December 1941 (8 page)

With British forces spread across the world, Winston Churchill proposed an expanded draft of civilian men. Now, men from the ages of “181/2 to 50” would be drafted for military service, but the British government hinted that men as old as sixty might soon be drafted. Previously, the draft had been of men from nineteen to forty-one years of age. The prime minister called it a “crisis of man power and woman power.” The plan was also to draft unmarried women between the ages of twenty and thirty. The prime minister, what's more, warned of a possible invasion by the Nazis.
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On December 2, much of the public concern of the afternoon before over war with Japan had waned a bit. Maybe cooler heads were thinking. But some in Washington were mulling over the explosive statement by the Japanese: “The United States does not understand the real situation in East Asia. It is trying to forcibly apply to East Asiatic countries fantastic principles and rules not adapted to the actual situation in the world and thereby tending to obstruct the construction of the New Order. This is extremely regrettable.”
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Franklin Roosevelt “politely asked” the Japanese government for an explanation on its intentions in Southeast Asia, specifically on new troop movements into Indochina and whether this was a prelude to an invasion of Thailand.
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There were also reports that the Japanese army was practicing drills using parachutes in Kwangtung.
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Furthermore, Japan was seizing private ships to use for their navy, and there were worries that if they seized Thailand, Japan could cut of the trade routes to the Indian Ocean.
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FDR's request was given to the Japanese consulate in Washington via Undersecretary of State Sumner Wells, who was filling in for Cordell Hull, whom the
New York Times
said was “indisposed.”
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As Wells entered the room for their thirty-five-minute meeting, Ambassador Nomura blurted out, “Nobody wants war.” Wells later told reporters he could not disclose anything that had been discussed, but Nomura did. He said he told Wells, “War would not settle the issues anyway. Issues that cannot be settled by diplomacy cannot be settled by war.”
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Yet a huge chasm divided the two countries, and not just over their policies of talking to reporters. Some speculated that FDR was about to take control of the negotiations, personally.
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The meeting with Wells was inconclusive, as they had not yet answered the president's question. But the
Washington Post
reported that FDR “assumed direct command of diplomatic and military moves relating to Japan and the lights of peace flickered low in the Orient.”
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“Mr. Roosevelt recalled that this Government had been somewhat surprised in June when Japan had sent troops into Indo-China, while discussions were going on here in an effort to reach an understanding for a permanent peace in the Pacific area.”
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As of December, the Japanese already had amassed a huge army, navy, and air force in the region, but was still adding to it. Roosevelt met with Henry Stimson, his secretary of war, and Frank Knox, the secretary of the navy. In a separate meeting, he met with Adm. Harold Stark, the chief of Naval Operations, and Hull in the second floor oval study of the private residence in the White House at noon, to discuss yet again the situation in Thailand. These meetings had not previously been disclosed to the press, with whom he met at 4:00 p.m.
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Roosevelt's alter ego, Harry Hopkins, who had been hospitalized for weeks at the “Naval Hospital,” left his bed and met with the president over lunch on December 1, according to reports.
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A Japanese official said they wanted to “make the United States reconsider Pacific problems.”
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The media—especially the Japanese press—began referring to the “A, B, C, D” coalition (America, Britain, China, and Dutch East Indies) and how they were conspiring against the Japanese. The administration also began referring to the State Department's document given to the Japanese as “principles for peace in the Pacific.”
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Analysts argued that if Japan went ahead and invaded Thailand, they would gain an advantage in a final assault on the Burma Road, a vital thoroughfare used to supply the Free Chinese. If the Japanese seized the Burma Road, it would put them in better stead to attack the British and Dutch, it would allow Japan to further interdict tin, rubber, and other resources going to America, and it would be more evidence that the Axis powers really did want to rule the world. Some speculation intimated that Germany was overextended in North Africa and on the Eastern Front, so would be of little aid to Japan in their drive south and deeper into China.
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But news reports continued that the Japanese cabinet wanted to proceed with peace efforts.

At his press conference, Roosevelt expressed hope for a speedy response from Tokyo, but said that it would be “silly” to set a deadline for a reply.
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News reports said the Japanese could not get back to Roosevelt for “three days or more” because they were seeking “‘clarification' of various points in Secretary of State Cordell Hull's statement on the American position.”
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Newspapers in Tokyo suggested that with the new British ships arriving in the South Pacific by order of the Admiralty and because of the heightened state of alert by the British, American, and Dutch forces, it was they who were agitating for a war and accused the British of planning to invade Thailand.
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Japanese news agencies also flooded the airwaves with accusations against Australia and America.
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In fact, it was revealed that the navy had evacuated all 750 marines in Shanghai and they'd been redeployed in the Philippines, out of harm's way. They had crossed the China Sea—along with remaining American civilians—in two ships, the
President Madison
and the
President Harrison
.
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Americans worried that if Japan invaded Thailand, “it would enable Japan to menace American sources of tin, rubber and other raw materials essential for defense production, and, by giving Japan a firm hold in the South Pacific, jeopardize the future security of the Philippines.”
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On the other hand, other government experts were reassured. “If the Japanese want to start something . . . we can bomb Japanese cities and war objectives from the Philippines easier than they can come this way in the air, since we have longer range, faster planes—the flying fortresses.” The U.S. government was reportedly sending more armaments to the Philippines to rebuff the Japanese if they attempted an invasion. “The highest Army and Navy authorities here expect a Pacific war to be a series of quick and heavy air blasts, like tornados over Japan, the Philippines, Indo-China and Malaya,” reported via radio journalist Royal Arch Gunnison for the Newspaper Alliance.
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The Japanese newspaper,
Yomiur
i, compared their circumstances with America's in 1776.
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Expenditures by the federal government in 1941—ending with the fiscal year in November—revealed that the government was only collecting in taxes one out of every three dollars it was spending. The government had brought in taxes from June to October just under $3 billion, but had spent almost $9 billion. Government officials were not worried about the massive borrowing, however, because new taxes would go into effect in 1942 and discussions were underway for even greater taxing of the American people. In that five-month period, 70 percent of federal spending had gone to defense.
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Like all bureaucracies, the navy was often engaged in fights large and small. As they watched earth-shattering developments around the world, a fierce turf battle broke out over who would “operate the cafeteria in the Navy Department Building.”
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The Navy Cafeteria Association operated the dining hall, but Secretary Knox wanted the Public Buildings Administration to take things over. The association bitterly fought the secretary. “Officers of the Cafeteria Association insist that the cafeteria, which has been under their operation since 1937, provides better food, larger portions and better service. ” The facility provided for twelve thousand meals per day, and to break the impasse, the matter was turned over to the sage council of the Judge Advocate General.
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Several days later, FDR received a memo from an aide about a “Mr. Davies” who was complaining that the navy had commandeered his yacht, but it was not seeing any action. “The Auxiliary Vessels Board . . . which indicates that if acquired, she will later be restored and returned to her owner in the condition in which received by the Navy—if still afloat at that time.”
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He also received a more serious memo on the horrible conditions the Polish prisoners were subjected to by the Soviets. “As penalties food rations are reduced to 300 grams of bread and 200 grams of thin soup every twenty-four hours and [the Poles were] imprisoned in cold, wet dungeons.”
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Secretary of War Knox seemed not to worry about the abilities of the U.S. Navy. He'd just written an article for
American Magazine
saying the navy “is ready for any emergency in the Atlantic or Pacific.”
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But it was noted in another publication that “units of the Japanese fleet have been reported maneuvering north of British Borneo.”
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No one paid attention.

The shooting war on the water continued unabated, and Germany had the upper hand over the Allies. It was disclosed that the British aircraft carrier,
Ark Royal
, had been sunk by U-boats in the Mediterranean, with a number of planes appallingly still strapped on her decks.
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German ships had also sunk a number of Australian ships, both military and civilian.
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Berlin exulted that in a matter of weeks, they had sent to the bottom forty-eight merchant ships and eleven naval craft while damaging thirty-nine others. All told, the Germans had sunk 231,870 tons in November alone.
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America was starting to churn out “Liberty” ships, which would become the backbone of the merchant marines. In Baltimore, six of these workhorse boats were shortly launched, including one christened the
Roger B. Taney
.
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Taney, a son of Maryland, had been chief justice of the U. S. Supreme Court less than a century earlier and was famous for delivering the majority opinion in the
Dred Scott
decision, which in essence codified slavery in America, saying that slaves were not people but property and thus could not sue in federal courts.

No American war or discussion of war would be complete without its politicization, and syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann did the trick. “A failure on the part of the Republican party to give the national policy wholehearted support, which, of course, includes outspoken criticism of incompetence, unwisdom and inefficiency, will have to be construed as meaning only one thing: that the party is gambling on the defeat of the United States and that it is staking its political future on a national disaster. If the Republican party in Congress merely sulks and opposes, waiting for trouble, and appearing to hope for trouble . . . the Republican party will have placed itself in the intolerable position of have a vested interest in the humiliation and defeat of the United States.”
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Yet another columnist, Westbrook Pegler, took dead aim at Congress, calling members there a “miserable, fumbling, timid aggregation of political trimmers and panhandlers” that bowed down before organized labor. Members were incensed, including Clare Hoffman of Michigan, who said, “Oh, we can lick Mr. Hitler all right but he's 2,000 miles away. But Pegler's right here at home.” Hoffman called for a congressional investigation of Pegler.
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Pegler also became a shrill critic of a young up-and-coming singer, Frank Sinatra. In a preview of later cultural phenoms such as Elvis Presley, the skinny kid from Hoboken, dubbed “The Voice,” was making teenage bobby-soxers swoon at the Paramount Theater in New York City. Social conservatives such as Pegler saw Sinatra as a threat to decent society; it didn't help that Sinatra was Italian, a flagrant philanderer, and an outspoken liberal. Pegler referred to the singer in his columns as a “New Deal Crooner”
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and a “Commie Playboy.”
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In 1941, newspaper columnists wielded enormous power. Pegler and many other ink-stained wretches of the day delighted in taking potshots at the earnest do-gooder Sinatra, suggesting that he was a reprobate at best and a communist at worst. Sinatra's vicious and unfair treatment at the hands of the press in the early 1940s helped explain his lifelong animosity toward the Fourth Estate, especially in his later years when the political outlook of Ol' Blue Eyes grew decidedly more conservative.

While Pegler decried the self-absorption of Sinatra's screeching teenage fans, the self-absorption of Capitol Hill was long and legendary. Members were squawking about parking fees on the Hill, and Congressman Everett Dirksen, a Republican from Illinois, proposed price controls. He complained that while downtown garages charged 60 cents for eight hours, lots and garages on Capitol Hill charged at much as 25 cents for the first hour, 10 cents for the second hour, 5 cents per hour after that, a whole 5 cents more for eight hours.
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