December 1941 (5 page)

The president had looked forward to spending an extended time in Georgia, until he took a confidential call over the weekend from Secretary of State Hull. Hull advised FDR that things in the Pacific had suddenly taken a turn, possibly for the worse.
⁹³
Hull was in ongoing tense discussions with Special Envoy Saburo Kurusu and Ambassador Kichisaboro Nomura. Kurusu's wife was the former Alice Little, formerly of Chicago, Illinois. The men were photographed in America's newspapers, smiling, polite,
⁹⁴
although it was also reported they had emerged from one meeting with Hull looking “grave.”
⁹⁵
All told, FDR was in Warm Springs for about twenty-six hours, only got in a short swim and departed for Washington looking “grave.”
⁹⁶
Roosevelt's hurried departure on his special train, the
Ferdinand Magellan
, was “without the usual gay hand-waving to the crowds of back-country farmers, out to see the caravan whoosh past.” He arrived at the White House at 11:30 the morning of the First.

By the afternoon of Sunday, December 1, Americans knew about the call between Hull and FDR the previous evening and the president's speedy return to Washington as result. Roosevelt was spotted looking “grim,” an affliction that was apparently spreading. “ The
New York Times
reported that if negotiations broke down, “the American fleet in the Pacific . . . had instructions for . . . what to do if hostilities start.”
⁹⁷
It was later reported that FDR had met in secret with the chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold R. Stark.

Just the night before in Georgia, he'd given a startling speech in which he altered course, radically, saying, “It is always possible that our boys may actually be fighting for the defense of these American institutions of ours.” within the year.
⁹⁸
It was the first reference to the possibility of American boys dying on another continent.

White House reporters knew of the president's return by the sudden appearance of his beloved Scottie, Fala. The dog trotted into a room full of reporters, barking and wagging his tail. “Ah, the President's home,” said Mrs. Roosevelt when she saw the dog.
⁹⁹
The White House refused to say exactly why FDR had cut short his trip to Warm Springs.

Upon his return, FDR met in private with Hull in the Oval Office, after the secretary's meeting with the Japanese representatives. Several days earlier, Hull had given the Japanese envoys a response in writing, stating the Americans would not cease their embargo until and unless the Japanese withdrew their forces from China.
¹⁰⁰
The Japanese made it clear they had no intentions of slowing their drive down the Asian continent, rejecting the U.S. position as “fantastic.”
¹⁰¹

Waiting on FDR's desk the morning of the first was a confidential memo from his “real world” eyes and ears, John Franklin Carter. The memo detailed the Japanese population along the Mexican border around Corpus Christi and Galveston. In summary, there were very few Japanese in the south of Texas in late 1941. “Everything very quiet along the border. There seems to be more anti-Japanese prejudice in Texas than in California, also more suspicion.”
¹⁰²
Most who saw him thought he looked good and healthy, even if he did not have the suntan he was usually known for, because of extra-long hours of work in the Oval Office.

The National Industrial Conference Board estimated that the “economic blockade” of Japan by the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherland Indies had “cut off 75 per cent of her normal imports.”
¹⁰³
Japan had a population in 1941 of 73 million occupying a land mass smaller than California.
¹⁰⁴
The embargo was hurting the empire of Japan and her people, but it was also hurting American exporters.

An AP report clacked, “Whether the Japanese decision is a step toward a final settlement which conceivably might take Tokyo out of the Axis camp or a mere temporizing in the hope of a more propitious day for hard talk with the United States remains to be seen.”
¹⁰⁵

FDR, after meeting with cabinet members about the Far East developments, saw his doctor that evening at 7:15 and then dined alone in his study at 7:30 before retiring at 11:00 p.m.
¹⁰⁶

Some afternoon papers reported the situation as “grave” and that no more talks between the Americans and the Japanese were contemplated
¹⁰⁷
while other reports said they wanted to continue them for “at least two weeks.”
¹⁰⁸
The headline of the
Panama City News-Herald
said, “Nazi Reversals Cause Japs to Ask More Time.”
¹⁰⁹

Newspaper reports were often contradictory. But Americans also read of private meetings in the Philippines between Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Thomas C. Hart to discuss “emergency steps.”
¹¹⁰

CHAPTER 2
THE SECOND OF DECEMBER

“Japan Renews Talks, but Capital Is Skeptical”

New York Times

“U.S. Asks Japan to Explain Troop Moves”

Washington Evening Star

“All America Must Pull Together, Lecturer Warns”

Birmingham News

A
s the Christmas season grew closer, over 800,000 furloughs had been granted to America's fighting men, all of whom now would have to find a way home. A flight on Delta Airlines from Birmingham to Dallas was $32.
¹
On American Airlines, a round trip flight between New York and Washington was $21.90.
²
These were considerable sums at the time, so for most men traveling commercial air was out of the question.

What about the train? Because of Washington bungling and unpredicted requisitions by the military, there was a shortage of railroad passenger cars. And the ride in some locales would be inhospitable. In New York, for instance, the Board of Transportation was to begin enforcing regulations prohibiting “smoking or spitting in stations, platforms and cars.”
³
With no planes and few trains, soldiers had to either fight for a seat on a Greyhound Bus or depend upon the generosity of private citizens with automobiles.

Because of regulations, military personnel were prohibited from hitchhiking. A campaign in the Golden State was organized by the California Automobile Association to help soldiers and sailors avoid trouble. Motorists who volunteered could place on their windshield a sticker issued by the group that would tell young men in uniform that the driver was participating in the “Give Them a Lift” effort.
⁴

Travel was on the mind of many. On the West Coast, residents of four counties in California and one in Oregon attempted to create the forty-ninth state of “Jefferson.”
⁵
They were apparently upset about poor thoroughfare conditions and declared they wanted to secede “only on Thursdays to impress on their present States the seriousness of their petitions for improved roads and aid in development of resources.”
⁶
Armed civilians stopped cars passing through their counties to hand them pamphlets.

Fortunately, the cars forced to sit and idle had plenty of gasoline, as did all Americans. This was true even though use was up sharply—11 percent—over the previous years, despite the admonitions by the government for Americans to use less. Total gas consumption for 1941 was projected to rise by 2.5 billion gallons from the previous year. But there were also, according to estimates, 2.5 million more cars on the road.
⁷

The Traffic Subcommittee of the U.S. House released a report on the state of automobile traffic in Washington. The document said in no uncertain terms that “making recommendations for relief of the traffic problem in Washington properly emphasizes the need for long-range remedies rather than temporary palliatives if there is to be any reasonably permanent and effective cure of the city's parking and traffic ills.”
⁸
The immediate construction of a subway was discussed as a cure.

Police in Kansas City were concerned with more mundane questions. They assembled a group of fifteen drivers and plied them with shots of whiskey each half hour “to determine at what stage of drunkenness a driver is at his worst.” Of the fifteen, “one dropped out after a phone call to his wife, one fell asleep, three appeared still sober after seven drinks.” Another complained he was a Scotch, not a bourbon drinker. “Most of the men lost their driving judgment. But one improved for a time. His explanation: he was so nervous from being around cops that the liquor steadied him.” Having reached no definite conclusions, the police packed the more or less drunk men into squad cars and drove them home.
⁹

Worried about inflation settling in the auto industry, the Office of Price Administration fired a shot across the hood of auto manufacturers by announcing it would set a ceiling price on the cost of new cars. Said the head of the automobile section of the OPA, Cyrus McCormick, “The Government had the power to regiment the automobile industry to the nth degree.”
¹⁰
Despite expressing personal concerns about such actions, his division went ahead with a complicated formula to regulate costs and production in Detroit that was even stricter than had been previously imposed.

Americans were keen on avoiding war and were for the most part unaware that it was coming their way. In the Philippines—relatively close to Indochina where hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops were amassing—the Army Air Corps fighter planes under Gen. Douglas MacArthur's command were still lined up wingtip to wingtip at Clark Field. It was the same at Hickam Field in Honolulu, where hundreds of army and navy planes were also lined up in such a tight fashion.

Gen. Walter Short, in command of the army garrison in the Hawaiian Islands, was more worried about saboteurs than about aerial bombardment.
Sabotage
is derived from
sabo
, the French word for shoe. In an earlier era, when French factory workers were unhappy with their working conditions, they threw their shoes into the machinery. Short was more concerned about the thousands of Japanese workers on the Islands throwing something at the military planes there on the ground than something hurling at them from the air.
¹¹

Also lined up—neat as you please—along “Battleship Row” in Pearl Harbor were American battleships, considered by most of the brass as the backbone of the navy. Battleships since the time of Stephen Decatur and John Paul Jones had borne the brunt of battles on the high seas. Most of the admirals in December 1941 were elderly men who viewed aircraft carriers as a passing fancy and not an important part of their operations. Serious navy men put their faith in battlewagons and not flattops.

Even so, Congress approved an additional $7 billion for new tanks, armaments, and other munitions, but the outlays would go to help Russia, China, and Britain.
¹²
Helping to foot the bill was the ever-present American taxpayer, purchasing Defense Stamps
¹³
from the government that could later be cashed in with interest.

The War Department and Washington were at the time teeming with corruption. Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, himself a product of the corrupt Tom Pendergast political machine in that state, was heading an investigation into the waste and fraud in the defense industry. Truman chaired an investigation of corporate suppliers to the U.S. military, spotlighting war profiteering and shoddy materials. His relentless inquiry ruffled feathers, but he didn't care, exposing one dirty and corrupt project after another. One construction venture for the army was supposed to cost $20 million, but five months later, cost overruns had shot the price tag up to $51 million. Dozens of contractors, including Ferguson-Oman and Taylor-Hale, overbilled and under-delivered, costing the taxpayer untold millions. The government was paying rent on equipment that wasn't worth the cost of the rental charge; other equipment was rented to the government and then hidden. It went on and on and on. One witness testified before the Truman Commission, “It seems to me all Ferguson-Oman officials and employees are organized to cost the Government every dollar they can.”
¹⁴
As a result, Congress tightened military contracting practices.

Two other congressional committees were investigating a magazine that purported to have close ties to the Democratic Party and thus was strong-arming defense contractors into purchasing ads in the Democratic National Press. One knowledgeable source said their methods “would make Al Capone blush with envy.”
¹⁵
It later turned out the publication had nothing to do with the party.

Yet another congressional investigation uncovered an apparently penniless man who somehow received a $200,000 defense contract for unspecified purposes and was using the money to entertain politicians and defense contractors in Washington at “championship prize fights.”

“Investigators . . . have dug up considerable information about ‘middle men,' ‘brokers,' and ‘go-betweens' who have neither manufacturing facilities . . . nor any legitimate connection with Government agencies. Yet they are said to haunt Washington hotels and ante-rooms in large numbers, seeking commissions on the basis of their alleged influence.”
¹⁶

Public monies were also appropriated for tens of thousands of houses on growing military bases, courtesy of the Public Buildings Administration. Thoughtfully, the PBA also hired a consultant for interior decorating, Miss Gladys Miller, but it wasn't made clear if she would personally redecorate every one of the forty thousand houses in the works. “She recommended . . . the purchase of furniture to scale with the rooms . . . gay, vivid colors to lend a cheery note; elimination of unnecessary objects.” In addition to being paid by the U.S. taxpayer for her sage advice on paints, furniture, and spacing, she was also conveniently on the staff at New York University.
¹⁷