December 1941 (38 page)

Honolulu wasn't completely caught unawares of Japanese intentions. For some time, residents of Oahu had been warned what to do in case of attack, to “lay in emergency food supplies,” and warned they might have to evacuate to the mountains should war come to their island. “It is safe to say that no other American community was as well prepared for war as was Hawaii.”
⁵⁵
Ironic.

The risk was great after December 7 of another Japanese attack on Hawaii, so Americans thought. “Unless the naval patrol around Hawaii, and indeed around the fringe of American islands farther west can be made more effective, periodic harassing attacks on Hawaii are practically certain.”
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Secretary Hull said publicly he expected more surprise attacks on the part of the Japanese. And fresh claims by the Japanese included the sinking of a “mother ship” and the downing of an American plane near Hawaii.
⁵⁷

The Japanese were crowing now; what was left of the American fleet was no match for their intact fleet in the Pacific. “This force would be regarded as utterly inadequate to accomplish any successful outcome in an encounter with the thus-far-intact Japanese Fleet.”
⁵⁸

As of the tenth, the war news only became more depressing. The Japanese sunk two huge British battleships, the thirty-five thousand ton
Prince of Wales
and the thirty-two thousand ton
Repulse
, in the same Pacific battle. Hundreds of men were lost, and the
Repulse
went down immediately after the torpedo and dive bomber planes had attacked. The ships, without air cover, were simply sitting ducks to air attack. Winston Churchill was truly stunned at the news. “In all the war, I never received a more direct shock.” Churchill wrote in
The Grand Alliance
.
⁵⁹

He was down to only nineteen battleships. The Japanese claimed they'd also sunk the
King George V
battleship.
⁶⁰
It was learned that two British islands in the Pacific, Nauru and Ocean, were under attack by the Japanese.
⁶¹
Both were small, but both were strategically important, as part of the Gilbert Island chain halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines. The Japanese had also apparently seized a British airfield located in the northern Malaya Peninsula area.

Japanese troops stormed ashore at Luzon in the Philippines. They were also “in force in Malaya,” as reported from Singapore.
⁶²
“Bitter fighting continued throughout the night and today.”
⁶³
The Japanese claimed they bombed Clark Field and Nichols in the Philippines again and shelled Midway Island again, as well as shooting down nine American planes over Wake Island. The Japanese navy had also captured over two hundred commercial ships of all countries, all in the waters off the China Coast and southward.

American fighters were off the ground in Manila and finally engaging the enemy, however there was respect for the Japanese fighters. One American flyer described the opposing planes as “plenty good and heavily armored.”
⁶⁴

The Japanese took possession of the
President Harrison
, with a compliment of U.S. Marines on board.
⁶⁵
They were tightening their grip on Thailand, sending in more troops, and tightening their grip on Bangkok.
⁶⁶
Shanghai was also now safely in Japanese hands.
⁶⁷

FDR received classified daily reports from London on the situation in the rest of the world. The reports were frank and disheartening. In all world sectors, the Axis powers were on offense and the Allies were on defense. “Heavy air attacks . . . A small enemy force landed . . . German progress . . . Battle casualties . . . German . . . long range bombing force on Eastern Front is still being vigorously pursued . . . seriously damaged by bombs.”
⁶⁸

New causality reports were coming in from Hawaii. Leading the latest list was Sergeant Walter R. French, twenty-nine, of Delphos, Ohio. He was in the Medical Corps. The War Department acknowledged a mistake, in that Wilbur Carr, nineteen, of Franklin, Ohio, was not dead as his parents had previously been told. Young Carr was alive and well.
⁶⁹

In New York, for the first time in thirty-five years, the huge lighted clock at the top of the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet building was darkened as a precaution. Handbooks were issued to all the schools in New York City, outlining air-raid procedures for the children, teachers, and administrators.
⁷⁰
The U.S. Capitol was darkened for the duration of the war and the flood lights, which had illuminated the great building for years, were turned off.
⁷¹

In the face of depressing news came more depressing news. The thirty-first president had taken to the airwaves the night before from the Oval Room of the White House to give his fellow countrymen a more fulsome report on the attack on Pearl, the situation regarding the Japanese, and to generally buck up morale, but also to let the American media have it right between the eyes.

He might have started out looking crisp and alive that morning, but Roosevelt looked fatigued at the end of December 10, with dark circles under his eyes. He was still attired in a grey pinstripe suit but now looked baggy and loose. His remarks could be heard over most of the free world and parts of the non-free world, except Vichy France, which jammed the NBC transmission. The American radio audience was estimated to be 90 million citizens. In 1941, the population of the United States was 130 million.
⁷²

He opened, blasting Tokyo, saying, “The sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific provide the climax of a decade of international immorality.” Early in his remarks, he made a compelling case that the Japanese, Germans, and Italians were all the common enemy of the United States and that each of them was a threat. “It is all of a pattern,” he said.
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Then, “We are now in this war. So far, the news has been all bad. We have suffered a serious setback in Hawaii. Our forces in the Philippines . . . are taking punishment but are defending themselves vigorously. The reports from Guan and Wake and Midway Islands are still confused, but we must be prepared for the announcement that all these three outposts have been seized. The casualty lists of these first few days will undoubtedly be large.”
⁷⁴

He assured loved ones that the dead of family members would be made known to them as judiciously as possible and that “they will get news just as quickly as possible.” Roosevelt turned his attention to all the disinformation being spread around. “Most urgently, I urge my countrymen to reject all rumors. These ugly little hints of complete disaster fly thick and fast in wartime. They have to be examined and appraised. As an example, I can tell you frankly that until further surveys are made, I have not sufficient information to state the exact damage which has been done to our naval vessels at Pearl Harbor. Admittedly the damage is serious.”
⁷⁵

“I cite as another example a statement made on Sunday night that a Japanese carrier had been located and sunk off the Canal Zone. And when you hear statements that are attributed to what they call ‘an authoritative source,' you can be reasonably sure from now on that under these war circumstance the ‘authority source' is not any person in authority.” Clearly, Roosevelt had become angry with all the innuendo and false information over the past several days and warned that a lot of the disinformation could be coming from the Japanese as a means of sapping American morale. “This is an old trick of propaganda which has been used innumerable times by the Nazis.”
⁷⁶
And then he took on the national media.

“To all newspapers and radio stations—all those who reach the eyes and ears of the American people—I say this: You have a most grave responsibility to the nation now and for the duration of this war. If you feel that your government is not disclosing enough of the truth, you have every right to say so.” And then he dropped his anvil. “But—in the absence of all the facts, as revealed by official sources—you have no right in the ethics of patriotism to deal out unconfirmed reports in such a way as to make people believe they are the gospel truth. The lives of our soldiers and sailors—the whole future of this nation—depend upon the manner in which each and every one of us fulfills his obligation to our country.”
⁷⁷

Then he swung into an impassioned defense of Lend-Lease, contending the program had bought the Allies time against the Axis powers. “Precious months were gained by sending vast quantities of our war materiel to the nations of the world still able to resist Axis aggression.” FDR moved to the heart of his remarks, telling Americans what they had learned and what they must do. “I repeat that the United States can accept no result save victory, final and complete. We have learned that our ocean-girth hemisphere is not immune from severe attack.” And finally, “We are now in the midst of a war, not for conquest, not for vengeance, but for a world in which this nation, all that this nation represents, will be safe for our children.” He made no bones of his intentions, saying, “We expect to eliminate the danger of Japan, but it would serve us ill if we accomplished that and found that the rest of the world was dominated by Hitler and Mussolini.”
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Concluding, Roosevelt said, “So we are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows. And in the difficult hours of this day—and through dark days that may be yet to come—we will know that the vast majority of the members of the human race are on our side. Many of them are fighting with us. All of them are praying for us. For in representing our cause, we represent theirs as well—our hope and their hope for liberty under God.”
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The White House was flooded with letters and telegrams praising FDR, supporting his efforts. Many volunteered to do what they could do for the war effort.
⁸⁰

That evening FDR dined alone, went for a swim, and “went back to his desk, the war dispatches, phone and radio communiqués.”
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Despite FDR's plea, the country was overrun with rumors. The day after the president lectured Americans about not engaging in unfounded gossip, it became clear the East Coast scare of planes about to bomb New York, Boston, and Washington of the day before was indeed a rumor that had raced out of control and was passed along by radio, government, and military sources. “The story grew from mouth to mouth. Newspapers and radio stations could not deny it. They could get no authentic information one way or another. The War Department's statement that it had not originated the report could not be interpreted as a denial.”
⁸²

What began as an innocent phone call to Mitchel Field turned into confusion. A man had called the First Army Office in New York, innocently asking about “any truth in a report that bombers had been sighted. He said he had heard it in a radio broadcast from Washington.” From there it went to the airfield commander to whom it was somehow announced that the War Department
had
an “enemy plane approaching the coast.”
⁸³

This quickly metastasized into a “phony tip,” which then set off a panic of wailing sirens and general confusion that affected millions along the East Coast, for no reason whatsoever. Panicky housewives called husbands at work, pleading for them to come home. Others called newspapers wanting to know where bomb shelters were located. Three hundred planes stationed at Mitchel Field on Long Island took to the air, looking for nonexistent enemy planes. On the fears of eminent attack, the stock market declined deeply. The War Department did not apologize for causing so much of the problem, but newspapers did print notices telling readers how to react in the future to air-raid warnings.
⁸⁴

The whole thing “at noon yesterday threw the Atlantic Coast from Portland, Maine to Norfolk into a confusion which, in some places, bordered on hysteria. Somehow somewhere—so the story went—an unidentified enemy airplane had been sighted over the sea. It was all an extraordinary comedy of errors superimposed on a people stunned by the events of the last two days into an exceptional state of suggestibility.”
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The fallout over the supposed sighting of enemy planes over San Francisco continued. The army denied it was a dress rehearsal or a hoax, as those in New York, Boston, and Washington found out. In San Francisco, they stuck by their story.
⁸⁶

There, Gen. John J. Dewitt emphatically, loudly, and scarily berated the civilian population for not reacting sooner and with more alacrity to the warnings and air-raid sirens, going so far as to say that it would have been “a good thing” if some bombs had indeed dropped, as a way to awaken the populace. “He denounced as ‘inane, idiotic and foolish' those who refused to believe there was real danger.” He warned of “death and destruction.” He told people to “get the hell out” if they didn't start to take things more seriously. He said he hoped for enemy bombings. “It might have awakened some of the fools in this community who refuse to realize this is a war.” He said a bombing was “imminent.” He told FDR the fact that there had been no sabotage by Japanese in San Francisco was evidence that it was coming soon. He favored the forced internment of all Japanese living in America.
⁸⁷
Dewitt was widely praised. Dewitt was also a nutcase.

Congress was actively engaged in the war now. On the ninth, the Senate had passed a number of war-related bills and then adjourned at 2:08 that afternoon. But the House had their nose to the grindstone, passing bills and holding hearings until they adjourned at 4:47.
⁸⁸
The Senate Naval Affairs committee met for over an hour behind closed doors where they learned more details about the coordinated attacks. Opinions, however, were out in the open. “Members left this session saying that they were ‘stunned' by what they had heard. Though some committeemen had indicated that they went to the meeting prepared to criticize, they left pledging full cooperation in meeting new Navy demands.
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Others were panicky, though. One senator advocated seizing every questionable piece of property in the Western Hemisphere such as French Guiana from which airplanes could be launched to bomb America.
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