evening Star
Knox in Honolulu
The Atlanta Constitution
Plan Bared for Mobilizing Men, Women
The Boston Daily Globe
These early days of the war were among the very worst. As of the twelfth, Wake Island was still holding on—but just barely—and in a press conference, FDR praised the beleaguered marine garrison fighting there. The British conceded that operations were not going well in the Malaya-Thailand sector and that the Japanese “had dented British defense lines in the jungles. . . . Heavy fighting continued.”1 Hong Kong was closer to being occupied by Japanese troops, who were also coming ashore on the Philippine main island of Luzon, where most of the commerce and population were located. The Japanese claimed they had destroyed over two hundred Americans planes, the vast majority still on the ground. Also, “The Japanese attacked Olongapo, 50 miles west of Manila, one of the most important naval installations in the Philippines [and] the province of Batangas and Clark Field, 40 miles north of Manila.”2
Some unconfirmed reports said Japanese pilots were flying their planes into American targets, and Admiral Thomas Hart, commander-in-chief of the Asiatic Fleet, said the Japanese inflicted “very great damage. There was a considerable loss of life, more among the civilians in the city of Cavite than among the naval personnel.”3 Whereas General MacArthur was confident, Hart could only muster a languid, “We shall do our best” statement.4 For his part, Winston Churchill more confidently told Parliament, “We are all in this. Not only the British Empire now, but the United States are fighting for life. 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 1000 years.”5 Churchill for his part had been jubilant about the Japanese attack on America. “Churchill regarded the Japanese attack as Britain’s salvation. He recalled in his memoirs the emotion he felt at hearing the news: ‘We had won the war . . . ”6
The night of the seventh, he was having a depressing dinner with Averill Harriman and American ambassador John Winant. A butler brought in a small radio, and Churchill fiddled with the dials, finally getting it turned on. When he heard the report, Churchill immediately called FDR via the transatlantic line. “What’s this about Japan?” Roosevelt confirmed that Japan and America were now at war: ‘We are all in the same boat now,” FDR told the British prime minister.7
As of the twelfth, the Russians had still not decided if they would declare war on Japan. Joseph Stalin was locked in a fight to the death with Germany along a 1,800-mile front and was terrified that if he declared war on the Japanese, they would invade Siberia, opening a two-front war. The German offensive, Operation Barbarossa, involved 4.5 million German soldiers,8 and Russia needed all the men they had in uniform to stave off the assault. Russia could barely muster the forces to withstand the German invasion, so it was open to question whether Rus
sia could even send troops to meet the Japanese. As of December 1941, the outcome of the German offensive was still uncertain, and the smart money was on Hitler’s army. However, it did appear as if Germany had slowed for the winter, unable to continue its assault because of the brutal Russian cold. But the army of the Third Reich remained in place, hunkered down, with Moscow still in sight.
Out of the midst of the war gloom was some somberly and disquietingly good news with the announcement of the first American hero of the “New War.”9 Captain Colin P. Kelly Jr. had been the pilot of the plane that had sunk the Japanese battleship Haruna, and his name had been released for radio and newspaper reports. Kelly’s type of aircraft was unidentified in news reports as was the cause of his death, but it was made known he had scored “three direct hits on the Japanese capital ship.”10 Kelly’s tragic heroics were a bit of good news in the morass of the unremitting bad reports and bulletins going around in America. But in this, the first naval battle between America’s forces and the Japanese, other ships had slipped away, avoiding greater losses for the enemy. In addition to everything else, luck seemed to be on Tokyo’s side.
Another little bit of heroic news was the report of the Pan Am Clipper that had escaped Guam, shot up by the imperial navy, but had managed to limp back to San Francisco with the passengers—all employees of the airline who had been stationed on the island—safe and unharmed. It was a story of great courage involving the pilot, who had to engage in some fancy flying to escape the war zone. Left behind at Guam were hundreds of civilians, though, as well as a handful of U.S Marines.11
Interestingly, commercial flights by Pan Am continued in the Pacific, although along new routes and with new passengers: military men. “No commercial passengers or private materials are accepted for the time being on the Pacific,” the air service company said, although flights for private citizens would continue along the east and west coasts of the United States.12
December 1941 Page 30