December 1941 (28 page)

Additional stories reported that the U.S. military had downed “many Jap planes” in the battle over Hawaii.
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Others said the Japanese had parachuted into Manila and they'd used mustard gas in their invasion of Malaya.
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Hundreds of rumors went out over the airwaves, including one that said Germany had participated in the attack on Hawaii.
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Another said on NBC radio out of Manila that “Germany soon will follow Japan in a declaration of war on the United States.”
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The Japanese also claimed they sunk an American carrier off the mouth of Pearl Harbor with one of their submarines and that they had captured dozens of commercial vessels. Some disinformation was coming directly from the White House, as Press Secretary Stephen Early reported that American forces had destroyed “a number of Japanese planes and submarines.”
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Another rumor was the U.S. government would hold the Japanese diplomats Kichisaburo Nomura and Saburo Kurusu in effect hostage until the government was assured that Ambassador Joseph Grew and his staff were safely out of Japan.
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An AP story erroneously reported, “At sea the United States Fleet apparently had engaged the enemy. Destroyers steamed full speed from Pearl Harbor, and spectators reported seeing shell splashes in the ocean. Unconfirmed reports said the attacking planes came from two enemy aircraft carriers and probably these and other enemy ships were being fought by the American ships.”
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Yet another story said that as of December 8, “American operations against the Japanese attacking force in the neighborhood of the Hawaiian Islands are still continuing.”
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Also, errant wire stories claimed that British and American forces had sunk many Japanese ships,
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and the
New York Times
erroneously reported that “four engine dive bombers” had been used at Pearl Harbor.
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The paper furthermore mistakenly said that “four submarines were destroyed” by the U.S. Navy.
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The
Sun
reported “an oil tank there was seen blazing and smoking. An unconfirmed report said one ship in the harbor was on its side and four others burning. . . . In Washington, some hours later, the War Department gave the White House a preliminary estimate that 104 were dead and more than 300 wounded.”
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Unconfirmed reports from Panama and London said a Japanese aircraft carrier operating off Hawaii had been “sunk by United States Navy ships.” The word “unconfirmed” filled hundreds of out-of-breath news stories. However, one story on the AP wire, dateline Honolulu, was accurate. “Japanese bombers, striking lightning-like aerial blows from off the Pacific, brought death and destruction . . . to this mid-Pacific island fortress and vacation paradise. Scores of men in United States uniform, as well as civilians, died under the savage blows which shattered the Sabbath morning peace and spread the European war to the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.”
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Thousands of concerned citizens gathered in front of the White House on December 7 and 8, quietly peering through the wrought iron fence. Pennsylvania Avenue was jammed with cars until the police closed it. The sidewalk in front of the White House was also closed, so the curious gathered along West Executive Avenue. Thousands more were on Capitol Hill as the members, the Supreme Court justices, the guests, and the president of the United States made their way there. There was a real fear of a Japanese terrorist attack in Washington. “Her undercover agents, a suicide squad, might . . . arrange a surprise here.”
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Berlin and Rome were surprisingly cautious in their public statements, not immediately rallying to the cause of their Axis ally, Japan. But a radio report in Rome monitored by CBS said that the two Axis powers were indeed at war with the Allies because of the actions of the Japanese.
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But who knew? Disinformation was more plentiful than information, and the Japanese were filling the airwaves with claims both true and false. “Japanese headquarters said the United States aircraft carrier sunk was the victim of a submarine off Honolulu and that many merchant ships had been captured in the Pacific.”
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There still had been no mention of the exact extent of the damage in Hawaii, and as far as anyone in the United States was concerned, the
Arizona
had come through unharmed.

In Tokyo, some forty-five American diplomats, led by the estimable Joseph Grew, were stranded in the middle of a war in the middle of a hostile power.
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Grew had been ambassador to Japan since 1932, with a long career serving both Republican and Democratic presidents, including Wilson and Coolidge.

The Japanese had maintained fifteen consulates in America and the territories, including San Francisco, New York, Mobile, Seattle, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Galveston, Portland, and Pearl Harbor. All these localities had significant naval bases or manufacturing facilities, not so coincidentally. At some, including the one in New Orleans, crowds gathered to boo and hiss the Japanese until local police dispersed them.
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On the West Side of New York City, a Japanese national was severely beaten by some street toughs, screaming, “Why don't you go where you belong?” The Japanese man checked himself into a hotel with a fractured skull.
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Stones were hurled through the plate glass window of the Taijo Trading Company at 121 Fifth Avenue.
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The Japanese had attacked with lightning speed and precision although their attempts so far to take Singapore were faring poorly; the British “cut to pieces” the invading Japanese troops while they waded through the surf.
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Eventually, they took the strategically important area and, having planned ahead, dropped leaflets “announcing the seizure of the settlement but urged people to go about their business and remain calm.”
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Another report said that American planes in Manila took to wing in search of Japanese targets.
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Manila was no stranger to war. It was here in the harbor, in 1898, where Commodore George Dewey engaged the Spanish in the kickoff battle to the Spanish-American War. Since that war's conclusion, America had had a military presence there. Germany had not taken part in the Pacific attack, as some stories had it, but the Third Reich was taunting America via the airwaves.

FDR had his eye on the ball, though, as his White House claimed that Germany “pushed” the Japanese into the attacks in the Pacific.
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Indeed, Japan radio issued a broadcast claiming Germany would join the war within twenty-four hours.
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In fact, Berlin had wanted the Japanese to prosecute the war in China further, march across Asia, and eventually catch Moscow between the Axis forces. But Roosevelt knew that to win the new world war, America would have to engage the Germans and Italians eventually. Still, in his speech to Congress, he refrained from mentioning the other Axis powers. He only discussed Japan, even as Germany and Italian officials offered cooing words of support for Tokyo and called FDR a “shylock.”
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The spokesman for the Third Reich backed away from an actual military commitment to Japan, though.
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Because of the European war and Hitler's unrestricted warfare in the North Atlantic, FDR had already declared “an unlimited state of national emergency” on May 27, 1941.
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Three weeks later, on June 16, the U.S. government ordered the eventual closing of all German consulates on U.S. soil.
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Time stopped in America at 12:30 eastern standard time on December 8 as everyone tuned in to listen to the president of the United States address a joint session of Congress with an elegantly simple five-hundred-word avowal.
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Street commerce stopped; traffic stopped. Many schools had already closed, some fearing Japanese attacks: the public schools in Oakland, California, shut down responding to a report that a Japanese carrier lay off of San Francisco. The district attorney said he had closed the schools based on the recommendation of the Office of Civilian Defense in Washington.
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Newspapers were already printing helpful stories on the various time zones of the east coast, the west coast, Hawaii and Tokyo, along with an explanation of the International Dateline. When it was noon in Washington, Japan was fourteen hours ahead, but Honolulu was nineteen and a half hours behind Tokyo. And Honolulu was five and half hours behind Washington. All papers had the standard “Man on the Street” reactions to the attack, but women were interviewed as well. That day the Honolulu Star-Bulletin printed three “Extra!” editions, all told 250,000 newspapers. With the radios often shut off, residents were desperate for news.
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First thing Monday morning, Wall Street plunged except for commodities such as beef, wool, and steel, which climbed dramatically.
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Then the traders stopped to listen to their president.
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Congress opened at 12:00 noon with a prayer, offered by the Senate chaplain, the Reverend ZeBarney T. Phillips, asking for national unison.
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A now former isolationist, GOP congressman Joseph Martin said of the new unity, “There is no politics here. There is only one party when it comes to the integrity and honor of this country.”
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FDR's remarks would be broadcast live on NBC, CBS, and Mutual Radio.
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“Promptly at noon the big glass doors at the White House swung open, six limousines drew up, and President Roosevelt came out.”
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He was walking, using the painful leg braces, but did not speak. “The car, bearing the White House insignia, started at once for the Capitol.” In the other cars were “Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Dorothy Brady, Mrs. Stephen Early, Grace Tully . . . General Edward M. Watson and Captain John Beardahl, the President's military and naval aides.”
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FDR was attired in the familiar dark blue cape.

Silent crowds encircled the White House, watching the procession, with little doubt as to what their president was going to ask of their Congress. Telegrams of support and shock had already flooded the White House. “The messages came from Governors, Mayors, religious leaders, heads of civic movements, newspaper editors and radio broadcasters, many offering their personal services.”
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A resolution offered at noon for a joint session of Congress was quickly approved.
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The galleries were packed, and crowds outside were kept two blocks away from the Capitol. Even with a pass, police checked those favored every few feet. The Diplomatic Corps began to file in, except the Chinese ambassador, Hu Shih, who was detained briefly by a guard, until a senator interceded.
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Seated together were Gen. George C. Marshall, Adm. Harold Stark, and Maj. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, commandant of the Marine Corps.

The president departed the White House at 12:10,
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still tinkering with his remarks on the way to the House chamber where he spoke to a solemn, angry but resolute audience at 12:32. In his car, he “sat back in the deep cushions . . . adjusted his big dark Navy cape.”
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The running boards on Roosevelt's car were draped with Secret Service agents, three on each side, and four were inside the car. “The men in the” limousine “held sawed-off riot guns. Those outside carried .38-caliber service revolvers.”
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Soldiers guarded each doorway in the Capitol and credentials were demanded while FDR waited in the Speaker's office. The Senate marched into the House Chamber. Then the Supreme Court came. A committee, chosen by the Speaker, then escorted the president to the rostrum. They were John McCormack, the House Majority Leader; Joseph W. Martin, House Minority leader; Robert Doughton, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee; Alben Barkley, Senate Majority Leader; Charles McNary, Senate Minority Leader; and Senator Carter Glass of Virginia. The same man, Garrett Whiteside, a House clerk in 1917 and now a Senate clerk in 1941, who had delivered the 1917 document to President Wilson, this time typed the address for President Roosevelt.
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“When all are seated, the speaker announces the President of the United States. Cheers, applause, more cheers, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, with a tired and worn face, is ascending the ramp which is always provided for him. When the president took the stand, every man, woman and child, every Republican, isolationist (on Saturday), Roosevelt-haters and Democrats stood as united Americans and cheered for their president.” Some in attendance discovered to their embarrassment they were crying, until they saw others around them crying as well.
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FDR was accompanied by his eldest son, James, to the rostrum. James, a captain in the Marine Corps, was in his blue dress uniform. “The President stood erect, his head held high. He spoke in clear, measured words to a chamber in which there was not even the sound of a deep drawn breath or the rustle of a woman's skirt.”
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He “gripped the reading clerk's stand, flipped open his black, loose-leaf schoolboy's notebook.”
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The floor was crammed with senators and congressmen and other dignitaries as they had rushed back to Washington beginning the afternoon before, as soon as they heard about the attacks. Reporters caught up with Senator Harry Truman in St. Louis, just as he was about to board a flight for Washington the day before. “It's for the welfare of the country that we must declare war and put Japan in its place,” he said. Wendell Willkie, the 1940 GOP nominee, who had attacked FDR, accusing him of wanting to send American boys into the European war, now said, “I have not the slightest doubt as to what a united America should and will do.”
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