As investors predicted, railroad stocks climbed sharply. With the new restrictions on rubber, people would turn back the pages of time and traverse the country as before, on the B&O and the Lehigh Valley, the Reading and the Erie Lackawanna. Among the various railroad companies, a hundred thousand new boxcars were ordered to accommodate the war effort and the shift by the civilian population from cars and trucks, to trains. While not taking Americans “back to horse and buggy days,” the ban did push the railroads again “to the forefront as movers of passengers and freight.”24 The president of the Association of American Railroads, J. J. Pelley, wrote the presidents of colleges and universities asking that their football teams not travel by train “and keep student travel to a minimum so that we can devote our passenger facilities to troop movements.”25 Stocks in tire companies had plummeted though and theft became widespread.
Some worried that American women’s style would falter in the face of the war, but right there on the fashion pages was a shapely model posing in what was sure to be popular haute couture for 1942. “Today’s defense worker (or shall we call them war workers?) are going about their jobs efficiently in sturdy denim fashions adapted from men’s work clothes. This mechanic’s suit is styled for comfort.”26
Ted Williams was voted baseball’s “Man of the Year” by the Sporting News, making up for the fact that he’d lost out to Joe DiMaggio for MVP.27 He was the first ballplayer to bat over .400 since 1923. The Chicago Bears, winner of the NFL championship, were on their way to New York for the annual All-Star game pitting the defending champs against a team made up of the best players from the rest of the league.
Baseball in January of 1942 was declared essential by the president personally, but even so, so many ballplayers left to join the fight, that the quality of the game fell precipitously. It stumbled through using has-beens, never-weres, old men, young men, and in St. Louis, the joke of the league Browns, used a one-armed ballplayer, Pete Gray, in the outfield because he could not serve in the military. The Browns won the American League pennant in 1944.
Citizen Kane was chosen as picture of the year by the New York Film Critics, and the annual list of the ten best dressed women in the world was released.28 Topping it for 1941 was the Duchess of Windsor, the twice-divorced and many-loved Wallis Simpson, for whom a man gave up a throne, a crown and an Empire and in so doing, changed the course of history for Great Britain and the world. Sentimentalized in the press as the “Love Story of the Century,” the reality behind Simpson and Edward was actually quite tawdry. Unknown to the public at the time, Simpson remained promiscuous, even while married to Edward. For his part, the weak-willed Edward showed Nazi sympathies and proved such a security risk that an angry Churchill demanded that the erstwhile king be isolated from any secrets of state. The public saw the Duke of Windsor as a romantic figure, when, in fact, he would prove a royal embarrassment for many years to come.
After one last transmission from General MacArthur’s command, all official communication stopped from Manila as of 3:35 a.m. (EST) the morning of December 31. “The enemy is driving in great force from both north and south. His dive-bombers practically control the roads from the air. The Japanese are using great quantities of tanks and armored units. Our lines are being pushed back,” was the last message heard.29
A Tokyo broadcast was monitored calling on the American forces to cease all resistance in the Philippines “to assure the safety and protection of lives and property in Manila.”30 The Netherland press reported that Allied relief was just over the horizon. “Allied reinforcements were reported by Dutch newspapers tonight to be en route to the Pacific war theatre. . . .”31 No such luck. It was also reported that Winston Churchill had cabled Australian Prime Mister John Curtin with assurances that resources would be made available to defend his country. But there was, again, no mention of the Philippines. The Philippines eventually fell and MacArthur was forced for a time onto the tiny island of Corregidor and then, ordered off that island fortress by FDR and sent to Australia. Meanwhile, thousands of American, British, Australian, and Filipino troops fell into the hands of the murderous Japanese and faced a long death march in Bataan.
Things continued to go badly for the Americans in the Western and Central Pacific in 1942 with ships such as the Langley, the Edsall, and the Peary and many others sunk by the Japanese until Chester Nimitz, with three aircraft carriers and a hell of a lot of luck, sank four of the Japanese fire line carriers at the Battle of Midway in June of 1942. All four of the carriers had been used in the attack on Pearl and everybody marinated themselves in the joy of revenge. Still, some members of congress called for Nimitz’s impeachment because he did not—they felt—more aggressively pursue the badly damaged and limping Japanese armada.
His predecessor knew something about being unfairly hounded. Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, broken and bitter, took an early retirement in 1942 and spent most of the rest of his life trying to pick up the pieces of his shattered reputation, even as his son Manning was killed aboard a navy sub in 1944.
Twenty years after his command was destroyed before his very eyes, he wrote a book simply called Admiral Kimmel’s Story, attempting to exonerate himself, but the book was filled with bitter recriminations against Roosevelt. The forward to the book could only muster this defense of Kimmel: “It must be remembered that Admiral Kimmel was never formally charged with dereliction of duty . . . .”32 Admiral Husband Kimmel, in his book, went so far as to call Roosevelt a “criminal.”33
General Walter Short also retired from the military in early 1942. He moved to Dallas and seemed less obsessed with restoring his name than Kimmel. Short died in 1949 of heart disease.34
Kimmel and Short were exonerated on several occasions in later years, through studies, papers, and reports but as a result, rather than being scapegoats, they morphed into victims and no real fighting man wanted to be regarded as either.
An act of congress in 1947 allowed every man in uniform to receive the lifetime benefits of his highest rank in the war, except for two: Kimmel and Short.
Singapore had been hit again in late December of 1941 four times by Japanese bombers and looting broke out as the social structure began to break down. The pattern that was playing out in the Philippines and had played out in Hong Kong and Guam and Wake Island was now playing out in the Malaya city. Blitzkrieg bombing night and day to neutralize the enemy planes and ground batteries while unnerving the civilian populations, were followed by a massive, quick striking invasion, all supported by a naval bombardment. Martial law was declared in Singapore to help stabilize the state of affairs. Spain, while officially neutral, was unofficially acting as a leader in the cheering section for Japan when the state radio in Madrid said the Japanese, in bombing Manila, had only hit military targets. Madrid said it had Tokyo’s word on that.35
Douglas MacArthur and other American officials had assured and reassured the people of the Philippines that a relief effort was on the way; in fact Washington had ordered most of the American navy to withdraw to Australia to save what ships it had left, operating in the Western Pacific. Only a number of U.S. subs remained. “The little Asiatic Fleet, based in the Philippines, was never intended as anything other than a harassing and delaying fleet . . . it was never expected to prevent Japanese landings.”36 This, plus the fact that the only reliable port was in Singapore, also crippled the navy’s operations in the South China Sea, and the U.S. subs that were operating got poor reviews. In fact, the navy would not take any significant action until February of 1942 when the Yorktown and the Enterprise attacked the Japanese in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.37
In one of his final communiqués before evacuating his command post, MacArthur promised to mete out revenge for the bombing of Manila. Eventually, he moved his family and forces to the Bataan section of Luzon and then, onto the island of Corregidor for one last stand before he could return.38
Word was spreading that MacArthur’s position was tenuous, faltering. “Private advices
received in New York indicate that the fall of Manila is imminent.” MacArthur had attempted to evacuate three hundred wounded by ship.39 “Yankee and Filipino soldiers fought desperately to block the assault, but the sheer weight of Jap numbers and equipment forced our men slowly back towards the capital.”40
The Japanese were crowing about their successes in the Pacific, claiming to have destroyed over 540 American, British, and Dutch aircraft, and to have sunk or badly damaged 33 large warships and four smaller vessels. They also claimed to have killed over 3,000 Allied troops while capturing 7,000 POWs.41
One sailor they did not kill, but whose own government thought they had, was Clifford Kickbush, 19, who “saw a grave marked as his own and talked to a friend who thought he had helped bury him in the Hawaiian Islands informed his parents he was very much alive.” He contacted his very relieved parents and assured his startled shipmate that he had not seen a ghost. “What the devil! I helped bury you yesterday.”42 The story only became public three weeks after the attack.
Most Americans had assumed that the Burma Road was a vital link to China and the Free Chinese Forces, along which munitions, medicine, and materiel passed from the Allies; in truth, the road was a highway of pirates, privateers, con men, crooks and murderers. “It has been, and still remains both a national scandal and a national disgrace. Because the Burma Road has for years been dominated by racketeers and war profiteers . . . 10,000 Chinese soldiers have gone without rifles, hand grenades or munitions.”43 Thousands of tons of materiel destined for the Free Chinese never made it, left alongside the long road, stolen, destroyed, or which ended up on the black market, ever since its opening in 1938.
Mohandas Gandhi, the “Little Leader” stepped down as the head of the All-India Nationalist Congress because of his commitment to nonviolence. India, where opposition to British colonial rule was brewing, conditionally supported England. Some there wanted to leverage support for England in exchange for independence, but Gandhi would have none of it. “I could not identify myself with opposition to war efforts on the ground of ill-will against Britain.” In essence, he would not support violence in exchange for peace. “If such were my view and I believed in the use of violence for gaining independence . . . I would consider myself guilty of unpatriotic conduct.”44 The decision by the Indian government was a practical one though. The Japanese were threatening to bomb Calcutta. They were also suspected by the navy of having opened up submarine operations in the waters off Alaska.
Closer to home, the U.S. Congress wrapped up a rather eventful first session. In the 77th Congress, all they did was declare war on three countries, pass a huge new defense budget, give the president extraordinary authority under the War Powers Act, including the ability to censor just about anybody and any entity, pass a huge tax increase, pass the Lend-Lease Act, undo most of the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s, pass a new Selective Service Act, and conduct numerous investigations including corruption and fraud in defense lobbying.
Legislation they did not get around to passing included anti-lynching laws, stopped by a ferocious filibuster in the Senate. Proponents of the law thought that 1941 would be their year to finally get federal laws against lynching moved through Congress, but it was not to be so. The Birmingham News, while opposing a federal law against lynching, said hopefully, that in all of 1941 there had only been four in the country, according to the Tuskegee Institute. This was down from thirty-nine lynchings in the years 1936 to 1941, and over three hundred from 1922 to 1936. “Almost any year now the nation may be able to go through an entire 12-month period without a lynching. This would be about the best answer to those who persist in agitating for a federal anti-lynching law.”45
They also did not get the planned investigation into war propaganda in the movies, but by December, it was a moot point. With the government’s complicity, Hollywood had helped manufacture a consensus in favor of war.
Then “the Senate passed resolutions for sine die adjournment Jan. 2 and convening of the new Congress Jan. 5,” at which time, they would consider legislation, to allow FDR the executive authority, to direct the country to abide by daylight savings. The House did likewise. One of the first bills they would take up in 1942 was the “establishment of a separate air force. . . .”46 The 77th Congress began 1941 riddled with factionalism and petty bickering, Democrats versus Republicans and Democrats versus Democrats. There simply weren’t enough Republicans to fight amongst themselves. They also began the year arguing over a $17 billion dollar federal budget. Twelve months later, they were in near unanimous agreement that the country needed a $61.5 billion dollar budget, all of it save $8 billion slated for national defense.47 Capitol Hill in January of 1941 was dominated by isolationists. In December of 1941, it was dominated by internationalists.
The city of Washington finally staged a successful blackout drill, after numerous failed attempts to do so. All it took was twelve thousand air raid wardens bellowing throughout the city for residents to get off the streets and turn off their lights. “By intent, it was only a partial blackout. Street lights were extinguished only in the downtown section and even there lights continued to glow . . . for the order in such cases were simply to use as little light as possible.”48
Via his odious Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler addressed the German people on New Year’s Eve. So, too, did Marshal Petain address the French people on that day. Hitler claimed to have been behind the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but a confidential memo to FDR from Rome refuted that. There, Hermann Goering had a conversation with an undercover British operative in which the German signaled his interest and approval of the Japanese operations in the Pacific. Although out of favor with Hitler for the recent failures of his Luftwaffe, Goering probably would have known if there had been any coordination between Berlin and Tokyo on December 7. Goering said, “I should consider it a great pleasure if Japan would be so kind as to instruct me in their method of conducting these operations. I feel that I have made a great mistake in not giving more study to the matter of launching aerial torpedoes.”49
In the continuation of his exclusive interview with Pierre Huss of the International News Service, it was clear Hitler was still paranoid, ill-informed, insecure, and delusional. “He may have heard that astrologers are saying in the eighth year of his favorable sign in the heaven is the last. It is a worrisome thing.” One thing was for sure. Adolf Hitler was absolutely obsessed with Franklin Roosevelt.50
The rumor was still going around that Hitler would be overthrown by his generals in 1942 and they would immediately sue for peace. A memo from the Office of Naval Intelligence laid it out, saying the German military was divided between “two factions, the first—Extremist, the second—Conservative. The Extremists are strong adherents of Hitler . . . Marshal Goering is now inclined toward the Conservative group, which is the real reason for his present alienation from Hitler. He and other members of the Conservative faction are under close surveillance of the Gestapo.” The memo continued, “The Conservatives aim at final liquidation of the Nazi party at the earliest opportunity . . . .”51
In an earlier broadcast, he’d referred to President Roosevelt as “Frau Roosevelt.”52 British astrologers also forecast a bad 1942 for Adolf Hitler.
Still ringing in the ears of the Allies were the immortal words of Churchill “There will be no halting or half measures. There will be no compromise or parley. These gangs of bandits have sought to darken the light of the world . . . and thence march forward into their inheritance. They shall themselves be cast into the pit of death and shame, and only when the earth has been cleansed and purged of their crime and of their villiany will we turn from the task which they have forced upon us . . . The enemies have asked for total war. Let us make sure they get it.”53
Mr. Churchill was due back in Washington on January 1st and few men fired up the American people like the British Prime Minister.
The first time Churchill and Roosevelt met in London in 1918, they did not like ea
ch other though they did share a fondness for “tobacco, strong drink, history, the sea, battleships, hymns, pageantry, patriotic poetry, high office and hearing themselves talk.” But they grew to respect each other, and on Churchill’s part, there was a genuine fondness. He once said that FDR was like opening a new bottle of champagne and FDR once said to Churchill, I am glad we live in the same decade.54
At the stroke of midnight on January 1st, 1942, America had technically been at war ___days ____hours ___minutes since the attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 8, President Roosevelt had made it official and then he did so again on December 11. America was thrust into a new world war; one in which she had vowed never to be involved; one that polling established the vast majority of the American people opposed, and one that had been forced upon a reluctant nation and indolent capital. “A languid Southern town with a pace so slow that much of it simply closed down for the summer grew almost overnight into a crowded, harried, almost frantic metropolis struggling desperately to assume the mantle of global power, moving haltingly and haphazardly and only partially successfully to change itself into the capital of the free world.”55
Once forced into battle, the American people quickly rallied to the cause of patriotic grace, passion, desire, commitment, fear, revenge, love, hate, anger—all the emotions one would expect when one’s country is unfairly and maliciously and sneakily attacked. Especially if that country was America in 1941, with its particularly strong streak of patriotism and sense of fair play.
The events of December 7, 1941, changed America and changed America forever. It sent the country careening off on a wildly different path of history than the one it had traveled in the days before that fateful day. In the two hours of the attack, the Navy lost more men than in World War I and the Spanish-America War combined. However, the nearly 3,000 dead did not come close to representing or reflecting the dimensions of the radical changes to America.
December 1941 Page 62
