December 1941
Page 26
The administration was also getting ready to ask Congress for virtually unrestricted powers, including the ability to send arms and other support materiel to any country fighting the Axis powers and not just against Japan.10 The White House was seeking nothing less than authoritarian powers in the conduct of war. It went even further.
With the help of the Federal Communications Commission and the War Department, the White House in essence nationalized the nation’s radio industry. “President Roosevelt signed an executive order late today . . . to designate radio facilities for use, control or closure by the War or Navy Departments. . . . The effect of the order is to give the Government freedom to step in and supervise directly or make use of all radio facilities of the Nation.”11 The order also allowed “other agencies of the government” to step in and take control of private radio broadcasting facilities.12
FDR was drawing broad support from many corners. Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, America’s only five-star general, still on the active duty roster at the age of eighty-one, sent the president a letter, offering his services. FDR responded kindly, calling him “magnificent. I am deeply grateful to you . . . under a wise law, you have never been placed on the retired list.”13
A dispute among constitutional scholars broke out over exactly when America went to war with Japan, fueled by FDR’s language proclaiming “a state of war has existed” even though Congress had not formally declared war on Japan at the time. Most agreed that a state of war did not come into actual existence until 4:10 p.m. on the eighth, when the president actually signed the proclamation of war. Whatever the variances, all agreed that the president’s powers were now vastly expanded. “Statutes which operate in such periods authorize the President to take over transportation systems, industrial plants, radio stations, power facilities and ships, and place some controls on communications systems,” reported the New York Times.14
The mobilization of the political and business class to fight a highly industrialized global war, combined with the concentration of power into the hands of the commander in chief, was profoundly changing what had once been Fortress America. It marked the beginning of what would later be known as the Imperial Presidency. The expansion of presidential powers in response to Pearl Harbor also presaged the postwar National Security State, in which civil liberties were sometimes curtailed. This was all to come. But in December 1941, it was already clear to ordinary and powerful citizens alike that a major shift in American society was under way and that the republic as originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers was giving way to something different.
A quote from Alexander Hamilton from Federalist 74 was bandied about to support the contention that wartime conditions allowed for the expansion of executive powers: “The direction of war implies the direction of common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength forms an unusual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.”15
Most believed President Roosevelt now had enhanced and broaden powers not only over the military but the citizenry, the economy, and labor as well. One euphemistic new example: “The Secretary of War may rent any building in the District of Columbia.”16 In other words, the federal government now had the right to commandeer private property. Indeed, in his press conference, FDR suggested that a seven-day workweek in the war industries might be necessary and proposed convening a conference of business and labor to discuss the matter. The word parley was used, but in fact there would be little to discuss.17 He also floated the idea of a “Conference on the Defense of [the] Western Hemisphere.”18 Also proposed was the notion of “enforced savings” of the average worker that would automatically deduct “10 to 15 percent of all income and wages.”19
The issue of who exactly was an American also came up in debate. The law said Japanese could not become naturalized citizens “under provisions of the act of Feb 18, 1875 amending the act of July 14, 1870 limiting naturalization to white persons or those of African descent.” Open to question was whether a child born in America, of Japanese parentage—called “Nisei”—was considered a naturalized American.20
The government was now monitoring or restricting the movements of over 1 million individuals, virtually all of Japanese, German, and Italian heritage. As of the tenth, the attorney general’s office said they had now picked up over one thousand foreign nationals. FDR’s proclamation instituting prohibitions on those still roaming free, including the ability to possess a firearm, “ammunition, bombs, explosives or material used in the manufacture of explosives; shortwave radio receiving sets; transmitting sets; signal devices; codes or ciphers; cameras; papers; documents or books in which there may be invisible writing; photograph, sketch, picture, drawing, map or graphical representation of any military or naval installations.” The directive went on with even more specifics and restrictions.21 Arrests continued. “A Japanese was seized near Oakland Airport and another was arrested near the scene of an early morning fire in Oakland.”22
Hawaii had the same concerns, only magnified. The territorial governor, Joseph Poindexter, who’d been appointed by FDR, worried about “the conduct of Hawaii’s 37,000 Japanese aliens and 100,000 American-born Japanese.”23
Also open to question was how to deal with approximately fifty Japanese diplomats still in the country. Cordell Hull made an appeal to a neutral European country to act as the go-between involving the two warring countries.
American diplomats were still in Tokyo as well, including Ambassador Joseph Grew. There was also the matter of approximately five thousand Americans on Japanese soil. But there were only a few neutral countries in the world now, including Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden.24
Tokyo meanwhile announced there were 1,270 Americans, British, Canadians, and Australian citizens in Japan.
In reply, the Japanese announced they would abide by the Geneva Convention and allow U.S., British, and Canadian diplomats safe passage to a neutral port of call.25 But the Japanese government also announced it had arrested one hundred American and British nationals.26 Thousands of other noncombatant Americans were spread throughout the War Zone, and the British government reminded the Japanese government of the Conventions and the Geneva Protocol of 1925 strictures against the use of chemical weapons.
Allies rounded up initially 25,000 Japanese in Davao in the Philippines and another 100,000 at Bilibid prison in Manila. In Davao, Japanese “have submitted peaceably. Some appeared voluntarily at concentration centers.”27 Also worrisome for Washington was that while few of her naval officers spoke Japanese, “a vast number of [Japan’s] military officers . . . speak English. This is bound to give Nippon an edge in questioning war prisoners, translating intercepted messages and in obtaining information from material found on men fallen in action.”28
The questions were why did it happen and how did it happen? Pearl Harbor had often been referred to by the navy as “the Gibraltar of the Pacific.”29 Just one day before the attack, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox had issued a statement saying the navy was ready.30 It was more than just being “back-stabbers-in-the-dark,” as the Los Angeles Times described the new enemy.31 Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana said the Japanese “must have gone crazy.”32 Winston Churchill had warned for more than a month that the Pacific was a powder keg waiting to explode.
Pearl Harbor was a vitally important outpost for the American military and thus a direct threat to Japan’s designs on an empire stretching up and down the Asian east coast and spreading into the Philippines and the Pacific. This answered some of the why, although it was far more complicated. After all, the Japanese had already invaded China, Manchuria, and French-Indo China, and many presumed America would also tolerate the invasion of Thailand. Deeper issues were involved.
Why did the Japanese attack America and Great Britain? One answer was the character of the military men running Japan. “These men are the most reactionary school. They have long been practically at grips with Emperor Hirohito, trying to dives
t him of actual state authority, reduce him to helpless isolation in the palace, and to restore an aristocratic regime tantamount to the old-time Shogunate under which for 250 years, ending around 1870, Japan was locked away from the outside world.”33
The biggest fascist of all, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, was the majordomo in all military and political affairs in his country. As a fascist, militarist, and overtly nationalistic, Tojo wasn’t hard to figure out, as his defense for keeping troops in China was the positive affect it had on Japanese military morale. His nickname was “The Razor.” When he became prime minister in October 1941, he was assigned the task of evaluating the negotiations with the United States to see if peace was possible but within a matter of days signed off on the audacious plan to launch a sneak attack against America.
Why did the American military fail to see the threat posed? Why did American diplomats and politicians fail to remember that Japan, in her long history, had never actually declared war on an opponent before attacking that opponent? Why did American politicians and diplomats fail to recognize just who and what was running the show in Tokyo? “The real rulers of Japan have been a clique of army and navy officers whose thought processes, fanatical, mystical, belong in another age. They are a direct throwback to the Shoguns, Diamyos, and Samurai who ruled in ancient and medieval times. . . . They were Fascists before Mussolini, National Socialists before Hitler.”34
But the Japanese people were also a proud and courageous race. They were unyielding and Tokyologists knew that, for the Japanese, “national suicide would be preferable to yielding.”35 The word fanatical to describe the Japanese was cropping up in more and more articles. The Japanese had often been poorly and cruelly portrayed in the political cartoons of American newspapers, but now it took an uglier, racist turn. A hated caricature was emerging of the average Japanese citizen and certainly the Japanese military. The president of Tufts University, Leonard Carmichael, accused the Japanese race of being “infected with madness.”36 Political cartoons routinely depicted the Japanese in the most vicious possible manner. Short, “bifocals and bamboo,” squinty-eyed, often with a knife in the back of Uncle Sam, egged on by caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini.
Still, the bigger question on the minds of Americans and official Washington was how were the Japanese so successful in sneaking up on Hawaii? Sure, it was a big ocean, but it was also a big armada and should, some thought, have been spotted by navy or civilian ships or planes. Pan American flights over the Pacific were routine, and the military on Oahu did have planes and ships dedicated to be on the lookout for potential threats from the sea. Indeed, one that had landed in the middle of the battle over Oahu made its way safely back to San Francisco while another, along with twenty airline personnel, successfully escaped from Guam.
One expert said the navy suffered from “Scapa Flow.” Scapa Flow was where the Germans surprised and sank the British Royal Oak in early October of 1939, at a time when the Brits should have known better. The Christian Science Monitor acidly wrote, “Why the American Navy permitted itself to be surprised in the Pacific will take some major explaining from a command which almost at the same moment was declaring its marine forces ‘second to none’ in the world.”37
The army, along with the navy, seemed confused as to its next step. The army oddly announced that it was not planning any type of offensive operations against the Japanese any time soon.38 A White House source elaborated, saying nothing on the scale of the 2 million doughboys sent to Europe in 1917 was being contemplated. And while it was the Japanese who had attacked America, “the most formidable enemy still is Germany.”39 Stories circulated that Germany was planning on aiding the Japanese with military hardware. Adm. William D. Leahy supposedly told a journalist four years earlier that Japan needed to be corralled. In 1937, isolationists labeled him a “warmonger.”40
The blame game and the “I knew it all along” parlor room nonsense were only beginning to gain a head of steam. Some of the headlines: “While Japan caught the United States Navy napping at Hawaii,” “U.S. Learns Lesson in Attack,”41 “U.S. Navy Caught Off Guard,”42 and “Preparedness of Defenses is Questioned in Washington: Capital Hears Queries About Functions of Hawaii Off-Shore Patrol,”43 Conclusions were being jumped to all over the place, and the navy was increasingly under attack by American politicians and editorialists and not just Japanese militarists. “Also heard in the rising uproar were proposals for a housecleaning of the Navy Department, beginning with the Secretary, Frank Knox.”44
FDR was asked at his press conference the day before who was to blame and he bristled at the offending reporter. A reporter also complained that it seemed to him the War Department had clamped down on all information, but Roosevelt smiled and “told the correspondent his toes hadn’t been stepped on.”45 “Asked if it would be the policy to make public no bad news, the President answered in the negative, but added that the rule of accuracy and determination not to aid the enemy would be the standard of measure.” He also shot down the notion that some papers were unhappy with the policy, noting that he’d also “heard other reports where the shoe was on the other foot.”46
Along with the finger-pointing, conspiracy theorists started coming out of the woodwork. Senator Guy Gillette, Democrat of Iowa, claimed he’d been told by a source that the State Department had been told by another source that the Japanese would attack America in either December 1941 or January of 1942.47 No doubt there had been formal and informal warning about the Japanese, and the War Department’s Enigma machine had decoded transmissions between Tokyo and their embassy in Washington, but nowhere in those transmissions was it explicit that Japan was going to war with the United States. The War Department had issued “war warnings” to the field commanders, including Admiral Kimmel and General Short, but none of those ever mentioned Hawaii.48 Roosevelt himself had been given several top secret memos alerting him to the possibility the Japanese could attack the Philippines or Hawaii, but in the end, everybody just could not fathom it. All thought the Japanese’s next target was Thailand. It was one of the greatest bait and switches in world history.
Experts on the Far East weighed in, saying the attack was to break up a suspected blockade of Japan, before the Allies and the United States could get it going in earnest. Others, including Kimmel, thought FDR was being deliberately provocative, when the president personally ordered the fleet moved from San Diego to Oahu early in 1941.49 He also complained of being kept in the dark about the increasing diplomatic difficulties between Washington and Tokyo and implied that had he known, he would have taken steps to protect the fleet.
With perfect 20/20 hindsight, the Washington Post opened its lead editorial of December 8 saying, “The Japanese attack on Hawaii began precisely as many Navy and Army officers predicted it would.” The editorial did not name these visionary individuals, and there was no reporting before December 7 in the Post or any paper in America for that matter about their warnings of a possible attack in the Pacific by Japan.50 The paper, however, being located in the nation’s capital, was marinated in the “as I said before” tuchas-covering culture of the town.
The Post also had an aggressively pro-Roosevelt, pro-interventionist editorial policy with a habit of patting itself on the back. “This paper has gone on that assumption since Hitler and the Italians leagued themselves with the Japanese” that war was inevitable and it would not be confined to the European powers. In arguing for a swift entry into the war, it said, “This is our rendezvous with destiny.”51 Their crosstown rival, the Washington Times-Herald, was a vicious and bitter opponent of FDR, the New Deal, Lend-Lease, and internationalism. The paper was owned by newspaper mogul Col. Robert McCormick, whose opposition to FDR was reflected deeply in all his papers.
Adding to Americans’ doubts about the world situation was the fact that while their government was telling them one thing, other sources were telling them something quite different. Network radio correspondents were reporting in great detail about destruction in
Manila while the War Department was saying the Philippine base in question was operational—or saying nothing at all. “Continuing as it did, the silence created a growing possibility that the public would simply begin to believe all rumors, simply because no facts were made available to controvert them.”52 The Japanese were dropping propaganda leaflets by day and flares at night, to illuminate bombing targets. There was constant chatter going around that German pilots were participating in the attack, flying Japanese warplanes.53
Americans did not know of the six separate military targets successfully hit in Oahu by the Japanese, or of the near-complete destruction or disabling of twenty-one vessels in the American fleet, or that over three hundred first-line Air Corps and navy planes had been destroyed, or that three thousand of the fellow countrymen had been brutally killed only because they wore a uniform and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There was no news coming out of Hawaii about the extent to which the Japanese had succeeded, including the murder of 1,177 sailors and marines assigned to the Arizona, which having taken a bomb into her magazine, exploded in a earth-shattering fireball and sank to the bottom of the harbor. Nearly the entire crew was lost.
Hawaii was under martial law, and retail stores were ordered closed so the civilian government could order an inventory of available food supplies. The White House said repairs on the damaged ships and planes were in effect and replacement planes were being “rushed” to Hawaii, but the fact was Pearl Harbor, Ford Island, and Hickam Field were only beginning to pick up the pieces. Dead and missing soldiers and sailors were still unaccounted for, and investigations hadn’t even gotten underway. A sad epilogue to December 7 was that a squadron of six planes from the Enterprise was on approach to Pearl Harbor after a vain search for the Japanese ships, and despite being told repeatedly they were “friendlies,” they were shot down by panicked U.S. sailors. Only one of the six planes landed safely.54