December 1941 (52 page)

Also behind enemy lines (or soon to be) were American Christian missionaries throughout the Far East. The Catholic Church had by far the most, with nearly 1,300 priests, brothers, sisters, and scholastics scattered across the region. There were also a couple hundred Baptist missionaries.
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Prayers were offered for their safe return.

Despite their early successes, General Tojo warned the Japanese people at a public rally of a long and brutal war with the Americans. In America,
Life
magazine opined, “Close observers of Japan have said for years that if that country ever found itself in a hopeless corner it was capable of committing national hari-kari by flinging itself at the throat of its mightiest enemy. Japan has found itself in just such a corner . . . Japan's daring was matched only by its barefaced duplicity.”
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But Tojo also bragged to the Japanese Diet that the American and British fleets in the Pacific had been “crushed.”
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Midway Island was still in U.S. hands as of Monday, the fifteenth, but FDR had already cautioned the American people that all of the central Pacific islands—save the Hawaiian Islands—and all those of the Far East could fall to the Japanese. In his way, he too was warning his people of a long and brutal conflict and that the news would get worse before it got better. Guam had already fallen, and with it, the fates of 155 marines and 400 navy men were now in the hands of their captors, who did not have a good track record when it came to POWs.
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Across America, the refrain “Remember Pearl Harbor!” was heard more and more. It followed in the tradition of other American battle cries: “Give me liberty or give me death!” from Patrick Henry; “Don't give up the ship!” from Captain James Lawrence in the War of 1812; “Remember the Alamo!” from General Sam Houston, before the 1836 decisive battle of San Jacinto in the Texas War of Independence; and “Remember the
Maine
!” which found its origins in a gin mill in New York in 1898, shortly after the explosion of the ship in Havana harbor, which sparked American eagerness for the Spanish-American War. (Whether or not the Spanish or their allies had planted a bomb on the
Maine
was open to question, as it was not unusual for ships of the day to see faulty boilers explode, but for men like William Randolph Hearst, the propaganda value was too attractive to quibble over details such as welders' seams or the efficacy of iron bolts.)

Time
magazine observed that never had the people of America ever been this united. “What would the people . . . say in the face of the mightiest event of their time? What they said—tens of thousands them—was: ‘Why, the yellow bastards!'”
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December 7 had become indelible.

Everybody knew where they were on December 7 when they heard the news of Pearl Harbor. There were but a few dates in American history for which someone could say, “I remember where I was when I heard . . . .”

December 7, 1941, was at the top of the list.

FDR had yet to meet with navy head Frank Knox, but rumor out of Washington had it that the navy thought it might be possible to refloat and refit some of those ships hit by the Japanese. Because the harbor was relatively shallow and because the Japanese bombers had ignored the dry docks, the damaged and sunken ships would not have to be towed the 3,000-or-so miles to San Diego.

Still, the fact that repairs were being discussed and that the president had met with Admiral Samuel Robinson—head of the Navy's Bureau of Ships, which was responsible for construction and maintenance—was confirmation to the casual observer that severe damage had occurred at Hawaii.
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All major publications had done profiles of the military brass including Admiral Ernest “Rey” King, Admiral Harold “Betty” Stark and Admiral Husband “Kim” Kimmel. Kimmel had been featured on the cover of
Time
magazine the second week of December.
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Stark had picked up his nickname while an underclassman at Annapolis.
¹²
Time
wasn't afraid of controversy, even as it had a tendency to shill often, for the Roosevelt Administration. Its reporting could be terse, mincing few words. In their November 10 issue, they referred to the
New Republic
magazine as “pinko,” suggesting the publication was soft on communism.
¹³

Life
and
Time
magazines took up Kimmel's cause but they were only two of a very few, to do so. Defending the increasingly beleaguered navy man,
Life
wrote “Admiral Kimmel had not been given enough patrol planes to spot enemy carriers a night's steaming away.”
¹⁴
Still, “there was speculation whether Knox's investigation would lead to changes in either army or navy command in the Hawaiian area.”
¹⁵

On Sunday evening, the fourteenth, Knox—upon his return from Hawaii—gave his report to Roosevelt in a short meeting of thirty minutes. FDR studied it into the evening.
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Knox's return to Washington was not announced until after he left the White House that evening. Then on Monday, eight days after the attack, some of the brutal truth was revealed to the American people.

President Roosevelt sent a report to Congress on Monday detailing that Japanese submarines had been used, something not previously confirmed. Elaborating he said, “The actual air and submarine attack on the Hawaiian Islands began at 1:20 p.m. Washington time on Dec. 7.” Enraged, he said that it was well over three hours after the attack before U.S. ambassador Joseph Grew was notified by the Japanese that they had declared war on America. He also observed that “Japan . . . accepted the German thesis of racial superiority and extreme nationalism.” Japan, he noted, had proclaimed herself in 1937 to be of a superior race when compared to any other country “of the Orient.”
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The document Roosevelt sent to the Hill was essentially a recitation of the steady decline of the relations between the two countries, brought on by Japan's growing militarism. News reports described the president's tone in the document as “bitter.” The climax of the FDR's communiqué exclaimed that “there is the record, for all history to read in amazement, in sorrow, in horror, in disgust!”
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The report had been sent in part to placate some in Congress who had been agitating for more details. However, those Congressmen knew they had to tread lightly in their criticism. Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, who just a few days earlier had created a scene on the floor of the Senate over the attack by calling for the heads of everybody in the military, was publicly rebuked by the American Legion of his own state, who called on him “to demonstrate undivided allegiance to our country . . . by supporting the proper civil and military authorities of this country.”
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Knox huddled again that morning with the president for “two hours and 25 minutes” before meeting in a room packed with reporters and photographers. “Knox looked pale and haggard as he talked to the press in his office.”
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The report was startling. The massacre was widespread. FDR called it “barbaric aggression.”
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Americans were prepared to hear of a couple hundred killed. They were not prepared for thousands. “The casualties crept from rumor into uglier-rumor: hundreds on hundreds of Americans had died bomb-quick, or were dying, bed-slow.”
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The bottom line was that far more men had been killed or wounded than previously thought and far more ships had been destroyed or damaged than previously reported. Knox's report only dealt with the navy's losses and only mentioned the army planes and hangers destroyed, although he did say that “army losses were severe.”
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Knox told reporters that six American warships had been destroyed in the attack. He “declared that the Navy was not on the alert . . . that the Pacific fleet lost the battleship
Arizona
, three destroyers and two lesser craft . . . . Knox disclosed for the first time that the Navy had suffered 3,385 casualties in the Hawaiian attacks—2,729 officers and men killed and 656 wounded—fatalities in the sudden attack.” He elaborated, saying, “Officers 91 dead and 20 wounded: enlisted men 2,638 dead and 636 wounded.”
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Still, all the details would not be revealed to the American people, “and no complete report is promised.”
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The other capital ship he named besides the
Arizona
was the
Oklahoma
, along with four smaller ships; the
Cassin
, the
Shaw
, the
Downes
, and the
Oglala
. Not revealed was the number of civilians killed by the Japanese.
²⁶

Knox did say the
Arizona
was lost due to a direct hit by the enemy, and he dispelled the rumors that the Japanese had any kind of secret weapon or that they had used anything other than single-engine aircraft. Knox said the American forces destroyed three Japanese submarines and forty-one planes. He also claimed that the remaining American ships were at sea, searching out the enemy.
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Unpromisingly, he told reporters, “We are entitled to know if (a) there was any error of judgment which contributed to the surprise [and] (b) if there was any dereliction of duty prior to the attack.”
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The Secretary of the Navy also made it clear that Japanese espionage had played a significant role in the attack, feeding the imperial navy constantly with updated information on targets and movements.

He finished the grim report by saying, “In the Navy's gravest hour of peril, the officers and men of the fleet exhibited magnificent courage and resourcefulness during the treacherous Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. The real story of Pearl Harbor is not one of individual heroism, although there were many such cases. It lies in the splendid manner in which all hands did their job as long as they were able, not only under fire but while fighting the flames afterwards and immediately starting salvage work and reorganization.”
²⁹

Knox paid tribute to an unnamed young seaman who, on his own, manned a machine gun and fired the first shots of America in the new war against Japan, “even before general quarters was sounded.” He also paid tribute to the unnamed captain of a battleship who stayed at his post even as “his stomach was laid completely open by shrapnel burst.”
³⁰

Before departing, Knox told the reporters there would be an investigation into the military leadership in Hawaii instigated immediately by the president.
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December 15 was “Bill of Rights Day,” a national holiday commemorating the first Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Individual rights and freedoms took on a new meaning this time around, however, and President Roosevelt gave a one hour address, broadcast live from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. on all radio networks. FDR, concerned about the agitated state of Americans, used his remarks to warn against “inflamed or hysterical action.”
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CBS Radio also broadcast a special entitled, “We Hold These Truths” starring Lionel Barrymore, Walter Huston, and Edward G. Robinson. Always on the lookout to promote young starlets, a Hollywood studio depicted Gene Tierney in a low-cut white dress, holding an oversized version of the document. Constitution meet Cheesecake. More seriously, concerned about the agitated state of Americans, FDR used his remarks to warn against “inflamed or hysterical action.”
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The year 1941 was also significant as it was the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution by the Commonwealth of Virginia, in 1791, “which completed the necessary action on the Bill of Rights and gave it the full force and effect of the Constitution.” Celebrations of the day were far and wide, involving public and private schools and towns and communities. Vice President Henry Wallace laid a wreath at the grave of George Mason, the Father of the Bill of Rights, at the Founding Father's home in Gunston, Virginia. The governor of Virginia, James Price, also spoke, and a ceremony took place at the tomb of the newspaper editor, John Peter Zenger, “the editor whose trial established the freedom of the press.” The Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, was the mastermind behind the big day.
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The original Bill of Rights contained twelve amendments, but the two regulating the pay and the size of Congress were thrown out. As for the ten amendments that formed the final Bill of Rights, in light of current events, few if any people openly commented on which of those were effectively overlooked by the war effort.

A new document was also signed, but among Allies of a different sort. Together, America, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Russia, Free China, and others met in London and signed a mutual war pact declaring that none of the signers would embark on a separate peace agreement with any of the Axis Powers.
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On both sides now, it was all-for-one-and-one-for-all war, as representatives of the Axis Powers met in Berlin to map out
their
war strategies.
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In Syracuse, New York, representatives of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy met as well to decide their next move. These six independent nations had declared war on Germany in 1917 and were gathering once again to determine if they as a group would declare war on the Axis Powers.
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