December 1941 (32 page)

The lead editorial of the
Los Angeles Times
pulled no punches. “Japan has asked for it. Now she is going to get it.”
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CHAPTER 9
THE NINTH OF DECEMBER

“New York Has Two Air Raid Alarms;
Planes Reported Near”

Birmingham News

“Frisco Drives Off Japanese Raiders”

Boston Globe

“Pacific Battle Widens; Manila Area Bombed”

New York Times

“More Planes Off Frisco, New Raid Alarm Sounded”

Sun

T
wo days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was in a panic.

A war that had been oceans away now appeared to be on the country's doorstep. News stories raced across the United States of more imminent assaults, including on New York.

“The great metropolitan area of New York City was put on an air-raid alert twice within an hour shortly after noon Tuesday amid varying unconfirmed reports of an imminent attack by hostile planes,” ran the Associated Press wire. “The vast stretch of Long Island from the city to Montauk Point also braced itself for the reported possible attack. A million school children in New York and thousands on Long Island were sent home. Army planes took to the air after the first alarm was sounded. . . . We have information that a squadron of planes is headed toward Long Island. Make all necessary preparations, if identified as enemy planes,” heard police patrolmen on their car radios.
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No one seemed to know where the reports of the unidentified planes came from. Citizens were confused, not knowing what the sirens were for, and others claimed they didn't hear the sirens. But this did not stop city fathers from going into a full-fright lockdown. Many New Yorkers, however, took it in stride, ignoring the air-raid sirens, going about their business. In Times Square, people took a decidedly “so what?” attitude. It was much the same in Brooklyn, Queens, and Harlem.
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A policeman boarded a bus full of passengers and told them they had to get off and take shelter, but no one moved. Stymied, he said, “What was I to do? Use my gun on them?” A pretzel vendor got into an argument with another police officer who ordered him off the street, but the vendor, with hot wares to sell, won the argument, not budging.
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“Spotters” were looking in the sky, armed with field glasses, looking in vain for enemy fighters. Cops tried to get people off the streets and into shelters, while civil defense volunteers tried to get customers in department stores and restaurants to lie down on the floor.
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“In at least one fashionable East River apartment, women volunteer wardens . . . ran through the building, breaking up early bridge games and rousing late sleepers; soon the halls were filled with women in dressing gowns, with cold cream on their faces.”
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Military planes at Mitchel Field took off, searching for enemy planes. Radio beams that planes “rode” into airports were shut off. The
New York Times
said planes were guarding the city for “air raids,” antiaircraft guns had been deployed, and the police and fire departments were trying to figure out how to efficiently notify the eight hundred schools in the area.
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The paper also published a special feature, “What to Do in an Air Raid.”
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New York City did not have air-raid sirens in any of the five boroughs, so a Rube Goldberg operation involving the sirens on police squad cars and fire engines, in concert, was employed.
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Unsubstantiated rumors continued to wash all over America. A story opened in the
Los Angeles Times
, “As battle comes close to the Pacific Coast . . .”
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Boston also went on the alert, thinking it, too, was under imminent attack. The “approach of enemy planes” was heard broadcast over the radio. “New Englanders suddenly were confronted with the possibility that the war was about to burst on them with terrible realism.”
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Sirens in Beantown wailed for over an hour.

Civilians were barred from the Boston Navy Yard. Area schools were closed and children sent home. The Coast Guard “cancelled all liberty” on reports that enemy planes were headed for Boston.
¹¹

In New York, guardsmen stepped up their patrol of the harbor, on the lookout for “incendiary” bombs.
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The docks were covered with armaments and one well-placed bomb could send the whole thing up. Fourteen thousand workers at the Bethlehem Steel Company at Quincy, Massachusetts, shipyard were sent home. Antiaircraft guns were deployed along the New England coastline.
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Teachers in the Boston schools were reported crying. “Conditions of near-panic were reported in several places . . . [amid] wild rumors that the Japanese were in New York, among other rumors.”
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Cars, headed for Boston, were halted in Cambridge.
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The head of the Bay State's Committee on Public Safety, J. Wells Farley, said, “Remember—panic is the worst danger.”
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On the other side of the country, in San Francisco, a woman, Marie Sayre, was shot and wounded by a member of the Home Guard when her husband failed to stop their car as ordered as he approached the Golden Gate Bridge.

In newspapers across the land, it was reported that there were “unidentified planes” over San Francisco; the planes were never identified, nor took any hostile actions. The army claimed that thirty planes had flown over the “west coast sector” and consequently an air-raid signal was sounded and the civilian population went into hiding.

Searchlights lit up the sky as the air raids sounded at 2:39 a.m., and the darkness added to the sense of panic.
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The whole thing earned screaming headlines in American newspapers even though there was no real evidence that the planes were, in fact, the enemy. Gen. William Ryan claimed they had been turned back at the Golden Gate Bridge. Still, he did not know to whom the planes belonged. “They weren't Army planes, they weren't Navy planes, and you can be sure they weren't civilian planes.”
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No one could account for the mystery aircraft that mysteriously vanished southward.

Also on the West Coast was a persistent rumor of an enemy aircraft carrier nearby. Ryan maintained that enemy ships had been “detected . . . about 100 miles at sea.”
¹⁹
Then it was reported over the radio that the military was searching for “two or three Japanese aircraft carriers and some submarines reported operating off the coast.” Some supposedly saw fifteen planes flying south toward San Jose. “The lights went off in Oakland and most of her sister cities . . . and there were strange reports of planes being heard overhead but no confirmation.”
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Military planes were sent aloft in wild goose chases looking for phantom ships and planes, but none were found. Stories also circulated that Japanese attacks on the Aleutian Islands and Canada were imminent.
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Alaska was on full alert status.
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Rumors begat fresh rumors. In this case, it was that the Japanese carriers in California waters were there to try to “panic” Washington “into calling [the] fleet back home,”
²³
presumably to join in the search for the phantom ships and phantom planes. The country was utterly convinced that the Japanese were on the brink of attacking and possibly invading the West Coast of America, or were plotting to engage in a harassing naval action, much as the Germans had been doing in the North Atlantic for nearly a year.

Cities including San Francisco were completely blacked out at night, and many imposed curfews. In Seattle, a mob took to the streets and smashed the windows of store owners who were not complying with the blackout orders. “The crowd, urged on by shouting women,” totaling one thousand people, broke the windows of some thirty shops and stores that had left some lights on.
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Many radio stations, including those in Seattle, were ordered to stop broadcasting after 7:00 p.m., except those used to transmit official business to the worried citizenry.
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Blackouts were ordered in nearly every city on the West Coast, along with the U.S. capital on the East Coast. In Washington, “Autoists should use only their dim lights and drive slowly, spotlighting of bridges and public buildings must cease, all theatre marquees must be turned out, all show windows must be darkened and outside advertising put out, street lights will be dimmed, although traffic lights will stay on; citizens must pull their window shades down.”
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In Manila, a radio correspondent had to debunk a rumor that American planes had bombed the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kobe, and the island of Formosa, which was in Japanese hands. This was after CBS had reported that the bombing had taken place.
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Another rumor was “Japanese planes were reported off Panama.”
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Military officials in Boston later claimed the air-raid alarm was just a “dress rehearsal” and there had been no approach of planes.
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The civilian government had not been let in on the army plan, which had made the announcement. It was the same in New York. The “air raid” was a hoax concocted by the military.
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Another rumor making the rounds—fifth hand—was that the Japanese had told Adolf Hitler six days earlier that they were planning to attack. attack.
³¹
Another was that Germany was getting ready to declare war on the United States, and Berlin chortled that the United States was now facing a “two-front war.” Another tale was that Christmas leave was still on, on schedule and as planned, for the military.
³²

The initial reports that Japanese troops had parachuted into Hawaii were now largely dismissed. More likely, it now seemed, observers saw the parachutes of Japanese pilots who had bailed out of their planes due to antiaircraft fire.

It was also whispered in Walter Winchell's column that Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh were contemplating a divorce, as she'd become fed up with his politics and his ego. The worm was turning for the once-unassailable aviator hero who had crossed the Atlantic. Winchell was enormously influential, and he both shaped and reflected public opinion. His trademark staccato voice on the radio riveted listeners throughout the nation. A supporter of FDR who morphed into a red-baiting reactionary after the war, Winchell was a feared and fearless reporter who could make or break careers. His reportage was a mix of politics, opinion, hokum, sensationalism, and celebrity dirt.

Forty-eight hours after the attack, Washington would neither openly confirm nor deny the details of the assault.

The Japanese claimed they'd sunk the
Oklahoma
and the
West Virginia
³³
while other rumors had it the
Pennsylvania
, another battleship, had been sunk. Then the Japanese upped the ante, saying they had destroyed eleven ships including “four battleships, an aircraft carrier and six cruisers . . . more than 100 American airplanes.” The White House stuck to their story of only a couple of ships being badly damaged and some planes being “put out of commission,” although the number of dead had been upped to 1,500.
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“Just what the condition is of the United States Pacific fleet is at the present time has not been revealed by Washington.” FDR, however, did make a reference to “severe damage” in a press conference.
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About the only thing the White House would say about Pearl Harbor was that an old battleship had capsized and a destroyer was lost, along with some smaller ships. They did concede the damage “appears more serious than at first believed.”
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Stephen Early announced that FDR would take to the airwaves on December 9 at 10:00 p.m. (EST) to lay out a “more complete documentation” of the events in Hawaii the previous Sunday. Roosevelt was scheduled to speak for half an hour, and it would be carried live on all networks nationwide.
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His day on the ninth was occupied with reviewing reports and meeting with the military brass.

During the day on the ninth, the president held a press conference in which he “outlined in general terms a broad program for intensification of military production efforts.” He also discussed the attacks in general details, but did not address any specifics, begging off until more information was forthcoming. He also bristled when the reasons for the attacks were brought up. According to one report, “Mr. Roosevelt resentfully remarked that neither he nor any member of Congress knew the reasons at present for the Japanese success in surprising the American defenders of Pearl Harbor. He was even more resentful when told that rumors were spreading that an important percentage of the Navy personnel in Pearl Harbor had been given week-end leaves.” Reporters also pressed him on releasing war information.
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Within hours of the attack, hundreds of volunteer-staffed “Defense Centers” opened around the country. More popularly known as “canteens,” they operated as a resting area for troops on their way to their posts.
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Magazines and newspapers were available to peruse. Mostly women worked at these, serving coffee and doughnuts, giving out writing papers to the young G.I.s so they could write home. It was this way all over the country. In Atlanta, “hundreds of women of all ages, gray-haired grandmothers and young high school girls, swarmed into the American Women's Voluntary service headquarters.”
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