December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  However, Knox also told the young men in white dress uniforms what was becoming obvious to all now: the Japanese had by far the largest naval force in the Western Pacific.

  “By far.”59

  CHAPTER 20

  THE TWENTIETH OF DECEMBER

  U.S. Reveals Foe Operating Subs off East Coast

  Birmingham News

  Hong Kong Defenders Staging Last Ditch Fight

  Yuma Daily World

  12 U. S. Agencies, 10,000 Leaving D.C.

  Washington Post

  Heavy Philippine Battle Rages; Japs Land Anew

  The Sun

  As news days go in a new war, Saturday the twentieth was a relatively measured one even as planes were downed, ships were sunk, soldiers were killed, and civilians were marched off to their own extermination. A measured march was working inexorably against America and the Allies.

  The war news—such as it was—was getting worse for the Allies. The newspapers began using phrases like “bad news from the East” and “heavy raid reported close to London.” A headline in the Boston Evening Globe screamed, “Hong Kong Doomed.”1 The Saturday evening edition of Baltimore’s Sun newspaper reported as if Hong Kong had already fallen, but in fact, the British garrison was fighting on, holding on, hanging on.

  Winston Churchill once said that the only thing inevitable in war was disappointment. Power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it. .2 To illustrate Churchill’s point: for years a man had flown Christmas gifts to lonely lighthouse keepers and their families up and down the New England coast, but the navy grounded the “Flying Santa,” fearing he might be mistaken for an enemy plane and shot down.3 So much for Christmas spirit.

  Still, Americans could take heart and draw on their own history for inspiration and resolve. After all, the twentieth was also the 164th anniversary of another beleaguered time in American history: when George Washington and his ragged and demoralized men straggled into Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to make camp. Among his troops was Private Henry Cone of Lyme, Connecticut.

  Congress was moving toward a break, even after a pledge by Speaker Sam Rayburn that the House would not go out of session because of the war. The plan now was to go into recess until January 5.

  Since the attack at Pearl Harbor, the national legislature had moved with lightning speed over long days to declare war on three nations, appropriate billions of dollars for defense, grant the president unprecedented war powers, create a restructured Selective Service bill which was finally headed to President Roosevelt for his signature, and hold hearings on all sorts of war-related matters including corruption.

  The head of the Selective Service, General Louis B. Hershey, sent Roosevelt a memo outlining his concerns that men in war-related industries should stay put and not be allowed to join the armed forces. “In many instances they are men of skills who should stay in war production or vital civilian activities.” He advocated that recruiting stop and that the military depend instead on a draft.4 Memos Roosevelt reviewed that day dealt with the disposition of loyal Japanese on the West Coast5 (authored again by John Franklin Carter) memos on the Dutch East Indies,6 memos on Russia,7 and Stalin’s desire for “the Baltic States . . . but also . . . expansion to the west, presumably by advancing the Lithuanian borders into East Prussia” and obtaining “naval and air bases in Finland . . .”8

  No wonder Roosevelt was tired and cranky.

  He also received a detailed memo from the office of the legal advisor at the State Department explaining how, while the Constitution was clear on declaring war, it was silent on declaring peace. “The Constitution itself contains no specific grant of power to any branch of the Government to make peace.”It had been discussed at the Constitutional Convention in August of 1787 “to give Congress the power to declare both war and peace. The motion was unanimously rejected.” This power had been in the Articles of Confederation. Any conclusion of hostilities required a treaty, and that required the approval of the U.S. Senate. However, the fabled document gave the president broad powers. According to constitutional experts, “It is the right of the president, and not of Congress, to determine whether the terms [of peace] are advantageous, and if he refuses to make peace, the war must go on.” Even Woodrow Wilson said only the Senate could ratify peace.9

  A House special investigating committee also released a report that said “thousands of Nazis, Fascists, Japs are active there” in South America. In Argentina alone, it was charged that over 2,000 Gestapo agents were operating, and there “was reason to believe that a large contingent of Storm Troopers has 1been organized and that secret drilling is now in progress.” Also, the committee report claimed that there were 90,000 Nazis in the Buenos Aires area alone.10 The German embassy in that city was little more than a printing press for propaganda.

  The German embassy had taken the speeches of Charles Lindbergh, put them in a brochure, and distributed them widely throughout Argentina.11 Lindbergh, erstwhile American hero, would suffer a permanent blow to his reputation and prestige because of his previous pro-German, isolationist stance. The congressional report on these matters was comprehensive and had been assembled in a short period of time. Senator Harry Truman’s steadfast work rooting out corruption was also impressive.

  Whether one agreed or disagreed with all the actions of Congress, those actions were nonetheless impressive in speed and scope.

  It was time for the editors of the United Press to poll their editors and rank the top ten stories of 1941. The attack at Pearl Harbor was the lead-pipe cinch for first place. Of the succeeding nine, all were war related, from Lend-Lease to the Atlantic Charter to the pitched sea battle between the Bismarck and the Hood in the Atlantic. Not even Joe Louis’s epic title defenses or Joe DiMaggio’s fifty-six game hitting streak or Ted Williams’ phenomenal season hitting over .400 made the top ten stories.12

  In Washington, a former silent screen star, Corrine Griffith, and her husband, “wealthy Washington (D.C.) laundry operator Clark Griffith” were granted full custody in the adoption of two young girls. Buried at the bottom of the small newspaper item, it was also noted that Griffith was the owner of the “Washington professional football Redskins.”13

  The national debt was announced at $57 billion dollars.14

  Initially, the War Department had put out a call for skilled welders and steelworkers needed to help build ships at Pearl Harbor, but it was revealed several days later that, in fact, the workers were needed to “help repair the damage” at the war-torn island. “Those needed include mechanics, laborers and helpers. Among the journeyman trades the pay will vary from $1.02 an hour to $1.30 an hour, depending on the type of work. One hundred laborers at 62 cents an hour and 100 helpers at 74 cents an hour are needed. Single men are preferred . . . all applicants will be subjected to . . . [a] Federal Bureau of Investigation fingerprint test.”15

  The war industry continued to ramp up speedily as the president set higher and higher production quotas. Exhibiting his usual knack for the inspirational phrase, FDR called America’s massive manufacturing might the Arsenal of Democracy. At first, business leaders as well as Congress (which had to come up with the astronomical funding) balked at some of his ambitious demands. Soon, though, the war economy was firing on all cylinders and producing weaponry and materiel at levels previously deemed utterly impossible. Germany and its Axis partners were about to get a taste of America’s will. At a plant in Johnsville, Pennsylvania, new dive bombers were near to being turned out only weeks after the factory opened. Without revealing any details, the designers of the new plane promised it would fly circles around the German Stuka. The new American plane’s initial name was “Buccaneer.”16

  To build planes, trains, automobiles, tanks, ships, guns, ,etc., raw materials were needed—and lots of them. So the government’s requisitioning of privately owned material accelerated. “OPM Priorities Director Donald M. Nelson yesterday announced the seizure by the Navy of more than one million dollars worth of critic
al scarce materials being held in warehouses and railroad terminals for shipment to foreign countries. The requisitioning, first under new powers granted to the Office of Production Management by Executive Order, included more than 13 million pounds of steel, 31/2 million pounds of copper, 34,000 pounds of tin and 70,000 feet of teakwood. The steel had been located by OPM research and statistics bureau’s survey of lost, hidden and frozen inventories . . . . The owners of the property taken . . . will be compensated for the value of the materials.”17 The navy also helped itself to “four of [the] Gulf’s finest yachts” in Mobile, Alabama.18

  With astonishing speed, the U.S. government had not only identified privately held metals, woods, and other materials but had also taken them for the war effort. Government was all-pervasive by the twentieth. Not since the special powers that President Lincoln had appropriated for himself during the Civil War had the centralized authority of the U.S. government moved with such alacrity and such trampling of private property, if not of the Constitution for that matter. During the existential crisis of the Civil War, Lincoln used his war powers to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, proclaim a blockade, and spend funds without congressional authorization. Most of his actions were subsequently upheld by Congress and the courts. Now, America faced another existential crisis, and FDR had precedent for dispensing with a few inconvenient democratic niceties.

  The Wall Street Journal fretted about the new war powers granted FDR by Congress. “President Roosevelt now holds greater powers over life and property than any President before him. Legislation to give him still more power already is being planned. Two additional legislative grants of power are to be asked soon, government officials disclose. Also, it is anticipated that the President will soon ask Congress to eliminate the Tabor amendment to the Property Requisitioning Bill.” If eliminated, it would allow outright seizure of factory equipment by the government for the war effort.19 Unlike some editors in the Civil War who had been ordered imprisoned by Lincoln because their opposition had displeased him, Roosevelt made no such move against newspapers that opposed him, including the Journal.

  The Office of Production Management was being reorganized. This, for the few defenders of an unfettered free market, was cause for concern. The OPM regulated just about everything already, from rubber to salad oil. Now it was poised to directly manage all of industry and the entire workforce, including “the curtailment of production for civilian use.” It was also preparing to take over the “pulp and paper; printing and publishing; lumber and building materials; plumbing and heating; electrical appliances; automobiles; transportation and farm equipment; industrial and office machinery.” The list just continued on and on.20

  Because of the rapid expansion of the federal war bureaucracy, some government functions were actually suggested to be outsourced to other locations around the country to make room for the war effort in Washington. All in all, twelve federal agencies including the Patent Office, the Rural Electrification Administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and others were proposed to be moved to New York City, St. Louis, and Chicago, among other locations. For the 10,000 federal workers potentially being displaced, the government promised to pay their moving costs and help them find adequate housing, or, if they could not move, the government promised to help them find comparable jobs.21 The forced private-sector layoffs came with no such guarantees.

  America’s medical schools on the East Coast announced that becoming a board certified physician would now take only three years, as opposed to the usual four-year plan because of the desperate need for doctors in military hospitals. A “Victory Book” campaign was organized nationally to get people to send works of fiction and nonfiction to servicemen for their reading pleasure. The Girl Scouts organized a “Senior Scout” program to train their elder girls “in emergency feeding, messenger service, care of children, preparation of emergency shelters and packing of emergency rations and equipment.”22 A contingent of members of the Canadian Air Cadets came through New York on a publicity tour, with the idea of starting a similar program for American boys. The ages of the air cadets were fourteen to eighteen, and they were described as the “kindergarten of the Royal Air Force.”23

  Perhaps because of the Christmas season, the city of Washington was displaying a pubic spiritedness not normally associated with the Capitol of Cynicism. Dupont Circle and Glover Park organized air-raid watching groups, as did Takoma Park in Maryland. A “D.C. Committee of 70” was set up to collect scrap paper, rubber, metal, and old rags.24

  Blind Americans were also doing their part for the war effort. At “fifty-four workshops for the blind in twenty-seven states,” they were churning out for the military “brooms, mops, deck swabs, mattresses, cocoa mats, pillowcases, whisk brooms, mailing bags, mop handles and similar articles.”25

  Because skilled labor was needed, some of the new vocational and academic teaching programs for the blind came as a direct result of the war effort, because skilled labor was needed. Over 2,000 patriotic sightless citizens working in these various plants wanted to kick the stuffing out of the Axis thugs too.

  Even Fido was being recruited for the war effort. The commander of the Los Angeles harbor, Colonel W. W. Hicks, put out an all-points bulletin for “canine recruits.” He “said the dogs could be of all sizes or breeds, but must be in good health and sufficiently intelligent to pass the canine equivalent of the Stanford universal achievement test.” What the lucky dogs would be engaged in was termed a “military secret.” It was recalled that “in the last war, they were used at the front to carry messages.”26

  It may have been the holiday season that brought people together, but marriages still ended and some badly. In order to secure a divorce, a public notice ran in the New York Times: “My wife, Phyllis Zenerino, having left my bed and board . . . [I] will not be responsible for her debts. Frank Zenerino, 608 9th Avenue, New York.”27

  The spirit of Christmas and esprit de corps and sacrifice were almost everywhere else though. In the Philippines, the 6,000 criminals of the penitentiary offered to donate blood for the Allied cause and to fight the Japanese if released. “The prisoners reaffirmed their faith in the United States and the Philippines.”28 A group of thirteen criminals, most of them serving life sentences, went one better and offered themselves to FDR as a “suicide squad.” They wrote a letter to Roosevelt, which the warden allowed to go to the White House and in which they proposed “to serve as human torpedoes to help crush the Japanese. It is far better to sacrifice one life than to lose thousands,” the missive said.29 Sacrifice for a higher calling, even among crooks, was deep in the American creed.

  Across America, religious and seasonal Christmas songs burst forth in department stores, on city sidewalks, in government buildings, in public schools, on radios, and all across the country. Everybody wished everybody else “Merry Christmas!” and no one was offended. Bibles were everywhere, as were crèches—scenes of the manger where Christ was born. Big write-ups in all the papers detailed planned church festivities, and there were extensive stories in the Washington papers of the planned activities of the Roosevelt clan on Christmas Eve. Christmas lighting had been kept to a minimum, but the sacrifices of war made the American people all the more resolute and, indeed, righteous in wanting to celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ. The fact that America was fighting for its life made the Christmas of 1941 deeply meaningful because it represented, to most people, the very thing that made fighting worthwhile. Understandably then, beneath the Christmas joy was a seriousness of purpose among the American people.

  So much so, that many factories were humming and operating on December 25. “To supply steel for war, many plants in the industry, will operate on Christmas Day for the first time in 24 years, or since the first World War.” Some of the plants that would be open included Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation, Republic Steel, and, appropriately, Bethlehem Steel. All workers would receive time-and-a-half, and the president of Carnegie, J. L. Perry, remarked, “It is not
longer a question of how much steel can be provided to industry but how quickly. Delay in the production of steel means delay in the production of material vital to national welfare.”30

  Christmas was being celebrated in Hawaii, albeit it in a truncated manner. Blackouts were still in effect, but during the day, Navy enlistees in their white uniforms were spotted carrying packages on the streets of Honolulu. “Nobody seems downhearted. Nevertheless, the territorial office of civilian defense has established a public morale section to promote loyalty to the United States and interracial harmony . . . This section is headed by an American, with one Chinese assistant and another of Japanese-American ancestry.”31

  But what was on everybody’s mind in Hawaii was when the bars and nightclubs and liquor stores would open back up.32

  Even with the massive disruption in the national economy, consumer spending was projected to increase greatly in 1942 “despite higher taxes and rising prices.”33 After years of grim deprivation during the Depression, there was a huge pent up demand for consumer goods and a better life. Anticipating the upswing in the economy, the Spiegel Company of Chicago, a department store and mail-order house, announced it was for the first time offering a credit plan for mail orders, with no interest charges, only a small “carrying charge.”34 Adding to the holiday spirit was the release of a new Shirley Temple movie, Kathleen, after a two-year hiatus for the hugely popular young movie actress.35

  Reality was always deeply woven into the fabric, however. There were ongoing discussions about cancelling the annual New Year’s Eve festivities in Times Square in New York City. Boston’s archbishop, William Cardinal O’Connell, canceled the traditional midnight Mass for Christmas Eve because of the fear of what could happen to a large group of unsuspecting churchgoers. “The action was taken in a move to co-operate with defense authorities by eliminating the possibility of congestion of hundreds of persons after dark in the event of an emergency.”36 A letter had gone out to every Catholic church in America to be read at Mass on Sunday, the twenty-first, asking all parishioners to get involved in war work.