December 1941 (61 page)

American diplomats in Berlin had already been moved out of the city to a “comfortable hotel” until an exchange could be worked out, and the United States responded in kind, taking the German diplomats to an equally “comfortable hotel.”
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Switzerland was now representing the interests of the United States “in all belligerent countries.”
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While men rushed to enlist, the need to bolster the ranks was great enough to discuss the possibility of drafting married men.
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“The Government will become hard-boiled about drafting husbands whose wives are self-supporting, the Senate was told today, as military leaders made known their view that this country must have an Army much larger than 4,000,000 men.”
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Allowance would be made, but General Lewis B. Hershey, head of the Selective Service, said that a four–million-man army in that era was not practical. He explained to the Senate that the army “may have to go to the bottom of its manpower.” He compared it to the Civil War, during which more than 2 million soldiers were twenty-one or younger, more than 1 million were eighteen or under, more than 800,000 were seventeen and below, and two dozen or so were just ten years of age. Germany, said Hershey, had a standing army of 8,000,000.
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The University of Kentucky announced that it would grant college credit to any of its underclassmen who either enlisted or were drafted for military service.
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Not waiting to be drafted into the army, Japanese American brothers Benjamin and Fred Kuroki, of Grand Island, Nebraska, enlisted in the U.S. Navy. The story of two Japanese brothers enlisting ran on all the wire services.
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The women who wanted to serve finally got their wish when it was announced the military needed 50,000 nurses immediately. The army had 6,811 nurses on active duty, and the navy had only 828 trained nurses. Initially, the new nurses would serve as part of the Red Cross, but the idea was floated again of drafting women directly into the military.
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Thousands of women had already stepped forward to volunteer their skills.

Eastman Kodak Company had developed “color prints direct from color negatives, the latest Eastman contribution to the progress of color photography for the masses.” It was called “Kodacolor” and came in rolls that, once exposed, were sent for developing to the Kodak plant in Rochester, New York, and then sent back to the customer. It was a revolutionary development.
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But not every invention caught on immediately. With only several days left until Christmas, toy manufacturers were working overtime to fill orders for what was shaping up to be one of the biggest gift-buying seasons in years. “Plastic toys have not attracted the buying public, so far,” said a spokesman for the Milton Bradley Company. He said “it takes a new idea a little while to make itself felt in the market and also because plastics . . . are expensive.”
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CHAPTER 19
THE NINETEENTH OF DECEMBER

Enemy Aliens Will Be Kept in Camps in the Southwest

Christian Science Monitor

British-Canadian Garrison Is Still Holding Hong Kong

Lethbridge Herald

Japanese Bomb Panay Island in Philippines

Washington Post

P
resident Roosevelt's new proposal for an Allied Grand Council bringing together all the countries of the Allied Powers ran into headwinds: he wanted it based in Washington, but Winston Churchill wanted it nearer the front, in London. America had been in the war a little over a week, American troops hadn't even set foot on the European continent, and already there was intramural squabbling among the Allies. FDR would only say the discussions on the Grand Council were “in progress” and that they had been conferring for a week, but he would not elaborate beyond that at his press conference.
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Nevertheless, the first meeting took place in . . . London.

A draft of a Memorandum of Agreement” for a Supreme War Council was prepared for Winston Churchill, FDR, Stalin, and the “Generalissimo of the Armies of the National Government of the Republic of China . . .”
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Chiang Kai-Shek, who had already had a fabled career.

The document was very specific on theaters of operation, unity efforts, a “common agreement” not to make peace with any enemy until all the Allied Powers made peace with that enemy, and so forth.
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Curiously, the Allies could never get it straight on what to call the operation.

The day before, President Roosevelt held a ninety-minute meeting with his American “war council,” including new member Admiral Chester Nimitz. Nimitz was anxious to get to his new command but told reporters, “I am very sensible to the fact that I am being entrusted with a very great responsibility which I intend to discharge to the utmost of my ability.”
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Nimitz's wife, Catherine, could not join her husband right away, as she was at their vacation home in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod.

Roosevelt spent another long day, mostly at his desk, in meetings and “hacking away at the mound of memos and reports in the big wire basket on his desk.”
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The government finally made a decision on the thousands of enemy aliens it was holding in various locations around the country. The plan was announced to build internment camps in the remote deserts of the American Southwest, but the War Department refused to reveal their exact locations. It did leak out, though, that a handful of enemy aliens were also being shipped to Montana.
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“Thousands of enemy aliens in the United States, ordered interned, after hearings held by the Justice and War Departments, will be sent to permanent concentration camps to be constructed in the Southwestern States, it was announced today.”
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Initially, three camps were planned for construction, and the aliens, already held at various army and civilian locations around the country, would be shipped there for holding for the duration of the war.

Just days after December 7, Attorney General Francis Biddle said the bulk of the arrests of aliens was over, but a mere two weeks after he made that statement, the arrests continued unabated. “Under special wartime powers the Federal Government is continuing the summary arrest and detention of any Japanese, Germans and Italians above the age of 14 who may have been deemed ‘dangerous to the public peace or safety of the United States,' by the Attorney General or the Secretary of War.” Nearly 500 “axis aliens” had been picked up in the Los Angeles area alone. FBI officials pointed out that “there are hundreds of dangerous aliens who came to this country as agents of sabotage and destruction, awaiting the day when, behind the lines, they could strike a blow for Japan, Germany or Italy.”
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The internees were dressed in old army uniforms and given three square meals a day, but little else.
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So as to avoid confusion and “embarrassment,” Chinese Americans nationwide began wearing lapel pins and buttons bearing American and Chinese flags, distributed by the Chinese consul general's office in New York.

The diplomats representing the Axis Powers had it better. Germany's 145 attachés and nationals were being held in a posh resort hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and the Japanese envoys were holed up at a posh resort hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia. Rumors had it that both groups of diplomats were drinking heavily.
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Laura Ingalls, a popular, petite, and pretty aviatrix of the 1930s, was, it turned out, a Nazi stooge. Winner of many speed races and records, the thirty-eight-year-old was arrested and incarcerated in Washington on charges of being on the payroll of the Nazis without reporting either the money or her work. The FBI had her dead to rights as taking money over the years from agents of the Third Reich. She'd been a familiar sight to Washingtonians, having flown her silver low wing plane over the capital and “bombarded the city with peace pamphlets.”
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What looked like altruism at the time may have been just another ploy by the Germans to keep Americans out of the European conflict. At the time, she was the head of the “Woman's National Campaign to Keep [the] United States out of War.” Ingalls had spoken often at America First gatherings.
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The fight for the Philippines was rapidly deteriorating for the Americans, even as General MacArthur and Admiral Thomas Hart put up a brave front, claiming battle victories. But it was noticed that navy documents were being burned in an incinerator, a sure sign that things were not going well for the American side.
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Some Filipino troops were battling the onslaught with only sharpened bamboo poles and knives.
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Heavy bombing was reported over Manila in what was described as “hit and run “tactics”
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and the Japanese claimed that U.S. forces were “in retreat.” Three waves of Japanese planes hit the island of Panay especially hard, including a religious school located there. Civilians were killed, and a great deal of property was damaged on the sugar-producing island.
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The situation in Hong Kong was even worse, as Tokyo had gained a strong forward-command position, cutting off communication between the British forces there and the outside world. No one knew if the British garrison was still holding on and, if so, how long it could hold. “The Japanese made landings at several places thus making the dispersal of the British forces necessary to cope with the various assaulting parties.” However, “the Anglo-Canadian garrison on the island is ‘comparatively small with a considerable area to defend.'” The Japanese propaganda agencies “claimed that British resistance in Hong Kong was collapsing and that the capture of the crown colony, which they described as already half-conquered, was only a matter of hours.”
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The word “claim” was liberally used in the public relations war between the Allies and the Axis. Winning or the perception of winning was important for the military, the politicians, and the citizenry. Morale was everything to all involved, and both sides were guilty of putting things in the best light or minimizing the damage done by the enemy. There was no question that the Allies were far more honest with their citizens than the Axis, perhaps because part of the glue that holds democracies together is the truth, while part of the glue that holds despotic governments together is lies. Lying comes easily for those whose aspiration is to control other people.

Wake Island was holding by its fingernails, subjected to round-the-clock bombing from warships and airplanes. Japanese ships, troops, and bombers were carrying out widespread offensive campaigns against American and British military outposts, while opening up new fronts in Dutch New Guinea and advancing toward the Burma Road. Supply lines were becoming an issue for the Allies. “Imperial Tokyo headquarters . . . asserted that Japanese troops operating from Aparri, 250 miles north of Manila, had seized a U.S. Army base and were driving southward. The Tokyo high command claimed furthermore that the Philippines air defenses had been virtually knocked out as a result of Japanese bombing attacks on flying fields. Britain's struggle to halt the Japanese drive toward Singapore took a darkening turn as British and Indian troops were acknowledged to have withdrawn below the southern border . . . apparently yielding the 115-mile-long Malayan Peninsula state to the Japanese.”
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The
New York Times
reported that the Japanese troops fought with a “fanatical disregard . . . of a constantly high death toll. ”
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Frantically, a private naval message marked “Secret” ended up on Roosevelt's desk, pleading “there is no time to lose. We must at all costs hold Singapore. Hailed in the press are largely illusory. Due to the events of the past week, there is a dangerous undercurrent in certain powerful official circles which deprecates American and English prestige and our ability to win this war. That it is already too late is even being said by some.”
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A source in London confirmed that British troops were evacuating the island of Penang, an “important . . . base . . . one of Singapore's major outer defense posts.” American troops had been dispatched to Singapore to help the Brits hold on to the vitally important outpost, but the Americans had their own hands full.
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Wake Island was bombed yet again; there was nothing to the little atoll, and it was a miracle anything was left of it. Some reports in the United States said there had been a lull in the fighting in the Far East, but you could not tell that to a flyer or an infantryman or the marines on Wake. Apparently an American submarine had sunk a Japanese troop transport in the region, while an American fighter pilot, Lieutenant Samuel H. Merett, his plane shot up, flew it and himself into the side of a Japanese transport.
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The British navy was faring better in the Mediterranean than in the Far East. They were literally blowing Italian warships out of the water on what seemed to be a daily basis. On the eighteenth alone, the Italians had lost 1 destroyer, 2 cruisers and 5,000 men.
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The carnage was such that the Germans restarted their airplane attacks on British ships operating there.

The seasonal rains had begun, complicating the situation for the American troops in the Far East. The Japanese were accustomed to jungle fighting, mud, and guerilla warfare. The Americans were not. A news report said the Japanese had attempted a landing at New Guinea, which, if true, meant they were opening yet another front in the Western Pacific. The Japanese were cunning and knew exactly what they were doing. Strike fast before the Allies could effectively respond and then attack everywhere, as they had the advantage of position. Then bleed the Allies dry of men and materiel before London and Washington could effectively reply and rearm. After seizing the territory, fortify it and make it impossible for the Allies to regain possession. Their plan was working beautifully.