December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  The mystery was cleared up when Tokyo rejected the Hull proposal, calling it “unacceptable” and saying that it could not serve as the foundation for “negotiations henceforth.” It also did not address Roosevelt’s question about Thailand. The Japanese news agencies, including Domei, let loose with a verbal blast against Washington. The newspaper Asahi claimed the Hull initiative was “‘evident’ that the United States was becoming ‘more and more undisguised in her hostile activities against Japan.’”47 After Hull said the two countries were at a near-breakdown in negotiations, the United Press called it “the strongest verbal whiplashing yet administered [at the] Tokyo government by an American official.”48

  The Japanese then floated the argument that they were amassing soldiers in Indochina as a security precaution to quell internal disturbances. “There have been no evidences of internal disorders . . . to warrant such extraordinary military and naval maneuvers,” replied the Washington Star. The Vichy government had already signed over the former French colony to Tokyo. “Indo-China was taken over so easily that Tokio [sic] undoubtedly was encouraged to look upon further aggressive steps.”49 Still, the Japanese sent diplomats to Indochina to give the whole situation a veneer of officialdom, rather than a blatant military incursion. Tokyo even produced a “neutrality” treaty between the Japanese and then-Silan signed in 1606.50

  The Japanese government also broadcast over a radio in Hanoi that it would send no more troops into Indochina and further, the troops there would not be used to attack either Thailand or the Burma Road. They also disputed the number of soldiers FDR claimed were there.51

  Before receiving the Japanese delegation in Washington, Hull met once again with FDR. Roosevelt then met with congressional leaders about the crisis in the Far East. Attending the meeting were Vice President Henry Wallace, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, and others. “Mr. Roosevelt told how the Japanese army twice had deliberately sabotaged peace negotiations with the United States just when these seemed to be going favorably.” Hull echoed FDR’s pessimism.52 He had concluded that the Japanese had fully embraced “Nazi doctrine in tactics in the Far East.” Also discussed was FDR’s Lend-Lease announcement for Turkey.53 The Germans were none too happy about Lend-Lease being extended to Turkey, storming, “[T]he last words have not been spoken in Defense Zone expansion” matters.54 The Germans had designs on Turkey as a port on the Mediterranean.

  Also in attendance was Senator Elbert Thomas, Democrat of Utah and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He had a kinder and gentler view of the Japanese, later predicting that shortly, the two powers would begin to cooperate against Germany and Italy. “Japan’s Axis alliance is so unnatural and she is lonesome.” Thomas made his remarks at a dinner in New York honoring a Soviet diplomat.55

  A similar high-level meeting to the one convened by FDR at the White House took place in Tokyo, lasting two and a half hours and conducted by the “Privy Council, highest advisory organ of the empire to which Premier Gen. Hideki Tojo and Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo report in detail.” The Privy Council in turn gave its advice to Emperor Hirohito. Pessimism filled the air in all the meetings and counsels in both Washington and Tokyo.56 Meanwhile, Japan was working on creating a sham agreement with French Indochina, as it was ostensibly under Vichy control, which was under Berlin’s control, but Indochina was already overrun with Japanese troops.

  “Hull, in his press conference, specifically declared that Japanese policy is based on the doctrine of force and that this force is being wielded Nazi-fashion to attain political, economical, moral and social domination of the territory belonging to other sovereign nations.”57 The normally placid man was near to throwing up his hands, so frustrated was he with Tokyo. He was working to create a solution, but whatever he offered, the Japanese rejected and then blamed Washington for the continued stalemate.

  A Japanese newspaper piled on. “If anything ruptures in the Pacific, the Anglo-American powers should take the responsibility.”58 Hull was a proud, successful, and patient man, but the Japanese intransigence had about beaten him.

  British and Dutch commercial shipping in the Western Pacific effectively came to a standstill, in part because Nazi ships operating there were raiding them. British battleships had arrived in Singapore “but censorship cloaked that fact.”59 The Australians announced the loss of the cruiser, Sydney, after being shelled by the German boat Steiermark in the Indian Ocean. The German boat had been “disguised as a merchantman” and opened fire on the Aussie boat. It was of little consequence that the German boat was sunk by the Sydney before she too went down.60

  The Atlantic was no better than the Pacific.

  By now, hope had faded for the recovery of most of the seventy-plus seamen who went down on the Reuben James in the North Atlantic, the greatest loss of naval personnel since the Maine went down in Cuba in 1898. A survivor, George Beasley, twenty-two, of Tulsa recounted, “We were swimming about 30 yards away . . . when she went down. Just as she slipped under, the depth charges went off. The ocean was thrown up in great wave, our raft was overturned and I was pulled under. About half of the men on the raft were drowned.” Beasley was anxious to get back to sea.61

  A month earlier, the U.S. government told the German government it would accept $3 million, cash on the barrelhead, for the previous sinking of the Robin Moore, which would settle all claims. The Germans then sunk the American cargo carrier Lehigh, off the coast of Africa.62

  Over the previous month, Germans had lost more ships than the British, but the British had lost more planes than the Germans. London reported it had lost three bombers over France while “German planes bombed a port on the British southwest coast.”63

  December 4 was a bad day in California for military flyers, as several became lost in fog and perished. Out of the sky in Dublin appeared a German soldier, floating down in a parachute. The police arrested and booked him.64 Winston Churchill’s nephew, Pilot Officer Esmond Romilly, was declared missing in action after oversees air operations in the North Sea, flying for the Canadian Air Force. At twenty-two, he’d already been a bartender in Florida, lived in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife, Jessica, a prominent London socialite, had been active in Socialist politics in England, and had fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.65 Romilly was later declared dead.

  America launched two more destroyers, the Aaron Ward and the Buchanan, in New Jersey, which was covered by all the newspapers, including ship compliments and armaments.66 A wire photograph of an unusual view of the stocks and flukes of a giant anchor in the Pearl Harbor navy yard went out on all the wires, published in many papers. Again, photographers and reporters had unalloyed access to American military installations and information.

  The navy vessel Salinas was fired upon in the North Atlantic just a month earlier by German subs and the ship managed to limp into port, but not before returning fire on the subs, damaging one.67 It was the first time the U.S. Navy had successfully fired upon and damaged a German naval vessel. American naval vessels were under orders directly from FDR to defend themselves and had been for some time. The naval battle was heavily covered in all the newspapers. But if anyone really needed more detail on American vessels, all they had to do was pick up a copy of the publication Jane’s Fighting Ships, easily available. “The publication . . . credits the Salinas with two 5-inch guns and three 3-inch anti-aircraft guns. Whether the latter could be depressed sufficiently for fire on a submarine would depend on whether they are of a late model.”68

  Photos of an unidentified British freighter being torpedoed in the Atlantic by a U-boat ran in newspapers on December 4. In Chungking, Chinese sources spotted forty Japanese warships in Camranh Bay. This fleet included at least one aircraft carrier and “45 planes aboard. The Japanese were hastily building an air base in Western Indochina near the Gulf of Siam (Thailand) having impressed 5,000 native workers for the job.” Impressed was a polite word left over from an earlier era that in fact meant “slavery.”69

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sp; At the same time Seigo Nakano, a “pro-Axis political leader, was demanding the sinking of United States ships unless aid to China ceases.”70 The Maritime Commission urged the speedup of the production of Liberty ships, which were needed for transporting goods and war materiel. At the time, ships were “splashing” at the rate of one every seven months, but the goal was to streamline the process so that one could be launched every four months.71

  In Nazi-occupied Belgrade, Serb guerillas were making the occupying German army’s life miserable. “The Serbs were . . . harassing German patrols, cutting German communications and looting German supply trains.” An initial report said the Serbs had inflicted six hundred casualties on the Germans. The Serbs, numbering around eighty thousand, led by Gen. Draja Mihailovic, “were locked in battle in the Yugoslav Valley of the Western Morava.” The Germans were determined to wipe out every Serb as punishment for reprisals. The ragtag Serbs were fighting and winning against five Nazi divisions, heavily armed, with superior firepower.72 The Nazis eventually lost four of five divisions before withdrawing.

  Also, in a week’s period of time, four German passenger planes between Belgrade and Ankara, Turkey, had crashed, and while some blamed the cold weather for causing engine failure, others blamed Serb saboteurs for the planes’ demise.73 Moscow also claimed credit for killing four thousand German troops, and the British claimed that Nazi planes accidentally killed or wounded sixty German prisoners who were being transported in freight cars to a camp in the Nile Valley.74

  When it came to security, the American government wasn’t completely feckless. “The United States yesterday added 189 names to its blacklist of individuals and firms in South and Central America alleged to be acting for the benefit of Germany or Italy.”75 The government had already assembled a list of two thousand persons of interest thought to be aligned with Italy and Germany. But apparently no Japanese interests were listed, even though America was not at war with any of the three principle countries of the Axis powers.76 Many papers referred to it as a “Black List.”77

  In Paris, the German Gestapo set a deadline for those guilty of “terroristic acts against German soldiers.” In recent days, a German doctor had been shot and a bomb had been detonated, killing two artillerymen. “The Germans have dealt sternly with previous attacks on soldiers. Fifty hostages were executed by German firing squads at Nantes for the assassination of the commander of that city and fifty others were executed at Bordeaux for the assassination of a German military lawyer.”78 In the occupied countries of Europe, it was not unusual for the Nazis to shoot one hundred civilians as reprisals for every action taken against a German national.

  In the time since Nazi occupation of Paris, the city’s population had sharply declined, from over 2.6 million in 1936 to just over 1 million as of the spring 1941. It was estimated that 1.5 million French had been deported to “German oflags and stalags.”79

  It turned out the House Military Affairs Subcommittee had only begun to scratch the surface when it came to Leon Shanack, the so-called “defense broker” whose exploits the papers had covered avidly the day before. It was subsequently revealed that Shanack was no piker when it came to bilking the American taxpayer and, in fact, had so far pocketed $97,959 and stood to collect another $91,990 in “brokerage fees” from Remington Arms for services rendered as a go-between with the Greenwich Machine and Tool Company of New York. It was later discovered that Shanack received even more fees from additional companies for other defense contractors.80

  The economy wasn’t in completely bad shape, even with a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour.81 The newspapers abounded with bank ads for car loans and home loans, and pitched opening savings accounts with each, insured up to $5,000 by the government.82 At the People’s Bank in Atlanta, they were paying 4 percent on a passbook savings account.83

  Flush with defense dollars, New York was a downright party town. The Rainbow Room, a swank restaurant and nightclub with a revolving dance floor and live big band, located on the sixty-fifth floor of the Rockefeller Center, was the scene of lavish parties given by Manhattan’s elite. “This is NBC, coming to you from the Rainbow Room” was a frequent phrase heard on national radio, causing a frisson of wistful yearning among ordinary Americans in the listening audience not privileged enough to be dancing there in formal attire to the strains of jazz kings like Tommy Dorsey or Harry James.

  An astonishing story was reported at length in the Chicago Tribune, owned by Col. Robert McCormick, an isolationist whose Republican leanings were well-known, as was his opposition to FDR. Because of this, the paper’s news gathering—which was often superb—was sometimes discounted by the more New Deal supplicant newspapers.

  In an exclusive, lengthy, and detailed story, the paper reported that a secret “War Plans Division” was laying out how the United States government was preparing to create a massive armed forces—over 5 million men—and would make a “supreme offensive effort” to enter the war on July 1, 1943. The document was called “Blueprint for War.” A highly confidential letter was produced for the article from Roosevelt to Henry Stimson, secretary of war, urging he coordinate with Henry Knox, secretary of the navy, to formulate a grand plan for America’s entry into the war. The main objective was the absolute defeat of Nazi Germany. “I wish you would explore the munitions and mechanical equipment of all types, which, in your opinion, would be required to exceed by an appropriate amount that which is available to our potential enemies,” FDR ostensibly wrote the secretary of war.84

  Just as astonishing, FDR’s secretary, Stephen T. Early, did not dismiss the explosive story out of hand, but simply said, “I am in no position to confirm or deny the truth of this story” and that there would be “an investigation.” The War Department could only say, “No comment.”85 In Washington, at all times, “no comment” was a surefire confirmation that the allegation was true, as was any call for an investigation. Early went even further, defending the notion that FDR should be preparing for war. “An unlimited national emergency has been declared. If these divisions lacked plans to meet this emergency or any phase of it, they would be guilty of inefficiency.”86

  What rankled so many people was their perception of FDR’s autocratic and secretive approach to governance and presumed preparations for war with Germany. Indeed, it came to light that he’d been arming Turkey for six months prior to announcing the extension of Lend-Lease to the beleaguered country, a promise he’d made to Churchill months earlier, even though there were forces in Ankara attempting an alliance with the Axis powers. Senator Robert Taft, Republican of Ohio, did not object, though. “I would much rather give aid to them than to Russia.”87

  Analysis in the Stimson document was cold and accurate. “By themselves, however, naval and air forces seldom, if ever, win important wars. It should be recognized as an almost invariable rule that only land armies can likely win wars.”88 It did recognize the political realities of December 4, 1941, when the document said, “It is out of the question to expect the United States . . . to undertake a substantial and successful” effort to enter the World War.89 Astonishingly, war with Japan was only referred to as an aside, barely considered by the war planners.

  Harold Ickes, secretary of the Interior, outlined his own view of America foreign policy in a speech before the Jewish Community Council. “I know of no one, except the Nazis and the self-acclaimed but misnamed American Firsters, who is suggesting a negotiated peace, or who is likely to ask for a negotiated peace. I know the only way to prevent a war epidemic is through the establishing of democracy at the sources of war.”90

  On the East Coast, it was open season on the America First Committee, and syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson said the group was “Japan’s Ace in [the] Hole.” The grassroots movement, she said, “creates in Tokyo the false impression that Japan can risk war with us.”91

  For good girls and boys expecting gifts from Santa (and with some assist from Mom and Dad) a “Slingin’ Sammy Baugh” football made by Spalding was se
lling at the Plaza Sports Shop for $1.95, a Spalding “Babe Ruth” fielder’s glove was $3.50, and boys’ and girls’ skates were selling for $6.95, available in either black or white.92

  In Washington, in an era when downtowns were still vibrant and big department stores dominated shopping, men could shop at Frederick’s for “nationally known Men’s wear.” For women, “Lysol for feminine hygiene” was being advertised under the heading, “Her Husband Was a Stranger.” The dreadful ad copy continued, “His coolness was hard to bear. She blamed it on everything but the real cause—her ‘ONE NEGLECT’—carelessness about feminine hygiene. You can prevent this threat to your romance. Do as modern women do. Use Lysol for your intimate personal care. Endorsed by many doctors.” The ad was accompanied by the photo of an understandably stricken woman.93

  For evening entertainment in Washington, patrons could enjoy the sounds of the Don Carper Four in the Café Caprice at the Roger Smith Hotel. “Dance to the enchanting rhythm . . . nightly at 10. . . . Tremendous Cocktails.”94 The hotel was located at Pennsylvania and 18th streets, just two blocks away from the White House. Also open for business was the Pall Mall Room at the Hotel Raleigh, “with music by Bert Bernath and his Sidney Orchestra.”95 The Lounge Rivera, with dancing from “9 to 2” and music performed by Pete Macia’s famous orchestra was also a popular hangout.96 For those whose dancing skills were suspect, they could always learn or brush up at any one of dozens of Arthur Murray Dance Schools around the nation.

  There was also a great deal of cheer in South Carolina, where army troops finally finished two months of maneuvers. Some headed back to their bases, others to their homes for Christmas. “While music boxes blared in the smoke-filled cafes and taverns, long lines of soldiers impatiently stood on the sidewalks awaiting their turn to eat.” The restaurants were so filled that many men ate standing up as “perspiring waitresses staggered under trays of food. . . . Last night was a barber’s nightmare.” Many of the soldiers had gone for over a month without a haircut but now “enjoyed the luxury of shaves and shampoos in warm water. Many waited three to four hours before getting a chair.”97