December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  The Japanese were not only destroying, they were also restoring. In Borneo, retreating British engineers had laid waste to some 150 oil wells, in the hopes of denying or delaying the precious liquid for the enemy. The ploy failed as the Japanese, within days, brought seventy of them back on line, producing by their estimate some 700 tons of oil a day.23 The Japanese alacrity in restoring the oil wells underscored the degree to which their conquest of East Asia was in large part predicated on their strategic need to capture rich oil resources, once controlled by the British. The Japanese knew full well that without sufficient oil to power their war machine, their aspirations for greater Empire would be futile.

  In capturing the area of Sarawak from the British, the Japanese, had fall into their lap, tons of precious tin, rubber, guns, “armors cars” and other spoils of war.24 Additionally, a report from the British colonial office said the Japanese were now “operating” in the Gilbert Islands which were approximately halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and Australia. “The announcement expressed fears that some European residents of the little chain of 16 coral atoll islands might have been taken prisoners.”25

  Americans were following the news of their country and the news of the world as newspaper circulation reached an all-time high, according to Editor and Publisher.26 Morning papers were up, afternoon papers were up, and Sunday papers were up. Most papers cost 2 to 3 cents.

  For weeks, women had been warned that the days of silk stockings—at least during the war effort—were probably over and now it appeared they were, as many department stores had pushed their purchase hard for the Christmas buying season. The National Association of Hosiery expected inventories to run out, as there had been a run on them since December 7. Silk would be needed to fill more important roles including parachutes and the powder bags for the large guns on warships if the Allies were going to get a leg up over the Axis Powers.

  Washington finally got its policy together on civilian purchase of new tires during the war and the course of action was essentially “Hit the road, Jack.” Plain, everyday citizens had no hope (at least legally) of getting new tires but neither did cabbies or those who lived in rural areas. Tires in 1941 were not steel-belted or vulcanized or pneumatic or nylon-belted and did not last for thousands of miles. They were essentially a thin rubber balloon inside a hard circle of rubber that wrapped around a steel rim, and the contraption did not last long. A board with nails, glass in the road, were daggers at the throat of these poorly made tires. Even if they did not meet their demise due to puncture, they wore out very quickly as did the tread. Getting stuck in snow, ice, and mud was an everyday occurrence and the solution for many was to place chains around their tires which also destroyed the soft tar of city streets. An outright ban on tires was essentially a ban on driving. This was not an inconsequential decision by the government. The cessation of the sale of new tires had a broad and potentially devastating ramification for the economy. As many people drove their cars to work each day or took cabs, it would definitely have an effect on employment. Goodyear pitched their flimsy contrivances saying, “You can safely run your tire until the non-skid tread design practically disappears. Then you can have them safely regrooved. Later, if your tire carcasses are sound, you can safely have them retreaded and drive them nearly as far again.”27

  “The nation’s 32,000,000-odd motor car owners today face an almost complete tire famine,” said one story.28 Local rationing boards were set up with three members from each community, like the Draft Boards and the Enemy Alien Boards. The members would be appointed by each state’s governor and would be empowered to issue certificates for purchase “to those few operators that come under the classifications outlined by Washington and all law enforcement agencies have been asked to aid in enforcing the rationing rules.”29

  The rubber shortage was such that people were advised against going for Sunday drives, to walk more, and to only drive for essential reasons and when one did, combine all your errands together. Comedian Bob Hope was in newspaper ads astride a Schwinn bicycle.30

  New tire sales were limited to police and fire departments, doctors, nurses, veterinarians, trucks that delivered oil, farm tractors and other equipment needed for the production of food, and delivery trucks for scrap metals and trucks for “garbage removal.”31 For delivery vehicles like milk trucks, it was no go. The Office of Production Management later amended their rules to allow for the manufacture of fire hoses.32 American farmers were urged to plant a Russian imported dandelion as some scientists saw the weed as being able to produce a modicum of rubber to replace at least some of the shortage, according to the National Chemurgic Council.33 One side effect of the new rule: “Stores were quickly cleaned out of golf balls.”34

  City fathers in Detroit of all places made plans to bring out of retirement over a hundred streetcars to fill the need for public transportation created by the tire shortage.35 The shortage was so severe in Great Britain, the Minister of Supply issued an outright ban on anything made out of the now-rare substance including “corsets . . . golf tees and garden hoses.”36

  With all the seriousness and seriousness of purpose in America, it was sometimes difficult to remember that the country also still had a seedy underside, fueled by easy money, notoriety, and booze. Young millionaire heiress Gloria Vanderbilt was so often in the news it was reasonable to assume she employed an army of publicists. But she was also a “Jonah,” bringing trouble and bad luck to everybody around her it seemed. At her engagement party, two men who claimed to be princes got into a fistfight and this made the newspapers, even as war was raging all around and even as young American boys were fighting and dying.37

  Just as American families were getting over the weeklong food festival of Christmas week, they were staring down the barrel of yet another festival of food and fun during New Year’s Week. Still, with the new regulations on tires, Americans would have plenty of opportunity to walk off the extra poundage they gained over the holiday season. Ralph’s, a chain supermarket in the Los Angeles area, was touting all sorts of meats, fruits, vegetables, and staples for customers to restock their shelves. Interestingly, of all the staples listed, including salt and pepper, Maxwell House coffee (1 pound was just 31 cents), and potatoes (10 pounds for 27 cents), sugar was nowhere to be found in their print ads. They also now carried the new disclaimer at the bottom, “We Reserve the Right to Limit Quantities.”38

  They would also have plenty of jobs in manual labor to sweat over, building the arsenal of democracy. Government planners in a myriad of agencies, including the National Youth Administration, were conceiving new job training programs for men and women, as there was a “skilled labor gap.” The effort involved “federal, state and local agencies” who were “cooperating in an all-out program to provide skilled workers to fill the wide gaps in industrial plant rosters growing out of the acceleration of production to meet war needs.” The plans included moving workers around the country to meet the needs of various industries. Also, women would be “encouraged” to join the work force. “As a first big step, the big-scale employment of women looms, hence they are now being trained for jobs now reserved for male workers. Women soon will dominate in many machine shops, drafting rooms, engineering departments, light assembly divisions, light riveting and spot welding.”39

  The American government continued its crackdown on “enemy aliens” in the country. In Alabama, fruit orchards owned by Japanese nationals were seized by the Department of the Interior, while the Justice Department issued a terse statement that all “Japanese, German and Italian nationals in seven Pacific coast states” had until 11 a.m. on Monday, the twenty-ninth to surrender to authorities any radio-transmitting equipment, especially short-wave radios, as well as any cameras they owned. Those states the edict applied to were Washington, California, Utah, Montana, Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada.40 A second group of twenty-three enemy aliens was trucked from San Francisco to “a Missoula internment camp. . . . About 100 local aliens previously have been
sent to Montana. Several carloads of Southern California aliens were scheduled to be placed aboard the same train at Sacramento.”41

  If possible, security measures were becoming even tighter in America three weeks after the outbreak of war. Additional cordons were thrown up around defense plants, identification cards for workers were being issued, and tightly controlled and law enforcement officials often pulled over drivers for no apparent reason. Washington tightened even further the border with Mexico, not allowing anyone to carry any form of correspondence across the boundaries. All letters would be confiscated.42

  While nobody used the phrase “Police State,” a blanket of state-sponsored security—along with the acquiescence of most Americans—was settling over the country. The Santa Anita thoroughbred racing meeting was canceled for the first time ever. Public officials were debating banning any gathering of more than 10,000 people. To enter the Los Angeles harbor—as with others around the country—specially issued photo identification was needed but they also contained “fingerprint, status of citizenship and physical description of the holder.”43

  The harbor had already been designated a “Navy sea defense district” by presidential order. “Photographing in the area is prohibited and no one can divulge movements of shipping or naval activities under penalty of violation of the Espionage Act or other Federal or state laws. . . .”44

  The costs for civil defense had gone up exponentially. As a result, money available for other municipal programs was severely restricted. The lead editorial in the Los Angeles Times read, “Where to Cut to Save Money for War.” Editorials in the New York Times, the New York Herald-Tribune, the Indianapolis News, and others applauded the new restrictions and offered advice to citizens on how to stay out of trouble.45

  If anybody did complain about all the censorship, shortages, rationing, checkpoints, blackout drills, ubiquitous guards, and any number of other infringements and inconveniences, the Pavlovian response was, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” as if the questioning party was somehow unpatriotic.

  The matter of the Japanese, German, and Italian legations was still to be resolved, though the United States pledged to abide by the international conventions. The German staff and ambassador had been removed from Washington and were comfortably ensconced at the Greenbrier hotel in West Virginia, mostly eating and drinking too much. They were awaiting their deportation which was delayed because of the niceties of diplomats, the intermediary Swiss, and foot-dragging bureaucrats.46 The Germans though weren’t in any hurry to leave.

  Further, the Roosevelt administration pledged that in the matter of Japanese prisoners of war, here it too would abide by the 1929 articles of Geneva endorsed and ratified at the time by forty-seven countries. Ominously, Japan never ratified the conventions. “The United States has informed the Japanese government that all Japanese prisoners captured by American armed forces will be treated in accordance with the prisoner-of-war convention. . . .” The Americans expected the Japanese to reciprocate and “grant all American prisoners of war reciprocal fair and humane treatment.”47 It was asking a lot.

  The Japanese already had a sizable number of American POW’s including the marines taken at Wake Island, in China, and at Guam, plus the sailors taken off a gunboat captured in Shanghai. The Americans only had a handful including several pilots shot down in Pearl and the crew of one of the “midget” submarines captured in that battle. According to the 1929 document as created by the International Red Cross, prisoner exchanges had to be arranged and POW camps opened for international inspection.

  Representatives of the World Alliance of the Young Men Christian’s Association, including Dr. Darius Davis, had gone on an inspection tour of the Russian, German, French, and English POW camps and found that each was generally abiding by the Geneva Convention, although the Germans fed their Russian prisoners less than prisoners “of other nationalities. “Each day, the Russians were given “a cooked turnip ‘with a little codfish thrown in.’”48 Many governments sent “supplementary” food to their captive men: Davis was asked if prisoners could survive without supplementary food and he remarked that the Serbs and the Poles got nothing from home, “And they are still able to live.”49 No inspections had yet been made of Japanese POW camps and, of course, there was no mention of the German concentration camps where the extermination of millions of human beings was just getting underway.

  As abruptly as the torpedo attacks along the California coast had begun, they by and large ceased. No doubt the increased surveillance by civilians and the law enforcement along the shore, as well as vastly increased over flights by the military and the additional precautions taken by ship captains, combined to have a positive effect. However, it could also have been that the subs—presumably Japanese—had run low on fuel and supplies and were thus forced to withdraw to safer waters to re-provision. Still, fishing on the West Coast was severely restricted because boat insurance had jumped up and with it, the cost of sardines.50

  The American people had digested the situation with more than some aplomb. There was never a general panic among the populace and given what submarines were capable of doing to defenseless ships and shore emplacements, they would have been justified in panicking more. Shipping along the coast was vitally important to the local economy at the time. There were few roads up and down the West Coast.

  Airplanes were not big enough to haul sufficient quantities of food and other goods, so it was up to ships and trains to carry the load. The very thought of commercial ships being sunk at random could have set off a panic, sending food prices spiraling upwards with runs on grocery stores and yet, those Americans along the West Coast had taken the whole matter in stride, perhaps inured a bit to the new vicissitudes of war.

  For them, war and sacrifice already had become a way of life. Little could Americans realize, in those heady first days of rekindled patriotism, just how long and costly this global conflict would prove to be.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE TWENTY-EIGHTH OF DECEMBER

  Japanese Bombs Fire Open City of Manila;

  Roosevelt and Churchill Fix War Strategy

  New York Times

  Japs Demand Filipinos “Cease All Resistance”

  Atlanta Constitution

  Night Shifts for Women in Plane Plants Seen

  Los Angeles Times

  The twenty-eighth marked the third week after Pearl Harbor. It was also the last Sunday of the year, and the churches of America were packed with congregants and parishioners listening to ministers and priests asking them to pray for their president, for Winston Churchill, for their elected leaders, but most importantly for the people on the front lines fighting for America.1 The Archbishop of Chicago, Father Samuel Stritch, asked his parishioners to pray for Roosevelt and against the “Godless . . . fury.”2 The day before, in a synagogue in New York, Rabbi Elias Solomon spoke to his flock of FDR and Churchill, “Like Joseph of old, they seem to have been chosen to preserve life and liberty for all men and nations.”3

  It would be nice to imagine that the national emergency and the holiday season might cool the partisanship and mean-spiritedness in America, but not so. In addition to getting on Roosevelt’s nerves over his mismanagement of the Office of Civil Defense, Fiorello La Guardia, as mayor, ordered the head of the Office of Commissioner of Markets in New York City, William Morgan Jr., to fire Mrs. Preston Davie, whom newspaper accounts said was a “blue blooded leader in Republican women circles.”4

  La Guardia was a Republican in only the most casual and tissue-thin interpretation. In 1941, the Republican Party was home to many moderates and liberals, especially in the Northeast. La Guardia was a New Dealer through and through and had campaigned for Roosevelt in 1936 and 1940. La Guardia won Gracie Mansion by running against corruption and then ran the city like a little dictator rather than a “Little Flower.” He also ran for mayor on the ticket of the American Labor Party, an ultra-liberal organization. Mrs. Roosevelt had been installed by her husband as the ass
istant director of the Office of Civil Defense to keep an eye on La Guardia for FDR, and because she herself had been mildly critical of his stewardship of the OCD.5

  When Morgan refused to fire Mrs. Davie, La Guardia got tough and one of his lackeys referred publicly to Mrs. Davie as Morgan’s “girlfriend.”6 Morgan threw up his hands and resigned.

  Candor was the Western watchword in the waning days of December. Australian Prime Minister John Curtin gave a speech before his parliament in Canberra in which he warned of more and more reversals for the Allied Powers. The leaders of the Allied Powers had little choice but to tell people this as the news each day seemed to become gloomier and gloomier. The best they could do against Japan, Curtin said, was to “slow the enemy down.”7

  Curtin also understood what he and the Allies were up against. “We face an enemy nurtured in the tradition that to die for the nation is the highest virtue.”8 Not everyone was convinced that the Allies felt that defeating the Japanese carried the same weight as defeating Nazi Germany, including many, not surprisingly, in the Pacific. Indeed, in the war conferences in Washington, on at least one occasion, Allied representatives suggested that the war in the Pacific could wait. “Diplomatic circles reported . . . that one of the premises basic to the conference was that Hitler’s Germany was the chief and, at present, perhaps the most vulnerable enemy and that Japan, if she could be checked at Singapore and its approaches including the Philippines, could be taken care of later.”9 The premise was dangerous and foolish because even a cursory look at the broadsheets of the days made clear that the battles for Singapore and the Philippines were not going at all well for the Allies. There might not be much, later.