December 1941 (31 page)

The National Committee of the Communist Party, headquartered in New York, also issued a statement supporting the United States.
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A Christmas charity drive for children sponsored by NBC, the
Star
newspaper, and the Warner Brothers Theaters was “suspended . . . because of the war.”
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The federal government and military installations went into lockdown mode, and only those carrying special passes could be admitted. National Airport went on a “wartime basis” as “special attention was being paid to anti-sabotage patrol.”
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Attention was also being paid to gas lines, water lines, and electrical plants to guard against sabotage. All across the country, War Emergency Committees and Regional Defense Councils and the like were hurriedly organized.
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At 11:00 p.m. on December 7, a partial blackout was ordered for Washington, but it looked more like a “dim out” to officials. “Residents—at least some of them—did as they were requested and snapped off lights in their homes or pulled the shades down.” But much of Washington was still brightly lit, from the great chandelier in the White House to the U.S. Capitol.
¹⁷⁶

Mrs. Roosevelt, in her weekly Sunday evening radio broadcast, had called on American women to “rise above their fears” and support their sons in the services and help support the morale of their families. “Many of you all over this country have boys in the services who will now be called upon to go into action. You cannot escape a clutch of fear at your heart and yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.”
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The First Lady told her listeners that she, too, had a son in harm's way. “I have a boy at sea on a destroyer. For all I know he is on his way to the Pacific.” Mistakenly, she also said that the president had been meeting with the Japanese diplomats at the very time when Japan was attacking. In closing, she said, “To the young people of this nation I must speak tonight. You are going to have a great opportunity—there will be high moments in which your strength and your ability will be tested. I have faith in you! Just as though I were standing upon a rock, and that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens.”
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General Motors declared it was putting all its plants on “full war status.”
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The United Brotherhoods of Welders, Cutters and Helpers—which had scheduled a nationwide strike for the following week—called it off.
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The War Department issued orders to defense contractors that workers in those plants “be required to work as many additional hours as is necessary to get the day's work done. Additional overtime work and second and third shifts must be arranged. Our production must be put on a 24-hour-a-day basis.”
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The War Department also ordered all defense plants to take steps to ensure that sabotage did not befall them.

Soon, there would be plenty of work for all Americans. Pearl Harbor was the final nail in the coffin of the Great Depression; shortly, the problem wouldn't be creating enough work—it would be finding enough workers.

In Abilene, Texas, “the only Japanese soldier in the 45th Division was a prisoner in the Camp Barkeley stockade today. He is doing six months at hard labor for desertion. Headquarters said he refused to tell a court martial where he had been during two months absence.”
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In Panama and Alaska, and at a military installment in Sacramento, blackouts were ordered. Antisubmarine netting was spread across the San Diego harbor.
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Over one hundred Japanese civilians were picked up in the Canal Zone, in part because the canal was an inviting target for sabotage. The Japanese minister demanded their release, but it fell on deaf ears.
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The naval base at Puget Sound announced it would shoot down any plane flying overhead. All private aviation was canceled in the United States by the Civil Aeronautics Authority and licenses were suspended. Only commercial and military planes were allowed aloft.
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Fishing boats in San Francisco harbor were ordered to stay at anchor, and the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge were turned off. On the Bay Bridge, cars were allowed to pass except those containing Japanese. These were stopped and questioned. The new water aqueduct in Los Angeles was put under guard. Cargo ships in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other West Coast harbors were “bottled up.”
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The downtown area of the city was clogged with traffic, but citizens were warned to stay at home. “Then came a reaction as truly American as apple pie.” The word on the street was, “They started it—we'll finish it!”
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Four thousand antiaircraft troops were deployed around the city, and the navy ordered a blackout of the harbors at Long Beach, San Pedro, and Wilmington. The city also ordered the darkening of street lights
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and . . . airfields landing lights were turned off. “Black-outs, wild rumors of ‘approaching aircraft'''
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Reeves Field was closed around 11:30 a.m. on the seventh “as word of the attack on Honolulu was received. Gates to the field were closed, all leaves were cancelled, all visitors were banned and those within the gates were subject to questioning before they were permitted to depart.”
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A national call was issued for volunteer amateur radio operators and airplane spotters. The first request the government made of the ham radio operators was to switch off their crystal sets to clear the airwaves so Washington officials could better monitor enemy transmissions from inside the United States.
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The real story of the events in Washington, Tokyo, and the Pacific were only beginning to emerge by December 8 and would not be entirely unraveled for some time. In short, the Japanese military attacked unarmed civilians and unprepared and unaware military outposts without first declaring war. The time in Washington was 1:05 p.m.

Secretary of State Cordell Hull had been in conferences Sunday morning with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Secretary of War Henry Stimson for three hours, beginning at 9:45 a.m. At 1:00 p.m., Japanese ambassador Nomura requested an immediate appointment with Hull.
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The fourteenth part of the long message from Tokyo had arrived and it concluded, “The Japanese government regrets to have to notify hereby the American government that in view of the attitude of the American government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.”
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It could be interpreted many ways, and only one as a declaration of war. Countries had broken off negotiations in the past, had withdrawn envoys, all without going to war.

The meeting was set for 1:45, but Nomura and fellow diplomat Kurusu were fifteen minutes late. They then cooled their heels in Hull's outer office for another fifteen minutes. The meeting started at 2:15 and lasted only ten minutes. The pair presented an ultimatum from their government.
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Just before meeting with Nomura and Kurusu, Hull learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor in a startling phone conversation with the president.
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The meeting, suffice it to say, was short and unpleasant.
Time
magazine said the statement they'd delivered was “an incredible farrago of self-justification and abuse.”
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The Japanese envoys departed, curiously photographed smiling, while surrounded by dozens of scowling reporters and photographers,
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though it was not clear the diplomats knew that their country had attacked America. These photos became infamous, further inflaming the already inflamed American populace. Most people didn't follow the diplomatic interplay between the two countries, the boycotts, the invasions, or the subtle and not so subtle military moves. Then came a declaration by the emperor of Japan, Hirohito, which was picked up, translated, and then broadcast by NBC radio. Surprising no one, Hirohito told his listeners, “We by the grace of Heaven, Emperor of Japan and seated on the throne of a line unbroken for ages eternal, enjoin upon thee, our loyal and brave subjects. We hereby declare war upon the United States of America and the British Empire.”
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From there, Hirohito made his case against America and England while crafting essentially a “pep talk” for the Japanese people. Servicemen—many of them sailors—teemed Times Square and other city gathering places where they read newspapers, some anxious to go to war with Japan. “‘We can whip them in no time,' was a common remark sailors made.”
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Of course, none of these young men had ever been to war, nor did they realize the Japanese population had been making sacrifices since the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and the Japanese troops were battle-hardened from that incursion as well as the invasion of China in 1937.

The Japanese had, by best estimates, somewhere between three and five thousand fighter planes and sixty-six divisions or 1.8 million men in uniform, not including the twenty divisions occupying Eastern China as well as others in Indochina, Formosa, and other locales. Also, “the Japanese fleet [was the] world's third largest,” consisting of “eleven capital ships with [others] nearly ready; eight or nine aircraft carriers plus three carriers converted from merchantmen; forty-four to forty-six cruisers . . . about 126 destroyers and sixty-nine or seventy submarines, some of them large craft of long range probably now operating in the Eastern Pacific.”
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The Japanese had a hell of a fighting force and no one was going to “whip them in no time.”

Most Americans could not find Pearl Harbor on a map before December 7, 1941. One congressman lamented that Pearl Harbor should have been put in the middle of the United States rather than the middle of the Pacific. The Washington Post made reference to “Bickam Field,”
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while the
New York Times
called it “Hickman.”
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It was Hickam Field.

But Americans did understand fair play and playing by the rules. Fair play was ingrained in Americans, as was American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. Editorials across the nation freely used the adjectives “sordid,” “deceitful,” “consummate duplicity,” “perfidy,” “treachery,” “unscrupulous,” and others far worse.

All made it abundantly clear to their infuriated readers that Japan had declared war after attacking America. While most of the immediate information coming out of the White House was inaccurate, their initial estimate of the dead in Hawaii, three thousand was fairly correct.
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None of the names of the American ships hit by the Japanese were released by official sources.

Roosevelt—at least outwardly—took the crisis in stride. “Deadly calm” was how Eleanor Roosevelt described him. “He was completely calm. His reaction to any event was always to be calm. If it was something that was bad, he just became almost like an iceberg, and then there was never the slightest emotion that was allowed to show.”
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Secretary Morgenthau suggested more protection for FDR, but he balked. “You've doubled the [White House] guard,” said the president. “That's all you need.”
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Editorially, every paper in the country called for American victory and denounced the Japanese in the harshest and sometimes most personal terms. The
Los Angeles Times
called the Japanese a “mad dog . . . a gangster's parody.” The
Philadelphia Inquirer
called them “war-mad.” The
St. Louis Globe Democrat
accused Tokyo of “international rapine.”
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A palpable rage against the Japanese was everywhere. “Let the Japanese Ambassador go back to his masters and tell them that the United States answers Japan's challenge with steel-throated cannon and a sharp sword of retribution. We shall repay this dastardly treachery with multiplied bombs from the air and heaviest and accurate shells from the sea.” The author of this “bombastic” statement was seventy-four-year-old Tom Connally of Texas, a member of that deliberative body known as the United States Senate.
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American boys had grown up playing cowboy, and the rule was you didn't shoot anyone in the back, even an Indian. Boys did not sucker punch other boys. You gave your opponent a chance to defend himself. American girls had grown up learning good manners and the rules of life. Dirty play and breaking the rules was frowned upon. Chivalry and good manners reigned in American culture in 1941. Men held doors for ladies. Ladies acted like ladies. Men and women abided by the rules of courtship and life. It was the America way. Now, Americans were storming mad. “We'll mop them up,” said one. Another said, “I've got a brother somewhere on the Pacific. . . . I just hope he gets three or four of those yellow rats.” Yet another said, “Now we've got to go get those yellow rice eaters.” Mrs. A.V. B. Gilbert of Clifton Road in Atlanta said, “The Japanese are despicable people.” Barney Oakes, a salesman said, “The Japs will find those were expensive warships they sank.”
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American public opinion was uniformly anti-Japanese, to say the least, and some of it quite ugly.

The Japanese had not played by the rules. They had assaulted America without provocation, without declaring war. They had deceitfully attacked America on a Sunday, and in 1941, America was for all intents and purposes a Christian country.