December 1941 (85 page)

Huss knew otherwise, of course. Being there with this monster, he said, “[gives] you the uncomfortable feeling that none but the führer should be heard or seen, lest perhaps a blitz of unrestrained temper and authority hit the man nearest this volcano.” Huss referred to Hitler's aides as “flunkies with booted black pants . . . .”
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This portion of the historic interview concluded with the führer ranting that Roosevelt had broken political tradition in America by seeking a third term but even so, he could outwait FDR because, “I am young and healthy. Roosevelt is not.”
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The circle was closing on Manila and Singapore. Overnight, Japanese planes had raided Singapore four times, bombing it heavily. Since Christmas Eve, bombs had fallen on Manila, but then they went silent. However, no one thought for a minute that the Japanese had changed their minds and withdrawn their forces. They just had a new target to go after: Corregidor.

The Japanese began bombing Corregidor Island, only thirty miles from Manila. For three hours, they blasted at the island with a “very large force of enemy aircraft.”
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The tactic was designed to weaken the fortification strength of the Allied military there as a possible prelude to the Japanese navy steaming into Manila Harbor. “Corregidor is of natural rock formation and is about 61/2 miles long. It is five miles from the northern mainland shore, about midway at the bay's mouth.” The island was surrounded by several smaller islands, also fortified. Corregidor was honeycombed with caves where supplies had been stored “for any siege and where its defenders could shelter from air-raids and artillery barrages from the mainland.”
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Bristling with big guns, no navy commander in his right mind would attempt to enter Manila Bay without first neutralizing Corregidor.

But Douglas MacArthur did have a new ally in the war for the Philippines. The Balugas, a pigmy tribe whose men stood no taller than five feet, announced their opposition to the Empire of Japan, led by “King Alfanso.”
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They lived in the mountains on the island of Luzon and as tribute to the Allies, turned over to the Americans three Japanese soldiers who had parachuted into their domain.

The Japanese propagandists had tried to divide the Filipinos from the Americans, but there was a bond and a history between the two that ran deep. MacArthur, who had a long and warm history with the Philippines, including his own father, Arthur MacArthur's service there as Civilian Governor, had raged and denounced the Japanese for the bombings of Manila, which he himself had declared an open city, but there was little other than that which he could do against the surging tide of the Japanese invasion.

MacArthur noted what seemed to be a deliberate attempt by the Japanese to obliterate the religious culture of Manila. “The great Cathedral of the immaculate Conception was a special target of Japanese bombs. It was sought out and attacked on three successive days. The College of San Juan Lateran, with its irreplaceable library of original manuscripts, was likewise attacked. Repeated attacks on successive days were made on Santa Rosa Convent and Santa Catalina Convent. The San Juan Dedios Hospital was also the object of vicious attacks.”
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Things were faring better for the Americans who had volunteered to fly and fight with the Chinese air force. The American Volunteer Squadron had, on December 26th alone, shot down 26 Japanese planes in dog fights over Rangoon. The Americans, led by the legendary Col. Claire Chennault, meanwhile had lost only two planes.
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As soon as Winston Churchill returned to Washington from Ottawa, Franklin Roosevelt planned on convening another “war council” meeting. “Military and naval . . . experts have been laboring on a master strategy plan for the past week.”
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Churchill, while in Ottawa, gave a sterling speech to the Canadian Parliament. It was there where he assured Australia, another parliamentary government, and member of the Commonwealth, and their nervous if also steely prime minister, John Curtin, that the Allies would not leave their friends down under, to the mercy of the merciless Japanese. But his speech was also vague and news reports only said that “Churchill and President Roosevelt have decided on definite measures of defense for both British and American interests in the Pacific.”
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Churchill had hailed the Canadian contribution to the war and mocked the Axis Powers, interrupted often by the applauding audience in the House of Commons. He said the war “must be an assault on the citadel and homeland of the guilty powers, both in Europe and Asia.” The British Prime Minister said the goal was straightforward: “the total extirpation of Hitler tyranny, Japanese frenzy and the Mussolini flop.” Churchill loved tormenting Benito Mussolini. The Italian dictator was a preening and vain egomaniac, obsessed with his own machismo. These qualities made Il Duce an easy target of ridicule; even his ally Hitler considered him to be an embarrassment. “[Churchill's] speech was filled with jibes and taunts at the Axis partners which moved the crowded chamber to cheers and laughter, but most of it was a calm, confident review of the road already travelled and the road still left to travel.”
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His praise of Roosevelt was fulsome and heartfelt. “I have been all this week with the President of the United States, that great man whom destiny has marked for this climax of human fortune.”
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The crowds inside and outside Parliament Hill went wild. Loudspeakers broadcast his speech to the thousands standing in the cold and snow. “Hitler and his Nazi gang have sown the wind—let them reap the whirlwind.”
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For Winston Churchill and the people of Great Britain, it had been a long and lonely quest as they had been the only major power opposing Nazism. At one point, observers felt there was a real chance England could fall to the Third Reich. No sane person wished for war but the only way to end this new conflict was for more countries to declare war and by the end of December 1941, 90 percent of the countries of the world were at war with someone. Though his headcount clashed with that of the U.S. State Department, Churchill told the Canadians “more than 30 States and nations” were arrayed against the Axis but the striped pants set of Foggy Bottom, ever cautious, low-balled it to 29.
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He concluded his peroration, as only the old master could: “The power of the enemy is upon us,” he said. “Let us then, sir, address ourselves to our task, not in any way underrating its tremendous difficulties and perils; but in good heart and sober confidence, resolved that whatever the cost, whatever the sufferings, we shall stand by one another, true and faithful comrades, and do out duty, God helping us to the end.”
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As with all his wartime speeches, Churchill's remarks were a pleasure to read and a joy to hear. The words and phrases cascaded over his listeners, convincing them of Churchill's righteousness and why they needed to join in his cause. There is no doubt that he saved England from Hitlerism and by extension, saved the world from a new dark age. At few times in history had a man been so clearly and perfectly thrust forward to fulfill his destiny.

Other volunteers were springing forth. Under one of the most awful headlines of the month, the Associated Press moved a story: “Red Men Bury Hatchet to Aid War on Axis.” It detailed how California's Indian tribes, having been at odds with Washington since 1850, “patched up their differences and will support the United States in its war against the Axis. The Mission Indian Foundation, with 3,000 . . . members, telegraphed President Roosevelt . . . ‘a message of loyalty and readiness to serve our great nation.'”
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A reclusive college professor ensconced in Princeton, a sleepy college town in New Jersey, gave a rare interview just before he was to address the American Physical Society. The organization was dedicated to the pleasure of knowledge, not the flesh. “Dr. Albert Einstein, renowned German Jewish refugee scientist and once a militant pacifist, said tonight the democracies eventually would win over the totalitarian powers but that ‘we must strike hard and leave the breaking to the other sides.'” The interview with the sixty-two-year-old mathematician “with the great shock of unruly white hair” was conducted in his modest, green-shuttered home, as he smoked a pipe and pondered the often inane questions of his journalistic inquisitors. When asked about conditions in Nazi Germany—3,000 miles away—he replied, “I have no methods of observation” there.
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His books had been banned for years in the Third Reich. The brilliant Einstein, whose groundbreaking Theory of Relatively had forever changed humankind's basic notions of the physical universe, had been hounded by the Nazis for practicing what they mocked as “Jew science.” Like many of his talented colleagues, Einstein had seen the writing on the wall in Hitler's Germany and fled to the United States before the outbreak of war. Luckily for the civilized world, the Nazis had chased from their midst the very geniuses who could have given Hitler the atomic bomb.

Other scientists were also pondering the practical application of science to killing the enemy. Naturally, they met in Cleveland.
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“Astronomy is turning practical for wartime to increase the range and accuracy of guns and to advance aerial photography, the American Astronomical Society heard tonight. Scores of astronomers now are applying their knowledge of mathematics and telescopes to ballistics . . . The problem of an astronomical body moving peacefully through the ether is much the same mathematically as that involving a bullet moving through the air.”
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Yet another obscure scientist said the theory of the expanding universe was all wet. After six years of staring each night through the largest telescope in the world at Mt. Wilson in California, Dr. Edwin P. Hubble, stated his belief that the universe was static, not dynamic, filled with approximately one hundred million Milky Way galaxies.
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And in a startling announcement, scientists said that there was absolutely no doubt about it, water existed on Mars! They weren't sure though if oxygen existed on the “Red Planet.”
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The territorial civilian governor of Hawaii, Joseph Poindexter, had already announced the mandatory finger-printing of all island residents but other new strictures were announced in the
Honolulu Advertiser
and other papers. Long forms were printed in the broadsheets for everybody to fill out including the number of radios owned, and questions about their make, were they long wave, short wave, did the individual have either a receiver or transmitter? Number of beds in place of residences, and were the beds doubles, singles or three quarter? The government also wanted to know the number of bathrooms in one's domicile. Would the renter or owner be willing to take in evacuees? With all the questions about fingerprints, nationality, “Racial Extraction,” etc., the curiosity of the government seemed limitless.
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Poindexter was also granted executive authority over all bakery goods under the “M-Day Act.” It said, “Bakery products may be offered for sale as long as they are fit for human consumption. . . .”
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Something no doubt rarely considered before his administration.

The paper also had a long list of civilian residents of Hawaii whom friends and loved ones on the “mainland” had not been able to get a hold of since December 7. Worried individuals had been contacting the Red Cross asking for their assistance and got the cooperation of the newspaper to do so. “It will be appreciated if anyone whose name appears below will call the local American Red Cross office . . . and notify their present status, in order that a reply might be cabled to the National Headquarters in Washington as soon as possible.”
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Residents of the islands, who had served in the military of any other country other than the United States, had to turn themselves in to the local police station immediately. Regulations were also issued for fishing boats including all boats had to be painted white, fish only in designated areas and in designated hours and only American citizens were allowed to own fishing licenses.
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An elaborate air-raid system was being constructed on the various islands of Oahau, Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii so hopefully all the residents could know at the same time if another attack was forthcoming. “The new system will be ready for operation in the very near future and installation is now contingent only upon the arrival of equipment.”
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Fantastic stories of the overt operations of “Fifth Columnists” operating in Hawaii were emerging including a United Press story, published in the
New York Times
in which the navy secretary said huge arrows were cut in the “sugar fields pointing to hangars, munitions” and that some Japanese routinely strolled around the Schofield barracks. He detailed the “general espionage and sabotage network,” including shopkeepers, a “host of spies, chiefly proprietors of small stores, restaurants, cafes . . . Japanese naval intelligence, which ran a much more extensive organization . . . its agents included fishermen and seamen.” After saying such, came the clarification that this was not “an indictment of all Japanese in Honolulu. On the whole, they were industrious, dependable and well behaved. But enough of them were fifth columnists to make the attack successful.”
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The order by the attorney general to “enemy aliens” to turn over camera equipment and radio broadcasting equipment was, by all accounts, enthusiastically obeyed. Francis Biddle's directive was originally aimed at seven states in the West but then was extended to the rest of the country. In the Los Angeles area alone, some four thousand now-contraband items had been surrendered to the local police, including “several hundred [firearms], mostly rifles and shotguns. . . .” The Los Angeles Board of Equalization also revoked the liquor licenses of all German, Italian, and Japanese aliens, affecting several hundred businesses.
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