December 1941 (56 page)

In Chicago, when Roosevelt appeared on the screen in a movie house newsreel, Edward A. Loss Jr. booed him and was fined $200 by a municipal court judge, “the maximum” for disorderly conduct.
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In Topeka, a mother was sentenced to one year in prison “because of the alleged failure of her two young sons to salute the American flag in school. The boys, Clinton and John H., were made wards of the court by Juvenile Court Judge Roy N. McCue, who said [Lucille] Meyer ‘was guilty of encouraging the children in the contributing to their delinquency.'”
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The government was moving to seize a billion dollars worth of Axis property in America. The attorney general's office created “a special force of G-men . . . to impound the enemy owned property”.
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Much of the impounded property was eventually liquidated, but the government still had property seized in 1917 and had yet to release it because it lacked the authority, even after the Armistice.

There existed a real threat to America from spies and Fifth Columnists. Federal agents raided and seized the offices of the German American Bund, the German American Business League, and the newspapers they published in New York. A notice was posted on the door: “This property is under the control of the United States Government. All persons are hereby prohibited from entering the premises under penalty of law. H. Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury.”
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Roosevelt received a short, contradictory memo on the matter of spies operating inside the United States. It said, on the one hand, that Frank Knox was overblown in his public allegations but, on the other hand, that ‘considerable danger of sabotage to strategic points [was] left unguarded.'”
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In California, a German baron, Ernest Frolich de Meyer, was arrested wearing the uniform of a U.S. Army officer. When federal agents raided his apartment in Hollywood, they found navy and Marine Corps uniforms, “a short wave radio set and what appeared to be data on coast defenses.”
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Government bureaucrats, in order to control supply and demand, debated full-blown wage and price controls and “consumer rationing cards,” but these were ruled out for the time being.
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Still, the Brookings Institute, which was advising the government on such matters, said the country could not have rationing without price controls, and it could not have price controls without rationing. Brookings advocated both.
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The federal government could also be inadvertently dangerous and often clumsy, even scary. In Los Angeles, a man awakened to find a live antiaircraft shell weighing fifteen pounds in his back yard, undetonated.
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The government was, in addition, nearly omnipotent. On final passage, Congress, by voice vote, approved new legislation granting FDR all the war powers given Woodrow Wilson in World War I. Plus, FDR could now issue noncompetitive contracts and reorganize the government as he saw fit and without the approval of the courts or Congress. He could regulate all the transactions of the government, and he could censor just about anybody and anything.
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The irony was lost on the citizenry that Roosevelt now wielded more power over the American people than King George III ever dreamed of, on his best days.

That evening, FDR and Eleanor dined with Henry Stimson, Grace Tully, and actor Melvyn Douglas at 7:30 p.m. Douglas excused himself at 9:15 p.m., and the Roosevelts turned in at 12:15 a.m. Throughout the month, though, Roosevelt dined or met, often alone, with women: “Miss Margaret Suckley” on the nineteenth, “Mrs. Mary Eben” on the eighteenth, “Mrs. Dorothy Brady” on the twenty-first, “Crown Princess Martha of Norway” on the tenth and again on the fourteenth. Unescorted women, both married and single, were also frequent guests in the private residence of the White House in the month of December 1941.
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American and Chinese pilots began airlifting civilians out of Hong Kong, as the prospects for holding the city dimmed in the face of the continued onslaughts. The Japanese had mounted an all-out assault by land, sea, and air to take the prized British possession once and for all. “The Japanese opened a general . . . offensive against Hong Kong . . . to take the British crown colony . . . the fate of the colony would be decided in a matter of days.”
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The Japanese also claimed that they'd wiped out an entire British mechanized division; it “had been destroyed” on the Malayan peninsula.
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The news was equally bad in other Far East sectors of which London had control; Churchill's government hinted that some could fall. British resistance in Hong Kong was crumbling.

Meanwhile, “Japanese forces operating on Luzon are advancing according to plan, ‘crushing enemy resistance at every point,' army imperial headquarters said today. Bombers which attacked air bases on central Luzon Saturday destroyed forty United States bombers and fighters on the ground and set fire to three other aircraft, it asserted. Barracks, the announcement continued, were destroyed in a raid on United States military headquarters. ”
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American resistance in the Philippines was crumbling.

Adding insult to injury, Tokyo announced it had seized 225 American and British merchant ships. They also claimed that twenty-one American and British naval vessels had either been destroyed or badly disabled since the opening of the war, less than two weeks past.
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Plans for a supreme Allied War Council were moving ahead. FDR had met with representatives of all the Allied Powers at this point to work out the broad outline of such an organization. Roosevelt had already discussed it by transatlantic telephone with Churchill and had met with the Lord Privy Seal, Major Clement Attlee, to flesh out the concept. Problem was, Russia was still dillydallying about actually declaring war on Japan. The best Moscow could say was the Allies “could reasonably look forward” to Russia jumping into the Pacific war.
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The Russians for their part had successfully mounted a drive to push back the dug-in German Army from just outside Moscow and Leningrad. Initial news reports closely resembled the propaganda coming from Stalin's government, but as more independent sources confirmed, it became clear the Russians had gained an offensive. However, it was important to remember the Russians were still fighting on their own terrain and the Germans had driven hundreds of miles deep inside Mother Russia.

A British attempt to mount a counteroffensive in Thailand was repulsed by the Japanese, and the Japanese claimed to have sunk another British ship, though the name was not released.
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Also, Vichy France announced it was intending to halt diplomatic relations with the United States, as a result of the seizure of several of its ships in American ports.
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On the more hopeful side, American forces were claiming to have sunk four Japanese troop transports operating near the Philippines, but again no details were released.
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Admiral Yamamoto seemed unconcerned. He'd written a letter sometime earlier to a friend, which the Japanese state propaganda agency,
Domei
, released. In it he said, “Any time war breaks out between Japan and the United States I shall not be content merely to capture Guam and the Philippines and occupy Hawaii and San Francisco. I am looking forward to dictating peace to the United States in the White House in Washington.”
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Lofty ambition, that.

Even before the war had begun in earnest, a ground of educators had met in Riverside, California, to plan for world peace. Organized by the Institute of World Affairs, they sponsored a weeklong series of talks, roundtable discussions, and panels. Nothing was concluded except that an “international governing commission” would be necessary to run postwar Germany, if only because “Germany must be humiliated and made to realize it mustn't molest people,” according to one participating academic. Another educator observed that “while Germany may have foisted upon the world its ‘Jewish . . . problem, the world must realize that it has a German problem to solve.”
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One thing at a time.

Roosevelt was right when he warned the country that the news would become bleaker before it became brighter.

CHAPTER 17
THE SEVENTEENTH OF DECEMBER

Women Demand to Be Drafted

Christian Science Monitor

Japanese Ships Shell Two Hawaiian Islands

New York Times

Widows to Be Given Adequate
Support from U.S. in New War

Birmingham News

Speed War Output President Demands

Evening Star

Justice Roberts Heads Pearl Harbor Inquiry Board

Washington Post

A
Penny a Plane Club formed in Marshall, Texas. City fathers asked the residents if they would donate one penny for every enemy plane downed by the Americans. The club had started in Argentina and was wildly successful. There, residents of the country amassed a membership of 50,000 and “made possible the purchase for the British of a fighter plane costing $75,000 each month.” The chief organizer of the American effort, Harry Adams, had been told of the success of the Argentineans and thought it could spread throughout the United States.
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Money seemed to be flying out of the pockets of the American citizenry, seemingly all for the war effort. Some banks actually ran out of government bonds because demand was so high. Nonetheless, a goal of $1 billion a month in bond sales was announced by the government. Three businessmen in Connecticut began a New
Arizona
Fund to raise money to build a new battleship to replace the one sunk by the Japanese.
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The city of Washington was awash in letters, all containing contributions to “Uncle Sam” from patriotic Americans. Some envelopes contained a penny. Others contained up to $200. Written on many of the envelopes was “Remember Pearl Harbor!” Children sent letters, businessmen sent letters, housewives sent letters, families and local clubs sent letters. An elderly man sent $25.00 with a note regretting that he was too old to fight. A woman sent $5.00, saying if it purchased just one bolt for an airplane, it would make her happy. Hairdressers sent their tip money, as did waiters and waitresses. Treasury officials said there were too many letters, making it impossible to count how much money had been received.
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Within America, a deep wellspring of charity had always existed. It was just one of the many qualities that made it unique among countries throughout the history of the world. But this outpouring had been unmatched in the history of the republic. The pain and anger of the citizenry had been channeled into positive actions, and perhaps Christmastime helped season the era with the kindness, love, and brotherhood demonstrated by a Jewish carpenter one thousand nine hundred and forty-one years earlier.

A little girl sent a letter to Santa asking that he forgo toys for her this year, and instead, make “every country free.”
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A dying man left his estate to an aeronautical library for young boys so that books could be “loaned to anyone by mail, without charge.”
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Even Congress—at least the House—got in the spirit of giving and sacrifice as Speaker Sam Rayburn, Democrat of Texas, announced there would be no Christmas vacation for the members—not even the three-day recess usually granted.
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Money was also flying into the pockets of some of Washington's biggest lobbyists. Tommy “The Cork” Corcoran had just steered a $21 million dollar loan to a new business “syndicate formed to produce manganese,” from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, or RFC, for which he pocketed a handsome fee of $65,000, a fee that was more than the vast majority of Americans would make in their life time. He told the Truman Investigating Committee that he'd picked up over $100,000 in lobbying fees over the past year.
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It was never really suggested that Corcoran had any special pull in Washington simply because he was part of the FDR Brain Trust,
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and for a time he actually resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW; moreover, he said the fact that he was once counsel to RFC had nothing to do with the loan he'd secured for his client.
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Later, Truman learned to despise Corcoran as much as FDR loved him.

Charles West, another close adviser to Roosevelt, was suing a company for $700,000. He claimed they had rooked him out of his fees after he had arranged for federal business for them.
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Most other Americans were less selfish.

Heavyweight champ Joe Louis and challenger Buddy Baer agreed to a title fight under the condition that the proceeds would go to the Navy Relief Fund. They raised thousands. They then met in a second bout and donated those proceeds to the relief fund as well, approximately $90,000 from both contests.
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In gratitude, the Internal Revenue Service, for years after the war, pursued Louis claiming the donated money had been income to him.
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In Los Angeles, star pro football running back, Jackie Robinson, was thrilling fans of the Los Angeles Bulldogs. The Bulldogs were one of the many flimsy professional gridiron teams that had sprung up around the West and the South in the late '30s and early '40s, and Robinson, in an athletic class of his own, ran roughshod over opponents. Robinson would later switch games and break the color barrier in Major League Baseball after the war.