A GOOD READ: “DECEMBER 1941” by CRAIG SHIRLEY -- A BOOK REVIEW
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 29, 2012
The 1940s started out to be a simpler time, a quieter time, a less hectic time until December 7, 1941. On that date, the Imperial Forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Oahu of the Hawaiian Islands on a Sunday morning.
Author Craig Shirley does the reader a wonderful service in highlighting those thirty-one days of that fateful month, claiming it “changed America, and saved the world.”
For an adolescent boy in the middle of America, these were halcyon days of uninterrupted pleasure, a world of friends and sports, church and school, a time when he would rush home from school and listen to the latest adventures on the radio of “Jack Armstrong, the all-American boy,” “the Shadow,” “Captain Midnight,” and at night with his parents to Fibber McGee & Molly, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Amos ‘n’ Andy, occasionally, to the fireside chats of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and “The Ave Maria Hour” with his mother.
He lived in an industrial town on the Mississippi River in the state of Iowa, which would come to operate 24/7 in support of the military in WWII like similar small industrial centers across the nation. When the president declared December 7, 1941 would be “a day that will live in infamy,” the sentiments echoed across the land.
Pastoral America was awaken from its sleep and became a roaring tiger. If the reader is interested in why this was so, these 31 days of that momentous month will prove helpful. To give you that sense, I have taken the liberty to share the first eight days of December 1941 with the reader that provides the foundation for the rest of the month, and a blueprint of America at war for the next four years.
December 1, 1941
Since dissolving its military forces in 1919, the US Army Air Corps had 51,000 trained pilots compared to Canada’s 500,000.
The Great Depression still lingered on with unemployment still around 10 percent.
Two percent payroll tax was enough to fund the Social Security Retirement System. Pensioners at age 60 were eligible for $36 per month. The vaulted “New Deal” of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was expanding and exerting a greater control of the national economy.
It cost ten cents to see a movie. Men dressed up in suits and ties and hats, and women in dresses to go to the movies, where they could smoke during the movie if they liked, which most did.
All men shaved except old men or psychiatrists, who might sport beards. Movie stars such as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, William Powell and Ronald Colman had pencil moustaches. Movie actresses such as Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy and Greer Garson wore dresses with the hem just below the knee. Popular movies were “Sergeant York,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “Meet John Doe,” “Dumbo” and “Citizen Kane.” Moviegoers could also watch serials such as Captain Marvel, Dick Tracy, The Green Hornet and Jungle Girl.
Radio personalities were Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bob Hope and newsmen Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell.
It was the great band era with Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Harry James, Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington with singers Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Harriet Nelson, Bing Crosby and Louie Armstrong.
Craig Shirley writes, “Everybody smoked cigarettes in 1941, and everybody smoked cigarettes everywhere.” Smoking Phillip Morris was important as “eminent doctors” said it was easier on the throat than other “leading brands” because “all smokers sometimes inhale.”
In sport, Duke was pitted against Oregon in the Rose Bowl; Joe DiMaggio was setting a hitting streak. Fiorello LaGuardia was the mayor of New York City. Henry Luce headed Time and Life magazine. Joseph Kennedy, ambassador to Great Britain, was increasingly an isolationist and pro-Nazi as was Charles Lindbergh.
President Roosevelt managed a Lend-Lease program of arm supplies to Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain. This meant that part of American industry was devoted to making tanks, planes, ships and guns for the British to the tune of $millions.
The United States maintained an embargo on Japan for its forces in China, and increased its economic blockade along with its allies Great Britain and the Netherlands East Indies, cutting off oil and other imports by 75 percent.
December 2, 1941
Citizens can buy Defense Stamps from the government.
A Japanese expert writes why America would be no competition for Japan in a war: “The national debt, a spoiled child mentality, low national morale at the first defeat, and Robert Taft and Gerald Nye and Charles Lindberg will lead a revolt, Roosevelt is a buffoon, hesitancy, Americans excite and cool easily, disunity – with 20 million Negroes, 10 million unemployed, 5 million trade unionists, inflation.”
A British psychiatrist said that the lower classes handled stress better than the upper classes.
The Andrews Sisters had no Great Depression making $5,000 a week.
Harvard found its incoming freshman had low reading acumen. This forced this prestige institution to have a remedial reading course in reading fundamentals.
The power of the movies was so disturbing to Pope Pius XI that he devoted a papal encyclical to it.
The book “Total Espionage” was a best seller detailing the rise of the Third Reich.
Retired General Robert E. Wood was chairman of Sears & Roebuck Company, and bringing it to new heights of economic power.
The March of Dimes for polio was celebrated, no mention for FDR’s polio.
Vice President Henry Wallace was cited for his liberal leanings.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities claimed communists had infiltrated the government.
The Panzer Division of German General Rommel, called “the desert fox”, dominated North Africa.
Great Britain was drafting men from the ages of 18.5 to 50 into military service.
Secretary of State Cordell Hull worried about Japan invading Thailand menacing America’s tin and rubber supply.
Germany sunk 48 merchant ships and 11 naval craft in the Atlantic.
America was churning out “liberty ships” as its merchant fleet. The latest was called “Roger B. Taney.” He was the chief justice of the US Supreme Court and gave the decided opinion on the Dred Scott Decision, saying, “Slaves were not people but property, and thus could not sue for rights.”
Columnist Westbrook Pegler called members of Congress “miserable, fumbling, timid aggregation of political trimmers and panhandlers.”
December 3, 1941
Charlie Chaplin made “The Great Dictator” film, spoofing Hitler. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on the artist.
Over 20 percent of those eligible for the military draft were rejected for bad teeth.
Mexicans crossing the border who did not declare their intentions to become US citizens were exempt from the draft.
At Sakes Fifth Avenue, Christmas ads were hawking lingerie for women, saying, “There is no shortage of pure silk.”
Senor Walter George of Georgia states American taxpayers had reached their limit and borrowing to finance the New Deal and war effort could push off repaying the debt.
Nazi Germany’s war machine was two-thirds supported by tax revenue and one-third financing the debt. Thyssen and Krupp families viewed Hitler, "the Vienna clown," but useful for their industrial and financial purposes, plus he had gotten rid of labor unions, communists and undesirables.
Ireland remained neutral as its hatred of Great Britain finds some cheering Germany.
Met Ott and Lou Boudreau are playing managers of the New York Giants and Cleveland Indians. Boston’s Ted Williams hit over .400 for the season. Rapid Robert Feller, who came to the baseball’s major leagues at 17, had another great year.
December 4, 1941
Women looking for employment are flooding the nation’s capital, Washington, DC.
“Tessie the Typist” is in search of white-collar employment. “Rosie the Riveter,” her blue-collar counterpart has not yet arrived on the scene.
RCA uses a foggy night to test out its air raid siren.
Ford in Detroit has already partially converted to making tanks and planes.
President Batista of Cuba asks for emergency powers in case of war.
Great Britain moved to declare war on Finland, Rumania and Hungary. Joseph Stalin personally directed the Soviet Russian army against the Nazis.
Tokyo rejects the Hull accords.
German U-boat submarines sink the Reuben James in the North Atlantic with more than 70 US sailors lost, the greatest naval personnel loss since the Maine in Cuba in 1898.
Nazis occupy Belgrade, but Serb guerillas are making the German occupation difficult. German Gestapo set a policy of 50 hostages to be killed by firing squad for every German soldier or politician killed. Nazi occupation of Paris finds population declining from 2.6 million in 1936 to 1 million.
The US government’s “Blueprint for War” projected an armed force of 5 million men to be completed by July 1, 1943.
Americans are rankled by the perception that FDR is autocratic and secretive and is massing the nation for war with Germany. Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, outlined his foreign policy to a receptive FDR.
A new ugly car rolls off the assembly lines that cost two-thirds less to buy and gets up to 50 miles on a gallon, and 40,000 miles on its tires. The car sells for $447 with $149 down. The Manhattan Auto and Radio Company are selling the car, which looked like it was made of paper mache.
New cereals hit the market, Cheerioats and Kellogg’s All Bran and Toasted Corn Flakes.
The Charles Dickens manuscript “The Life of the Lord” is to be serialized for Christmas in the Atlanta Constitution.
The Los Angeles Times celebrates its sixtieth birthday.
“The peripatetic First Lady appears on NBC radio at a town hall meeting.” Margaret Bourke-White photographed her appearance.
December 5, 1941
Amelia Earhart’s fateful 1937 flight around the world is being investigated.
A new material has been created, plastic, developed from polymer chemistry. It is believed to have unlimited possibilities.
Dr. Karl Menninger of the American Psychoanalytical Association says men seek war to gratify the subconscious desire to destroy and kill.
The American military has developed a fantastic new gun that can bring down anything that flies.
Americans have seen their life span increase through the auspices of public health: that is, sanitized treated water, improved methods of sewage treatment, and trash collection.
In 1900, life expectancy was 44 years of age. Now in 1941 it is 66 for women and 63 for men.
Americans diet is still questionable as 50 percent of draftees are rejected for poor nutrition.
Hitler claims he invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia for their own good.
Syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann carries a lot more clout than simply as a journalist as he is thought to be a protean thinker.
The consensus is that should war develop between the US and Japan, the US could not avoid war with Germany.
FDR gave a blank check to Churchill with the Lend Lease Program, which no longer passed the scrutiny of Congress. Historians look at this as a great finesses of the Roosevelt Administration. It essentially saved Great Britain in its hour of greatest peril with little hope the debt would ever be repaid. . .
The Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) gave dances and lectures for servicemen, as did Catholic and Jewish clubs.
Eleanor Roosevelt lobbied for greater civil rights for Negroes including repeal of Jim Crow laws. However, the District Court of Washington upholds a covenant not to sell land in Washington DC to colored people.
Ugly free speech was upheld in New Jersey.
French Resistance undermined Axis powers in Paris.
FDR mourned the death of his mother.
Young congressman Lyndon Johnson became the fair-haired boy of the president.
Secretary of State Hull chillingly remarked to Tokyo, “If there is no sincerity then there is no need to continue the conversations.”
Skirmishes break out between Japan and Russia. Japan dispatches a ship to Panama to bring back its citizens to Japan.
The New York Stock Exchange’s spokesman says, “Only a fool would bet on peace now.”
Some 17 million men are declared draft eligible, only 1.6 million in the military.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, “FDR has a second class mind, but a first class temperament.”
Since 1932, and the New Deal, the Republican Party has struggled for relevance. It doesn’t appear to be changing with the nomination of Wendell Willkie in 1941.
The Great Depression is still a part of American economic life.
December 6, 1941
At Pearl Harbor on December 6, there are eight battleships, two heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, and twenty-nine destroyers, and a handful of PT boats, ocean togs, minesweepers, minelayers, seaplane tenders, repair ships, two general store ships and a hospital ship. Three carriers are stationed at Pearl Harbor but are out to sea on maneuvers.
Japanese nationals are quickly withdrawing from Panama, Borneo, Malaya, India, Ceylon and Mexico.
General Douglas MacArthur, always the optimist, claimed confidently that his forces in the Philippines could handle any military folly planned by the Japanese.
A new $8 billion defense bill passes the House 309-5, but military facilities are skeletal. At Camp David, there are 18 basketballs but no basketball court. At Pine Camp, there are baseballs and bats but no baseball diamond. At Camp Blanding, there are 50,000 men, but no recreational facilities. The US Navy does a far better job.
For the first time in nine years, unemployment is tracking down. Guns take precedence to butter and social issues, which does not sit well with V.P. Henry Wallace.
The Third Reich asked for reparation of German business losses in the US due to German businesses being black listed. Senator Claude Pepper of Florida, “Hitler is a devil from hell! You had just as well tried to make peace with the devil.”
Jews in Germany can no longer sell their own property. American Jews are not united against Hitler. A leading Jew, Jerome Frank published “Save Americas First.” He sees isolationism as the only way to save America. Later, he admitted he misjudged Hitler.
Wealthy Fascist Jews in the US claim, “Hitler is all right except for his Jewish mistake.”
Brilliant but controversial Secretary Harold Ickes was seen by Clair Booth Luce as having the mind of a commissar and the soul of a meat axe. Ickes was fueling fears, according to her, by closing gas stations on the east coast. He then authorized the reducing of lead in ethyl gasoline, which meant it would take more gas now selling at 20 cents a gallon.
Campbell’s soups are popular with G.I.s, an institution established after the Civil War.
Hitler launched a new campaign against Russia with 1.5 million fresh troops, 1,000 big guns, and 8,000 tanks. Russia’s winter averages 31 degrees below zero. Nazis have taken 600,000 Russian prisoners in the march, and over 3 million since the campaign started; all are being treated poorly, putting many to work in defense factories.
British Admiral Barry Domvile and his wife are arrested as Nazi sympathizers.
December 7, Washington Redskins are scheduled to play the Chicago Bears for 1940 Championship (note: Martin Cruz Smith authors a compelling novel of the times in his “December 6,” 2002, where he looks at that day from the other end of the historical prism.).
December 7, 1941
Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, in charge of the Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, has been obsessed about a possible Japanese attack on the island, but has been unable to gain traction with Washington, DC on the matter. He reported that Japan would attack on the weekend and would not first declare war. There had been only one black out drill on Oahu, and it was in May.
On December 6, FDR sent a message to Emperor Hirohito with such words as “friendship” and “virtue” and “wisdom.” Ending the message with “dispelling the dark clouds .. for the sake of humanity.” No evidence exists the emperor ever saw it.
Nazi Panzer Divisions are only 40 miles from the Soviet capital. December 6 Navy Secretary Frank Knox confessed we don’t have enough radio technicians. At 3.42 a.m., a midget submarine is spotted by a Condor on patrol outside the entrance of Pearl Harbor.
At Opana Point Radar Station, the highest point on the island of Oahu, a huge group of planes was spotted on the radar heading for the island. A call was placed at 7:00 a.m. Nothing was done as it was thought to be a squadron of American B-17s due that morning. As the planes appeared, they were met with neither antiaircraft guns nor planes to challenge them. Then the call went out, “Attention, this is no exercise. The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor, all personnel to report to duty.”
No announcement was made of the attack at the championship football game as it was against its management policy.
The Japanese attack was at 7:35 Hawaiian time, 1:05 EST. Japan used 353 fighters and bombers on Oahu, 3,500 miles from its homeland.
Three battleships are hit; the Arizona is sunk. A second wave of 171 Japanese fighters then hits Hawaii. Films stopped at movie houses and announced the surprise attack.
Reporters immediately attempted to pin the blame for the attack on FDR. The president and his cabinet and Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall reviewed losses. FDR said he would speak to Congress on December 8, but was not sure he would ask for a declaration of war.
Eleanor Roosevelt was surprised how serene her husband was. FDR huddled with William Donovan of the Office of Strategic Services, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner in WWI.
Prime Minister Tojo of Japan assured the Japanese people they would win the war, as they had not lost a war in 2,600 years. The Japanese attacked the Philippines, Wake Island, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. They attacked US Marines stationed in China, on Guam, Midway Island, Shanghai and Pearl Harbor. FDR froze all Japanese assets. No Japanese are allowed to leave the US.
December 8, 1941
The West Coast was 2,500 miles from Hawaii, the East Coast another 3,000 miles. Japan attacked while America and the American military slept. General Tojo of Japan blamed the Americans for the attack. Ironically, Churchill and Great Britain declared war on Japan several hours before the US did. Australia also declared war on Japan.
The distance from Tokyo to Honolulu was 3,860 miles, Hawaii to San Francisco, 2,397 miles.
There were fears of Japanese terrorist attacks on Washington DC. Disinformation was more plentiful than information. FDR believed Germany pushed Japan into the attack.
The president tinkered with his remarks to Congress. Originally, he was planning to say “a date which will live in history.” At the last moment, he changed the word “history” to “infamy,” making it one of the great speeches of his presidency.
The speech lasted six and one-half minutes. A declaration of war passed the House 388 to 1, and in the Senate 82 – 0. The debate lasted forty minutes. The one dissenting vote was from Jeannette Rankin from Montana.
Ted Williams gave up his deferment to enter the military and fly jets.
FDR had 50,000 Japanese Americans picked up; later it would be well over 100,000. Few Americans, including Congress, knew Japan had declared war on the US two hours after its attack on Pearl Harbor.
General Motors declared all its plants would be exclusively defense plants. A national call was made to amateur radio operators to network and plane spot.
The Japanese had three to five thousand fighter planes, 1.8 million men in uniform; the naval fleet was the third largest in the world with nine aircraft carriers, forty-six cruisers, 126 destroyers, and seventy submarines.
Most Americans could not find Pearl Harbor on the map. About 3,000 died on Pearl Harbor.
FDR showed very little emotion as he mapped out his war strategy.
American boys grew up playing cowboy and Indian games in which you never shot anyone in the back, never sucker punched another person, dirty play and breaking rules was frowned upon, chivalry was in, ladies were treated with dignity, the US for all intent and purpose was a Christian country, and now its brutal soul was coming out of the genie bottle with a rage not known since the Civil War.
WHAT WAS DIFFERENT – HOW THE NEXT 23 DAYS PROVED THE RULE
In one sense, “December 1941” could be seen as a collage of the times, but this would miss the point. The book shows a people pressed to the brink of disaster with the future uncertain but still able to function effectively. Americans were calm, involved, focused, mutually supportive, and yes, even confident that they would survive and prevail, this melting pot of ethnicities coalesced around an idea, democracy.
Yet, the country still needed a scapegoat for Pearl Harbor. The press first centered on FDR but that didn’t stick. It then came to be Adm. Husband E. Kimmel. Forgotten was that the Pacific Naval Fleet Commander had repeatedly called for taking the Japanese threat seriously, but was unheeded.
He retired in disgrace, blamed for the planes being wing tip to wing tip on the ground and destroyed and for not using the sophisticated new radar system. Little credence was given to reports that planes were spotted in squadrons from the Opana point Radar Station, but thought to be B-17 bombers returning to base, so no action was taken.
Revisionists claimed Japan wanted peace and Americans wanted war.
The fact that the US was ramping up its industrial might for the past year in support of Great Britain with the Land Lease Program gave the country a running start to full industrialization.
“The mobilization of the political and business class to fight a highly industrialized global war, combined with the concentration of power into the hands of the Commander in Chief (the president), was profoundly changing what had once been Fortress America. It marked the beginning of what would later be known as the Imperial Presidency.”
Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers had supported a concentration of power in the executive branch of government during wartime. FDR had more power than most notable dictators in history, including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Prime Minister Tojo of Japan was nicknamed “The Razor” for his brutal and audacious leadership. A surprising visceral hatred of the Japanese race surfaced at the time with university presidents describing the Japanese people as fanatical, infected with madness, and caricatured as short, squinty-eyed bifocal baboons.”
FDR had been given several top-secret memos alerting him to the possibility of a Japanese attack, but it could not be imagined to ever happen. Admiral Kimmel thought the president was being provocative when he moved the US Naval Fleet from San Diego to Oahu earlier in 1941. A total of 1.177 sailors and marines went down with the Arizona.
On December 10, 1941 in FDR’s fireside chats he told the American people,
“We are now in the midst of a war, not for conquer, not for vengeance, but for a world in which this nation, all that this nation represents, will be safe for our children . . We are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows.”
The president’s health was not good, too little sleep, endless smoking of unfiltered Camel cigarettes, too much drinking, and too little exercise (swimming).” The nation never saw his steel braced legs that allowed him only to walk a few steps. The press was in collusion with the president in this deception.
The war in the Pacific does not go well with the Japanese sinking two British battleships, the Prince of Wales and Repulse. The Japanese also claimed to have sunk King George V battleship.
Hitler and Mussolini gave ranting speeches promising the Fascist State would dominate for the next 500 to 1,000 years. The German dictator saw the US rotting from within by a mongrel Jewish-Negroid race. Germany declared war on the US on December 11.
General Douglas MacArthur gave the president assurance that he was in control of the Philippines as the Japanese invaders took island after island closer to that archipelago.
The expression the “Fifth Column” was bandied about, which referred to subversive elements inside a country. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover assured the president that no such elements existed in the US when hundreds of such agents were found to be so embedded.
FDR made a pact with China’s Chiang Kai-Shek and his armed forces that were battling the occupying Japanese army.
Unemployment continued to dip and was expected to be below 10 percent by the end of 1941.
In Europe, Herman Goring’s Luftwaffe fighters and bombers ruled the skies. Blitzkrieg bombing of military targets in Great Britain had been unremitting, now its concentration would be on civilian targets to demoralize the British people. By changing targets from military installations to civilian population centers, it gave the British time to rebuild its Spitfire and Hurricane fighter squadrons, which had been nearly wiped out.
A story was developing of African Americans fighter pilots distinguishing themselves in air battles with Germans and Japanese squadrons. They overcame the Japanese and Germans, but had to overcome their own country as well.
General Motors, with a year’s work on Lend Lease, had nearly completed retooling all its plants to churn out machine guns, diesel engines for tanks and “Allison” engines for aircraft. It ceased to manufacture automobiles until after the war.
Pan-American countries declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
American public education in 1941 was judged the best in the world led by dedicated teachers, rote and repetitious learning with a mix of discipline and tenderness. A high school diploma was hard-earned necessitating language skills, writing skills, citizenship skills, geology, biology, physics, mathematics, Latin, Greek, and extensive book reading. Only 24.5 percent of Americans were high school graduates with 4.5 percent holding four-year college degrees. The Palmer method of cursive writing was still taught, and many grammar schools still used the McGuffey Reader.
FDR appeared the perfect bromide for the American people in a time of uncertainty and fear. He enjoyed an easy repartee with the press, who scribbled down his insouciant witticisms. His energetic activism, irrepressible confidence, effervescent charm and reassuring fireside chats, kept the nation on track and on task, motivated to do its best. Huge fines and jail time of up to 180 days were enforced for those who violated the rules whatever they were.
New Orleans cancelled the 1942 Mardi Gras.
The New York Times made a study of public opinion. It discovered there is no disunity in the nation.
Instead, there is a fusion of people of all groups, all classes, all nationalities, all races, into a feeling of national solidarity. There is no panic only a quiet refrain, “They started it, we’ll finish it.” There is no hysteria, only a cold slogan, “Remember Pearl Harbor!” There is no isolationism or pacifism, only a united people, ready and willing to do whatever the president and the armed forces command them to do. The American people are 100 percent unified in opposition to the Axis powers.
The stock and commodities markets are slapdash. It is a smoking nation with smoking allowed everywhere and anywhere including on all flights in all sections at all times. Coca Cola is Santa’s drink as it is the pause that refreshes.
As Europe became Nazified, people of all economic classes, especially Jews, fled for their lives leaving behind wealth and the possessions of a lifetime. Among hundreds of thousands of refugees, there were thousands of Catholic priests and nuns.
The year 1941 marked the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1791.
Slang language always proliferates in times of crisis. 1941 was no different.
Coffee is “Joe,” sailors are “swabs” and “gobs,” soldiers are “dogfaces, and marines are “jarheads. When a soldier tells another, “our bean grub is shrapnel, cream on a shingle, and ink with side arms,” he’s talking about a meal of baked beans, creamed beef on toast, and coffee with cream and sugar.
Civilians joined in. “Patch my panty waist” means being amazed, “hoytoytoy” is having a good time, “futzing around” is wasting time, “dig me” means do you understand, “yum yum type” is someone good looking, “shove in your clutch” means get-going, a “G.I.” is government issue, “SNAFU” means situation normal, all f---ed up!”
Citizens not only put triangle flags in their windows denoting they have a member of the family in the military, but “E” flags as well that indicate they work in a defense plant and have an “Excellent” rating.
Civilians were admonished to be careful of what they say, “Loose lips sink ships!”
Cigarette companies and the media endorsed cigarette smoking by men and women in the military. In fact, one brand “Juleps” encouraged “chain smoking” their cigarette with “a hint of miracle mint” to clear the throat. Spud cigarettes were also billed as good for the throat.
Bombing of London by Germany grounded to a halt in September 1940 after some 19,000 V-2 rockets had smashed into the metropolis. Nazi Air Marshall Hermann Goering had said if Germany failed in the Battle of Britain, the German people could call him “Meyer,” an anti-Semitic slur.
THE MONTH OF DECEMBER 1941, WHY IMPORTANT
America’s leadership didn’t panic and therefore the American people didn’t. December 1941 tested this mettle.
Since it was a surprise attack, and many were isolationists before the attack, December 1941 bombarded the public psyche with reports beyond the imagination.
Daily newspaper headlines screamed with the horror of freighters and cargo ships being sunk, troop ships and military vessels under attack and often being sunk in shipping lanes across the Atlantic and Pacific.
Japan was swarming like a tsunami while German troops were scorching the earth like a prairie fire. Germans were 40 miles from the Russian capital with over a million Russian prisoners of war. The picture couldn’t be bleaker. Yet, less than five years later the Axis powers surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces.
We are all familiar with the expression “the more things change the more they remain the same,” and “if you don’t learn from lessons of history, you’re doomed to repeat them.”
Seventy-one years after Pearl Harbor with sanctions against Iran, an embargo on their oil supply, and saber rattling in the Strait of Hormuth, the times echo the Japanese-American tensions leading up to the surprise attack in 1941.
President Barak Obama is forced for austerity reasons to cut the military budget and withdraw American military personnel from Iraq, and to draw down troops from Afghanistan, which is to be completed by 2014, different scenario but a similar problem
Author Craig Shirley ends the book with an epilogue titled, “A failure of imagination.” He illustrates how this was the case with the 1967 Apollo One disaster when Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee were burned alive on the ground during a routine drill. Astronaut Frank Gorman told Congress, “Senator, it was a failure of imagination …no one ever imagined … we just didn’t think that such a thing could happen.”
Shirley writes, “No one in America imagined that the Japanese would have the cunning to attempt such a feat, and yet they succeeded because of a failure of imagination on the part of those in power in Washington, both civilian and military.”
As I closed the book, I sat and reflected about another book, a book that seems, at first blush, light years away from this geopolitical situation because it is an engineer’s perspective. I wondered if its premise had been available, which of course was not possible, would the outcome have been the same? The book is William L. Livingston’s DESIGN FOR PREVENTION (2010), a book that takes in the social, cultural and political aspects of the problem solving as well as the engineering design of prevention. It is not limited by a failure of imagination because it follows first principles of natural law..
* * *
