December 1941 (10 page)

In Georgia, 707 men received “greetings” from Uncle Sam. One of these was a man convicted for failing to keep his local “draft board advised of his address.”
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He was sent up for three years for draft evasion, but he pleaded that he'd tried to enlist a number of times. In court, the prisoner, Horace Woodrow Hampton, who had also been convicted twice of automobile theft, was advised that under a federal statue, inmates could be released if they went into the military.
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Mexicans who crossed the border and did not declare their intention to become U.S. citizens were exempt from military service. They could continue to live in Mexico and work in America, commuting each day.
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But because defense contractors required most workers to have a birth certificate and the military required all personnel to have such documents, it created a land office business with the state agencies that handled legal documents.
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Prior to 1941, birth certificates had not been much of an issue and people took prospective employees at their word as to where and when they were born.

There was a news report that covert Nazi agents were operating in Mexico City to recruit young Mexican boys—members of the “Mexican Sinarchists” to the Fascist cause and then send them overseas to join the Nazi cause. “A new pamphlet entitled, ‘Mexico in 1960' contains a historical review indicating Sinarchist hostility to the United States,” complaining about lands taken in 1847.
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Bad behavior did occasionally take place in America, as some men discovered it was easier to panhandle wearing a uniform. Some donned uniforms of the Royal Air Force and stood outside clubs and restaurants in New York, claiming they lost their wallets; kind-hearted civilians often bailed them out.
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It also wasn't unusual for inductees to be found with syphilis.

Some men, especially farm boys wanting to get off the farm, enlisted rather than wait to be drafted, as enlistees got better treatment and a chance to learn a trade. One twenty-year-old who had just finished a three-year hitch signed up for another and said he liked the army and planned on being in it when he was fifty. “I don't know how to act around people,” he told the
Los Angeles Times
.
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The U.S. government announced that the hulls for twenty-four “escort vessels” ordered by the navy would be built in Denver, Colorado—1,300 miles from the nearest ocean port. The initial budget was $55 million.
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Part of the largess of the war effort also went to America's prisons. In Atlanta, a penitentiary received a bonus check from the government for the “outstanding work” by inmates there. The check was presented in person by the attorney general, Francis Biddle.
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Congress continued its investigations into corruption in defense contracting and discovered a “sub-subcontractor” who was taking kickbacks of nearly one-third of the contract he'd brought Remington Arms Co. of Connecticut and its subcontracted maker of “shell dies.” The treasurer for the company said the sub-subcontractor, Leon K. Shanak, had performed “no service” and that the subcontractor, Trans-Continental, had provided nothing for the federal government.
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Washington “disqualified” 560 individuals for work because they failed to pass loyalty oaths to the U.S. government. This was out of a pool of 40,000 seeking jobs in defense industries. Arthur Flemming, a commissioner with the Civil Service, speculated, “Does [this] give evidence to you of some fifth column activities in the Government?” He answered his own query, “Certainly, if one studies our records, he would get some indication of that.” Another 2,400 failed to pass “character investigations.”
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In London, a pacifist member of the House of Lords, the Duke of Bedford, was seated only after taking that country's loyalty oath to the king. The duke said he was only doing so to help some friends, who had been picked up by the government for violating “regulation 18B,” which allowed the home secretary “to hold without trial anyone he regards as dangerous to the war effort.”
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At the other end of the spectrum, Lady Astor—née Nancy Witcher Langhorne of Virginia—criticized Churchill for not including more women in the war effort. In a speech in the House of Commons, she said the prime minister should go “further in proposals to conscript women . . . If you don't conscript married women there will be great discontent.”
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Lady Astor had been born in the United States and like Churchill, she was nobody's fool. Like Churchill, she was a Tory, but unlike Churchill, she was beautiful. She was also the first woman to sit in Parliament, having succeeded her husband, Waldorf Astor.

Later, a poll of British subjects demonstrated wide support—55 percent to 35—for the conscription of women into the military; however, the vast majority—65 percent over 26—disapproved of women in combat. There were already a few women who were serving in harm's way, some “wo-manning” antiaircraft emplacements. “It is reported that women have been found to excel men in the handling of complicated mechanical instruments and range finders.”
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Americans were more chivalrous on the subject. In a
Los Angeles Times
poll, nearly 60 percent opposed drafting women into the military.
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Of course the nation's attitude about the sexes was hardly modern, as evidenced by syndicated columnist Dorothy Dix, who advised divorced women to buck up and accept the fact it was probably their fault that their husbands had left them. “The discarded wife always poses as martyr and calls upon her friends and acquaintances to shed tears of pity over her. They look upon marriage as a graft in which the husband must give all while they give nothing.”
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As a result of the Allied embargo of Japan, 75 percent of her imports had been cut, but that was only the beginning of her economic strain. Because of the shift in the Japanese economy to a war footing, billions of yen were being devoted to armaments, and annual rice production fell from 400 million bushels to 297 million because of the cutoff of fertilizers for farmers.
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The Japanese had still not answered President Roosevelt's question from the day before: what were their intentions in Thailand? The Thai government felt certain it knew the answer and issued an open invitation for help, assuming a likely and imminent attack. But diplomacy is a complicated art. “It is no secret here that the discussions have been severely hampered by the Japanese proclivity for combining peaceful words with warlike actions,” reported the Associated Press from Washington.
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FDR “made clear that the objective which was sought meant that no additional territory should be taken by anyone,” reported the
Los Angeles Times
.
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But Roosevelt said his query “did not constitute an ultimatum.”
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He also complained that the Japanese people were not being made aware of Washington's position when it came to the Pacific and that the press there was only telling citizens of British military actions in the region. “The Chief Executive termed Japan a friendly power with which the United States was at peace.”
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But the situation was dicier than a word like
peace
would indicate. The White House let it out that the administration might “abandon talks if good faith is not shown.”
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Yet there were still hopes for an “armed truce,”
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though some of the striped pants set said the “crisis may come to [a] head within [a] few days.”
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Another group of diplomats said that FDR “placed Japan in a position where she must withdraw forces recently sent to and in transit to Indo-China and continue negotiations . . . or face . . . a possible war” with America.
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Meanwhile, Japanese officials said Premier Tojo had been “misquoted” when he said that Americans and British had to be “purged”
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from the Far East, and that a “subordinate official . . . did a clumsy job” of translating Tojo.
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Later, the Japanese government denied outright that Tojo had ever said the word
purge
.
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An assistant secretary for the navy, Ralph A. Bard, said the situation in the Pacific was “a tinder box . . . waiting for a spark that will explode all over the eastern quarter of the globe.”
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But he also stated, like everybody else in the navy, that they do not “underestimate Japan's power” and “in the regrettable event of trouble in the Pacific, that trouble will not be a minor one.”
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Despite FDR's assurance of a non-ultimatum, the
Washington Post
ran a story with a dire lede, dateline Washington, that appeared to blame Tokyo. “The issue of peace or war in the Pacific . . . may turn on Japan's reply.”
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The headline said, “Tokyo Must Explain Actions,”
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And the story detailed how FDR was waiting, how his question amounted to an ultimatum, even as he said in his press conference it did not. It also reported that Washington had set a deadline of December 15 as “zero hour.” That was when the rice fields in Thailand were no longer flooded and the ground would be firm enough for mechanized vehicles.
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The paper ran a story, the same day, with an ominous headline dateline Tokyo, that appeared to blame Washington. “The uncompromising attitude of Washington undoubtedly has dimmed any chance for success of the United States-Japanese negotiations, but Japan is determined that all avenues of a peaceful settlement be exhausted . . . informed sources said.” The headline said, “Japan to Exhaust All Peace Avenues.”
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As many times as FDR waved off speculation that any invasion of Thailand would lead to war, the
Post
speculated just as many times that an invasion would lead to “undeclared hostilities . . . general war in the Pacific.” FDR also told reporters that “some progress” was being made in the peace negotiations and that it was his understanding the Japanese “would take no additional steps while the negotiations were underway.”
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However his query was interpreted, by Tokyo or American newspapers, Roosevelt had good reason to be concerned. While the talks continued, one report came in saying, “A sizable Japanese naval force also is reported in Indo-China waters. . . .”
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New reports coming from Saigon said the Japanese continued to amass extraordinary numbers of troops and supplies in Indo-China, along the Thai border. “The docks” in Saigon “are piled with drums of gasoline, trucks, guns and other equipment. Troops and supplies are arriving daily by ship and train at Saigon.” Military experts thought the islands of the Dutch Indies would be the first target of Tokyo.
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FDR that day received a confidential memo from the Office of Naval Intelligence informing him on developments in the Far East, including troop movements into China and south, possibly as a prelude to invading Thailand.
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The British government was telling reporters that if Japan attacked their Far East outposts, America would jump into the fray, but this was wishful thinking as Churchill had been agitating for months for direct involvement by America.
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As much as the Japanese were provoking America, England was cajoling America. But it was also reported that the Dutch were pressuring London to go into Thailand to keep it from going to the Japanese, should they invade, much as FDR did with Surinam, taking it before the Germans could. The report out of Manila said a source close to the administration suggested that even if talks broke down between Washington and Tokyo, this would not presage a war between the two countries. “Washington sees no spark for an immediate Japanese-American war.”
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Even so, Americans were still evacuating Asia, many headed for the Philippines.

The
Chicago Tribune
was continuing to taunt FDR, contrasting his words of 1940: “I give you one more assurance your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars” with his words of just a few days earlier: “It is always possible that our boys in the military and naval academies may be fighting for the defense of these American institutions of ours.”
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The paper stated its platform on the editorial page in one simple phrase: “Save Our Republic.”
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Some former government officials seemed to be agitating for war with Japan. The former ambassador to Thailand, Hugh Grant, told the
New York Times
, “If the Japanese really want war, now is the time to let them have it. I believe we could smash them within a period of a few months with our superior air and naval forces.”
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Another civilian, Senator Tom Connally, Democrat of Texas, gave a speech in Florida in which he thundered that the U.S. Navy “in the Pacific . . . can shoot and shoot straight. That is my answer to the Japanese Premier.” Connally threw some other choice barbs at Tokyo. FDR also sent a message to the United States Saving and Loan League, to whom Connally gave his incendiary remarks, but it was simply to praise them for their work in constructing “defense housing.”
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After upbraiding FDR over his war-making powers, the
Baltimore Sun
then turned on a dime and taunted the Japanese. “By deciding to go on with the negotiations the Japanese statesmen are serving their own nation well. In ships, in planes, in all the stuff with which to make war, the United States grows stronger week by week. Both relatively and absolutely Japan grows weaker. The longer we can keep the Japanese talking, the greater the chance that they will finally understand that war with this country would be an undiluted disaster for them.”
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