December 1941 (16 page)

“Japan, in the grip of her militarists, has chosen to seek the will-o'-the-wisp of economic self-sufficiency by the path of military aggression. Now, after four years of exhausting war, she finds her economic and industrial life strangling. She has made the tragic error of following a course of military aggression irreconcilably opposed to that kind of world. She can expect relief only when her national policies again permit peace-loving nations to do business with her, without risk to themselves, and in good conscience.”
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Because of her own policies and myriad mistakes, Japan was now desperate. Washington was openly talking about a naval blockade of Japan, in cooperation with the British. “In that case . . . the Roosevelt Administration would be disposed to ask Congress for an outright declaration of war, rather than to wage an undeclared fight.”
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The peripatetic First Lady, tireless champion of social causes, was out and about as usual, appearing on national radio shows of her own including a “Town Hall Meeting of the Air” broadcast over NBC. Her cohost was the famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White. The topic they addressed was “What Must We Do to Improve Health and Welfare of the American People?”
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While giving a speech in New York at a “symposium on ‘Recent Immigrants and National Defense,'” Eleanor Roosevelt assured the audience that if war came, “aliens with good records . . . need have no anxiety about being placed in United States concentration camps should this country declare war against their homelands.”
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Italian, German, and Japanese Americans were relieved.

CHAPTER 5
THE FIFTH OF DECEMBER

“U.S. Proposals Downed by Japs”

Nevada State Journal

“Japanese See Talks Continue”

Standard Examiner

“Tokyo Envoy to Mexico Ordered Home
as U.S.-Japan Crisis Grows”

The Sun

S
cientists discovered in December of 1941 that the sun was 100,000 miles farther away from the earth than previously thought. Rather than the formerly believed 92,897,416 miles, Dr. H. Spencer Jones, astronomer royal at the Greenwich Observatory in Great Britain just outside of London, calculated
Sol
was actually 93,003,000 miles from
Terra Firma
. Dr. Jones also made some discoveries about asteroids, which other scientists referred to as “the lice of the heavens.”
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Astronomers also enlarged their knowledge about sunspots.

During this time, astrophysical research was gathering momentum in an intriguing area: black holes. In a new line of exploration that was dismissed by the scientific old guard as erroneous and fanciful, more imaginative scientists were theorizing that when a star collapsed after a supernova, it created a sufficiently dense mass from which even light couldn't escape, deforming the fabric of space and time.

Despite the war, German and British astronomers continued to exchange information.
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The world may have been on the brink of annihilation, but it was also on the brink of exciting new discoveries with enormous, lasting implications.

Science was advancing in others areas as well. In Los Angeles, an amateur “ham” radio operator, Karl E. Pierson, said he had developed important technology to quiet the static heard over broadcast receivers. Pierson had gained fame previously when he had been one of the last to hear transmissions from the lost aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, “on her fateful around-the-world flight in 1937.” He also claimed to have received transmissions from Earhart after her plane went down.
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Because of the aluminum shortage in America, a new, strong, and flexible material was being perfected: plastics. Some scientists predicted a bright future for the revolutionary new synthetic product and for young men going into the business of polymer and acetate development. “Someday . . . bathtubs, caskets, automobiles and airplane sections may be made of plastic.”
⁴
Plastic automobile bodies were also envisioned, but at the time, the material was mostly dedicated to the war effort.

Scientific advancement also extended to diet. Nutritionists in England, for instance, discovered that Rose hips were “20 times richer in vitamin c—the anti-infective vitamin—than orange juice, now scarce because of the war.” The Ministry of Health initiated a “harvest of the hedgerows . . . to garner 500 tons of the rose fruit to be converted into a tasty health-giving syrup.”
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And scientists in Australia were working to perfect powdered beef and in one instance, a six year old can of powdered meat came out in a perfect condition.

Dr. Karl Menninger, head of the American Psychoanalytical Association, produced a report explaining that man sought war because it was “a way to gratify subconscious desires to destroy and kill.” Elaborating, Dr. Menninger said, “War appeals to people for the same reasons that the Fascist philosophy appeals to people. It stimulates the wish to exert power over other people, to be aggressive, dominant commanding, possessive.”
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Science was also unfortunately improving man's ability to make war in the air, on the high seas, and over land. The American military announced the development of a fantastic new gun that could shoot down “anything that can fly and that is expected to prove a major factor in the war against Hitlerism. ” The announcement was made by Brigadier Gen. G. M. Barnes before a meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in the Hotel Astor in New York City. “Quantity production . . . will begin next month. The new weapon has a caliber of 4.7 inches or 120 millimeters. The characteristics of the gun are a carefully guarded military secret, but General Barnes discussed its history,” reported the
New York Times
. Barnes elaborated, “Reports from abroad indicate that 90 per cent of the bombing over England and Germany has been carried out at altitudes not exceeding 12,000 feet” and the new gun would be effective “at higher altitudes, using a heavier and more effective projectile.” So as to leave no doubt, Barnes went into even further detail for the benefit of casual readers and not so casual readers such as Nazi and Japanese spies. Then General Barnes turned it over to Colonel L. B. Lent, chief engineer of the National Inventors Council, who “told the meeting that some ‘revolutionary' new weapons submitted to the council were under test and development and ‘someday soon may be heard from in tones not pleasant to the Axis powers.'”
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Unfortunately, a 70-ton “flying boat” built for the government by the Glenn L. Martin Co. caught fire and then ran aground in Baltimore harbor while conducting sea and air trials. A propeller flew off and hit the fuselage, causing the mishap, and the plane was badly damaged as other parts of it caught fire. The plane had been named Mars.
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For the first time in months, Washington was drenched by a really good gully washer, and a strange rainbow shone over the city for a brief time. The temperature on December 5 was unusually warm for the season—it was in the sixties.
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Because of better sanitation, including treated water and the improved methods of handling sewage and trash, American life spans had rocketed up in just a few short years. At the turn of the century, the average life expectancy for an American was around forty-four years of age, but by 1941, it had gone up to sixty-six years for women and sixty-three years for men.
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And yet, Americans diet was still questionable, as 50 percent of draftees were rejected, mostly due to poor nutrition, which was attributed to substandard household income. A Gallup poll found that four in ten American families were bringing in less that $25 per week and, as such, could not afford enough food. The residents of 12million households went to bed hungry every night.
¹¹

There was still too little work to go around.

Many eyes were now on Thailand and war seemed to move closer. “To most Americans, Thailand is still Siam. The name conjures pictures of white elephants, temple dancers and pagodas, rather than clashing empires. England declared months ago that Japanese invasion of Thailand would produce immediate collision with the armed forces of the British Crown.” Japan propagandists continued their drumbeat that Thailand was threatened by outside forces. It was much the same argument Hitler made before invading Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Czechoslovakia, declaring he would be subjugating them for their own good.
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The Japanese also claimed the number of troops they were sending into Indochina had been grossly exaggerated and besides, they claimed, Thailand was a Buddhist country and thus anti-Chinese, and they, the Japanese, were there to protect Thailand.
¹³

Syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann declared, “For the first time, the country is now on the verge of actual, all out war.” Lippmann was the de facto voice of the “reasonable” establishment; his word carried clout. He saw another war coming for America not because of Lend-Lease or because of FDR's order to naval ships to fight back in the Atlantic, but because a fight with Japan would provoke America into jumping into the whole shooting match. In this, his was a voice both accurate and rare. He excoriated the isolationists and America First Committee for misunderstanding the situation in the Far East while focusing all their arguments on Europe.
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Others saw Lippmann as little more than a shill for the Roosevelt administration when it came to intervention.

A large school of thought in American foreign policy also believed that Japan's society was overtaxed, having failed in four years to completely subjugate China. Large amounts of men and resources were being devoted to fighting a war without resolution and because of this, Tokyo could not seriously consider expanding the war any farther south.
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Yet other writers and observers saw the arrival of new British battleships in Singapore as another deterrent to Japanese actions against Thailand. “Political observers here say the arrival of the British fleet brought powerful new pressure on the Japanese in connection with the Washington negotiations and believe it may be decisive in forcing Japan to drop her plans for new aggressions and to begin a general retreat.”
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A seesaw battle of public relations and war continued on the Russian Front, with the Germans claiming their big guns were raining shells on Moscow while the Soviets claimed the guns had been “silenced.”
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Temperatures on the Russian Front had reached 13 degrees below zero.
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The British claimed to have repulsed two surges by the Germans in North Africa, though they conceded that Axis forces had “reoccupied the important Gambut supply base which the British captured in the early days of the Libyan campaign.”
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Public relations battles were also raging in Washington with isolationist Democrats and Republicans fighting with internationalist Democrats and Republicans. On the floor of the Senate, a sharp exchange took place between Senator Charles McNary of Oregon, a Republican, and Claude Pepper of Florida, a Democrat. Pepper charged his honorable colleague with being a “laggard in supporting the President's defense program.”
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A grand jury had convened to investigate Nazi propaganda in the United States, and a star witness was Republican congressman Hamilton Fish of New York, an isolationist, whose chief aide had been indicted for perjury.
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Fish represented a grand legacy as his family boasted over one hundred years of political involvement.

Henry Stimson, the respected secretary of war, declared a war of his own against the
Chicago Tribune
for publishing the leaked documents on covert military planning by the U.S. government the prior day. Stimson did not deny their veracity and calmly said all contingencies were being explored, but he questioned the “wanting in loyalty and patriotism” of the newspaper for printing the story. Roosevelt had been asked about the report, but threw it into Stimson's lap to handle. Stimson did so, reading a long statement, lecturing the paper on proprieties in wartime and said his department was conducting an investigation. Capitol Hill erupted into a donnybrook over the
Tribune
story, while some charged that FDR was planning to give a “blank check” to Winston Churchill.
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Japanese propagandists and newspapers had a field day with the account. “Secret United States plans against Japan and Germany are exposed,” blared a headline in the
Chugai Shogyo Journal
; yet other Japanese newspapers said the story demonstrated that America was not ready for war and that Secretary Hull was pursuing “dollar diplomacy.” Japanese radio was little better, bashing America, spreading disinformation, playing the race and regionalism cards.
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A controversy over uniformed men and Washington's nightclubs had not died down, as both a general and a senator claimed their sons, both army privates, had been turned away and were told to go and change into civilian clothes before being admitted. Not to say there weren't plenty of other organized activities for soldiers and sailors.
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The local newspapers listed dozens of locations of Service Clubs and U.S.O. clubs in Washington. At the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines Club on L Street in the nation's capital, enlisted men found a “library, writing desks, table tennis, pool, radios, pianos, canteen, showers.” The club was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
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At many clubs, young single women put up Christmas trees, and if a homesick soldier or sailor had trouble finding a room in Washington, they could go to the hospitality committee in the District Building for help.
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