December 1941 (60 page)

Nimitz, as head of navy personnel, only days before was signing the telegrams notifying the next of kin of the death of their sons. But he'd also seen plenty of sea action in war and peace. Now he would get a chance to lead the friends and brothers and teammates of those fallen at Pearl Harbor into battle. He met that day for an hour in private conference with President Roosevelt.
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Chester Nimitz, with a two-jump-up in rank to a full admiral, was being pushed to the center stage of history. Kimmel and Short, having been demoted both then left the military in early 1942 and faded into the mist of cruel and unjust history.

The bad news from Malaya continued. The Japanese were driving hard down the peninsula towards Singapore; and British troops were not only on defense, but London was beginning to withdraw some of its troops, which was tantamount to an admission that all was lost there. Events were not faring any better in Hong Kong, where the Japanese demanded the British surrender, but the British refused. The Chinese were attempting a counteroffensive to aid the British, who had received an impossible order from London to “hold on.”
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The Japanese also seized the strategically important Penang Island.
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And things worsened in the Philippines as well; the Japanese continued moving towards Manila, and it was reported they were using buses to transport the invasion forces.

American forces in Manila did, however, destroy twenty-six Japanese planes. America's first ace of the war, First Lieutenant Boyd D. “Buzz” Wagner, had shot down five enemy planes in the air and was credited with the destruction of many of those twenty-six planes on the ground.
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Japanese troops made landfall on the island of North Borneo and Sarawak, both under British protection, both rich in oil, rubber, sugar, coffee, iron, coal, spices, and other treasures of the Earth.
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Sarawak had an unusual history to say the least. One hundred years earlier, Sir James Brooke, an English officer, had helped the Sultan of Brunei fight off an insurrection. In gratitude, the Sultan gave Brooke the territory of Sarawak, and his descendants still ruled the area as of the beginning of the Second World War.

Later, the “White Rajah”—Anthony Robert Brooke, son of Sir James—penned an agreement with England to provide protection for his country. When war broke out, the island had been celebrating the centennial of “White Man's Rule.”
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Japanese forces were also invading Dutch-owned islands in the region.

Just north of Sarawak, an earthquake of huge dimensions shook Formosa, China, and Japan; and hundreds were killed. Yet another earthquake hit Turkey, with similar deadly results. Both were a reminder that while war was waged, the forces of nature went on unimpeded.

The eighteenth of December was not a day of gigantic news, unless one counted the ouster of Kimmel and Short, which was huge as it was the biggest shakeup in the military leadership since the Civil War, but many, it seemed, had expected that Kimmel and Short would be relieved of their commands sooner or later. It had been rumored in the papers and in political and military circles for days, and everybody took it in stride. Some members of Congress had demanded that Kimmel and Short be impeached. They had become marked men who, after December 7, were simply marking time, waiting for their sentencing without first being charged or even receiving a fair trial.

The American people had become used to temporary and sudden changes over the past several weeks. The 1940s were looking different than the 1930s, when little seemed to change. Now there appeared to be a point where Americans settled into a routine that involved change on a daily, if not hourly, basis. No announcement, no event, no pronouncement, no decision, no news was outside the realm of possibility, except one saying they would lose the war. No one in America believed that. A new reality had settled across America, and upheaval seemed the new normal.

In the realm of the new reality, the U.S government seized a half million pounds of tin, legally owned, that was being stored in a warehouse in New York City. It was needed for the war effort. No one blinked or protested.

Then the Office of Production Management announced it was “freezing” all tin supplies in the United States.
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Tin would now be controlled by the Director of Priorities of the Metals Reserve Corporation, a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which eventually developed eight separate subsidiary corporations for the war effort. Washington also announced that, from now on, it would coordinate all air-raid drills and blackout drills. Americans for the first time were being urged to save scrap metal.

Announcements were made. The federal government announced it was hiring shipbuilders and metalworkers for operations in Pearl Harbor. The government also announced that fishing in New England would be limited to clear days only; the government announced it was, well, nationalizing the oil industry in California, citing national security.
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And “the laundry machine manufacturing industry is going to be called on to fill war orders aggregating millions of dollars.”
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“Eating habits may be changed a little because of the Jap war,” said the
Wall Street Journal
. “All canned pineapple come from Hawaii. Supplies may be cut down due to shipping difficulties. Tuna and sardines for canning and other fish caught off the west coast will be harder to get due to naval regulations and risks to fishermen. Japanese canned crab meat is out.”
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Airmail to the Pacific was halted for a time, but that came as little surprise. Also, “Northern California was battered by the winter's worst storm the first of this week but until today it was a military secret.” The navy and Weather Bureau brass had withheld the news until it was old enough to not do the Japanese any good.
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With the government's edict to limit rubber to almost exclusive military use, Price Administrator Leon Henderson caused a near riot when he said that production of such non-essential items as golf balls and tennis balls might be eliminated. Duffers and strokers swarmed into department stores and sporting goods stores, such as Abercrombie and Fitch, and cleaned them out in a matter of minutes.
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The NFL's annual Pro Bowl game, involving the winner of the NFL title and a team of all-stars from the other nine teams, was moved from Los Angeles, where it had always been, to New York.
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Again, security.

The first refugee ship since the outbreak of formal hostilities between the Axis and the United States arrived in Jersey City. One hundred and ninety-one passengers breathed the air of freedom.
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Reports from the Russian Front and North Africa were good for the Allies. The Russians finally appeared to be pushing the Germans back, while the British were also making headway in Libya. However, some analysts thought the Germans were simply reassessing and would mount a strike against Russia, farther south.

A navy bomber carrying six men crashed in Norfolk, killing all aboard,
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and a plane carrying a general on a seemingly routine flight from New York to California disappeared,
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but these noncombat-related crashes were now commonplace. There wasn't a day that went by without a report on a crash of a military plane. Meanwhile, civilian pilots now had to carry photo identification, something previously unheard of. Yet another rumored attack on the West Coast was reported, but this time it was a submarine and not a mystery plane.
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In FDR's confidential papers that day, was no mention of Kimmel or Short, or Nimitz for that matter. Some of the documents dealt with the deficient number of airplanes at the disposal of the navy: “The Navy has on hand an even 100 Douglas torpedo bombers known as TBD. This number is barely sufficient to meet minimum operating requirements.”
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A second memo noted that the navy only had 768 “aircraft torpedoes.” Complicating things, “unfortunately, there is no such thing as a universal torpedo.” Hopefully, it was noted that “a new Government torpedo plant is being erected in Chicago by the American Can Company, but this factory will not be in production until the end of 1942.”
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Cubans uncovered a Gestapo plot to set up a signaling system in a mountain range overlooking the Atlantic. Two arrested operatives of Nazi Germany were found with charts and plans detailing the plot.
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Nazi agents were also foiled in an attempt to blow up railway tracks in Bolivia that were used to ship tin and lead to the United States. Mexican officials discovered Japanese operatives attempting to install a radio transmitter. With all the attempts by the Axis Powers to commit sabotage in Central and South America, a conference representing all the Americas was announced for January 15 in Rio. Part of the approved agenda was to “curb the activities of ‘undesirable aliens' in the Western Hemisphere.”
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Sales of the “series E” bond—known as the “people's bond”—continued to skyrocket, up 146 percent over the previous week.
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All the government mandates to Detroit were bound to have an effect on employment in the car industry. Not only were up to 1 million assembly line workers affected, but also 44,000 new-car dealers, showroom managers, car salesmen, secretaries, swab boys, mechanics, tire salesmen, advertising and marketing executives . . . the list of those affected went on and on. At the end of 1941, when it became known that no new cars would be made for the foreseeable future, new car dealers did a land office business but it was only temporary. “Backbone of the dealer's business is the sale of new cars and trucks and such accessories as tires and tubes, radios, heaters, etc. Production of nearly all such goods, for the market in which he sells, is being severely restricted where not eliminated entirely.”
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Some workers in Detroit would be rehired as the factories were retooling for the war, but many others would not. “Vastly increased output of military trucks and tanks, warplanes and aircraft fuselages and engines, marine motors, guns and shells and hundreds of other industry-made munitions will create jobs practically immediately for tens of thousands of laid off automotive workers. By late next year—possibly sooner in some cases—the serious unemployment problem now facing automotive centers should be wholly or largely solved,” said the
Wall Street Journal
.
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The disposition of the thousands of “enemy aliens” who had been picked up by G-men in the hours and days after the attack at Pearl Harbor had still not been settled. The wheels of justice were turning especially slowly in this regard, and one of the first hearings for the thirty-six Japanese, German, and Italian nationals being held at, among other locations, the East Boston Immigration Detention Center would not take place until Monday, December 22.
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In New York, some were being held at—ironically—Ellis Island.
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The port of embarkation had been closed for fifteen years, but now it was being used for something altogether different.
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“Although no specific charge had been disclosed, presidential warrants for their arrest were based on a blanket allegation that their liberty was ‘dangerous to the public peace and safety of the United States.'”
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Even if not being held in detention, “enemy aliens” could not “have in his possession firearms or other implements of war; short-wave receiving or transmitting or signal devices, codes or ciphers, cameras, and documents in which there may be invisible writing. Photographs, sketches, pictures, drawings, or maps or any military or naval equipment are also banned.” An order came down actually telling the “enemy aliens” to surrender these items.
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The U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, Edmund J. Brandon, said, “While enemy aliens are not criminals' in the ordinary sense of the word, neither are they entitled to the rights set forth in the Bill of Rights. The latter applies only to citizens and aliens of countries other than enemy countries.”
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Brandon elaborated that the disposition of the alien enemies in captivity was entirely the prerogative of the president and that any American citizens who turned in a suspected alien enemy who was working to undermine the United States would receive the full protection of the Department of Justice.
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In Canada, all Japanese were being registered, regardless of status.
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The national government in Vancouver alone had confiscated 1,035 Japanese fishing boats.
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Acting on a tip, the Chicago office of the FBI arrested the head of the consulate there, Kiagachiro Ohmori. The consulate office there was shut down and sealed. They also arrested an Austrian inventor, Dr. Fritz Hansgirg, who was working at a magnesium plant in California. The FBI did not elaborate on why Dr. Hansgrig was arrested.
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Still unresolved were the diplomats of the Japanese and German legations in Washington. The Japanese, it was known, were drinking heavily, as witnessed by the chauffeur for the widow Mrs. William Howard Taft, who accidently got himself stuck for a time in the Japanese embassy on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington. According to David Brinkley in
Washington Goes to War
, the Japanese envoys were drinking heavily the night of December 6, which accounted in part for the slowness in transcribing the last of the thirteen-part message for delivery to Cordell Hull on the day of December 7. The “embassy staff had been drinking Scotch whiskey all night and the translators were still drunk the next morning.”
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