New York at War

by Steven H. Jaffe

  50 Jaffe, Crusade, 24; Shannon, Socialist Party, 104; Luebke, Bonds, 253, 268.

  51 Witcover, Sabotage, 233.

  52 Kennedy, Over Here, 75–77; Schaffer, America in the Great War, 218–221; Jaffe, Crusade, 55; “The Sedition Bill,” New York Times, April 10, 1918, 12.

  53 Joe Doyle, “Striking for Ireland on the New York Docks,” in Bayor and Meagher, eds., The New York Irish, 359; Jaffe, Crusade, 59–60, 62–64; Shannon, Socialist Party, 103–105.

  54 “Start Drive Today for Draft Slackers, New York Times, September 3, 1918, 8; “Seize 20,000 Here in Slacker Search,” New York Times, September 4, 1918, 1; “Second Day Nets Few Slackers Here,” New York Times, September 5, 1918, 3; “Hunting the Slacker,” New York Times, September 6, 1918, 12; “Get 1,500 Slackers in 3-Day Roundup,” New York Times, September 6, 1918, 24; “60,187 Men Taken in Slacker Raids,” New York Times, September 8, 1918, 9.

  55 Sterba, Good Americans, 56; Kennedy, Over Here, 81–82, 165–166; Schaffer, America in the Great War, 17; Higham, Strangers, 211–212.

  56 Schaffer, America in the Great War, 147–148; Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 183; Christopher M. Finan, From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 21, 4–25; “Hunting the Slacker,” New York Times, September 6, 1918, 12; Kennedy, Over Here, 89.

  57 Luebke, Bonds, 237, 276.

  58 Ibid., 216, 249; Erik Kirschbaum, The Eradication of German Culture in the United States: 1917–1918 (Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz Akademischer Verlag, 1986), 99, 101–102, 105–106, 135, 140.

  59 Luebke, Bonds, 10, 14–15, 227–228, 243; Jeff Kisseloff, You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), 118.

  60 William Bell Clark, When the U-Boats Came to America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929), 49–56, 73–74; “29 Survivors Reach Atlantic City Beach,” New York Times, June 5, 1918, 2.

  61 Clark, U-Boats, 42–50.

  62 Ibid., 32, 34–35, 42, 49–50, 72.

  63 Kennedy, Over Here, 169, 189; John Maxtone-Graham, Dazzle & Drab: Ocean Liners at War (New York: The Ocean Liner Museum, 2001), 15–17, 20; Ellis, Epic, 505.

  64 Clark, U-Boats, 64–65, 93–95, 131; Ellis, Epic, 505; Douglas Botting and the Editors of Time-Life Books, The U-Boats (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1979), 64.

  65 Page, City’s End, frontispiece; Clark, U-Boats, 78–79; “City Lights Out in Air Raid Test,” New York Times, June 5, 1918, 1; “Police Rules for Citizens Should Air Raid Be Made,” New York Times, June 5, 1918, 1; “Dim Some Streets to Foil Air Raids,” New York Times, June 6, 1918, 1; “To Cope with Air Raids,” New York Times, June 15, 1918, 6; “Huge Air-Raid Siren Tested by the Police,” New York Times, June 26, 1918, 8; “Air Raid Scare in Bronx,” New York Times, July 2, 1918, 14; “Siren Test Stirs Many,” New York Times, July 10, 1918, 10.

  66 Clark, U-Boats, 144, 159–163, 214–216, 309–311.

  67 Ibid., 107, 108.

  68 Ibid., 165, 255, 256; “Take Enemy Aliens in Barred Zone,” New York Times, July 20, 1918, 18.

  69 Sterba, Good Americans, 172–173; Schaffer, America in the Great War, 115.

  70 Kennedy, Over Here, 207; Kisseloff, You Must Remember, 551; Sterba, Good Americans, 3, 8, 80, 181; Schaffer, America in the Great War, 88, 89; Anderson, This Was Harlem, 107–108.

  71 Kennedy, Over Here, 291; Jaffe, Crusade, 231.

  72 Jaffe, Crusade, 85–91, 183–189; Kate Holladay Claghorn, The Immigrant’s Day in Court (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923), 418–421, 426–429, 447–448, 455.

  73 Joseph W. Bendersky, The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 69, 126–132.

  74 Ibid., 158–163, 166.

  Chapter 8

  1 The previous paragraphs are based on the following: “City to Ward Off ‘Invasion’ by Air,” New York Times, January 19, 1941, 19; “‘Air Raids’ in East Start 4-Day Test,” New York Times, January 22, 1941, 12; “‘Foe’s’ Planes Rain ‘Bombs’ onto City,” New York Times, January 23, 1941, 13; “Coast Vulnerable, War Games Show,” New York Times, January 24, 1941, 11; Hanson W. Baldwin, “Types of Aerial Missiles,” New York Times, January 24, 1941, 11; “The Nation,” New York Times, January 26, 1941, E2; “Air Raid Spotters to Be Permanent,” New York Times, January 25, 1941, 8.

  2 Brehon Somervell, “City Unemployment Figures,” New York Times, March 23, 1940, 10.

  3 Leo Polaski and Glen Williford, New York City’s Harbor Defenses (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 63–68, 71–73, 97, 104, 107, 109–111; Russell S. Gilmore, “fortifications,” in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 431–432.

  4 Baldwin, “Types of Aerial Missiles,” New York Times, January 24, 1941, 11.

  5 Richard M. Ketchum, The Borrowed Years 1938–1941: America on the Way to War (New York: Random House, 1989), 87–92.

  6 “Mayor Tells City He Will Run Again If Voters Call Him,” New York Times, May 22, 1941, 1; “City Defense Group Plans for Air Raids,” New York Times, January 16, 1941, 1; “Mayor Emphasizes Need of Discipline,” New York Times, June 14, 1941, 9; “Mayors Hear Poletti Warn of Invasion,” New York Times, June 12, 1941, 11; August Heckscher with Phyllis Robinson, When LaGuardia Was Mayor: New York’s Legendary Years (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 280, 297–298, Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989), 491–493.

  7 “Slums and Penthouses Send Forth Volunteers Eager to ‘Do Our Bit,’” New York Times, June 21, 1941, 8; “Post Wardens in Training,” New York Times, September 16, 1941, 7.

  8 “Mayor Emphasizes Need of Discipline,” New York Times, June 14, 1941, 9; “Urges Permanency in Defense Housing,” New York Times, April 25, 1941, 35; “Air Raid Drills Held in Schools,” New York Times, June 7, 1941, 19; “Tests Evacuation Plan,” New York Times, March 13, 1941, p.23; “Defense Exhibit Begins Saturday,” New York Times, September 14, 1941, 39; “Newest Weapons to Be on Exhibit,” New York Times, September 20, 1941, 34.

  9 Norman Brouwer, “Fortress New York,” Seaport: New York’s History Magazine 24, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 40.

  10 Sander A. Diamond, The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 92, 101–102, 206, 224, 228, 229, 245; Ronald H. Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish, Germans, Jews, and Italians of New York City, 1929–1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 61.

  11 Diamond, Nazi Movement, 144–145, 317; Stan Cohen and Don DeNevi with Richard Gay, They Came to Destroy America: The FBI Goes to War Against Nazi Spies & Saboteurs Before and During World War II (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 2003), 3.

  12 Diamond, Nazi Movement, 8, 150, 151, 156, 203, 209, 225, 277; Cohen and DeNevi, They Came, 17–18; Bayor, Neighbors, 63, 66–67, 73–74, 76; Mike Wallace, “New York and the World: The Global Context,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, ed. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: Museum of the City of New York/New York University Press, 2007), 22.

  13 “100,000 March Here in 6-Hour Protest over Nazi Policies,” New York Times, May 11, 1933, 1; Diamond, Nazi Movement, 107; Bayor, Neighbors, 68–70; Wallace, “New York and the World,” 21–22.

  14 Diamond, Nazi Movement, 230; Cohen and DeNevi, They Came, 4.

  15 “La Guardia Scores Nazi Racial Bias,” New York Times, January 20, 1935, 31; Kessner, La Guardia, 400–403.

  16 Kessner, La Guardia, 403, Heckscher, When LaGuardia, 163; William Manners, Patience and Fortitude: Fiorello La Guardia (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 245.

  17 Heckscher, When LaGuardia, 163–164.

  18 Diamond, Nazi Movement, 324–329; Cohen and DeNevi, They Came, 9–10.

  19 Diamond, Nazi Movement,
324–329; “Mayor to Permit Big Bund Meeting,” New York Times, February 18, 1939, 30; “22,000 Nazis Hold Rally in Garden; Police Check Foes,” New York Times, February 21, 1939, 1; “Bund Foes Protest Policing of Rally,” New York Times, February 22, 1939, 6; “New York: Nazi Garden Party,” New York Times, February 26, 1939, 66.

  20 Bayor, Neighbors, 24–29, 93; Wallace, “New York and the World,” 28–9; Patrick J. McNamara, “Pro-Franco Sentiment and Activity in New York City,” in Carroll and Fernandez, eds., Facing Fascism, 95–100.

  21 Bayor, Neighbors, 88–90, 92–93, 105–107.

  22 Ibid., 94–96, 97–104, 155–156, 160–163; Diamond, Nazi Movement, 319; Stephen H. Norwood, “Marauding Youth and the Christian Front: Antisemitic Violence in Boston and New York During World War II,” American Jewish History 91, no. 2 (June 2003): 241–242.

  23 Bayor, Neighbors, 102–103, 113.

  24 Ibid., 36, 78–79; Kessner, La Guardia, 136; John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 32, 79; Wallace, “New York and the World,” 23–24, 26–27.

  25 Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, 43; Kessner, La Guardia, 136.

  26 Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, 125–138; Nunzio Pernicone, “Italian Immigrant Radicalism in New York,” in The Italians of New York: Five Centuries of Struggle and Achievement, ed. Philip V. Cannistraro (New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1999), 85–88; “100 Police Break Up Anti-Fascist Riot,” New York Times, July 5, 1932, 1; “In Court as Slayer in Anti-Fascist Riot,” New York Times, July 6, 1932, 42; “Envoy at Service for Slain Fascist,” New York Times, July 8, 1932, 36.

  27 Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, 306–308; “Harlem Ponders Ethiopia’s Fate,” New York Times, July 14, 1935, E10.

  28 “Italians Execute Many in Ethiopia; Oust 4 Journalists,” New York Times, May 18, 1936, 1; “Plans Take Form to Rule Ethiopia,” New York Times, May 18, 1936, 11; “Mob of 400 Battles the Police in Harlem; Italian Stores Raided, Man Shot in Crowd,” New York Times, May 19, 1936, 6; Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, 306–307.

  29 Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, 306; Jervis Anderson, This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait, 1900–1950 (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982), 286–88; Langston Hughes, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 14:307–308; Richard Wright, “High Tide in Harlem: Joe Louis as a Symbol of Freedom,” in The Unlevel Playing Field: A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Sports, ed. David K. Wiggins and Patrick B. Miller (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 172.

  30 Peter Kwong, Chinatown, N.Y.: Labor and Politics, 1930–1950, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 1979), 38, 47, 52, 77, 97–107.

  31 Ibid., 112, 130; Wallace, “New York and the World,” 27–28.

  32 Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War Two (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), 96–98; Peter N. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 51–53.

  33 Letter from Volunteer Hyman Katz to his mother, November 5, 1937, in Carroll and Fernandez, eds., Facing Fascism, 24–25.

  34 Eric R. Smith, “New York’s Aid to the Spanish Republic,” in Carroll and Fernandez, eds., Facing Fascism, 43.

  35 Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 35; James P. Duffy, Target: America: Hitler’s Plan to Attack the United States (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004), 15; Hyman Katz to his mother, in Carroll and Fernandez, eds. Facing Fascism, 25.

  36 Manfred Griehl, Luftwaffe Over America: The Secret Plans to Bomb the United States in World War II (London: Greenhill Books, 2004), 20–21, 28–29, 35; Duffy, Target: America, 46–47.

  37 Griehl, Luftwaffe, 33–34, 37; Major Gerhard Engel, At the Heart of the Reich: The Secret Diary of Hitler’s Army Adjutant (London: Greenhill Books, 2005), 107.

  38 Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, Hating America: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 95–98; H. Paul Jeffers, The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002), 278.

  39 Rubin and Rubin, Hating America, 97–98; Ketchum, Borrowed Years, 179; Griehl, Luftwaffe, 34; Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 540.

  40 Cohen and DeNevi, They Came, 21–23, 28; Ladislas Farago, The Game of the Foxes (New York: David McKay, 1971), 25–27, 39, 45, 47, 54, 496–500, 506.

  41 Farago, Foxes, 63–64, 71–73, 532–533, 575.

  42 Cohen and DeNevi, They Came, vi–vii, 22–23; ibid., 373–377, 533–541; “U.S. Bomb Site Sold to Germany, Spy Jury Is Told,” New York Times, September 9, 1941, 1.

  43 Otto D. Tolischus, “Nipponese Face War They Thought Impossible,” New York Times, December 7, 1941, E3; “On the Radio This Week,” New York Times, December 7, 1941, X15; Ketchum, Borrowed Years, 776–778.

  44 Heckscher, When LaGuardia, 313–314; Jeffers, Napoleon of New York, 311–312; Kessner, La Guardia, 501–502; Ketchum, Borrowed Years, 777–778; “Entire City Put on War Footing,” New York Times, December 8, 1941, 1; “Planes Guard City from Air Attacks,” New York Times, December 9, 1941, 1; Lorraine B. Diehl, Over Here! New York City During World War II (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 63–64. Consul General Morishima was allowed to return home to Japan and soon was reassigned as Japan’s minister in the embassy to the Soviet Union.

  45 Michael Gammon, Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), xv–xvii.

  46 Ibid., 208–213, 216–223, 225. For a useful summary of U-123’s voyage and “kills,” see the website www.uboat.net.

  47 Ibid., 137–138; Andrew Williams, The Battle of the Atlantic (London: BBC Worldwide, 2002), 166.

  48 Gammon, Drumbeat, 19–21.

  49 Ibid., 224–225, 230–232; Williams, Battle, 166–167.

  50 Williams, Battle, 176.

  51 Ibid., 166–167.

  52 “Ship Found Awash,” New York Times, January 15, 1942, 1.

  53 Gammon, Drumbeat, 84–92.

  54 Ibid., 181–185; Polaski and Williford, Harbor Defenses, 109.

  55 Williams, Battle, 174–175; Gammon, Drumbeat, 352–355.

  56 John McPhee, Looking for a Ship (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990), 155; Gammon, Drumbeat, 271, 344; Arnold S. Lott, Most Dangerous Sea: A History of Mine Warfare, and an Account of U. S. Navy Mine Warfare Operations in World War II and Korea (Annapolis: US Naval Institute, 1959), 48–49.

  57 Gammon, Drumbeat, xviii, 388–389.

  58 Ibid., 231.

  59 W.A. Haskell, Shadows on the Horizon: The Battle of Convoy HX-233 (London: Chatham Publishing, 1998), 22, 25.

  60 Joseph F. Meany Jr., “New York: Sally Port to Victory,” Sea History 65 (Spring 1993): 13; Joseph F. Meany Jr., “Port in a Storm: The Port of New York in World War II,” in To Die Gallantly: The Battle of the Atlantic, ed. Timothy J. Runyan and Jan M. Copes (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 284, 289.

  61 Meany, “Sally Port,” 14; Roy Hoopes, Americans Remember the Home Front: An Oral Narrative (New York: Berkley Books, 2002), 160–161.

  62 Moray Epstein, Ports in a Storm: The Voyage of a Merchant Seaman Through World War II (San Diego: Moray Epstein, 1995), 56.

  63 George Sandiford in Eyewitness Accounts of the World War II Murmansk Run, ed. Mark Scott (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), 71.

  64 Sam Hakam in Scott, Eyewitness Accounts, 39, 41; Epstein, Ports, 96.

  65 Gammon, Drumbeat, xx; Meany, “New York: Sally Port to Victory,” 15. For wartime casualty rates, see www.usmm.org/casualty.html.

  66 Meany, “Sally Port,” 14; Meany, “Port in a Storm,” 289–290; William H. Miller and David F. Hutchings, Transatlantic Liners at War: The Story of the Queens (New York: Arco, 1985), 76, 82; Richard Goldstein, Helluva Town: The Story of New York City D
uring World War II (New York: Free Press, 2010), 56. San Francisco, the second busiest of the nation’s nine wartime embarkation ports, sent abroad only a bit more than half the number of troops dispatched by New York.

  67 Gammon, Drumbeat, 274; Joseph F. Meany Jr., “Port in a Storm: The Port of New York in World War II,” typescript, South Street Seaport Museum Library, 62–63.

  68 Meany, “Sally Port,” 16; “Division of Work for Defense Urged,” New York Times, August 15, 1941, 10; Geoffrey Rossano, “Suburbia Armed: Nassau County Development and the Rise of the Aerospace Industry, 1909–60,” in The Martial Metropolis: U.S. Cities in War and Peace, ed. Roger W. Lotchin (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1984), 73; “Knudsen Pledges 30 Billion Output,” New York Times, August 14, 1941, 1; Karl Drew Hartzell, The Empire State at War: World War II (Albany: The State of New York, 1949), 54–55; Dominic J. Capeci Jr., The Harlem Riot of 1943 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977), 61–63.

  69 Ellen Snyder-Grenier, Brooklyn! An Illustrated History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 134–135; Debra E. Bernhardt and Rachel Bernstein, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives: A Pictorial History of Working People in New York City (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 60.

  70 Snyder-Grenier, Brooklyn!, 119, 126–127, 132–133; Thomas F. Berner, The Brooklyn Navy Yard (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1999), 83; Meany, “Sally Port,” 16; Lucille Kolkin, remarks at Veteran’s Day event, South Street Seaport Museum, November 1993, transcript, Seaport Museum.

  71 Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City (New York: Coward-McCann, 1966), 561–564.

  72 Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades, New York: An Illustrated History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 471; Ronald H. Bailey and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Home Front: U.S.A. (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1978), 168–179; Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 284–290, 291, 367.

  73 “Drastic Dimout of All City Lights Effective Tonight,” New York Times, May 18, 1942, 1; “Dimout Gives Way to New ‘Brownout,’ Effective Monday,” New York Times, October 28, 1943, 1.