December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  Adding insult to injury, Tokyo announced it had seized 225 American and British merchant ships. They also claimed that twenty-one American and British naval vessels had either been destroyed or badly disabled since the opening of the war, less than two weeks past.66

  Plans for a supreme Allied War Council were moving ahead. FDR had met with representatives of all the Allied Powers at this point to work out the broad outline of such an organization. Roosevelt had already discussed it by transatlantic telephone with Churchill and had met with the Lord Privy Seal, Major Clement Attlee, to flesh out the concept. Problem was, Russia was still dillydallying about actually declaring war on Japan. The best Moscow could say was the Allies “could reasonably look forward” to Russia jumping into the Pacific war.67

  The Russians for their part had successfully mounted a drive to push back the dug-in German Army from just outside Moscow and Leningrad. Initial news reports closely resembled the propaganda coming from Stalin’s government, but as more independent sources confirmed, it became clear the Russians had gained an offensive. However, it was important to remember the Russians were still fighting on their own terrain and the Germans had driven hundreds of miles deep inside Mother Russia.

  A British attempt to mount a counteroffensive in Thailand was repulsed by the Japanese, and the Japanese claimed to have sunk another British ship, though the name was not released.68 Also, Vichy France announced it was intending to halt diplomatic relations with the United States, as a result of the seizure of several of its ships in American ports.69

  On the more hopeful side, American forces were claiming to have sunk four Japanese troop transports operating near the Philippines, but again no details were released.70 Admiral Yamamoto seemed unconcerned. He’d written a letter sometime earlier to a friend, which the Japanese state propaganda agency, Domei, released. In it he said, “Any time war breaks out between Japan and the United States I shall not be content merely to capture Guam and the Philippines and occupy Hawaii and San Francisco. I am looking forward to dictating peace to the United States in the White House in Washington.”71

  Lofty ambition, that.

  Even before the war had begun in earnest, a ground of educators had met in Riverside, California, to plan for world peace. Organized by the Institute of World Affairs, they sponsored a weeklong series of talks, roundtable discussions, and panels. Nothing was concluded except that an “international governing commission” would be necessary to run postwar Germany, if only because “Germany must be humiliated and made to realize it mustn’t molest people,” according to one participating academic. Another educator observed that “while Germany may have foisted upon the world its ‘Jewish . . . problem, the world must realize that it has a German problem to solve.”72

  One thing at a time.

  Roosevelt was right when he warned the country that the news would become bleaker before it became brighter.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE SEVENTEENTH OF DECEMBER

  Women Demand to Be Drafted

  Christian Science Monitor

  Japanese Ships Shell Two Hawaiian Islands

  New York Times

  Widows to Be Given Adequate

  Support from U.S. in New War

  Birmingham News

  Speed War Output President Demands

  Evening Star

  Justice Roberts Heads Pearl Harbor Inquiry Board

  Washington Post

  A Penny a Plane Club formed in Marshall, Texas. City fathers asked the residents if they would donate one penny for every enemy plane downed by the Americans. The club had started in Argentina and was wildly successful. There, residents of the country amassed a membership of 50,000 and “made possible the purchase for the British of a fighter plane costing $75,000 each month.” The chief organizer of the American effort, Harry Adams, had been told of the success of the Argentineans and thought it could spread throughout the United States.1

  Money seemed to be flying out of the pockets of the American citizenry, seemingly all for the war effort. Some banks actually ran out of government bonds because demand was so high. Nonetheless, a goal of $1 billion a month in bond sales was announced by the government. Three businessmen in Connecticut began a New Arizona Fund to raise money to build a new battleship to replace the one sunk by the Japanese.2

  The city of Washington was awash in letters, all containing contributions to “Uncle Sam” from patriotic Americans. Some envelopes contained a penny. Others contained up to $200. Written on many of the envelopes was “Remember Pearl Harbor!” Children sent letters, businessmen sent letters, housewives sent letters, families and local clubs sent letters. An elderly man sent $25.00 with a note regretting that he was too old to fight. A woman sent $5.00, saying if it purchased just one bolt for an airplane, it would make her happy. Hairdressers sent their tip money, as did waiters and waitresses. Treasury officials said there were too many letters, making it impossible to count how much money had been received.3

  Within America, a deep wellspring of charity had always existed. It was just one of the many qualities that made it unique among countries throughout the history of the world. But this outpouring had been unmatched in the history of the republic. The pain and anger of the citizenry had been channeled into positive actions, and perhaps Christmastime helped season the era with the kindness, love, and brotherhood demonstrated by a Jewish carpenter one thousand nine hundred and forty-one years earlier.

  A little girl sent a letter to Santa asking that he forgo toys for her this year, and instead, make “every country free.”4 A dying man left his estate to an aeronautical library for young boys so that books could be “loaned to anyone by mail, without charge.”5 Even Congress—at least the House—got in the spirit of giving and sacrifice as Speaker Sam Rayburn, Democrat of Texas, announced there would be no Christmas vacation for the members—not even the three-day recess usually granted.6

  Money was also flying into the pockets of some of Washington’s biggest lobbyists. Tommy “The Cork” Corcoran had just steered a $21 million dollar loan to a new business “syndicate formed to produce manganese,” from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, or RFC, for which he pocketed a handsome fee of $65,000, a fee that was more than the vast majority of Americans would make in their life time. He told the Truman Investigating Committee that he’d picked up over $100,000 in lobbying fees over the past year.7

  It was never really suggested that Corcoran had any special pull in Washington simply because he was part of the FDR Brain Trust,8and for a time he actually resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW; moreover, he said the fact that he was once counsel to RFC had nothing to do with the loan he’d secured for his client.9

  Later, Truman learned to despise Corcoran as much as FDR loved him.

  Charles West, another close adviser to Roosevelt, was suing a company for $700,000. He claimed they had rooked him out of his fees after he had arranged for federal business for them.10 Most other Americans were less selfish.

  Heavyweight champ Joe Louis and challenger Buddy Baer agreed to a title fight under the condition that the proceeds would go to the Navy Relief Fund. They raised thousands. They then met in a second bout and donated those proceeds to the relief fund as well, approximately $90,000 from both contests.11 In gratitude, the Internal Revenue Service, for years after the war, pursued Louis claiming the donated money had been income to him.12

  In Los Angeles, star pro football running back, Jackie Robinson, was thrilling fans of the Los Angeles Bulldogs. The Bulldogs were one of the many flimsy professional gridiron teams that had sprung up around the West and the South in the late ’30s and early ’40s, and Robinson, in an athletic class of his own, ran roughshod over opponents. Robinson would later switch games and break the color barrier in Major League Baseball after the war.

  By 1942, Louis, Baer, and Robinson were all in uniform.

  Clark Griffith, the owner of the Washington Senators, announced that he wasn’t going to make an announcement about some import
ant news regarding his baseball team because of the war. “In another week or so, we’ll be veterans in the war and people will want to look at the sports pages as a change.” Fans hoped whatever change was coming would be on the mound, as only the pitiable Philadelphia Athletics and the even more pathetic St. Louis Browns had worse pitching.13

  The annual East-West Shrine college game held in San Francisco had been moved to New Orleans because of the apparent risk under which the West Coast was still operating.14 As a result, other high school, college, and professional sports events were also cancelled or moved. With the baseball season over, the son of San Francisco, Joe DiMaggio, the “Yankee Clipper,” was voted Outstanding Male Athlete of 1941, besting Ted Williams, the “Splendid Splinter.” The winner the previous year had been Tom Harmon, “Old Number 99,” the famous end of the Michigan football team.15

  But the big unanswered question was whether or not Major League Baseball should be cancelled during the national emergency. The owners had already met in Chicago with no decision reached, preferring instead to see what Washington said. “End of major league baseball for the duration is being feared . . . as a result of what already has happened to the sports programs on the Pacific Coast,” the Boston Globe observed.16 In 1917, the game had been confronted with the same problem, but the government told owners to keep playing as it was too important to the nation’s morale. Even so, a month was sliced off the schedules during that war. If the 1942 baseball season went forward, the minor leagues figured to take a hit, what with so many of their players young, single, and 1-A healthy. There were vague reports about future meetings between baseball leaders and governmental leaders.

  The news from the world of sports that Americans did not get through newspaper or magazines, they could get from radio. Radio was simply the most dominant cultural force in America, even more than the movies, magazines, or the broadsheets. The role of radio as a form of news and entertainment in the American home could not be overstated. Radios were in the living room, the bedroom, and the kitchen. Radios were in cars and restaurants. They were simply everywhere, and everybody listened, especially now.

  Radio had been the main form of entertainment for Americans since the early days of the Great Depression and even before. Many was the lonely pensioner who got by each night listening to Bob Hope or the “Texaco Hour” or “Our Miss Brooks” or the orchestra dance music, broadcast from a hotel in any given city in America. Only one’s imagination limited what a radio show could do; the creative men and women could make the kids sitting around the living room believe Superman was really flying or ghouls were really at their door, or Little Orphan Annie was really meeting with the president.

  Yet the entertainment side of the radio shied away from the war until Fibber McGee and Molly took up the subject. Fibber wanted to buy a globe, and Molly warned him to buy it with Japan still on it, before the Allies bombed it into smithereens. Bob Hope then jumped into the fray, telling audiences, “We may have to black out our lights, but we will never black out our sense of humor.” Another was a bad routine between Jack Benny and Dennis Day. That did it. By mid-December 1941, radio, like everybody else in America, had gone to war.17

  Congress passed a law that would provide for six months’ salary and give lifetime pensions to the families of the soldiers and sailors killed at Pearl Harbor. The salary was straightforward, but the pension was a more complicated system, based on widows, their age, and how many and how old the servicemen’s orphans were.18

  It ranged from a low of $30 per month to a high of $83 per month. It was a part of the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act, but some additional laws also kept men in uniform from being harassed by collection agencies and lawsuits, and under circumstances prevented a war widow from being evicted if behind in her rent.19

  Mr. and Mrs. Max Mueller of Omaha were notified that two of their sons, Henry, nineteen, and Erwin, seventeen, had both been killed at Pearl Harbor. The last the parents knew, both boys were assigned to the Arizona.20

  More details were slowly being released from Hawaii, including the recovery of a “suicide submarine,” one of three suspected subs thought to have participated in the attack at Pearl Harbor. A “midget submarine,” it carried a two-man crew and ran on batteries. Its range was so limited that it could not make it back to a safe port. The three subs and crews who were believed to have engaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor knew they were on a one-way mission from which they, in all likelihood, would not return alive. A photo of the recovered sub that had washed ashore appeared in the papers.21

  Submarines had been an important part of the story of the North Atlantic for some time. German “wolf pack” U-boats had been sinking everything in sight; however, subs had not yet become important in the fight for the Pacific, except when the story was bad. That day, a confidential memo from the Secretary of the Navy to FDR advised the president that the American naval sub presence in Manila was now tenuous. “How much longer the submarines can base at Manila is problematical.”22

  Also, the American Asiatic fleet was down to “one patrol bomber squadron . . . 2 cruisers, 8 destroyers, 3 gunboats, several minesweepers . . . surface vessel lack fighter aircraft defense, and cannot operate in areas where dominated by enemy aircraft strength.”23

  This story line would eventually change. For the first time since the beginning of the war, American naval forces reported sea action by American submarines in the western Pacific, adding that they had performed well enough but had little to no support from American planes or surface ships. The overall news from the region continued to be nearly all bad for America.

  “Japan’s assault on the Philippines slacked off . . . but defense forces regard the respite as only temporary. Most observers said the letup probably meant that the Japanese were moving additional forces and supplies into position off the island coasts, resting pilots, overhauling planes and marshaling gasoline, bombs and ammunition for new and powerful attacks.” The situation was anything but “well in hand.”24

  The British were “having difficulty in Borneo, Malaya, and Hong Kong, and the American possessions of Johnston and Maui Islands in the Hawaiian area were shelled by Japanese naval craft.” Also, “Wake Island and Midway were reportedly raided again . . . [S]evere fighting continued in northern Malaya, where Japanese troops continued to push southward toward Singapore, now using one man tanks. At Hong Kong, Japanese naval vessels were reported . . . to have joined the attack on the British Colony. The Japanese claimed they had sunk one gun boat and six torpedo boats and damaged a destroyer and three other vessels in Hong Kong waters.”25

  Lord Beaverbook, the British ambassador to the United States, said of Hong Kong, “We must be prepared for its fall” and proclaimed that it had no military value.26

  Apparently, the attack on Maui had only been some Japanese torpedoes that hit the loading docks of a pineapple company; but still, Maui was part of the Hawaiian chain and only a hundred miles southeast of Honolulu. Also, a military airfield and “fleet anchorage” were located at Lahaina Roads there.27 It was the first attack on the Hawaiian Islands since the seventh, and that alone made it terrifying. Johnston Island was described by navy officials as being hit much harder than Maui, and more importantly, that was the first time it had been bombed. Johnston Island was “discovered” by the British ship Cornwallis in 1807.28 Some speculated that the Japanese were hitting many different locations in hopes of sending the navy off on a wild-goose chase.

  The British were doing their utmost to hold onto Singapore, but this hold seemed more tenuous by the day. A knowledgeable source said, “British lack of naval superiority has changed the entire situation in Northern Malaya.”29 If Singapore was taken, it would be catastrophic to the cause of the Allies. If Singapore went, the rest of the Western Pacific could fall like dominos into Japanese possession.

  There was a growing suspicion that the Roosevelt Administration, being heavily influenced by Winston Churchill, was more interested in first investing resources in
the Atlantic and Europe and that the Pacific would have to wait. Two days later in an unsigned White House memo dated December 19, titled “First Priority of Military Strategy, the answer came in the next line: The Defense of the Atlantic Area between the United States and the United Kingdom.”Both Africa and “the Pacific area” were noted as “secondary areas.”30The condition of the Pacific was described as “bleak.”31

  Meanwhile the governments of Turkey and Ireland restated their decision to stay neutral. Ireland also refused to allow the Allies to use its ports. Vichy France also claimed to be neutral, although with hundreds of thousands of German troops in the country and Marshal Petain at Hitler’s beck and call, it was a joke. Conversely, Free French forces in Morocco, Algeria, and other locations were bravely working against the Germans, who were tightening their grip on the region. An underground movement in France was growing. Audaciously, they had detonated a bomb in Paris, killing six Gestapo agents and one German general. New reprisals came in the form of rounding up as many as 4,000 suspects including, of course, Jews. “This group included some of most influential and wealthiest Jews in Paris.”32

  Halfway around the world, another courageous group was fighting the odds. A small assembly of twelve Indians led by one British lieutenant furiously fought off a much larger force of Japanese in Kota Bhara, in Malaya, before finally succumbing.33 The civilian evacuation of Malaya had already begun. “There definitely is danger—a real threat to Singapore by land,” a British dispatch read.34

  Meanwhile, it was rumored that Hitler had come close to suffering a nervous breakdown, frustrated with the lack of progress on the Eastern Front. His doctors told him to go to Berchtesgaden, his spectacularly scenic mountain retreat in Bavaria, for rest.35 There, the would-be ruler of the world would gaze at the soaring peaks and become lost in reveries of his own megalomania. Meanwhile, in the field, his soldiers were behaving with characteristic thuggery. Three precious Russian shrines, the home of Tolstoy, the cottage of Anton Chekov, and a museum dedicated to Tchaikovsky, were sacked by Nazi troops.36 In a confidential memo to Roosevelt from the British Embassy, the document said the Germans generals had decided to “try to stabilize their Russian front.” The document also pointed out that the Russian air force had gained air superiority over the Germans, in part because they knew more about handling equipment in the freezing cold than did the Germans.37