December 1941 (53 page)

Eight days after the attack, the White House was in a full lockdown. Papers and passes were demanded. Cops and military police roamed ubiquitously, stopping everyone, guns bristling. “Soldiers with sub-machine guns,” the
Los Angeles Times
bluntly noted.
³⁸
On the White House grounds, guard towers had been built and one-inch steel cables ran every which way, controlling the flow of foot traffic.

Security measures continued unabated. In Santa Barbara, miles and miles of federal parklands were closed to the public, including the Santa Ynez River locale. “Public entry is not to be permitted until the close of the war.”
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Entry to the Chesapeake Bay was tightly restricted by navy vessels. “Boats ordered to stop shall comply immediately on pain of being fired on.”
⁴⁰

The New York state government announced that, in order to save steel, motorists would only be required to have license tags on the back of their vehicles, thus saving annually two thousand tons of the important metal. However, there would be no corresponding reduction in licensing fees.
⁴¹
It was enough to drive any man to drink, except for German nationals in New York. These “Nazi Citizens,” as the
New York Times
called them, were prohibited by the state of New York from owning liquor licenses.
⁴²

In short order, the federal government ordered a halt to the manufacture of all new pots and pans and kitchen appliances made of iron or steel, and the industry “discontinue the use of brightwork or trim containing copper, nickel or aluminum.”
⁴³
However, a “war train” of sorts—but really called the “Defense Special”—was already touring the country, showing businessmen what the military needed to have manufactured. On the train, organized by the Office of Production Management, were blueprints and prototypes of fashioned metal parts.
⁴⁴

The culture had changed so deeply that
Time
magazine devoted a long article to the advantages of arc welding in the building of planes and ships.
⁴⁵

Washington was seizing an increased number of neutral or civilian ships, including those of allies, under the nautical rules of “angary.” Maritime Law provided for a nation, during wartime, to take any and all vessels in order to defend itself. Still, the oceans would shortly be crammed with American-made ships. In anticipation of all that new construction, the industry estimated it would have to recruit over a million workers within a year to meet the military and commercial needs of the country.
⁴⁶
The demand for shipyard workers was such that agriculture officials anticipated a farm labor shortage.

The navy began awarding what would become their famous “E” flags to civilian industries—and not just shipbuilding—denoting their “Excellent” work. Workers and management alike took real pride in flying these flags at the front of their plants.
⁴⁷
The growing patriotism in America was such that, at the Hatfield Wire and Cable Company in New Jersey, during the morning Pledge of Allegiance, two of the 350 employees refused to salute Old Glory. Three hundred and forty-eight employees went on strike as a result and said that, unless the two were fired, they would not go to work. The two (who cited religious stipulations) were dismissed.
⁴⁸

Sunday also found 80 percent of General Electric employees at their posts, working yet another full day. The employees of the big corporation had already voted to work a six-day-week but here they were, on the seventh day, working hard in Schenectady, Bridgeport, Philadelphia, and dozens of other locations around the nation. The company employed 125,000 workers.
⁴⁹

The war industry continued to be dangerous for civilians and would be, throughout the years. At a plant in New Jersey, an explosion “blew an employee to bits” and injured forty others. The FBI and the navy opened an investigation to see if sabotage had been the cause of the blast.
⁵⁰

After a call for donors, the Red Cross was awash in the blood of American civilians. Local chapters were overrun with so many people walking in, they were asked to call ahead and make an appointment.
⁵¹

America of 1941 was all slang, all the time. In the patois of the era, Americans had not “washed out” nor had they made a “hash” of things. Carl Sandberg once famously said, “Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and gets to work.”
⁵²
Coffee was “Joe”; and breakfast, lunch, and dinner were “three squares.” Sailors were “swabs” and “gobs” and soldiers were “dogfaces” and marines were “jarheads.” “When one soldier tells another ‘our bean-gun grub was shrapnel, cream on a shingle, and ink with side arms,' he's merely saying the meal from the rolling field kitchen included baked beans, creamed beef on toast and coffee with cream and sugar.”
⁵³
An unknown or pushy girl was “sister.”

Among civilians, “patch my pantywaist” meant being amazed, and “hoytoytoy” was a good time. “Futzing around” was wasting time, and “dig me?” was do you understand? A “yum yum type” was a good looking individual, and “shove in your clutch” meant get going.
⁵⁴
A “G.I.” of course was slang for “government issue.” Later, as the massive war effort generated its inevitable moments of chaos and confusion, harsher slang would emerge that had currency for many years, such as SNAFU (Situation Normal, All F—ed Up).

Many G.I.'s were going to get their Christmas furloughs after all. For those who were not released, the individual bases and the local USOs would do their best to ensure the young men a modicum of a Merry Christmas: after all, they were expecting packages from home, many of those packages containing cartons of cigarettes.

Cigarettes of every style, brand, and packaging were available to every civilian and G.I. in America. The refrain, “Smoke ' em' if you've got 'em” became an unofficial military slogan, as superior officers would bark this refrain to enlistees when they went on break. Because cigarettes were included in rations and readily available in military PX commissaries, the federal government all but recommended, encouraged, and endorsed cigarette smoking by men and women in the military. One brand with their own pitch was “Juleps,” which contained a “hint of miracle-mint.”

Advertising encouraged “chain smoking” of Juleps for those who thought they smoked too much of another brand. They were also recommended for “the boys at camp.” Spud cigarettes also billed themselves as good for a sore throat. So did Regent cigarettes.
⁵⁵
And Philip Morris.

There was never a general outbreak of violence against Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, and German Americans, but the Japanese Americans living loyally in the United States had more to fear and thus more to lose than the others for obvious reasons. There were the occasional stories such as the Japanese man in California who showed up dead in a canal in his car, either because of an accident or foul play.
⁵⁶
Still, U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle, concerned that the civilian American population would take out their ire on the wrong people, issued an important statement on the matter: “The United States is now at war. Every American will share in the task of defending our country. It is essential that we keep our heads, keep our tempers—above all, that we keep clearly in mind what we are defending. The enemy has attacked more than the soil of America. He has attacked our institutions, our freedoms, the principles on which this nation was founded and has grown to greatness. It therefore behooves us to guard these principles most zealously at home.
⁵⁷

Biddle reminded Americans that “aliens form 31/2 percent of our population,” while restating that only those aliens with malice in their plans need fear the federal government.
⁵⁸

Japanese-Americans in Los Angeles opened up their own pro-American storefronts and announced they would rat out any Japanese they thought “who by word or act consort[s] with the enemies.” They also came up with their own loyalty pledge.
⁵⁹
Little Tokyo in Los Angeles was a ghost town; shops had been forcibly closed as the Treasury Department had ordered Japanese citizens to stay off the streets. Christian Japanese groups formed support groups. Japanese had some reason to be bitter towards the United States. Since 1924, with the passage of the Japanese Exclusion Act, only 100 Japanese individuals per year were allowed U.S. citizenship.
⁶⁰

For the eighth day in a row, the Japanese pounded both Hong Kong and the Philippines. In Manila, General MacArthur had the added problem of subversive elements on the island facilitating the Japanese offensive, as well as problems with some of the local native tribes and anarchist groups. The Japanese were attempting to incite a riot against the American military. Japan's propaganda agencies claimed their military was making progress in both battles, as well as all of Malaya where they were advancing toward Singapore.
⁶¹

Even the stiffest upper lipped Brit was not hopeful about the outcome in either Hong Kong or Singapore, even though the Free Chinese were waging a furious battle against the Japanese. The
Christian Science Monitor
reported, “British troops admittedly were withdrawing from Kowloon. . . . Britain admitted that Japanese troops once again had gained ground in . . . North Malaya. . . . Britain admitted that its garrison at Victoria, southeastern Burma, was withdrawn following Japanese landings. . . .” According to London officials, the withdrawal from Kowloon was “according to plan.”
⁶²
It was a somber forty-sixth birthday for King George VI, who marked it with his wife, Queen Elizabeth, and his daughters, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.
⁶³

MacArthur issued yet another statement saying the situation was “well in hand both on the ground and in the air.”
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In fact, the conditions in Manila had deteriorated so critically that the national legislature was meeting in a basement and the Japanese had established three different beachheads on the main island of Luzon. The only encouraging news was that Filipino troops had won a fight against Japanese parachutists in the hills outside of Manila. The Allies had already declared Thailand as a lost cause, and Shanghai had fallen quickly.
⁶⁵

In the European sector, the German bombing of London had ground to a halt. Whereas London was bombed some 19,000 times in the month of September 1940, by September 1941 it had “only” been assailed from the air about 1500 times. Nazi air marshall Hermann Goering had once said that if Germans failed in the Battle of Britain, the German people could call him “Meyer.”
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The anti-Semitic slur was obvious.

The Allies did get some good news from North Africa, where the Brits had regained the offensive against Rommel, aided in part by Indian troops, which must have been particularly galling to the racist Hitler. “The Indians captured 21 Axis officers and 350 men. . . .”
⁶⁷
Also, American planes had mounted a small counteroffensive in the China Sea, apparently hitting several Japanese ships.
⁶⁸

Deep in the hills of Yugoslavia, Serbian guerrillas were also giving the Germans fits, staving off division after division totaling several hundred thousand troops. Eighteen total by December of 1941, who were completely stymied by Draja Mihilovic, the heroic Serb general who commanded a force of less than 80,000 men.
⁶⁹

Greek guerrillas were also wreaking havoc with Germany's plans for their country, and despite their best efforts, the German Army and Italian Army could not dislodge them, in the face of widespread food and arms shortages. The Greek people were starving and, by estimates, receiving only around 250 calories a day whereas, before the war, they were getting “between 3,000 and 4,000 daily.”
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After meeting with Knox, FDR had lunch with his 1940 Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie.
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No eyebrows were raised whatsoever. FDR's press secretary, Stephen Early, joined them. The Indiana businessman had run a personality campaign in 1940; no one could ever out-personality Roosevelt. The Republican Party of the era was a confusing mishmash of internationalists and minimalists, New Dealers, and the like. It had no coherent organizing philosophy and thus was more akin to a loyal half opposition. The Democratic Party in 1941 was all over the feeble and flaccid GOP.

Willkie lost decisively even as FDR was seeking a third consecutive term, something no previous occupant of the White House had probably ever really considered and certainly not sought. (Ulysses S. Grant had sought a third term, though not consecutively.) Willkie was a Republican New Dealer and fervent internationalist who often spoke up in favor of Roosevelt; many wondered if he'd wandered into the wrong political headquarters as a young man. Willkie later penned a best-selling book,
One World
, which stood as one of the great exhortations ever written for a coming-together of humanity—or just a big collectivist secular humanistic world. Take your pick.

Willkie was recruited to supervise a labor-business conference called by the White House for the following week, but it leaked out that he might take on even bigger responsibilities.
⁷²
The fact was, FDR and Willkie genuinely liked and respected each other.