December 1941 (68 page)

The Federal City had other problems. They had conducted their first air raid alarm which on the surface seemed successful. Lights flashed, radio bulletins went out, and phone calls were hurriedly made. Buses, trains, and cabs stopped. The police stopped traffic. “But the defense establishment in the Wardman Park Hotel heard no whistle. . . .” Off in the far distance, people in the city heard a whistle or a siren but only if they strained to listen. “The Willard Hotel wardens” from five blocks away “heard faintly a whistle in the distance.”
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Compared to those of other locales, D.C.'s drill, with the exception of the mute sirens, was a smashing success, though one local paper called the whole thing a “fiasco.”
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Byron Price had already been sworn in as head of the Censorship Bureau. His oath of office included the part where he promised to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Very few pointed out the incongruity of his job and his oath. A columnist, Blair Bolles of the
Evening Standard
was one of the few. “One day last week President Roosevelt made a speech about the glories of the Bill of Rights. Two days later he appointed a national censor, whose business it is to infringe on the Bill of Rights' guarantee of freedom of the press. Nobody protested. War is paradoxical, and we accept the idea that even in a war fought to protect the system of which the Bill of Rights is a part, free publication of information must be restricted.”
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The paradox went unaddressed as Price's mission was to stop all information that could aid the Axis Powers—very often a subjective determination. Who was to determine what really aided the enemy and what the American people had a right to know? This was no debate over how many Founding Fathers could dance on the head of a pin: it went to the core of the very existence of the American Republic. Was it necessary to sublimate the Constitution in order to save it?

The matter had been fought between Jefferson and Hamilton; over the Sedition Acts of the early 1800s; over the actions of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War when he imprisoned, without due process, newspaper editors who wrote articles that displeased him; or over the powers granted Woodrow Wilson during the Great War and what some thought was his low regard for the Constitution, seeing it as an impediment to executive progress.

Without even flinching, the National Association of Broadcasters had gone right along with the new state of censorship in America and in many ways, took the policy one step further, on its own and without government coercion. The NAB issued their own new guidelines against “sensationalism, carelessness and second-guessing in news broadcasts—as well as ‘ad lib' broadcasts on the street or in the studio. . . . Other ‘do nots' included the second guessing of military officers, over-estimating American military power or under-estimating enemy strength: broadcasting unformed reports, and the use of sponsors of news as a springboard for advertising ‘commercials.'”
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Radio had already been banned from broadcasting weather reports and now the NAB said broadcasts designed to “increase tension” were “do nots.” The guide also stated, “An open microphone accessible to the general public constitutes a very real hazard in times of war. Any question regarding the war or war production might make trouble.”
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Anxious over a surprise attack by the enemy during Christmas week, civil defense units asked their thousands of volunteer spotters all over America—but especially on the East Coast—to organize platoon systems and be on the watch for enemy planes, twenty-four hours a day for the duration of Christmas Week. In Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, O. P. Titus, a seventy-seven-year-old widow walked her post every day from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., surely convinced her town was of vital importance to the enemy.
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On the West Coast, all private planes within 150 miles of the coastline were abruptly ordered grounded until further notice.
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Americans who had already signed up for civil defense were more than happy to do so and did so, but if the photos that were guiding them on Japanese planes were anything like those running in
Life
magazine, they were woefully out of date, by five to ten years at least.
Life
published photos as a guide for Americans, but they were of biplanes and open cockpit planes, neither of which was in use by either side for combat, especially the Japanese, for years.
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Eyes toward the sky were helpful, but it paid to be watchful of the waves as well. The Pacific Ocean, including along the California coastline, now resembled a shooting gallery. After the shock that two oil tankers had been attacked so close to the California coast, the U.S. Navy announced that enemy submarines had several days earlier attacked other American vessels close to the Golden State. Both the steamships
Samoa
and
Lahaina
were attacked and the latter sunk en route to San Francisco.
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The tanker
L. P. St. Clair
reported that torpedoes had been fired on her and the Coast Guard said another tanker,
H.M. Storey
, owned by the Standard Oil Company, had been fired upon off the coast of Santa Barbara.
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A coast guardsman saw the whole thing from the shore, including the
Storey
's on-deck gun firing and missing the sub as it slipped beneath the surface.
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Navy patrol boats dropped depth charges after responding to the attack. Other captains fought back as well. The skipper of the
Agriworld
—previously fired upon—actually attempted to ram the unidentified sub assailing his tanker.
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New details emerged about the attack on the Emidio, including the atrocious actions of the unknown sub on defenseless seamen. After being torpedoed, the crew abandoned ship and hunkered down in three lifeboats alongside. The enemy submarine then turned its deck gun on the unarmed and helpless civilian seamen, blasting repeatedly. The first reports indicated no casualties, but followup reports said all twenty-two seamen were believed dead. The ship had issued an S.O.S. and American planes responded within ten minutes, dropping depth charges, but it was unknown if the sub had been hit.
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The Atlantic was also a shooting gallery, but this time it was favoring the United States. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox announced that fourteen German U-boats had either been hit or sunk, though it was not said when the actual fighting took place. FDR had, in fact, issued his “shoot on sight” order several months before.

Knox had a meeting the day before with the president, and upon its completion, immediately issued his statement to refute “any thought in the public mind that ‘the Navy has done nothing about' the daring approach of Axis sea ‘rattlesnakes' to United States shores . . . [giving] assurance that ‘appropriate counter measures' have been taken.”
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Americans indeed had been wondering, since December 7, about the U.S. Navy.

Citizens had heard about the exploits of the army and the marines and the daring deeds of Army Air Corps pilots and the American volunteers with the RAF and the Chinese, but little about the navy. Indeed, this announcement by the navy was the first official acknowledgement of any sea action whatsoever against “sub-surface fight craft.”
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The storyline was that FDR wanted to keep the Germans guessing, since they were still sinking American commercial ships with impunity, but now it seemed clear the greater worry was the morale of the American people. Of course, no details involving ships or compliments were released. Knox hinted also that the “silent service” was engaged in the battle for the Philippines and that navy was taking steps to deal with the enemy subs running amuck on the West Coast. But they would have their hands full.

“Activity of Jap undersea boats near the Pacific coast, coupled with a stepped up assault on the Philippine Islands, led to the belief the enemy in the West has thrown out a submarine screen to prevent reinforcement of hard-pressed United States forces in the Pacific.”
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The Japanese claimed they had sunk nine Allied submarines and had taken prisoner an untold number of Dutch, American, and British officers.
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The War Department estimated that Tokyo had as many as forty submarines that could reach the West Coast of America from their home waters. At least half the Japanese submariner fleet, Congress was told, was capable of distances in the neighborhood of 14,000 to 18,000 miles, without refueling. The distance from Seattle to Yokohama Bay was just over four thousand miles. This gave the Japanese navy a considerable cushion to do the maximum damage along the American West Coast. And if they refueled along the way in the Marshall or Caroline Islands, they could patrol the West Coast even longer.
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Some were also capable of laying up to sixty floating mines. The Japanese sub fleet was brand new, with not one submersible older than three years. On the surface, they made twenty knots, giving them plenty of speed to catch up to tankers and cargo ships.
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The situation in the Philippines was desperate. Douglas MacArthur was now facing an all-out invasion of the main island of Luzon. The Japanese were all in, committing somewhere between 80–100,000 troops to the invasion. At least eighty troop transports were landing on the island, only 150 miles from Manila. Whereas MacArthur had once been confident of fighting off the invading Japanese, a spokesman could only say the American and Filipino soldiers were “behaving well.”
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The
Washington Post
put the best light on the situation saying, “General Douglas MacArthur's headquarters has anticipated an attempted landing in force there and preparations have long been completed to meet just such an eventuality.”
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The Japanese bombed the hometown of Philippine president Manual Quezon, which was bad enough. His town of Baler was obscure, inland, was considered an “open city,” and the only reason to bomb it would be to undermine Filipino morale. But Japanese troops also encountered a busload of young girls and boys who were students at the University of Manila trying to get to their home province of Batangas. The bus driver and the boys rushed forward to defend the girls and were machine-gunned down. The Japanese soldiers then “mistreated” the girls. “The whole community . . . relatives of the students, is reported to be infuriated while word of the outrage is spreading throughout the province.”
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A
Time
correspondent on the scene filed this report. “Manila this evening was very tense . . . smoldering fires started in the noontime raid . . . Civilians are assuming wartime posts of censorships, patrols, evacuating, bandage-making . . . Talking to already stubble-bearded, grimy Yanks soldiers at undisclosed posts: ‘I'd like another crack at those low-flying bastards. Write my mother I'm a hero. I'll stay here. I'll stick it out' . . . Night sounds: howling dogs, shouts from sentries, douse that cigarette, turn off those lights, shrill police whistles . . . the babble of Filipino and American voices. . . .”
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In Hong Kong, the British “Tommies” were holding on by the skin of their teeth. The Japanese were carrying out a furious campaign to destroy what was left of the British garrison, and the Allies' only hope was relief from the Chinese. The battle “raged across Happy Valley,” ran one report with no obvious sense of irony. Artillery, aided by naval guns, shelled British shore batteries and fortifications. Japanese accounts said one after another British strong point was being reduced on the rock-bound island and that complete control was only a matter of time.”
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The Japanese had also bottled in 100 ships and that as many as half had been sunk including destroyers, gunboats, tankers and transports. King George VI sent a message to his men telling them “thoughts of all at home [are] with you.” A radio message crackled back, “organized resistance continues . . . heavy fighting.” The Union Jack was still flying over parts of Hong Kong but “the defenders” were “doomed” to a “certain death or war-long captivity.”
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The story was somewhat better in Singapore, where the British were mounting a counteroffensive after first retreating forty-five miles to regroup. “British forces, drawn up on a new line across the Malay peninsula about 300 miles north of Singapore, were reported today to have smashed heavily at Japanese forces gathering. . . .”
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The Allies needed to hold onto Singapore and were throwing everything into the fight.

For their part, the U.S. Marines were still holding onto Wake Island, still repelling the Japanese. U.S. relief ships had been repelled by the Japanese, but the marines kept fighting. “The valiant chapter in the history of warfare being written by a handful of United States marines on Wake Island in the Pacific yesterday gained another few lines. Isolated and alone, beyond the possibility of immediate help, dependant on what food and ammunition they have with them, this little force yesterday still held out after two weeks of constant attack.”
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The day before, Wake had been hit two more times by bombing planes. And still it held on. So too was Midway, apparently.

A small Associated Press story moved on the wires, though many papers chose not to run it. But the
Birmingham News
did print it under the headline, “Nazis Execute 5 Jews in Occupied France.” The story, as picked up from Vichy Radio, said the executions were punishment for “renewed attacks” on German military.
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