December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  Another harsh critic of the “Europe First” policy, Sir Keith Murdoch, publisher of the Melbourne Herald, took Churchill to task, denouncing him for being “Atlantic-minded” and said in no uncertain terms that if Singapore fell, then the Churchill government would fall. “Some of those in office are ready to say we can finish the Japanese after beating the Germans,” he stormed.10 Australia was not a member of FDR’s “War Council,” but many thought she should be, including Murdoch. The New York Times editorially called for “Anglo-American Unity.”11 Sir Keith eventually sired a son named Rupert, who inherited his father’s publishing empire, greatly expanded it, and went on to display the same pugnacious streak.

  To Murdoch’s point, it was announced that the Japanese had seized two of the Gilbert Islands, Makin and Abalang. The islands were a part of the British Commonwealth and only 2,000 miles from Hawaii.12

  FDR had his own problems with publishers, one in particular. Basil Brewer, the publisher of the New Bedford Standard-Times went hard after the Roosevelt administration over the Philippines, the lack of adequate defenses there, and Douglas MacArthur’s decision to declare Manila an open city. “The stupidity of removing defenses from Manila and declaring it an open city with the expectation that Japan would respect its civil population finds its expected answer in the death and destruction wrought there today. “ Brewer ripped FDR even further, saying his decisions contained a “profound lack of realism.”13

  With the Japanese rapidly moving down the Asian coastline, gobbling up one country after another, one colony after another, one outpost after another, the Australians’ impatience was understandable. They were nervous about the Japanese and had recent history on their side to point to. At some point, having taken everything else, the Japanese could be counted on to invade Australia and while the Aussies had a standing army of about 300,000 men, their equipment and training was considered poor. They had a small navy and virtually no air force.14 With no significant prior threats, Australia had never seen the need to invest in their military and was now looking to the United States and Great Britain.

  But the British had their point of view as well and they considered it valid. From where Churchill sat, Hitler was more of a threat to the bulk of the British people than Japan. The British Empire may have had 500 million people—factoring in India and other parts of the Commonwealth—but not all of them voted and not all of them had been bombed day and night by the German Luftwaffe. The British in private sometimes shook their heads about the American reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During their blitz, it wasn’t unusual for London to be hit hundreds of times in a single day by thousands of bombs.

  Plus, the war with Germany was over two years old. The war with Japan was only three weeks old. First things first.

  Out of those war conferences arranged in Washington by President Roosevelt came a consensus for the conduct of the war against the Axis. Speaking for the nearly three dozen countries arrayed against the Axis—all now members of the Allied Powers—“President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill [assumed] dramatic leadership of the . . . war against Axis aggression, spread before the accredited representatives of 33 nations yesterday the advanced blueprints for marshaling every economic and fighting resource of this globe-encircling front.”15 No details were of course revealed but the mere fact that so many countries could agree on anything was in and of itself a miracle. Even America’s allies, the Russians and the Chinese, were in agreement. Other countries sending representatives included Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Cuba, and, Paraguay and in fact, nearly all the countries of Central and South America were on hand. Roosevelt said they had made “excellent progress.”16

  White House press secretary Stephen Early handed out a statement from FDR which read, in part:

  As a result of all these meetings, I know tonight that the position of the United States and of all the nations aligned with us has been strengthened immeasurably. We have advanced far along the road toward achievement of the ultimate objective—the crushing defeat of those forces that have attacked and made war upon us. The present overall objective is the marshaling of all resources, military and economic, of the world-wide from opposing the Axis.17

  A surprisingly happy addition to the Allied efforts was the Netherlands as a result of their victories in the Far East against Japanese ships and planes. Truth be told, their military successes in the early days of the Pacific war were greater than those of either America or Great Britain. Just the day before, the Dutch had sunk two Japanese warships. The minister for the Netherlands, Dr. Alexander Loudon, was granted a private audience with Roosevelt and Churchill.18 The Free French were not prevalent at the meeting and it may have been because both Washington and London were miffed at Charles De Gaulle for taking two tiny islands off the coast of Newfoundland without first checking with them. The French then banned any ship from any country to make port in either St. Pierre or Miquelon.19

  Some of the representatives simply had to step out of their embassies and hail a cab to take them to the White House for these meetings, but others had more harrowing journeys, including the representatives of eight refugee governments who had been “driven from their homelands or have bowed to the exigencies of war to transfer their principal activities to new centers.”20 Some of them were included in the final meeting of the day: Poland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Greece, Czechoslovakia and others. One more meeting was postponed until the next day because Churchill and Roosevelt had been going non-stop and needed a break after the long Saturday. Churchill would be leaving the next day.

  On Sunday, Churchill departed via train for Ottawa where he was to give a speech before the Canadian Parliament. He climbed aboard a private car at Union Station in Washington at 2:15 p.m. and headed north through Baltimore and Philadelphia before stopping in New York at 6:10 p.m. It took three hours to get to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he arrived at 9:40 p.m. In and out of White River Junction, Vermont after 1:00 a.m., he did not arrive in Ottawa until 9:00 a.m. the next morning.21

  Cigarettes and the tobacco industry were hugely important to the civilian population and military government, and it was big news when a new brand came out or, heaven forbid, manufacturers raised the price on a pack of cigarettes. The Office of Price Administration raised a stink when American Tobacco wanted to raise its prices by 57 cents on every 1,000 cigarettes. The increase to the consumer would be about one penny for a pack of 20 cigarettes and the OPM pressured nine other tobacco companies not to follow suit.22 The cost of a pack of cigarettes was, depending on where you lived, around 20 cents per pack and over sixty percent of all smokers smoked filterless Lucky Strikes, filterless Camels, or filterless Chesterfields.

  Big advertisements filled the magazines of America featuring soldiers and sailors and marines in uniform with cigarettes dangling from their mouths with the screaming headline, WE WANT CAMELS!23 Other ads featured kindly looking doctors with silver-haired temples, dressed in white lab coats, assuring smokers of the healthful benefits of certain cigarette brands. To pre-empt growing anxieties about the bad physical effects of smoking, tobacco companies increasingly featured bogus “medical evidence” that their brands were actually good for you. They also actively curried favor with physicians and physician groups, leveraging the enormous respect and authority that the medical profession enjoyed in society.

  Now, with America at war, cigarette advertisements were starting to feature heroic doctors in battle, supplying fighting men with the medical attention—and cigarettes—that they so desperately needed. As one advertisement had it: “[The medical man] well knows the comfort and cheer there is in a few moments’ relaxation with a good cigarette . . . like Camel . . . the favorite cigarette with men in all the services.”24

  Meanwhile, another government entity, the Office of Production Management, issued new orders of its own to makers of farm equipment. The companies were told to “curtail” the manufacturing of new equipment while stepping up the “output of repair parts.” “T
he purpose is to conserve scarce metals while assuring that farmers will be able to keep presently-owned machinery in good working condition.” The order, it was said, affected everything “from windmills to wheelbarrows.” At the time, some fifty thousand Americans were employed in the farm manufacturing industry, in which there were approximately a thousand companies churning out milk cans, tractors, combines, harrows, hoes, shovels, pickaxes, spades, and spade shovels; the tools for the men and women who had wrought miracles out of the American wilderness and with those tools, their hands, and their fortitude had fed millions of Americans with high-quality and low-cost food.25

  In the cities, where the sophisticates sometimes looked down their noses at their country cousins, they were getting ready for New Year’s Eve. To most farmers, it was simply another day but to the city slickers, it was an excuse to get dolled up, men in black tie, women in furs and flowing fur coats. A dinner jacket at Raleigh’s Haberdasher in Washington was going for $55, enough to feed a family of four for a month. For the police and fire departments of New York, New Year’s Eve would be spent patrolling the Great White Way, looking for saboteurs on the ground and bombers in the air. Big crowds were expected as with each New Year’s Eve and officials thought the throngs would be a tempting target to the enemy. The city had been under pressure to cancel the reverie on December 31, but they went ahead and made sure seven hundred of New York’s finest were out and about to ensure no harm befell the partiers.

  For the women, before going out, print ads reminded them—sometimes in the bluntest terms—to take care of their hygiene. “Go to bed, Mary,” said one ad for Mum deodorant. “That phone won’t ring tonight. No one ever calls Mary anymore. No one ever calls on any girl who is careless about underarm odour (sic). You need Mum to prevent odour to come.” Other ads advised women that if they had any chance at all for a man, they’d better use Lux Soap, or Palmolive Soap, or Cashmere Bouquet Soap. “That exquisite, lingering scent is the success secret of your romantic rival. . . .”26 Ivory Snow laundry detergent was recommended for women’s increasingly rare silk stockings because “perspiration is acid.”27

  Print ads in Los Angeles newspapers urged people to make their reservations now for the Hollywood Palladium where Tommy Dorsey “and his trombone and orchestra” would perform for the revelers on the Palladium’s opening night.28 On the bill for that evening was a wafer-thin twenty-four-year-old kid from Hoboken, New Jersey, named Frank Sinatra.

  For those who wanted to party New Year’s Eve in Hawaii, “intoxicating liquor” was still not available by order of the military governor. The only way to obtain beer, liquor, or wine was with a prescription written by a physician. If the “sick” individual was in the military, then their liquor prescription could only be filled by a military pharmacist. If the “sick” individual was a civilian, well, this one gave new meaning to bureaucracy. “Prescriptions written by civilian physicians, dentists and veterinarians must be submitted in duplicate form to the pharmacist who is required to note on the duplicate the action he takes. Then the pharmacist must forward daily the copy with his notation to the controller of civilian medical supplies. . . .”29 The runaround to getting a drink was enough to drive a man to drink.

  J. B. Poindexter, the military governor, was cracking down in other ways. Beginning on December 31, all residents of Hawaii over the age of six years old would have to be registered and fingerprinted. Only military personnel were exempted. The entire “Hawaiian Defense Act” took up a full page in mouse type in the December 28 Honolulu Advertiser. Anything and everything in the islands from gasoline consumption to residences to curfews had rules and regulations. The paper also was running classified ads selling bomb shelters. “Can be installed immediately.”30

  Irony was a part of war. It was reported that “several” of the Japanese pilots who had been shot down on December 7 were wearing class rings issued by the University of Hawaii and McKinley High School.31

  Local radio stations in Honolulu came on no earlier than 6:30 a.m. and their broadcasting day ended at just after 10 p.m. No longer would an enemy use the overnight broadcasting of a radio station as a homing beacon as the Japanese had done early in the morning of December 7. The first show on KGMB was, appropriately, “Dawn Patrol.”32

  The number of Japanese, Germans, and Italians deported from the West Coast and shipped to Montana was increasing. Prisoners who had been held in the Terminal Island Federal jail in the Los Angeles area were cleaned out “and moved to an internment camp.” Further, “This was disclosed yesterday with reports that more than 100 Japanese and German nationals had been transported to the internment camp together with a group from San Francisco.”33 Also, all the Japanese-owned shops in the Terminal Island “settlement” were closed.34

  Across the country, rumors went around that employers were dismissing workers of Italian, German, and Japanese descent, even though they were either American citizens or legal aliens and loyal to their adopted country. Attorney General Francis Biddle cautioned Americans against racism and xenophobia. “Among those who died fighting off the treacherous attacks upon Manila and Pearl Harbor were men named Wagner and Petersen and Monzo and Bossini and Mueller and Rasmussen. To bar aliens from employment is both short-sighted and wasteful.”35 The government then made a high profile arrest of a “Bund Leader” in Los Angeles, Herman Max Schwinn, “one-time alleged West Coast chieftain of the German-American Bund and many other Nazis and Italians have been arrested for investigation by G-men in a surprise and sensational roundup of aliens in Southern California.”36 Biddle would be an unsung hero of the era, successfully arguing to FDR that the mass internment of Japanese, favored by the military and others, was wrong.

  F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover took the credit for busting a German spy ring operating in the U.S. long before the war started. Thirty-three were arrested, and by mid-December fourteen had been convicted in federal court and the remaining nineteen had pleaded guilty. The spies used invisible writing and a “complicated code based on pages from the novel All This and Heaven, Too.”37 Hoover was a master at promoting himself and for taking credit for the hard work of subordinates; this was no exception.

  Possibly to make amends to Roosevelt, La Guardia’s Office of Civil Defense announced its new operating hours which was all the time. Employees would, for the duration of the war, work twelve-hour shifts. Time magazine described La Guardia’s operations there as “confused and unprepared” and he as “hen-shaped.”38

  Adjustments in work schedules were also being considered in airplane plants on the West Coast. Though operating on a twenty-four hour basis, the regulations prevented women from working the “graveyard” shifts unless they were paid overtime, even as the men who worked those hours, were paid at the normal rate. It was recommended that this rule be amended or changed because of the national emergency “and because the airplane plants already pay far above the legal minimum wage for women.”39

  The Office of Production Management also “requested” of defense plants, nationwide, that they put in a regular work schedule on New Year’s Day. “Since the men at the front, are not taking time off to celebrate New Year’s Day, we feel that this should not be considered a holiday for defense plants.”40

  Sub attacks on American vessels had declined dramatically; in part because of increased surveillance by the military and decreased provisions for the subs. Navy officials also credited the decline to quiet citizens. Two phrases popped up, “A slip of the lip may sink a ship” and “That friendly chap may tell a Jap.” The Office of War Information and the navy launched a public relations campaign to ask Americans not to talk about “disclosure of . . . ship movements.” One official said, “Much of this information is undoubtedly obtained by enemy agents and fifth columnists from conversations which they initiate or overhear in public places.” He then put an edge on it with the threat. The “federal Espionage Act . . . carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment for communicating, either directly or indirectly, inf
ormation relating to national defense.”41 Mum’s the word.

  In its lead editorial the Los Angeles Times took up the military’s lament against so-called Monday morning quarterbacks, “arm-chair generals, tablecloth admirals and all-round amateur runners-of-the-war.” The long editorial berated readers for all real or imagined complaints against the conduct of the war and defended the War Department. “Our military and naval leaders are among the ablest of their professions in the world.”42 Most of the complaining came from editorialists and columnists. To wit, an editorial the same day criticized the U.S. military for being taken in by the Japanese, for being foolish enough to believe they would abide by the rules of engagement pertaining to open cities—in this case, Manila—after the Japanese surprise attack. “We should have known that a government capable of such a monstrous crime as was perpetrated at Honolulu would not hesitate at the mere bombing of an open city in defiance of the international code of war. . . .”43 This hard-hitting editorial ran second to the lead in the Los Angeles Times. Few have successfully made a charge of consistency stick to the American press.

  The siege of Manila and the Philippines now dominated much of the news and with it, the utter and complete denunciation of the Japanese for their bombing of innocent civilians. Inexorably, Japanese troops were driving toward Manila, and Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana declared the enemy “an inhuman and half-civilized race.”44

  The death toll overnight had risen and part of Manila seemed to have more bomb craters than standing buildings. One bomb reportedly hit a church killing eighty people and wounding twenty more. Several nuns were killed.45 The famed Santo Domingo Church, built by the Dominicans in 1590, had been destroyed in the bombings according to reports.46 Despite the fires and the carnage and the danger, many of the residents of the heavily Catholic city attended Mass on the 28th.