America Gamely Stumbled Off to War
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 7, 2001; Page A01
After the sneak attack, crowds gathered outside the White
House and sang "God Bless America." Soldiers armed with
machine guns guarded government buildings. The FBI began
rounding up suspicious foreigners. And the head of the
Secret Service stared nervously at the sky, watching for
suspicious aircraft.
It was Dec. 7, 1941, 60 years ago today. Japanese planes
had bombed Pearl Harbor, and the West Coast was in a
state of panic.
In Los Angeles, an antiaircraft battery blasted away at
enemy bombers that were not actually there.
In Seattle, authorities ordered all lights extinguished
to fool Japanese pilots, and mobs enforced the blackout
by smashing store windows that had been left illuminated
-- and, incidentally, looting the stores.
In San Francisco, Army Gen. John DeWitt swore that a
flock of 15 enemy planes had buzzed the city and he
became irate when citizens expressed skepticism because
the phantom planes had dropped no bombs.
"Why bombs were not dropped, I don't know," DeWitt
said. "It might have been better if some bombs had
dropped to awaken this city. . . . If I can't knock
these facts into your heads with words, I will have to
turn you over to the police to let them knock them into
you with clubs."
In the three months since Sept. 11, 2001, a time of
anthrax panics and fear of flying, we tend to look at
wartime America through the rosy haze of nostalgia,
seeing a land of stalwart, courageous, patriotic
heroes. But the truth is far more interesting. Despite
the legend of the "Greatest Generation," there was just
as much chaos, fear, bickering, folly, drama and comedy
in the first few months after Pearl Harbor as there is
now.
And just as many screw-ups. Maybe more.
Eager for a Fight
On Dec. 8, recruiting offices across the country were
swamped with patriots eager to fight the Japanese.
"I just want to take one good shot at them," Welzey
Hensley told The Washington Post as he waited in line at
a Navy recruiting office in Washington. "I don't mind
giving my life for my country. We wouldn't be here today
if it weren't for people who have done that."
Liquor stores were as crowded as recruiting
offices. Drinkers haunted by bad memories of Prohibition
hoarded hooch for the sober times ahead. Grocery stores
were packed with shoppers who picked the shelves clean.
"A Ford station wagon left a Connecticut Avenue store so
grossly overloaded with canned foods," wrote David
Brinkley in "Washington Goes to War," that "the rear end
sagged down and rubbed on the tires, causing black smoke
and a horrible odor as it crept slowly toward Chevy
Chase."
Across the nation, inquiring reporters searched for the
mood of America and found the people confident.
"I feel certain we can whip the pants off them," said
Irene Noble, a Los Angeles candy store clerk.
"It won't take long," said John Zimmerman of Brooklyn,
"and the United States will be on top, just like Brooklyn
was in the National League."
"It's best to have war now," said Army Pvt. Salvator
Castiglione, "while we're prepared for it."
Actually, the country was woefully unprepared. In the
past year, America's first peacetime draft had put
hundreds of thousands of men in uniform, but the Army was
so short of weapons that some soldiers trained using
wooden guns and throwing fake grenades. And now, a large
portion of the Pacific fleet had been sunk at Pearl
Harbor and the country was at war with Japan, and within
days, also Germany and Italy.
Soon, Nazi U-boats were sinking American ships within
sight of New York and Miami. In February, a Japanese
submarine fired shells at the California coast at the
very moment that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was
reassuring Americans in a radio chat.
The prospect of air raids terrified Americans. The city
of Gary, Ind., tested a plan to shield its steel mills
from enemy planes by shrouding the city in a cloud of
dense smoke. In Boston, the gilded dome of the
Massachusetts State House was covered with dull gray
paint to make it less conspicuous.
In Washington, the Army was ordered to set up
antiaircraft batteries on government
buildings. Unfortunately, there were more buildings than
batteries, so some ended up defended by ersatz cannons
made of wood.
Across the country, cities held air raid drills and
citizens turned off their lights or covered their windows
with thick black curtains. The Office of Civilian
Defense issued helpful instructions: "If bombs start to
fall near you, lie down. . . . Should your house be hit,
keep cool."
Washington's first air raid drill was scheduled for
Dec. 21, 1941. Newspapers and radio stations publicized
the event for days and people waited eagerly for the
blast of the siren. When the big moment arrived, a city
official flipped the switch and . . . silence.
Well, not quite silence. Folks standing nearby could make
out a slight squawk. But the World War I-era horn was so
ancient and rusted that all it could do was creak and
wheeze.
He's No Rudy
In anticipation of war, FDR had appointed Fiorello
LaGuardia, New York's colorful mayor, to head the Office
of Civilian Defense. This was roughly equivalent to
George W. Bush appointing Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge as
director of homeland security, except that LaGuardia did
not project Ridge's air of solid implacability. On Pearl
Harbor day, he attempted to calm the public by riding
through Washington in a police car, its siren wailing as
LaGuardia hollered, "Calm! Calm!"
This performance failed to calm Washingtonians. Nor were
New Yorkers reassured by their mayor's frequent
predictions that the city would soon be bombed. LaGuardia
seemed to believe that he could best serve the cause of
civil defense by getting photographed wearing funny hats.
Aides urged FDR to fire him, but the president couldn't
bear to can his old friend. So he moved LaGuardia to a
symbolic position and appointed James M. Landis, dean of
the Harvard Law School, to run the agency. Landis was
appropriately colorless. So was his prose.
At a press conference, FDR cracked up when he read
Landis's official instructions on how to black out
federal offices: "Such obscuration can be obtained either
by blackout construction or by terminating the
illumination."
Laughing, reporters asked FDR if his press secretary had
written that.
"No," the president replied. "The dean of Harvard Law
School wrote it."
There was a new slang term for such bureaucratic language
-- "gobbledygook" -- and the bureaucrats were producing
it by the pound. In the spring of 1942, Sen. Millard
Tydings of Maryland charged that government agencies were
bombarding each of America's major newspapers with nearly
17 pounds of official press releases every week.
That's a lot of press releases. But there were a lot of
government agencies. America was attempting to transform
a still-depressed civilian economy into a war machine
that could train, equip, feed and transport millions of
soldiers across two oceans. That huge task spawned many
agencies, each known by its initials -- WPB, WSA, WMC,
OCD, ODT, OPA, OPC.
Nobody could keep track of all these initials, not even
the people who ran the agencies. At a press conference,
Interior Secretary Harold Ickes was asked about a new
ruling from the OPC -- the Office of Petroleum
Coordination.
"I can't speak for the OPC," he said.
The reporters looked confused. An aide informed Ickes
that he was the director of the OPC.
"I'm all balled up on all these initials," Ickes replied,
speaking for millions.
Our 'Concentration Camps'
"Personally, I hate the Japanese, and that goes for all
of them," wrote Henry McLemore, a columnist for the San
Francisco Examiner. "Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give
'em the inside room at the badlands."
With that screed, McLemore summed up what was soon to
become official American policy toward Japanese
Americans.
When the war began, the United States was home to about
900,000 "enemy aliens" -- a category that included
non-citizens born in Axis nations. Most were German or
Italian immigrants.
"I don't care so much about the Italians," FDR told his
attorney general. "They are a bunch of opera singers. But
the Germans are different. They may be dangerous."
Early in the war, the feds rounded up about 5,000 Germans
and Italians suspected of sympathizing with the
Axis. Most were released within a year.
Japanese Americans did not fare so well. Whites on the
West Coast, terrified by the prospect of invasion,
demanded that Japanese Americans be evacuated. The demand
came not only from bigots like McLemore but also from
California Attorney General Earl Warren, who would later
become a famously liberal Supreme Court justice. Warren
urged the feds to remove all Japanese Americans from
California, even those born in the United States.
On Feb. 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066,
authorizing the War Department to remove Japanese
Americans from the West Coast. Within a few months,
112,000 were interned behind barbed wire in what FDR
himself later called "concentration camps."
Incredibly, these citizens remained patriotic. In 1943,
when the Army announced that it would accept Japanese
American soldiers, more than 17,000 enlisted, many taking
their Army oath while still imprisoned in the camps. Most
were sent to fight the Nazis, and they became famous for
their bravery, earning 3,000 Purple Hearts and hundreds
of other medals.
"No combat unit in the Army," wrote legendary war
cartoonist Bill Mauldin, "could exceed them in loyalty,
hard work, courage and sacrifice."
Hollywood Joins the Battle
After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush urged
Americans to support the war on terrorism by buying and
flying. "Fly and enjoy America's great destination
spots," he said. "Get down to Disney World in
Florida. Take your families and enjoy life the way we
want it to be enjoyed."
In the months after Pearl Harbor, the government asked
Americans to do a lot more than that. It urged men to
enlist and, if they didn't, it drafted them. All told, 16
million Americans served in the military during the war,
two-thirds of them draftees. Those serving included the
rich and the famous -- Joe DiMaggio, Joe Louis, Jimmy
Stewart, Clark Gable, Lyndon Johnson, Henry Cabot Lodge
Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.
Bandleader Glenn Miller was killed in action. So were the
sons of Sen. Leverett Saltonstall, FDR aide Harry
Hopkins and Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy.
To conjure up a contemporary equivalent, picture Ben
Affleck and Derek Jeter serving in Afghanistan, plus Sean
"P. Diddy" Combs, Adam Sandler and Al Gore's son killed
in combat.
On the home front, government agencies issued an
unrelenting stream of demands on the country's 120
million civilians: Buy war bonds. Grow vegetables in
"victory gardens." Conserve rubber. Save scrap metal.
And turn in your bacon fat (which contained a chemical
used to make gunpowder).
The scrap metal drives brought in some odd items,
including two iron deer from Walt Disney's front lawn, a
rowing machine donated by the governor of Massachusetts,
suits of armor used in the Broadway play "The Vagabond
King" and 14 tons of copper stills confiscated from
moonshiners in West Virginia.
When voluntary conservation measures didn't work, the
government began rationing goods in the spring of 1942:
sugar, gas, tires and shoes, two pairs a year for
civilians.
Even rationing failed to prevent periodic shortages of
everything from cigarettes to diapers to paper. When
people grumbled about it -- and they did -- some wag
would answer with the question that stopped all
complaints: Don't you know there's a war on?
Of course, they knew. There was no way to escape the
war. It was everywhere. Newspaper headlines screamed of
battles. Factory walls howled wartime slogans: "Loose
Lips Sink Ships!" and "We Can Do It!"
Ads touted even the most peaceful of products as weapons
of war: Pepsi provides energy to defense workers:
"American energy will win!" Soft-Tuff Scot paper towels
prevent flu outbreaks in defense plants! Ads for Flit
bug spray showed a toy soldier zapping Hitler, Tojo and
Mussolini: "Flit Gives 'Em the Blitz!"
Pop culture, too, was conscripted into wartime
service. "What America needs today is a good 5-cent war
song," said Rep. J. Parnell Thomas. "The nation is
literally crying for a good, peppy marching song,
something with plenty of zip, ginger and fire."
Within weeks, America's songwriters responded with "Taps
for the Japs," "You're a Sap, Mr Jap" and "Goodbye Mama,
I'm Off to Yokohama." Irving Berlin, author of "God
Bless America," turned out a rousing ditty called "I Paid
My Income Tax Today."
Meanwhile, the motion picture industry took out full-page
ads to explain the wartime role of movies: "Just as it is
the job of some industries to provide the implements that
will keep 'em flying, keep 'em rolling and keep 'em
shooting, so it is the job of the Motion Picture Industry
to keep 'em smiling."
They kept 'em smiling with so many patriotic movies that,
by Memorial Day of 1942, Bette Davis was bored silly.
"Right now, there are too many 'message' pictures," she
said. "Also, there are too many war and Nazi
pictures. It's sex -- or at least a reasonable facsimile
thereof -- that the public wants."
Women in Wartime
The story swept across America in March 1942, spread by
people who swore it was witnessed by a friend or a
relative or a friend's relative:
This woman's sitting on a bus, talking, and she says, "My
husband has a better job than he ever had and he's making
more money." Then she says, "So I hope the war lasts a
long time."
Another woman hears that and she gets up and slaps the
first woman. She says, "That is for my son who was
killed at Pearl Harbor." Then she slaps her again and
says, "This is for my boy in the Philippines."
The story was reported as fact in several newspapers and
as a rumor in Time magazine. It may never have happened
but, as historian William Manchester later wrote, "its
widespread acceptance told wartime America something
about itself: For tens of millions, the war boom was in
fact a bonanza, a Depression dream come true, and they
felt guilty about it."
By then, the war was pumping $300 million a day into the
U.S. economy. It gave thousands of Americans, including
many black Americans, the first decent jobs they'd ever
had. The war did what the New Deal never could: It ended
the Depression.
"We are the only nation in this war," observed
broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, "that has raised its
standard of living."
With millions of men off fighting, many of America's new
jobs went to women. More than 250,000 worked in defense
plants and thousands more poured into Washington to
become "government girls" -- clerks and typists in the
expanding war bureaucracy.
They had money to spend but not much to spend it
on. There was a shortage of nylon stockings, so they
painted fake seams down the backs of their legs with an
eyebrow pencil. There was a shortage of men, too, so they
sang along with a popular song called "They're Either Too
Young or Too Old."
The presence of so many unattached women scared some
men. Rep. Earl Wilson suggested a 10 o'clock curfew for
the "government girls." His suggestion was met with a
barrage of fire from Washington's female workers.
"No congressmen can tell me when I should go to bed," one
told a reporter.
The war, as Wilson soon learned, was liberating American
women.
Breaking the Cease-Fire
On the day after Pearl Harbor, pundits, politicians and
editorial writers across America solemnly announced that
the time for national unity had arrived and the era of
petty partisan bickering was over.
It was inspiring. It was uplifting. It lasted about a
month.
At a press conference in January, FDR launched into a
rambling denunciation of the rich of Washington --
"people who live in 20-room mansions on Massachusetts
Avenue." He called them "parasites" and hinted that the
feds might confiscate their mansions for the war effort.
"I hope Cissy won't take that personally," he added. Then
he said, "I hope she will."
He was referring to Cissy Patterson, owner of the
right-wing Washington Times-Herald, who lived in a
Massachusetts Avenue mansion with more than 20 rooms. She
did take it personally, and her paper charged that
Washington's real parasites were "the New Deal
bureaucrats and bubble-headed social engineers intent on
bringing socialism to America."
So much for national unity. Soon, partisan bickering,
also known as democracy, was back with a vengeance as
pols battled over everything from the poll tax to the
fate of the New Deal. Time magazine described the
cacophony over the problems of war production:
"Everybody blamed somebody else. Assistant Attorney
General Thurman Arnold blamed 'monopoly.' The pinko
Nation and New Republic blamed capitalism in
general. Columnist Westbrook Pegler blamed CIO strikes.
. . . Anti-New Dealers blamed New Dealers and vice
versa. Congressmen blamed the OPM and vice versa."
The American people, busy collecting scrap metal and
saving bacon fat for the war effort, watched this
bickering with their usual cheerful chagrin.
"It is proper and seemly to save fat for Uncle Sam," a
Manhattanite wrote in a letter to the New York Daily
News, "but I don't think we need fear any real fat
shortage. If we actually get hard-pressed, we can always
fall back on the greatest fat concentration in human
history. This huge resource is stored up in Washington,
under the hats of assorted politicians and blunderers who
are messing things up with such conspicuous success."
Caustic, quarrelsome and lovably loopy, the world's
greatest democracy marched off to war.
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