December 1941 (19 page)

Georgians were stunned to learn that ten state colleges in the university system were academically decertified because of “political interference” by the governor, Eugene Talmadge. A virulent racist, he charged the schools with “teaching of whites and Negros in the same schools.” He attempted to take pro-integration members of the Board of Regents off and replace them with political cronies who would do his bidding. In retaliation, the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools stripped ten of eleven Georgia schools of their academic status and thousands of undergraduates were left high and dry. It was a huge issue in the state and indeed the entire South for days.
⁸⁵

Farmers were getting better prices for their crops than in previous years and at Christmas time were delighted to find they, for once, had some “folding money” in their pockets. Employment—mostly because of the war effort—was up over the prior year, as was real income, and the Commerce Department forecast heavier outlays for the Christmas of '41 than the previous year. However, the cost of living for the average American had also gone up 11 percent over the last twelve months.
⁸⁶
The government urged consumers to control their spending, issuing guidelines and admonishing Americans to be careful with their money, while at the same time Washington was engaging in a massive bond drive, urging Americans to spend lavishly and buy as many defense savings bonds as possible, so the government could spend more on the war effort. Keynesian economics taught on the first day of class that government spending did not produce inflation, but consumer spending did.

Initial reports from the Treasury Department said the bond sales were strong, and the government was generating over $1 billion.
⁸⁷
Preorders showed the danger of a possible oversubscription, but it also fit in with the new normal of America, circa 1941. The Great Depression was still a part of America's economic life, and few had escaped its terrors without being scarred for life. For every banker or Wall Street broker who jumped (no doubt cheered on by thousands), there were tens of thousands who lost their homes, their jobs, and their dignity, who scrapped and struggled just to get a decent meal into their children once a day.

As money and hope flowed from the New Deal and the alphabet soup of agencies and bureaus created by FDR's “Brain Trust,” the country stabilized, but the economy did not expand and the days of “wonderful nonsense” of the 1920s were over. People who did have jobs saved their money, living on a “cash basis,” and that included purchasing government bonds, many thinking that it would help stabilize their government. But because of government programs and the new frugality, there was not much in the way of consumer borrowing, which also hampered economic growth. No one wanted to be caught with too much debt and too little cash ever again. And it was a simple and direct act of patriotism for liberals to support FDR and for conservatives to support their constitutional government.

The privately held Alabama Power Company took out newspaper ads to announce that the power restrictions had been lifted and its customers were invited to “unrestricted use of electricity service.”
⁸⁸
The company clearly was attempting to encourage customers to use more electricity as a means of generating additional profits. The order came down from Washington's Office of Production Management, which seemed to have its hands in everything. Georgia Power also ran identical ads announcing “Blackout lifted.”
⁸⁹
Again, the national government was sending conflicting signals.

Even so, a spiffy double-breasted suit for a boy was retailing for $9.88 while “Longies” were going for $2.98 a piece.
⁹⁰
All the department stores in the country touted long, “leisure hour” robes for women, in the style made famous by Rita Hayworth and other Hollywood actresses. The hemline of skirts and dresses had already moved up to just below the knee. Also, long hair was very much in style for women, especially younger women. Hair was up for evening and formal occasions but curled and quaffed and about the shoulders during the day. Of course, no stylish woman went out in public without a hat. Neither did men. American women's hair styles were only regulated by popular fashion, unlike in Japan, where the government only allowed four approved hair styles for women.

At Rogers Jewelers store in Boston, a five-tube countertop radio—a Superheterodyne—could be purchased for $9.95 or just 50 cents down and 50 cents per week.
⁹¹
General Electric lightbulbs, the 40, 50, and 60 watt versions, were going for 13 cents apiece while the 75 and 100 watt bulbs were going for 15 cents per.
⁹²
In Philadelphia, bags of mail stolen nearly ninety years earlier—long before the Civil War—were found in an attic of a home. All the envelopes had been opened in an obvious search for money, but the real value now was the stamps.
⁹³
Philatelists like FDR drooled at the thought of pouring over the thousands of cancelled envelopes.

Tens of thousands of American GIs were traversing the country, the lucky ones on their way home in time for Christmas. It was not unusual to see convoys of hundreds of trucks and thousands of uniformed men heading for their home base before heading home. For most, home was priority, war a distant thought.

But news dispatches on December 5 said the American flyers fighting with the Chinese were just “itching” to get after Japanese pilots. Also the story noted that the Japanese had not yet taken the Burma Road using airplanes for aerial bombardment campaigns because they hadn't thought of that “vital overlooked method of attack. . . .”
⁹⁴

And the
Los Angeles Times
, in an editorial on the whole matter of Japan and the United States, wrote on Friday morning that while war could be imminent, it appeared “that nothing decisive will be forthcoming till next week, if then.”
⁹⁵

At week's end, the editorial pages of America's newspapers were filled with speculations and analysis of the preceding several days. Nearly all concluded that the country was moving closer to war with Japan. All the pieces speculated on Thailand, Indochina, the Philippines, Singapore, and other locales in the Far East. With the exception of some internal documents generated by the navy, including ones from Adm. Husband Edward Kimmel, newly installed head of the Pacific Fleet based on Pearl Harbor, no one else was speculating on whether the Japanese might strike elsewhere.

Japan's consulate in Mexico City was being hurriedly evacuated, and the staff had at first requested visas from the U.S. government to leave for Japan via Los Angeles, but they were then advised by their government that they would depart from Mexico, via the port at Manzanillo. The Japanese minister to Mexico, Yoshiaki Miura, worriedly held, “Only God knows how this crisis will be resolved.”
⁹⁶

CHAPTER 6
THE SIXTH OF DECEMBER

“Joint U.S.-Japan Commission
Is Proposed to End Deadlock”

Atlanta Constitution

“Japanese Plea of Self-Defense Coldly Received”

Washington Post

“Britain Takes Up Battle Posts in Far East as Crisis Grows;
Tokyo Reply Keeps Door Open”

Christian Science Monitor

“Far East Makes Ready for War”

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

B
ob Feller, standout pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, made his major league debut in 1936 at the age of seventeen, but after a meeting with Lt. Commander Gene Tunney, now the director of the navy's physical conditioning program, he announced that he was planning on enlisting early in the U.S. military reserves. Back home at his father's farm in Van Meter, Iowa, “Rapid Robert” reasoned that because he expected to be classified 1-A in February of 1942 anyway, he might as well beat the crowd. Feller was intrigued by the idea of being a reservist while still pitching for the Indians on his days off from the military. He paid a visit to the Air Corps at W Field in Ohio, as he was interested in flying planes, having already taken lessons and soloed.
¹
Both the army and the navy had pursued Feller “concerning his plans for entertaining” their troops.
²

British actor Captain David Niven was just as patriotic. He had it written in his contract that wherever he was making a movie, he had to be allowed to leave if he was called up to join his regiment.
³

The USS
Arizona
was the pride of the American navy. At 31,400 tons, she was larger than many other battleships in the American fleet. She was older too, having had her keel originally laid in 1916 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Her early days were spent close to home, patrolling the waters off the Atlantic coast, her shakedown cruise a quick jaunt to the Caribbean. The
Arizona
's home port was Norfolk, Virginia, until 1921, when she was transferred to Southern California, sometimes making the journey to Hawaii and back. In 1929, she went back to Virginia to be reoutfitted and modernized, which took two years. In August of 1931, she returned to the West Coast and from there was ordered to reposition to Pearl Harbor in 1940, on direct orders of the president.

The navy had seventeen battleships all told, some launched as long ago as 1912, as the
New York
and the
Texas
were. The
Arkansas
had been launched in 1911. In fact, the fleet was very old, with only the
North Carolina
and the
Washington
splashed in the previous year. Virtually all the battleships had been built during or just after the Great War. The Japanese had five less battlewagons, but they tended to be newer and of heavier tonnage. The United States' seven aircraft carriers were newer than the battleships, but the
Lexington
and the
Saratoga
were both launched in 1925. The
Enterprise
and
Yorktown
were built in 1936 and the
Wasp
in 1939. Japan also had seven carriers, but again, they tended to be bigger and lighter and thus faster than their American counterparts.
⁴
The United States had more heavy cruisers than Tokyo, eighteen to twelve, but overlooked was the fact that Japan only had one ocean to worry about. The United States had two—or more—to concern itself with.

On December 6, there were dozens of large and small ships along with four subs moored at Pearl Harbor: eight battleships, two heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, and twenty-nine destroyers, as well as a handful of PT boats, ocean-going tugs, minesweepers, minelayers, seaplane tenders, repair ships, and two general store ships along with one hospital ship, the
Solace
. A destroyer, the
Helm
, was underway at sea; another, the
Ward
, was patrolling the entrance to the harbor at Pearl.
⁵

Three carriers had also been stationed at Pearl Harbor: the
Enterprise
, under the command of Captain George D. Murray; the
Lexington
, under the command of Captain Frederick C. Sherman; and the
Saratoga
, with Captain Archibald H. Douglas at the helm.
⁶

Less than two weeks earlier, on November 28, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel sent Halsey and the
Enterprise
on an errand to deliver Marine Corps fighter planes to Wake Island.
⁷
On December 5, Kimmel ordered the Lexington to transport twenty-five scout bombers to Midway Island.
⁸
The
Saratoga
had also left Pearl Harbor for repairs at San Diego
⁹

The “carriers versus battleships” debate continued unabated and unresolved within the American navy. The Japanese had pretty much decided that the airplane was the weapon of the future, while the navy was pushing ahead with plans to build eighteen carriers—by 1945.

The foreign correspondent for the
Sun
newspaper of Baltimore, Marc T. Greene, submitted a story “by mail,” from Manila, which reviewed the American military situation in the Pacific, especially with regard to the airplane. “The rapid expansion of American air strength . . . in the southern and central Pacific area is giving immense satisfaction. . . . The recent acquisition of such islands as Palmyra and Johnston, in easy touch with our Hawaiian bases constitute the most recent evidence of that.”
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Readers were reassured of American air dominance in the Pacific.

The secretary of war, Henry Stimson, one of the cooler and more respected heads in Washington, nonetheless found himself in a fog, though not yet of war. He was on a military plane headed to Washington from New York, but the fog that had enveloped the city the day before was still too thick, so the flight was diverted to Richmond; upon landing he found he had no way to get back to the nation's capital. Stimson, seventy-four years of age, did what any resourceful person would do; the cabinet official on whose shoulders would fall the burden of the surely coming war stuck out his thumb and hitched a ride back to Washington.
¹¹

Another form of debate was the soapbox kind, taking place on the street corners of America, including Fifth Avenue in New York. There, proselytizers and preachers, orators and lecturers, along with just plain cranks, attempted to convince small crowds of the curious to either be pro-intervention, anti-intervention, and, depending on which side the soapbox, either denouncing FDR or praising him, denouncing Stalin or praising him, denouncing Charles Lindberg and the America First Committee or praising them. Law enforcement tolerated them as long as no violence broke out and nobody tried to sell anything without a license.
¹²