December 1941

by Craig Shirley

  Meanwhile, outside of Beantown, a class of sixty volunteer women graduated from fire school. Upon receiving their diplomas, they gave a demonstration in which they practiced jumping “into nets from second-story windows, carrying hose lines up fire ladders and smothering ‘bomb’ fires, the women demonstrated what they had learned in the six weeks’ course in all forms of fire-fighting.”17

  Just up the road from “the Hub,” Dartmouth College announced it was contracting its academic schedule, cancelling the Christmas and Spring Break vacations so graduating seniors could enlist five weeks earlier. Nearly all college campuses were hotbeds of patriotism and volunteerism.18 The president of the University of Alabama told his students, “We have an intelligent, patriotic government in Washington. . . . My appeal is to stick by the government, the President and Congress.”19 Yale University passed a resolution supporting the war.20 The municipal colleges of New York City—Queens, City, Hunter, and Brooklyn—all reported a tremendous upswing in volunteerism and in war bond and war stamp purchases.21 A coed at the University of Georgia wrote a sweet and patriotic poem that was reprinted in many newspapers. From the last stanza:

  So this Christmas I’m not asking for a brand-new car,

  NOT even champagne nor caviar,

  I’ll be perfectly frank and play my hand

  All I want is a brand-new man.22

  The weather across America had turned cold, and even in the Deep South temperatures were dipping into the twenties.

  In preparation for the winter, the city of Washington instituted its annual snow removal plan, requiring citizens to move their cars off of all major thoroughfares—about eighty-five miles, all told—from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. The city’s Refuse Department was hopeful that its snow removal this time around would be an improvement over previous years. “The city is better equipped this year than previously to meet a snow emergency.”23

  In the face of the indifference by American leaders, a large gathering was announced for later in the month organized by American Jewish groups to take place in Madison Square Garden. A leader of the event said, “The Garden rally also will respond to a moving call recently received by American and British Jewry from Jews in the Soviet Union . . . . [T]he troubled experiences of racial and religious minorities at the hands of Hitler has been brought home to all of us by the events of the past few days.”24

  Rallies and prayer vigils were increasing across the country. The day before, 3,000 people of varying faiths came together at the National Cathedral in Washington to pray for “victory and peace.”25 Speakers included priests, ministers, and rabbis. The Right Reverend James Freeman broke down crying, as he quoted a sonnet written by Washington native, John Magee Jr., a pilot who had been killed the week before while flying for the R.A.F. Young Magee’s father was also a minister with a congregation in the nation’s capital, though he did not speak.26 A Catholic church in Los Angeles had been holding a prayer vigil ever since the attack, serving communion each day.27

  But not all men of the cloth were supportive. In New York City, a minister resigned his position because he would not “use his ministry to ‘bless, sanction or support war.’” The Reverend John Haynes Holmes who was “a director of the American Civil Liberties Union . . . asserted that the American people were not guiltless in a war.”28 Meanwhile in Germany, Dr. Hans Kerrl, the Nazi minister of religious affairs, died unexpectedly. He expired, out of favor with Hitler, as he’d been unable to stop Catholic and Presbyterian criticism of the Third Reich.29

  One nagging question involved the soon-to-be-passed draft registration act before Congress. Would the government really draft, for military service, men in their forties and even older? Government officials stepped forward to say that it was unlikely that anyone under the age of twenty-one or over the age of thirty-five would be taken in for active duty service. Eighteen-year-olds would not be drafted, but they were free to register and shortly become active-duty members of the military.30

  Officials said that the government would register all men between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four so they could have a handle on how many men were available for potential military service. In any case, special training had to be added to the navy’s boot camp because more than 10 percent of inductees did not know how to swim. Instructors basically taught the landlubbers a rudimentary dog-paddle stroke, but the real goal was to teach how to stay afloat for long durations without life preservers. Sinking was not an option.31

  Recruiting offices continued to be heavily patronized by eager young men, and in some cases men more eager than young. In New York, a father and son appeared together to enlist. They were both accepted and were sent into the service together.32 However, the policy of allowing family members to serve on the same ship or in the same unit would change shortly.

  An unexpected—but certainly welcomed—enlistee was Clarke H. Kawakami, who’d been the Washington correspondent for Domei, the Japanese state-run media agency. He resigned his position in protest, calling the attack “the blackest and most shameful page in page in Japanese history.”33 The War Department played his story way up, seeing the propaganda value of young Kawakimi joining the U.S. Army, despite his having attended Harvard.34

  New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were leading the way with new enlistees, but the sons of all states were doing their level best to get into the military. As tens of thousands of young men were streaming into the army, a two-year veteran was leaving, thanks to being ratted out by his own mother. At the age of fourteen, Lynn Vinson had somehow conned the military and enlisted. Two years later, his mother went to the commandant of Camp Robinson in Arkansas with the proof that her son was underage. Vinson was given an honorable discharge but vowed to get back in as soon as he could.35

  In spite of the national emergency, over 500,000 men in uniform would be granted a furlough to go home for Christmas and sample their mother’s cooking and their father’s advice.36

  Many for the last time.

  Publications across the country were crammed with notices and announcements for civilians, particularly for defense rallies and classes in such subjects as “incendiary and explosive bomb demolition” and “poison gas analysis.”37 In cities with tall buildings, there was a real fear that flying glass in a bombing raid could maim dozens, if not hundreds.

  Food and transportation were always issues, and many stocked up on canned goods, just in case. Families made their own plans on what to do in case of an attack. Along with the men and women of America, children barely into their teens also stepped forward. In New York City, “250 boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 17 assembled . . . in Queens . . . to be instructed on the requirements of junior air wardens.” Right off the bat, the seriousness was made clear when an instructor told them that, “if any of you are here seeking telephone numbers or dates go right home and remain there. We don’t want you. This is not a social affair but the grim business of war.”38

  Around the country, more and more factories and plants were operated on a more rapid schedule. At many, the workers voted to “donate” their Sundays to the government and work for nothing. In Massachusetts, textile plants sought approval from the state to allow women to work past 10 p.m., and in New Hampshire, the governor waived the ruled forbidding women and children from working more than 48 hours per week, as long as they worked in a war-related industry.39 Even the Eureka vacuum cleaner company had switched over to defense manufacturing.40

  The Red Cross, the police, all the federal, state, and local agencies that dealt with volunteerism, the private organizations such as the Legion, women’s groups, the Boy and Girl Scouts—all reported a tremendous upswing in Americans stepping forward. The Grand Exalted Ruler of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, John McClelland, sent Roosevelt a telegram pledging that 500,000 Elks would take up activities to protect America.41 It was assumed the Moose Lodges of America would also stampede into volunteer offices.

  All the activities were duly reported in the nation’s
periodicals. Page after page after page of the papers also covered both the war front and the home front. And yet again, a newspaper noted the death of a sailor at Pearl Harbor. The New York Times reported that “45-year-old” Edwin J. Hill, chief boatswain “was killed during the Japanese attack.” Hill left behind a wife and three children.42

  Over the weekend, a bravely forlorn message was issued by the Department of the Navy: “Wake and Midway Continue to Resist.” The two tiny islands—little more than lumps of coral atolls rising a few feet out of the ocean—had been shelled and bombarded for days by Japanese planes and ships. The battling marines of Wake were referred to as the “Devil Dogs” in the papers. A radio transmission was sent to Honolulu by the tough marines. When asked if there was anything the beleaguered men needed, the reply came, “Send us some more Japs.”43

  Rumors continued to swirl of a “shakeup” in the navy’s high command in the Pacific, and no less an authority than the Army and Navy Register, an influential journal, speculated that the American ambassador to Vichy, Admiral William Leahy, was the top dog to take over from Admiral Kimmel.44

  San Franciscans suffered through yet another blackout as the military claimed again that enemy planes had been spotted over the city. There was still confusion in California about headlights, cars, and driving during blackouts. Some drivers thought it was okay to drive if they covered their headlights with blue tint and others if they turned off the headlights, so the rule had to be clarified, yet again: no driving during blackouts.45 Period.

  With much of the Far East and Europe cut off from the rest of the world due to war, shortwave radio took on a new importance. As Americans listened to NBC or CBS or Mutual broadcasts, often the announcer would source their reports as “Berlin radio” or “Stockholm radio” as the networks had set up “listening posts” along the East and West Coast of America. “Today, these listening posts with their batteries of radio receivers listening to the short wave transmissions of the world are proving extremely valuable now that the fact of belligerency with all the Axis Powers has cut of the American sources of news.”46

  The war effort would cost much more than what taxpayers were kicking in, but as of December, economists estimated that only 20 percent of the economy was devoted to that purpose47; unlike Great Britain, where more than 50 percent of the national economy was used for their national purpose.48 Still, America’s economy was much larger than that of England’s and certainly larger than Germany’s or Japan’s. Like a large ship, a large economy could not be turned on a dime, yet even so, the rapid revamping of the country’s industrial complex and the redirecting of resources were impressive.

  Private and commercial aircraft were increasingly recruited for the war effort. American Airlines took out ads in publications in the Northeast including the New York Times to advise travelers that flights to “Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo” as well as other cities, had been cancelled or postponed. “The airplanes usually utilized for the operation of these flights have been assigned to the performance of an administrative mission for the transportation of national defense supplies.”49

  Much of the war effort would come from higher taxes; therefore, articles began popping up cautioning taxpayers to set aside enough money to comply and to make their once-a-year lump sum payment or quarterly payment. “Now is the time to figure your tax and begin putting away a little money each week to pay it,” it was advised. The policy of the government was to collect taxes on March 15 of each year. The marginal tax rate began at $750 per year for single individuals and $1,500 for married couples. If the wife made less than $750, it was still mandated that the income be reported. The government figured to bring in around $1 billion on March 15, but taxpayers had a choice to file their taxes on the calendar year or, if they were a small businessperson, on their own fiscal year.50 The government was not only coming down hard on taxpayers, it was also coming down hard on people who disagreed with it under the old Anti-Sedition Acts of 1917. G-Men picked up a Kansas City lawyer, Herman D. Kissenger, charging him with being a “long time sympathizer” of the fascist governments of Germany and Japan. He’d written a letter to Congressman John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, in which he advocated the impeachment and court-martialing of Congress and the president. The U.S. attorney for the area said a federal grand jury would be assembled to consider the government’s case against nutty letter-writing.51

  In Chicago, when Roosevelt appeared on the screen in a movie house newsreel, Edward A. Loss Jr. booed him and was fined $200 by a municipal court judge, “the maximum” for disorderly conduct.52 In Topeka, a mother was sentenced to one year in prison “because of the alleged failure of her two young sons to salute the American flag in school. The boys, Clinton and John H., were made wards of the court by Juvenile Court Judge Roy N. McCue, who said [Lucille] Meyer ‘was guilty of encouraging the children in the contributing to their delinquency.’”53

  The government was moving to seize a billion dollars worth of Axis property in America. The attorney general’s office created “a special force of G-men . . . to impound the enemy owned property”.54 Much of the impounded property was eventually liquidated, but the government still had property seized in 1917 and had yet to release it because it lacked the authority, even after the Armistice.

  There existed a real threat to America from spies and Fifth Columnists. Federal agents raided and seized the offices of the German American Bund, the German American Business League, and the newspapers they published in New York. A notice was posted on the door: “This property is under the control of the United States Government. All persons are hereby prohibited from entering the premises under penalty of law. H. Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury.”55

  Roosevelt received a short, contradictory memo on the matter of spies operating inside the United States. It said, on the one hand, that Frank Knox was overblown in his public allegations but, on the other hand, that ‘considerable danger of sabotage to strategic points [was] left unguarded.’”56

  In California, a German baron, Ernest Frolich de Meyer, was arrested wearing the uniform of a U.S. Army officer. When federal agents raided his apartment in Hollywood, they found navy and Marine Corps uniforms, “a short wave radio set and what appeared to be data on coast defenses.”57

  Government bureaucrats, in order to control supply and demand, debated full-blown wage and price controls and “consumer rationing cards,” but these were ruled out for the time being.58 Still, the Brookings Institute, which was advising the government on such matters, said the country could not have rationing without price controls, and it could not have price controls without rationing. Brookings advocated both.59

  The federal government could also be inadvertently dangerous and often clumsy, even scary. In Los Angeles, a man awakened to find a live antiaircraft shell weighing fifteen pounds in his back yard, undetonated.60

  The government was, in addition, nearly omnipotent. On final passage, Congress, by voice vote, approved new legislation granting FDR all the war powers given Woodrow Wilson in World War I. Plus, FDR could now issue noncompetitive contracts and reorganize the government as he saw fit and without the approval of the courts or Congress. He could regulate all the transactions of the government, and he could censor just about anybody and anything.61

  The irony was lost on the citizenry that Roosevelt now wielded more power over the American people than King George III ever dreamed of, on his best days.

  That evening, FDR and Eleanor dined with Henry Stimson, Grace Tully, and actor Melvyn Douglas at 7:30 p.m. Douglas excused himself at 9:15 p.m., and the Roosevelts turned in at 12:15 a.m. Throughout the month, though, Roosevelt dined or met, often alone, with women: “Miss Margaret Suckley” on the nineteenth, “Mrs. Mary Eben” on the eighteenth, “Mrs. Dorothy Brady” on the twenty-first, “Crown Princess Martha of Norway” on the tenth and again on the fourteenth. Unescorted women, both married and single, were also frequent guests in the private residence of the White House in the month
of December 1941.62

  American and Chinese pilots began airlifting civilians out of Hong Kong, as the prospects for holding the city dimmed in the face of the continued onslaughts. The Japanese had mounted an all-out assault by land, sea, and air to take the prized British possession once and for all. “The Japanese opened a general . . . offensive against Hong Kong . . . to take the British crown colony . . . the fate of the colony would be decided in a matter of days.”63 The Japanese also claimed that they’d wiped out an entire British mechanized division; it “had been destroyed” on the Malayan peninsula.64 The news was equally bad in other Far East sectors of which London had control; Churchill’s government hinted that some could fall. British resistance in Hong Kong was crumbling.

  Meanwhile, “Japanese forces operating on Luzon are advancing according to plan, ‘crushing enemy resistance at every point,’ army imperial headquarters said today. Bombers which attacked air bases on central Luzon Saturday destroyed forty United States bombers and fighters on the ground and set fire to three other aircraft, it asserted. Barracks, the announcement continued, were destroyed in a raid on United States military headquarters. ”65 American resistance in the Philippines was crumbling.