December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  He told of men with arms ripped off, begging to get back into the fight. Men burned, nearly naked, screaming, “I want to get back to my ship. I want to get back to my gun.” Other wounded men said, “For God’s sake, I am alright.”7 They weren’t.

  Americans, Maguire said, “would glow if they could see how our boys died. If every American had seen how quietly, yes, quietly men suffered, how gallantly they died, how courageously they thought about the next man, they would glow. They would swear our front line will never give.”8

  In the towns and villages of America, because there were not bodies to bury, many internment ceremonies went forward anyway, as at Georgetown University with “flag draped catafalque symbolizing the bier of Ensign George Anderson Wolfe who died at Pearl Harbor”9 Also among the fallen was Billie McCary, seventeen, of Shades Mountain, Alabama. He was on the Arizona as a member of the band, for which he played the tuba and the coronet. Just weeks earlier, the band from the Arizona had competed with sixteen others in Hawaii, and Billie and his band, came away with the gold cup.10

  The first “white” resident of Birmingham—as noted by the Birmingham News—to die at Pearl Harbor was James Mark Lewis, twenty-one, seaman second class. Again the inevitable telegram: “The Navy Department regrets to inform you . . .” Concluding, it said, “The Department extends to you its sincerest sympathy in your great loss. To prevent possible aid to our enemies, please do not divulge the name of his ship. . . . Rear Admiral C.W. Nimitz, chief of Bureau of Navigation.” James’s dream was to be a navy chaplain, combining his love of boats as a child and his devotion to the Birmingham Tabernacle Gospel. His mother, age sixty, told the paper that, if she could, she would put on a uniform and go fight. The boy’s father, “aged . . . sitting in the sun on his back steps his face cupped in his hands said only, ‘they stabbed him in the back . . . he didn’t have a chance.’” Seaman Lewis’s remains had not yet been recovered.11

  Julius Ellsberry was the first “Negro” resident of Birmingham to be killed at Pearl Harbor, again as noted by the Birmingham paper. “First to be notified here that a son had given his life for his country was a Negro family in Inglenook.” Ellsberry, twenty, was a “mess attendant aboard a warship.”12 The paper featured an editorial headlined, “Julius Ellsberry. All Birmingham, white and colored, honors his name.” The family got the identical telegram that the McCary family and the Lewis families had received.13 The U.S. military may have been segregated, but death was color-blind.

  In dying for their country, the boys, Julius, Billie, and James, were not separate but were equal. The price of war kept going up. It was a price equally shared by all social and economic classes. Everyone had a stake in the war; America was experiencing a social cohesion that had not been witnessed before.

  In a marvelous public relations stunt, Roosevelt wrote a letter to another president: he wrote a letter to whoever would be president in 1956, recommending that the eighteen-month-old son of downed pilot/hero Captain Colin P. Kelly Jr. for appointment to West Point, fifteen years hence. “In the conviction that the service and example of Captain Colin P. Kelly, Jr. will be long remembered, I ask for this consideration in behalf of Colin P. Kelly, III.”14

  Nominations to U.S. military service academies such as West Point (for the army) were competitive. While some applicants may be eligible for a presidential nomination by virtue of a parent’s service, all U.S. citizens were eligible to compete for a nomination from his congressional representative and senators. A nomination from FDR himself certainly constituted an amazing “trump card.” Indeed, the president of the United States in 1956 offered “Corky” a.k.a. Colin P. Kelly III an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, but in true hero fashion, the young Kelly refused, wanting to compete with everybody else for a place; and he did so, graduating from “The Point” in 1963. The president of the United States in 1956 was Dwight David Eisenhower, who in 1941 was an obscure, chain-smoking aide in the office of Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall and who only months before had been promoted to the rank of general. Before that, he was a clerk for General Douglas MacArthur. Roosevelt loved being president, MacArthur wanted to be president, and Eisenhower hadn’t even given it a thought.

  The shake-up in the Pacific command finally came, oddly, before FDR’s Board of Inquiry had even met to investigate what had actually happened at Pearl Harbor and whether or not anyone really was to blame. Indeed, the board was given the task of finding facts in search of a theory. “They will seek to fix the responsibility for the fact that the armed services were ‘not on the alert’ on Dec 7.”15

  Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, fifty-six, was named to replace Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, fifty-nine, who was unceremoniously removed as commander-in-chief of the United States Fleet and as commander of the Pacific Fleet. The position as chief of the navy was a fairly meaningless title, but the position of head of the Pacific fleet was where the rubber met the road. Nimitz would become commander of the Pacific fleet but not “Commander-in-Chief” of the navy itself. Also removed and replaced were General Walter C. Short, sixty-one, commander of the army garrison in Hawaii, and Major General Frederick L. Martin, fifty-nine, commander of the Army Air Corps there.

  Stepping in for Short was Lieutenant General D.C. Emmons, fifty-two, and replacing Martin was Brigadier General C.L. Tucker. “The shifts were the direct result of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, in which the Hawaiian defense forces were caught off guard.”16

  Douglas MacArthur, who could have also been removed because he’d had some warning of an imminent attack, unlike Kimmel and Short, escaped unscathed because he was still fighting a battle in the Philippines, because he got better “press” back home than did the others, and because he was a personal favorite of Roosevelt’s, despite their political differences. They were kindred spirits in that they were royalty in America. MacArthur was the scion of a famous military family. His father had won the Congressional Medal of Honor for action in the Civil War, and Roosevelt, of course, was the scion of a famous political family. They had worked together before, and there was a friendship, though based on society and not ideology.

  In 1932, the Bonus Marchers of the Great War, had descended on Washington in the depths of the Great Depression to ask the government to pay early a bonus promised to the doughboys who had answered their country’s call. The bonuses had been issued in 1924 but would not come due until 1945; however, many of these heroes who went over there were out of work, starving, and wanted the government to pay ahead of time, even if it meant forgoing the interest. FDR refused and directed MacArthur to rid Washington of the marchers. MacArthur used harsh actions to clean the city of the thousands of Bonus Marchers and their families. In 1936, when Roosevelt had still not solved the Depression, the Democratically-controlled Congress, over the president’s objections, paid the Bonus Marchers.17

  Kimmel and Short were not American royalty, were frankly scapegoats—sacrificial lambs who had done everything by the book, had not been given all the facts by Washington, and now were being punished for it.18 They had been as astonished by the attack as anyone else in the world, but had they been given the decoded Japanese communications between Tokyo and their embassy in Washington that the War Department and the White House were intercepting, Kimmel and Short may have had a chance to change or at least alter the course of history. Even the night before the seventh, when shown the next to last segment of the thirteen-part Japanese communiqué that presented the Japanese ultimatum, FDR read it and said, “This means war.”19

  That was never communicated to any of the field commanders in the military, especially in the Pacific, who had more than a passing interest in the intent of Prime Minister Tojo and his government.

  Adding to this, the War Department and the navy had been tracking a large convoy of Japanese ships including six aircraft carriers just days earlier, but when the armada turned eastward, U.S. military strategists lost track of it. This too was never communi
cated to Kimmel or Short. All they ever got were oblique and confusing messages from Washington, reinterpreting the secret coded information going back and forth between Washington and Tokyo. The administration had believed that war was imminent between Japan and the United States, but they wanted Tokyo to commit the “first overt act of war” so a moral case for participation in the war could be made to the American people and the world community.20

  The Roosevelt administration had successfully squashed any congressional investigation and had gained control of the matter by naming its own board of inquiry. Even so, it was obvious the blame was either going to Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, Henry Stimson, George C. Marshall, Harold Stark, Frank Knox, and the rest of the military and political leadership in Washington, or it was going to two competent, if politically naïve, men who were 6,000 miles away, without access to the press to tell their side of the story or defend themselves. The outcome of this was easy to see. The lead in The Baltimore Sun reported, “Without waiting for any more information on the contributing causes of the Pearl Harbor disaster,” the men were humiliatingly dumped.21

  Washington had seen the old “hang ’em out to dry” gambit a thousand times before. Someone had to take the blame, and the master politicians in Washington made sure it was going to be Kimmel and Short, and not themselves. The history of the country was marked with not only heroes but also scapegoats. “Sources” in Washington let it out that Short and Kimmel had not been “on the alert.”22 An unflattering photo of Kimmel was made available to the newspapers. This was all orchestrated: the War Department and the Secretary of the Navy made the announcement simultaneously. Secretary of War Stimson bluntly said his thinking was in line with Secretary of the Navy Knox regarding the “unpreparedness of the situation of December 7th . . . and to expedite the reorganization of the air defenses in the (Hawaiian) islands.”23

  Their demotion was the headline of every newspaper in America, and nearly all used the word “ousted.”24 It was humiliating, especially since Kimmel’s new assignment was to stay in Hawaii on “temporary duty.” The final humiliation was that he would have to stay to watch Nimitz replace him.

  Nimitz, as head of navy personnel, only days before was signing the telegrams notifying the next of kin of the death of their sons. But he’d also seen plenty of sea action in war and peace. Now he would get a chance to lead the friends and brothers and teammates of those fallen at Pearl Harbor into battle. He met that day for an hour in private conference with President Roosevelt.25

  Chester Nimitz, with a two-jump-up in rank to a full admiral, was being pushed to the center stage of history. Kimmel and Short, having been demoted both then left the military in early 1942 and faded into the mist of cruel and unjust history.

  The bad news from Malaya continued. The Japanese were driving hard down the peninsula towards Singapore; and British troops were not only on defense, but London was beginning to withdraw some of its troops, which was tantamount to an admission that all was lost there. Events were not faring any better in Hong Kong, where the Japanese demanded the British surrender, but the British refused. The Chinese were attempting a counteroffensive to aid the British, who had received an impossible order from London to “hold on.”26 The Japanese also seized the strategically important Penang Island.27 And things worsened in the Philippines as well; the Japanese continued moving towards Manila, and it was reported they were using buses to transport the invasion forces.

  American forces in Manila did, however, destroy twenty-six Japanese planes. America’s first ace of the war, First Lieutenant Boyd D. “Buzz” Wagner, had shot down five enemy planes in the air and was credited with the destruction of many of those twenty-six planes on the ground.28

  Japanese troops made landfall on the island of North Borneo and Sarawak, both under British protection, both rich in oil, rubber, sugar, coffee, iron, coal, spices, and other treasures of the Earth.29 Sarawak had an unusual history to say the least. One hundred years earlier, Sir James Brooke, an English officer, had helped the Sultan of Brunei fight off an insurrection. In gratitude, the Sultan gave Brooke the territory of Sarawak, and his descendants still ruled the area as of the beginning of the Second World War.

  Later, the “White Rajah”—Anthony Robert Brooke, son of Sir James—penned an agreement with England to provide protection for his country. When war broke out, the island had been celebrating the centennial of “White Man’s Rule.”30 Japanese forces were also invading Dutch-owned islands in the region.

  Just north of Sarawak, an earthquake of huge dimensions shook Formosa, China, and Japan; and hundreds were killed. Yet another earthquake hit Turkey, with similar deadly results. Both were a reminder that while war was waged, the forces of nature went on unimpeded.

  The eighteenth of December was not a day of gigantic news, unless one counted the ouster of Kimmel and Short, which was huge as it was the biggest shakeup in the military leadership since the Civil War, but many, it seemed, had expected that Kimmel and Short would be relieved of their commands sooner or later. It had been rumored in the papers and in political and military circles for days, and everybody took it in stride. Some members of Congress had demanded that Kimmel and Short be impeached. They had become marked men who, after December 7, were simply marking time, waiting for their sentencing without first being charged or even receiving a fair trial.

  The American people had become used to temporary and sudden changes over the past several weeks. The 1940s were looking different than the 1930s, when little seemed to change. Now there appeared to be a point where Americans settled into a routine that involved change on a daily, if not hourly, basis. No announcement, no event, no pronouncement, no decision, no news was outside the realm of possibility, except one saying they would lose the war. No one in America believed that. A new reality had settled across America, and upheaval seemed the new normal.

  In the realm of the new reality, the U.S government seized a half million pounds of tin, legally owned, that was being stored in a warehouse in New York City. It was needed for the war effort. No one blinked or protested.

  Then the Office of Production Management announced it was “freezing” all tin supplies in the United States.31 Tin would now be controlled by the Director of Priorities of the Metals Reserve Corporation, a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which eventually developed eight separate subsidiary corporations for the war effort. Washington also announced that, from now on, it would coordinate all air-raid drills and blackout drills. Americans for the first time were being urged to save scrap metal.

  Announcements were made. The federal government announced it was hiring shipbuilders and metalworkers for operations in Pearl Harbor. The government also announced that fishing in New England would be limited to clear days only; the government announced it was, well, nationalizing the oil industry in California, citing national security.32 And “the laundry machine manufacturing industry is going to be called on to fill war orders aggregating millions of dollars.”33

  “Eating habits may be changed a little because of the Jap war,” said the Wall Street Journal. “All canned pineapple come from Hawaii. Supplies may be cut down due to shipping difficulties. Tuna and sardines for canning and other fish caught off the west coast will be harder to get due to naval regulations and risks to fishermen. Japanese canned crab meat is out.”34

  Airmail to the Pacific was halted for a time, but that came as little surprise. Also, “Northern California was battered by the winter’s worst storm the first of this week but until today it was a military secret.” The navy and Weather Bureau brass had withheld the news until it was old enough to not do the Japanese any good.35

  With the government’s edict to limit rubber to almost exclusive military use, Price Administrator Leon Henderson caused a near riot when he said that production of such non-essential items as golf balls and tennis balls might be eliminated. Duffers and strokers swarmed into department stores and sporting goods stores, such as Abercrombie and Fitch, and c
leaned them out in a matter of minutes.36

  The NFL’s annual Pro Bowl game, involving the winner of the NFL title and a team of all-stars from the other nine teams, was moved from Los Angeles, where it had always been, to New York.37 Again, security.

  The first refugee ship since the outbreak of formal hostilities between the Axis and the United States arrived in Jersey City. One hundred and ninety-one passengers breathed the air of freedom.38 Reports from the Russian Front and North Africa were good for the Allies. The Russians finally appeared to be pushing the Germans back, while the British were also making headway in Libya. However, some analysts thought the Germans were simply reassessing and would mount a strike against Russia, farther south.

  A navy bomber carrying six men crashed in Norfolk, killing all aboard,39 and a plane carrying a general on a seemingly routine flight from New York to California disappeared,40 but these noncombat-related crashes were now commonplace. There wasn’t a day that went by without a report on a crash of a military plane. Meanwhile, civilian pilots now had to carry photo identification, something previously unheard of. Yet another rumored attack on the West Coast was reported, but this time it was a submarine and not a mystery plane.41

  In FDR’s confidential papers that day, was no mention of Kimmel or Short, or Nimitz for that matter. Some of the documents dealt with the deficient number of airplanes at the disposal of the navy: “The Navy has on hand an even 100 Douglas torpedo bombers known as TBD. This number is barely sufficient to meet minimum operating requirements.”42 A second memo noted that the navy only had 768 “aircraft torpedoes.” Complicating things, “unfortunately, there is no such thing as a universal torpedo.” Hopefully, it was noted that “a new Government torpedo plant is being erected in Chicago by the American Can Company, but this factory will not be in production until the end of 1942.”43