December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  Concern was so high over the Japanese game plan of permanent offense that some started to speculate that the Panama Canal was also vulnerable. Knocking out the canal would add thousands of miles to any journey of an American naval vessel from the East Coast to the West Coast. Plus navigating the Straits of Magellan at the bottom of South America meant traversing some of the worst waters on the face of the earth. Locations along the Straits were named “Fatal Bay, Fury Island, Last Wreck Point, [and] Isolation Harbor.”24 Security around the Canal increased many-fold.

  Roosevelt temporarily promoted MacArthur to a full general, “a rank customarily reserved for the chief of staff of the army.” There was also some talk around Washington about MacArthur, having just received his fourth star, being awarded the rank of supreme commander of the allied forces in the Far East.”25 The promotion was warmly endorsed by many editorial pages, including those of the Washington Post.26

  War was hell in the air, on the ground, and at sea. A British bomber had ditched in the North Atlantic, and the crew floated for days with little water or food. To make bad matters worse, they were harassed by sharks: “One of the sailors had a large chunk taken from his chest and died five minutes later. All of them had a bad case of sun poisoning and were blistered. Their bodies were swollen.”27

  The armies of the world had taught soldiers how to fight; their faiths told them how to die; and doctors helped them with their wounds; but no one taught or prepared them how to survive. Survival was as important to war as any other aspect, and yet it had been completely overlooked by the planners and tacticians and strategists. Survival equipment was nonexistent, but new drugs were coming on line that would save the lives of many wounded men. Among them were anti-bacterial “sulfa” drugs that were the precursors to penicillin. The production and sales of sulfa drugs grew rapidly after their discovery in 1935. By 1941, more than 15 million people were treated with sulfa drugs every year.28 They proved a godsend on the battlefield.

  On the domestic side, just as government officials were telling the American people that there was no cause for alarm and there would be plenty of food for the citizenry during the crisis, stories began to appear suggesting otherwise, that change might come in just a few months. “It’s true those old meatless days, motorless Sundays, one lump sugar and weaker coffee are not in prospect now. Tea, pepper, tapioca and possibly soap will be scarce.” It was also noted that meats, canned goods, and cigarettes would be available, but more expensive. Christmas turkeys were going up in cost.29 Reports said that Italians Americans, French Americans, and other “hyphenated Americans” had no worries as there were plenty of Christmas “eels” available for their dinner tables.30

  New tires and new cars were out, as were new radios, new vacuum cleaners, new kitchen appliances, and most other household goods. Gas rationing on the East Coast was forecast for the spring, and Washington was still deliberating across the board controls over prices. It was already controlling the price of grains. Civilians were also asked to stay off the long-distance phone lines or at least keep their calls brief. War was one thing and sacrifices were expected, but it tried men’s souls when the flow of wines and liqueurs from the occupied countries of Europe “dried up.”31

  Not all the citizens who volunteered or made sacrifices or went without for the war effort had the best of intentions. In Los Angeles, “marauding gangs of self-appointed air-raid wardens who molest citizens on the pretense that they are ‘aiding defense’” were a problem in the city of not-all-angels.32 On the other hand, in San Diego, a “Minuteman” group of “crack marksmen” was formed with the help of local law enforcement. The job of the volunteer riflemen was to “crush any attempts at local sabotage.”33 Many were affiliated with local gun clubs and the National Rifle Association.

  More and more death notices from the Pacific, including the Philippines, were appearing in the broadsheets. And more stories appeared of grief-stricken parents, fathers enlisting or trying to enlist, and mothers joining the volunteer cause. In order to help boost morale for the American citizenry, the War Department produced the first motivational poster for the American effort. It was, at best, mediocre. The placard depicted five “ape-like figures in German uniform singing the Horst Wessel song.”34 Better though, was the reemergence of syndicated columnist Ernie Pyle after a four-month sabbatical. His wife had been ailing, and he had taken time off to care for her. Now one of America’s famous scribes came roaring back, and millions of readers were delighted.

  A recruiting office in New York held a poster competition. The first prize was a full, one-year scholarship to the Art Student League of New York City. The winning poster was excellent, creative, “portraying the undercarriage of an Army pursuit plane striking a tarmac” with the banner headline reading, “Be a U.S. Army Aviation Cadet.” The private sector was always more creative than the public sector, and excellent submissions came from “children, housewives, doctors, lawyers, green grocers, students, and salesmen.”35

  The concept of a “just war” had been a difficult notion for religious leaders and for people who had been taught and who believed that all violence was against the laws of God and man: peace was always the way. However, these were new and horrific enemies of all that was decent, and they were equipped with instruments of mass destruction.

  Pacifism was one thing, but letting evil win the Earth was quite another, especially when good had the means to fight back. The military announced it needed thousands more chaplains in order to minister to the spiritual needs of the American fighting man. Robert Paterson, undersecretary of war said that a soldier needed two things: “a firm faith in his country’s cause and spiritual strength. The comforts the chaplains give the soldiers are beyond any reckoning.”36

  The Catholic Bishops of America, following in the footsteps of Pope Pius XII, endorsed the American efforts as a “war for peace” and promised to work with the U.S. government without becoming political in an earthly fashion. The Catholics said it was their mission “to try to help, as becomes churchmen, our Government in being the instrument of Almighty God for the setting up of a new era in which human rights, human dignity, human freedoms, and a sane human solidarity will offer to all peoples prosperity and a chance for the pursuit of happiness.”37

  In reflection, several writers were somberly remembering the millions in aid the United States had given to the Japanese people during the devastating earthquake of 1923. “In the United States, more than fifteen million yen was raised for relief work. The United States Army contributed several million dollars worth of supplies, the United States Navy two million dollars worth. Of course, the flyers who bombed Hawaii did not pause to think of the ancient and profoundly honorable duty of gratitude.”38

  Criticism continued over the dishonorable lobbying activities and the egregious fees received by former Roosevelt associates, Tommy Corcoran and Charles West. The report from Senator Harry Truman’s investigating committee “demolishes the theory that New Deal reformers are any different really than their brethren of the old Deal.”39

  Another lobbyist, with an elixir that would have made ancient alchemists green with envy, turned a $42,000 investment into $34,000,000 in war contracts. Queried by tough-as-nails Truman about how this was possible, Frank Cohen, the beneficiary of his own largesse replied, “We were just good natured damned fools, that’s all.”40 Unfortunately, noted some editorialists, there were almost no regulations dealing with the access-selling industry which was flourishing in Washington.

  America went forward anyway. The new movie for children, Dumbo, was a big hit, as was the performance of Corporal Jimmy Stewart, who in a national radio broadcast several days earlier had commemorated the Bill of Rights. Stewart had enlisted a year earlier, was assigned to Moffett Field around San Francisco, and had been out of the Hollywood spotlight for months. Stewart had been drafted in 1940 but was rejected because he weighed too little. After working out with a Hollywood trainer, he put on enough weight to be accepted into the Ar
my Air Corps. Flying and music, not acting, were always Stewart’s first loves, even as he received the best actor award for his performance in the marvelous 1941 screwball comedy about social manners, The Philadelphia Story. An actor with a quintessentially American screen persona, Stewart was able to take time off from his duties to participate with other actors and actresses in commemorating the Bill of Rights. He spent hours writing his own script, demonstrating a deep knowledge and appreciation of American history.

  Upon hearing it, Spencer Tracy said, “One of the most deeply-moving patriotic deliveries I ever heard. If that’s Army training maybe a lot of us who think we can act ought to join up,” to Hollywood columnist, Harold Heffernan.41 Captain Stewart ended up flying numerous bombing missions over Germany and was awarded a DFC, a high French commendation, and other medals. Stewart was a decades-long film star, a family man, religious, successful, an American hero, and finally the iconic everyday man. A wonderful life, indeed.

  The Wall Street Journal calculated the odds of a young American male being drafted. If you were twenty-one to twenty-eight years of age, classified 1-A, and had not yet been called, guess what? Your number was up, and you would be drafted. It was a 100 percent certitude. If you had dependents, the odds were 1 in 7 of being called. If your work was classified as “essential,” the odds were 1 in 4 that you would still be drafted. Except if you were a “farm boy.” The army, inducted 1,000 of these young men then released them to go back to their work on the farm because their fathers needed them. Up in the air were boys who were still aged nineteen to twenty-one years of age. Roosevelt had wanted them drafted, but many in Congress only wanted them registered at this time.42

  Then Secretary of War Henry Stimson abruptly announced that army enlistments would soon cease.43 The patriotic outpouring since the seventh of young men wanting to sign up—such as “farm boys”—was depriving many war industries of skilled workers. The army would depend on the Selective Service to weed out the 1-A’s from the 4-F’s. The Selective Service had over a dozen different designations, including Conscientious Objectors (1-A-O) to 4-A, for the sole surviving son of a family. Such a designation would be employed more than once in this new war.

  New laws were also passed to make it difficult for creditors and banks to get at the men in uniform and for those not in the military. When not thinking about the war or volunteerism or things of immediate concern, the men in uniform were thinking about the economy and their own situation. The country was going through one massive dislocation as it was switching almost instantaneously from a peacetime to a wartime economy. Before the seventh, the stock market had been unreliable, up and down. Housing starts were down massively in November, and many small businesses were barely holding on. No doubt war was good for economies, as Lend-Lease had breathed life into the torpid American economy, but it came with a price. As men and women were hired for war work, men and women were fired because of war work. The Secretary of War put out an all-points-bulletin hiring an “unlimited number” of “men and women stenographers.” They were needed immediately, though it was open to question how many men were in the workforce who knew how to type, write shorthand, and take dictation.44 And 300,000 auto workers had already been laid off in Detroit.45 Until the economy could actually grow and consume on a large scale, creating a demand for goods and services, the economic situation would be tenuous.

  The nineteenth was the Friday before Christmas, and because many G.I.’s could not make it home, the towns and villages and families of America took the young men in uniform to their bosom. Parties were organized, dances, meals, music, gifts. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the main drag of the town was closed to traffic, and a massive street party was held for “the boys.” Sixty-two thousand soldiers descended for a barbecue feast.46 It was the same at Camp Blanding, in Florida where the locals laid out a massive spread for the soldiers; the same story was repeated all over the country. Churches in Baltimore were also feting thousands of soldiers. And the old hero of the First World War, Alvin York, was on a morale tour of American military installations.47

  Roosevelt and the First Lady wanted the White House Christmas—despite the presence of antiaircraft guns throughout the area—to go forward as normally as possible. The massive spruce tree had been placed inside the fence on the South Lawn, as opposed to its usual location on the Ellipse, for security reasons. Nonetheless, the plan was to open up the White House lawn on Christmas Eve to 30,000 well-wishers and carolers and to enjoy a performance by the Marine Band. FDR was scheduled to speak just after 4 p.m., and then he and Mrs. Roosevelt would attend services at Foundry Methodist Church.48 A White House staff party was also in the works for Christmas Eve.

  Christmas was tough at the home of J.E. Ingraham of Eastaboga, Alabama, as he mourned the loss of his son, George. George Ingraham had been killed the morning of the seventh—just after mailing his father a Christmas card.49

  Despite the war, or perhaps because of it, meetings in Washington on the future of the new medium, television, were going forward. Few in America had a television, but some government officials and executives with the National Broadcasting Co. saw its potential, primarily as a learning device and tool to alert many people on war developments. “The current discussions by N.B.C. are based on three main points: Increased use of television as a training device through programs dealing with air-raid precautions, fire control, first aid, etc; large screen television to be used in public auditoriums for civilian defense programs; and entertainment.”50

  The government considered moving nonessential agencies out of Washington to accommodate all the new military personnel and war industry civilians flooding into the city. Officials were also making plans to evict—forcibly if necessary—private companies from their places of business as well. To meet the needs of the navy alone, huge temporary buildings made out of aluminum were constructed on the mall, row after row of them. They looked like giant mobile homes and were horrendously ugly. The temporary buildings were still on the Mall twenty-eight years later when President Richard Nixon ordered them dismantled, as they should have been at the end of the war.

  FDR “asked” the governors of the forty-eight states to consolidate all their public employment services “under the federal government” so as to “facilitate the rapid recruiting of defense workers.” Yet a new agency, the State and Territorial Employment Services, was set up immediately. FDR said that a meeting in Washington to discuss the matter was“waste motion.”51 In essence, Roosevelt was federalizing the states’ labor forces.

  His new Bureau of Censorship began to flex its muscles, but the more it did so, the more some civil libertarians questioned the wisdom of such an agency. On the one hand, FDR abhorred censorship and said so. On the other, he saw the usefulness in chilling leakers and potential leakers, while putting a fright into anyone who might step over the line and communicate too much information from the government, on the radio or via a private letter. Congress was going one step further though. A bill that would “permit President Roosevelt to take control of telephone and telegraph facilities” was approved by the Interstate Commerce Committee. Potentially, it meant FDR could also control the “transmitting equipment of press services.”52 The Associated Press and United Press were the lifeblood of hundreds of newspapers around the country, and without the wires, their newspapers would be reduced to covering only farm reports and social doings.

  Congress was still considering a plan to make Daylight Savings Time the law of the nation in order to ameliorate many problems associated with blackouts and air raids, while at the same time lengthening the workday.53 Also under active consideration were federal laws enforcing and taking control of the blackouts in all the states.54

  The head of the federal office of Civil Defense, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was under fire. “Responsible sources reported that high official White House circles were displeased over the Mayor’s handling of the civil defense problem.” Specifically, “under criticism were the false
air raid alarms in New York last week, the air raid drill staged for newsreels in Times Square . . . and the complete failure . . . of the well-advertised test of a giant siren that proved virtually inaudible.”55 These were just three of the hundreds of expensive mistakes going on in the country.

  Even at its most efficient, war is nothing if not expensive. The cost of war kept spiraling upwards. It was calculated that in December 1941, it cost the country an appalling $729 per second, but by 1942, it would be up to an astounding $1,400 per second.56

  Some in academia had been slow to join the war effort. Two weeks after the declaration of war, the presidents of Wesleyan College, Colby College, and other schools pleaded with their undergraduate males to stay with their studies and get their degrees (and continue paying their tuitions) while others, including Harvard, finally got into the swing of things.

  The president of Harvard said third-year law students could receive “war degrees” on a case-by-case basis with an abbreviated last year. Smith College organized an Ambulance Corps, Brown University added “14 military courses,” Yale was offering degrees in three years, and Simmons College in Massachusetts was holding evening courses in national defense.57

  By the afternoon of Friday, December 19, the Japanese were claiming to have taken Hong Kong, in spite of the claims of the British military. If the Japanese claim were true, it would be devastating. Just hours earlier, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox spoke to the 1942 graduating class of Annapolis, whose graduation had been accelerated by six months because of the war. He told the 547 graduates that the army and the navy had repulsed a third attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, but this was false as there had been no third attack. He also asserted that with thirty minutes notice, the Japanese air invasion would have been blown out of the sky. “There is no question at all, in light of what transpired, that half an hour’s warning of the approach of the Japanese planes would have made all the difference.”58 Who knew?