December 1941 (58 page)

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Tom Connally, Democrat of Texas, was not satisfied in the least with Knox's limited report. “The statement . . . that neither the Navy nor the Army was on the alert at Hawaii when it was attacked by the Japanese is amazing. It is astounding. It is almost unbelievable. The Navy of John Paul Jones and that of Dewey must wear crepe. The old Army must carry an arm band. The loss of life is staggering.”
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At the same time, photos of B-17s on the ground, aflame, at Hickam Field on Oahu were appearing in the newspapers. Photos of other damage done at Pearl began appearing, but nearly all were of civilian centers and homes. Only a few photos of damaged planes were released and no photos of ships.

It was also revealed that a Japanese pilot on that day had landed his troubled plane on the island of Niihau, two hundred miles northwest of Oahu. Without phones or radios, these islanders knew nothing of the morning's attack. There the pilot encountered a native islander, Benny Kanahele. After being shot by the pilot three times, the large Hawaiian grabbed the pilot and rammed his head into a stone wall, killing him.
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“The pilot shot me . . . in the ribs, hip and groin. And then I got mad. I threw him against a stone wall.”
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Benny was, for the record, a woman.

So as to head off any congressional investigations into the attack at Pearl Harbor and to control the controversy, FDR went ahead and appointed his own Joint Inquiry Board, a blue ribbon commission made up of five men.
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They were to take the preliminary (and to many, unsatisfactory) findings by Knox numerous steps further and take the heat off the administration. A justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Owen J. Roberts, would chair the panel, and he immediately promised there would be no “whitewash” of the events or those responsible. The other four members were all respected career military men.
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They included retired Admiral William Standley, who was the former Chief of Naval Operations, retired Rear Admiral Joseph Reeves, retired Major General Frank McCoy and Brigadier General Joseph McNarney, who served with the Army Air Corps.
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Admiral James Richardson was expected to be one of the appointed; however, he was in hot water with FDR after telling the president it was a mistake to move the fleet from San Diego to Hawaii.
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Roberts had a distinguished career including his prosecution of Teapot Dome while he served as a federal attorney. Yet even with their careers of accomplishment, having been appointed by FDR, they were his men, beholden to him. “The membership of the Board satisfied Administration leaders in Congress, for it was announced that any Congressional action would be delayed until the Board had had any opportunity to study and act.”
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At his press conference, announcing the board of inquiry, the president spent considerable time speculating about espionage activities in Honolulu prior to December 7. Roosevelt had met with General George Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson as well as other military brass, just that day, to come up with the board; these men were described as “gloomy” when spotted leaving the Oval Office.
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The move by FDR, however, did not satisfy those on the Hill who did not consider themselves “administration leaders,” but there was little they could do. Congressman Martin Dies, Democrat of Texas and Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, squawked that his own investigation into subversive Japanese elements operating in the United States had been shut down at the request of Roosevelt and Cordell Hull, the previous September.
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He said that “his committee had information which ‘clearly indicated a planned attack on Manila and Pearl Harbor.'”
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Heading off a congressional probe was exactly what the administration and the military wanted. Two items of immediate concern to investigate would be (1) a fresh claim by Hull that he notified government officials in late November of his concerns that events in the Pacific would take a turn for the worse and (2) that, apparently, several radio stations in Hawaii had continued to broadcast in Japanese, even as the last planes were departing Oahu and headed back to the six Japanese carriers.
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At the business and labor conference that had convened, FDR told both sides that all strikes must cease for the duration of the war. Even with the new laws on the book, there had been wildcats strikes around the country. He also called for round-the-clock production. The country, he said, has “got to do perfectly unheard of things.”
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The longshoremen sent FDR a telegram pledging not to strike during the emergency.
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Yet what got everybody talking was the olive branch offered to the American Federation of Labor by the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Jaws dropped throughout the labor community. The two collective bargaining agents had been feuding for years, but because of the emergency, a slight thaw had developed in their previously frosty relations.

Washington also announced an extension of the new tire ban, to be made permanent starting January 4. No new tires or tubes could be manufactured for civilian use; only to fill those orders coming in from the military.
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Additional articles appeared in the papers advising consumers how to protect their tires, how to make them last, and how to make effective repairs. More government directives were forthcoming about the whole matter of tires and tire maintenance.

As the towns and cities of America struggled to perfect their blackouts and air-raid drills, advice was offered on protecting the family animals from falling bombs. The American Red Star Animal Relief organization sent out notices regarding horses, dogs, and cats. It informed owners that animals were important to morale and that there was no need to kill them, as many in England had done by the thousands with their own animals in the early days of the Blitz.
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Inland waterways were not overlooked when it came to security. Officials in the Empire State instituted tight navigation polices over the St. Lawrence Seaway. New York City seemed to have outpaced the other cities when it came to organizing its air-raid policies. First, the city worked with the newspapers to get the stories right once and for all, including the rules. Second, the drills were announced well ahead of time. “A test of the most powerful siren in the city, the steam-driven device on top of the Consolidated Edison Company's plant at First Avenue . . . will be made at 4 o'clock this afternoon and will be followed at 4:15 p.m. by the testing of two of the seventy new ‘sirodrones' acquired by the city this week for air-raid alarms.” Specific details followed, and the boxed item ran on the front of newspapers.
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On the West Coast, the mystery plane puzzle had still not been solved, but as the days grew shorter, the issue of instituting a form of “daylight savings” was debated, especially in Los Angeles where the Board of Supervisors decided to implement it for the county. It would allow citizens to get to work and back home during daylight hours. Hollywood studios had already implemented their own work schedule, which began the workday sooner but ended it sooner too.
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With FDR's new authority under the War Powers Act granted him by Congress, some Americans may not have agreed altogether with the new policies, but they understood the sentiment of their Allies down under. The headline in the
Christian Science Monitor
said it all: “Australians Give up Liberty to Assure Defense of Liberty.” The story detailed how Aussie citizens were giving up all their basic rights for the war and doing so happily. “Australians have now been asked by their Government to throw their own freedom to the winds until victory has been won.”
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The
New York Times
said Congress had conferred “on President Roosevelt almost unlimited powers to regulate the nation's emergency effort at home.”
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President Roosevelt's new agency for dealing with censorship said its mission was “partly mandatory, partly voluntary.”
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FDR announced the Censorship Bureau at a press conference, ironically, but he made no bones or apologies about the goals of the new agency. “It is necessary that prohibitions of some types of information contained in long existing statutes be rigidly enforced.” He also called on “a patriotic press and radio”; and the new head of the department, Byron Price, a former executive with the Associated Press, made clear his initial target was the U.S. Mail—specifically, letters written by private citizens going outside the country.
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FDR appeared well, dressed in a gray tweed suit and black tie, but the dark circles under his eyes were noticeable to reporters. There was some light banter with a radio reporter over the rumor that Roosevelt had called the Japanese “dirty yellow bastards.” Roosevelt cautioned the reporter to be careful with his consonants, and everybody laughed. When asked, he said he felt “fit as a fiddle.”
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Only the president's doctor knew that FDR was a very sick man. A longtime sufferer of polio, he was plagued with dangerously high blood pressure that went largely unaddressed. The toll of stress and illness were starting to show in his gray pallor and bouts of fatigue. To the rest of the world, though, he seemed as cheerful and vigorous as ever with his trademark cigarette holder stuck in his mouth at the usual jaunty angle. It was one of the greatest deceptions, in a war full of them.

“When he traveled by car, he was lifted in and out of the back seat away from public view. News photographers understood that they were not to photograph the president sitting in his wheelchair or being carried, and when anyone violated that rule the Secret Service confiscated the film,” said David Brinkley.
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In the face of the new government crackdown on communications, the Justice Department announced that local officials had been going too far in arresting people under the Sedition Act and warned that in the future they must consult with Washington before moving ahead with any apprehensions.
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At the same time, the final Selective Service Bill was passed by Congress. While all men ages eighteen to sixty-four would be registered, only men ages twenty-one to forty-five would be drafted. But eighteen-year-olds could enlist with their parents' permission. The War Department estimated this new bill would produce an army of 8,000,000 men.
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The administration was also moving ahead with a war council among the Allies, to better coordinate land, sea, and air offensive operations and counteroffenses against the Axis Powers. FDR hinted that what might be needed was an “Allied General Staff” to blend together the military leadership of all the countries opposing the Axis Powers. That evening he ate late and then worked into the night reviewing documents, talking on the phone, and issuing dispatches.
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Bills were flying out of Congress. Money for the military, money for more military and defense related-housing, money for civil defense, “increasing the authorized tonnage of the Navy,” another granting the navy access to every shipyard in America, publicly owned—or not.
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A bill was offered to empower the government to take over the machinery in private plants, “an action now forbidden by the Property Seizure Act.”
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The government was now spending money at a rate of roughly $20 billion a year, with approximately 72 percent devoted to the military. With all the spending for the New Deal, Lend-Lease, and the war, the national debt soared to over $55 billion.
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New regulations also flew out of Washington dealing with the weight of bicycles, the manufacture of new radios, and even one proposal to essentially nationalize all industry in America. The Treasury Department was looking at a plan “for centralized government control over the flow of capital and the financial conduct of industry.”
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Regardless, a new aviation company saw a bright horizon, and private stock purchases were offered in the Cessna Aircraft Co.

The results of the public spending and the national will were already tangible. The B-17 “Flying Fortress”
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bomber had been developed only several years earlier, but North American Aviation and the Glenn Martin Aircraft Co., with plants in Tulsa and Kansas City, announced that two entirely new bombers would begin rolling off the assembly line in early January—only one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

These two planes, the B-24 “Liberator” and the B-25 “Mitchell” were being fabricated entirely from automobile parts supplied by the Ford Motor Company, Chrysler, Goodyear, and the Fischer Auto Body Co.
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The thirty-one-day turnabout from peacetime manufacturing to an Arsenal of Democracy was no less than astonishing.

American Exceptionalism was a wondrous thing.

CHAPTER 18
THE EIGHTEENTH OF DECEMBER

Hawaii Army, Navy Chiefs Ousted; Nimitz Replaces Kimmel

Los Angeles Times

Japs in Borneo Peril Singapore

Washington Post

Rationing of Tires to Start on Jan. 4

New York Times

Jap Victim's Father Tries to Join Navy

Los Angeles Times