The sad realization of another world war was beginning to settle in. Americans were stoic and resolved though, even as they were facing the unknown. President Roosevelt proclaimed, “The eleventh of December, 1941, will be recorded in history as the date marking the formal beginning of the Great War to preserve this world as a living space for free men. For Americans, there is a certain measure of comfort to be derived from the fact that we are formally at war . . . At long last we know where we stand and we know what has to be done.”13 Before the eleventh, America had only been at war with Japan, and it was still a matter of consternation for many Americans whether their country should get into the European war. The surprise declaration of war by Germany and Italy committed America to a wholly different kind of war, a completely “undiscovered country” of death and destruction.
Only days into the new world war, very few in America really knew yet what would have to be done, the sacrifices that would have to be made, the carnage and slaughter of millions of civilians by the Axis Powers, the untold millions of deaths of young men in uniform on both sides, and how this war would change the world—and their nation—for all time.
America’s fighting men had already died in wartime since the attack on the seventh, and many more would die in the days, months, and years ahead in war zones around the world; but thousands of fighting men also died in accidents right here in America, and not a day went by that did not include bulletins of military airplanes crashing in Norfolk, Miami, and Texas, or accidental drownings or accidental shootings in and around the other hundreds of military installations. So many domestic military plane crashes occurred that guidelines were issued instructing civilians on how to help downed pilots escape from the craft and their harnesses. The sacrifice of these service men who were stateside was no less than those of their brothers in harm’s way across the rest of the world.
Everybody was coming to understand the rationale behind the Japanese attacks. It was not insanity. The scheme was a blending of their own philosophy of attack first then declare war later. The goal, by utilizing the Nazi blitzkrieg—lightning war—had been a quick decapitation of the American military in the Far East with the hope that Washington, left virtually defenseless to an invasion of the West Coast, would sue for peace. Then the empire of Japan would have the entire western Pacific to itself, with its weak governments and rich natural resources.
Some Americans were also coming to recognize that the arrogance and braggadocio of the American Navy before December 7—that the U.S. Navy was superior to that of the Japanese—had been a myth. “The sea power of the United States and the sea power of Britain were inferior to Japanese sea power in the Pacific last week; they are still inferior, though even more so, today.”14
The fact that many ships in the spring of 1941 had been repositioned to the Atlantic had further weakened the American naval presence in the Pacific. “The attack on Hawaii was a serious military defeat, bordering on a disaster. For a nation of less strength, it might have been an irretrievable disaster. This blunt fact cannot be concealed, even though full details have not been made, public, for obvious military reasons.”15
It had been five days since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Americans still had few hard details of the attack, but they had heard rumors of additional attacks there. No photographs of the aftermath appeared in the nation’s publications.
Other than the names of the battleships West Virginia and Oklahoma, which had appeared in early stories, no subsequent bulletin contained any details about the damage done at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. “There probably is good reason for suppressing temporarily the Pearl Harbor statistics, since the Japanese can only guess at what damage they did—until they have time to hear from their spy system in the islands. But the whole story should be told reasonably soon,” opined the Los Angeles Times.16
After being picked up in the shark-infested waters of the China Sea, war correspondent Cecil Brown filed a harrowing story of the head-shaking loss of the British ship Repulse.17 “In [a] float, a young midshipman, with a hole in his side big enough to put a fist in sat silently, clenching his teeth. Some men had the skin scalded from their backs, but made no complaint.”18
Japanese planes had first set the ship aflame, and then, like sharks smelling blood in the water, more planes swooped down. The ease with which the Japanese had sunk the giant battlewagon only added to the sense of vulnerability all Americans felt. Allies were also taken aback at the ferocity at which the enemy soldier waged war. Japanese society, with its emphasis on consensus, had subsumed the needs of the individual. Dying for the greater good of the group was honorable. This social value was the product of centuries of feudal warfare; after a long tradition of devastating civil war and the Way of the Shogun, the small and crowded island nation of Japan had learned to survive by placing great value on social peace and the sublimation of egoism. “They die with the same fervor in battle as the Mohammedan. . . . This national characteristic of the Japs may prove a great factor in the Pacific fight,” said an expert on the Far East to a group of businessmen in Alabama.19
One newspaper, more blunt and concise in its assessment of Japan’s edge in waging war, simply described the enemy as “short and sturdy.”20
It was slowly dawning on Navy officials and an American public that had been weaned on the unsinkable-battleship theory that—after December 7 and the subsequent and apparently all-too-easy sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales—the day of the mighty warship had passed. The airplane, whose development as a war weapon in the Great War had only scratched the surface, would rule this new war.
The old Spads and Fokkers and Nieuports of years earlier lumbered along at not much over 100-miles-per-hour and were weapons of short-range capability. They mostly fought each other. Now, the Japanese, the Germans, and the British all had superior fighter planes and bomber planes. They were equipped to take on other planes and targets on the ground and the high seas. These planes and their pilots had advanced training techniques, bombing sights, long-range capabilities, high altitudes, and, most importantly, speed. Some of the fighter planes of 1941 cruised at well over 320 miles per hour and in dives and dogfights could approach 340 miles per hour or more. America was developing the B-17 and other durable high-level bombers but was woefully behind on fighter planes. The navy in some cases was still flying biplanes.
Originally established as a part of the U.S. Army in 1907, America’s aviation force in the years leading up to 1941 went by a number of different titles and was placed under various parts of the army. One of its most familiar titles, the U.S. Army Air Corps, was used from July 2, 1926 to June 20, 1941. The air corps fought during World War II as the Army Air Force. The service name that we all know today, the U.S. Air Force, didn’t become its own service until after the war in 1947, gaining special strategic prominence in the post– World War II nuclear age.
But in 1941, Hermann Göring’s mighty Luftwaffe ruled the skies. The British already had lost two aircraft carriers to German aerial assault, the Courageous and the Glorious, though British planes had helped sink the great German battleship Bismarck. Of course, the Italian Navy, such as it was, had nearly been blown out of the water by British airplanes in the Mediterranean. One editorial bluntly and accurately said, “The war with Japan is an air war.”21
In Europe, the Germans had perfected the use of military aircraft in their blitzkriegs across the European continent, and though they had mostly abandoned the Battle of Britain, the unremitting aerial assault might have succeeded had not Hitler abruptly changed the bombing targets from military to civilian out of a spiteful desire to demoralize the British populace. The bombing of the military targets was nearly wiping out Great Britain’s ability to produce and get aloft her Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes. By changing targets, Hitler gave the English a chance to rebuild their industrial plants and the bombing of civilians in London did nothing more than anger the stubborn and resolute British.
Understatedly, Da
vid Lawrence wrote in the Evening Star, “The bomber may decide this war.”22 The British were engaged in daytime bombing of German naval installations at Wilhelmshaven and Emden, but planes were also being used to observe German ship movement.23 The fear was, with American and British ships now occupied in the Pacific, the Germans would step up their naval operations in the Atlantic.
A new idea was mulled over in Washington to expand a Selective Service for all able-bodied men and women from the ages of eighteen all the way up to sixty-five, even more all-encompassing than the British draft.24 “We undoubtedly are soon going to consider the registration of women,” said Brigadier General Louis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service Administration. “He estimated there were about 20,000,000 who could serve in some way, either replacing men in factories, enlisting in civil defense or with the armed services in noncombatant capacities.”25 Then Congress introduced a bill to draft able-bodied men but the actual training would be of men ages nineteen to forty-five; however, Hershey said that a “boy of 19 would not be sent into combat service.” He elaborated on an expansive draft. “This registration is necessary to get an overall picture of the manpower of the country.”26 Earlier notions about the drafting of women were set aside for the time being.
But, five days after Pearl Harbor, recruiting offices across the nation were still being mobbed. It wasn’t just the quantity of the young men eager to enlist; it was the quality as well. Prior to the seventh of December, most of the enlistees were poor, unhealthy, and relatively uneducated country boys, looking frankly for a way to get off the farm, to get a bed, decent medical attention, and three squares a day. Get up at 6 a.m.? Big deal. These boys had been doing it all their young lives and for no pay from Daddy either. Being in the Army with clean uniforms, clean sheets, hot-water showers, and weekends off was like a vacation for a lot of these down-at-the-heels farm boys.
Now a new kind of young man was enlisting. The average recruit was twenty-one, had at least a high school diploma, and their health was considerably better than their country cousins. “The Army expects 50,000 volunteers in December, twice the November total. The more exacting Marine Corps has 4,000 in sight, also doubling last month.”27 At one recruiting station, a navy yeoman was admitting young men for enlistment when he was stunned to look up and see his own son signing.28 The army also put out a call for 10,000 women to sign up as much-needed nurses, and the Red Cross issued an urgent alert for blood donors.29
Not everybody wanted to serve. “Dallas Thompson, 21, colored, was sentenced today to serve from one to three years in jail on a guilty plea of violating the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940. The presiding judge told him, “The Army doesn’t need a fellow like you.” According to the story, Thompson pretended he could not read or write when apparently he could do both perfectly well.30
That some black American men were reluctant to serve in the U.S. military was understandable. The military was still segregated, and black soldiers got the bum equipment, the bum food, the bum assignments, and were generally treated like bums. Their treatment in the Great War had not been forgotten. “Blacks had volunteered to serve in a segregated army for a segregated government, confident that after the war their sacrifices would be rewarded. When black veterans returned in 1919, the got a nice parade through Harlem and nothing else—no jobs, no challenges to segregation, no progress.”31
Still, over the course of the new war, over 2.5 million black Americans registered to join in the fight, and those enlisting in South Carolina received Bibles courtesy of the American Bible Society.32 The account of this new war would later be replete with stories of young African American men, overcoming the Germans, overcoming the Japanese, and overcoming their own country.
An eighteen-year-old boy quit his job at the engine house of the New Haven Railroad and left a note for his pals.
“To my buddies at the roundhouse. I was born in America. I enjoyed more privileges than any boy anywhere in the world. I had free speech; the right to chose my religion. I worked where I pleased and spent my money where I pleased. Yes, I did enjoy myself. I had liberty, fought and paid for with the blood of my forefathers. We all realize that this God-given liberty which we enjoy is in serious danger of being destroyed forever. But we know that it will never be destroyed while boys like you and I can prevent it. That is why I left my job here and enlisted in the United States Marines today. As our beloved President said last night, if I have to pay the supreme sacrifice to defend out liberty, I will consider it a privilege. So, until I see you again, have hope in us; we will not let you down.”33
The letter was signed Tom Mahoney. Young Tom’s father had served in the navy in the last war. Tom Mahoney would only have a short period of time to become a man. “One day at war in Manila had made tough, determined soldiers out of a good many American youngsters who only yesterday were just kids in soldiers’ uniforms.”34
Bond sales were high as Americans were rushing to banks and post offices and other locations to buy up the notes which lent to their government billions of dollars, to be paid back later with interest. At all levels and among all groups, everyone wanted to pitch in some way, somehow, for the war effort. Congress was also exploring new “war taxes,” possibly totaling as much as $6.5 billion, to be paid in lump sums by businesses and individuals.35 Every December, newspapers carried ads reminding citizens their taxes were due before the end of the year. The concept of “withholding” had yet to be introduced by the federal government and then adopted by those state governments that also imposed income taxes.
Volunteering for civil defense, which hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of Americans did, was not for the faint of heart or those lacking commitment. Long hours were spent training civilians on spotting and discerning enemy versus friendly planes, how to operate gas masks, crowd control, and potentially dangerous work. Over the course of the hostilities, thousands of civilians died in war work.
In Arlington, Virginia, “more than 1,000 volunteer air raid wardens were sworn in last night after sampling odors from four different types of gases available for present-day warfare and witnessing the extinguishing of an actual incendiary bomb.”36 Groups organized themselves in order to volunteer. Catholic women’s groups, Boy and Girl Scouts, Jobs Daughters, Masons, Daughters of the Nile, Kiwanis Clubs, and Lions Clubs, these and more stepped forward. Everywhere CD (Civil Defense) workers scanned “the sky for enemy bombers.”37
Construction began on a bomb shelter at the White House, between it and the Treasury Department in “the underground space” that once “housed the Treasury Department vaults.” But Grace Tully could never understand why the bomb shelter—which FDR had resisted anyway—had “open sky above and it was never explained to me why the protective structure had this weakness.”38
Boat owners on the Mississippi, on the coasts, and on the Potomac River also volunteered to guard bridges and report suspicious activities. The Coast Guard Auxiliary organized much of this work.39 Snafus happened everywhere, but Americans were sincere in their desire to pitch in. New guidelines were published advising people how to deal with air raids, including how to protect their pets. If in a car, pull over and turn off your lights. If a pedestrian and no shelter were available, readers were advised to “Lie Down.”40
Women’s silk stockings were making their farewell appearance, as the important material was needed for parachutes. Replacing them, along with the cumbersome garter belts and hooks, were “Spunsters” made from nylon, a synthetic material. American men lamented the passing of the day when the wind would whip a woman’s skirts up, revealing the sexy ensemble. Woodward and Lothrop Department Stores began hawking for all their female customers the new “bright little brief panties” that women skaters had used. Later, they became known as “panty hose.”41
The national government claimed that the initial roundup of suspected aliens was nearly over, but “additional arrests may be announced during the next few days,” the office of the Attorney Gener
al said. But the Los Angeles Times then reported a “Jap and Camera Held in Bay City”; the man had been taking photos of the city from Twin Peaks. And then another story appeared on how “two Japanese yesterday were taken into custody . . . with maps of Los Angeles County and Japanese literature in their possession.”42
Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe, a member of the Hungarian royal family visiting the United States, was picked up by the FBI. “Once reputed a friend of high Nazi officials and a colorful figure in European political intrigue . . . the short, red-haired . . . was sent to the United States Immigration Station at Gloucester, NJ.” A Republican member of Congress urged the FBI to arrest prominent labor leader, Harry Bridges, along with other “dangerous aliens.”43
A Chinese man, Samson Lee, recounted all the problems he had on a simple train trip from Hartford to New York and back and how ticket agents, conductors, and others demanded repeatedly he show proof that he was Chinese and not Japanese. Fortunately for Mr. Lee, he did have such proof. In frustration, he said, “Perhaps I should just wear a sign around my neck to say I am a Chinese.” He had his own cultural observances of the differences between the Japanese and Chinese. “One great difference between the two people is in their manners. Japanese are very boorish compared to the polite Chinese gentlemen. Most other people do not like them so very much.”44
Lee’s troubles were nothing compared to the unidentified Chinese man whose body was found in Seattle, nearly decapitated. According to officials, he may have been mistaken for a Japanese “secret agent.”45 But in a case chalked up to “racial hatred,” a Filipino man attacked a Japanese man with a knife as the two rode on a Pacific Electric Railroad car.46
December 1941 Page 31