December 1941 (35 page)

The Home Office in London also declared it was arresting Japanese nationals, starting with the staff members of Domei, the government-owned propaganda agency. Going further, the British issued an order for “all Japanese over the age of 16” to “report as soon as possible to the nearest police station” and produce “their registration certificates.”
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In the United States, the Civil Aeronautics Authority ordered all commercial airlines to not allow Japanese nationals to purchase tickets or fly with them.
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In Los Angeles, as in every other major and minor city in America, efforts to deal with Japanese nationals accelerated. In that city alone, it was estimated there were some forty to fifty thousand Japanese. “A military quarantine was set up around Terminal Island, in Los Angeles Harbor, home of a large Japanese fishing fleet.” Traffic was prohibited from entering or leaving the island, and fishing boats were ordered back to their docks, where government officials took control.
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Maps, binoculars, and radios in the possession of Japanese were ordered confiscated. “Stop all Japanese” was the standing order.
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It was the same in San Francisco. The city instituted “a special squad of fifty extra policemen” to guard “the Japanese colony, which covers thirty-six square blocks and has about 7,000 residents. Agents of the FBI picked up a small group for questioning.”
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But one
New York Times
story suggested the FBI initially had a plan to incarcerate all Japanese living in America.
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Because of the heavy concentration of war industries in California, combined with the large Japanese population, officials worried about the possibility of sabotage, and extra security was ordered around all plants. Mrs. Roosevelt had already jumped into the whole issue of how Japanese, Italian, and German Americans would be treated, saying, “She saw absolutely no reason why Japanese with ‘good' records—meaning ‘no criminal nor anti-American record'—had anything to fear.” Biddle did say, however, that the mass arrests of Japanese citizens in the Canal Zone and Hawaii were inevitable.
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Though large numbers of Japanese were rounded up nationwide, the government said it was interested in only a small number of potential threats to American security among the thousands. “The alien census last year listed about 92,000 Japanese, 90 percent of who live on the West Coast, and for months the F. B. I. has been preparing a list of those to be picked up immediately in the event of war.” The Alien Census Act also provided for the fines, imprisonment, and deportation of any Japanese who failed to register. In 1941, Washington had far more powers to deal with Japanese than it did in 1917 to deal with Germans living in America.
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From corner to corner of the country, pledges of fidelity to the war effort came from labor groups, corporations, Filipinos in Los Angeles, “Americans of Korean descent,” and the Japanese-American Citizens League.
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The Japanese diplomats in many of the consulates in the United States were truly astonished at their country's actions, and many openly questioned their own government. The Japanese Consul General in San Francisco, Joshio Muto, called the attack “unimaginable.”
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Kenji Nakauchi, the general consul in Los Angeles, actually apologized for his country's actions. “What can I say except that I am quite sorry!” When asked about roundups and internment camps, he said he saw “no reason why thousands of Japanese should be imprisoned.” Nakauchi pointed out that Germans and Italians in Vancouver were not imprisoned when Canada went to war with the Axis powers.
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Ashamed of his country's actions, one Japanese national attempted hari-kari by cutting himself with “a pocketknife and with a needle.” Matsuabo Matushita told police, “My country has done wrong attacking the United States of America.” It was reported, “[T]he wounds were slight.”
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A news report in the
Evening Star
said, “It is extremely difficult for Americans to distinguish their enemy, the Japanese, from their friends, the Chinese,” according to a Smithsonian anthropologist, Dr. Ales Hrdlicka. Only after a period of time, he said, can Anglos tell the difference by “facial expressions, mannerisms and ways of speech.” He said they, along with Filipinos, “all came from the same Mongoloid stock and have the same general physical characteristics.” Several Chinese in Washington had been embarrassed since the war started by being mistaken for being Japanese. A Chinese reporter arrived at the White House with a note pinned to his lapel that read, “Chinese reporters—not Japanese—please.”
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In New York, Chinese-Americans received buttons to wear to distinguish them from Japanese nationals. The blue buttons were distributed by the United Chinese Relief and proclaimed, “Thumbs up for China.” It was reported that “many Chinese, mistaken for Japanese, had been mishandled.”
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A full-page ad appeared, sponsored by United China Relief calling for the defeat of Japan. Officials of the organization included Pearl S. Buck, John D. Rockefeller III, David O. Selznick, Wendell L. Willkie, and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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The FBI seized the offices of Japan's Consulate General on Fifth Avenue to “begin impounding papers and records.” Morito Morishima, head of the office, was interrogated by the agents and his possessions examined. In those, agents with the “alien and sabotage squads” found “twenty film negatives of scenes in New York and Washington,” including “the Washington monument, bridges in Washington and New York, and the New York skyline . . . and one that appeared to be of a dam or reservoir.”
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Attorney General Biddle, concerned over the “wholesale arrests” of Japanese aliens, issued a statement saying that only the FBI could make such arrests
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and any suspicion of nefarious activities should be reported to the local FBI office. U.S. attorneys were instructed to pass the message along to state and local authorities to let the FBI handle the Japanese roundup.

Apparently the FBI had been making lists of Japanese aliens for months.

Across the country there was an outpouring of volunteers. Dozens of armed men showed up at the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles, reacting to an erroneous radio story that said the Civilian Defense Council asked them to come forward.
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Units of the State Guard were activated, and the Armory in Los Angeles was put under twenty-four-hour guard.
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The Motion Picture Producers Association “made available scores of studio trucks for the detail.”
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New York police were overrun when they put out a call for airplane spotters, and “40,000 civilian observers” went on “24-hour duty” in “13 East Coast States.”
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The acting mayor of New York, Newbold Morris, told listeners they could expect a “‘token visit' from Axis bombers at any time.”
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The navy's intelligence office in Los Angeles was sealed up tighter than a drum, and the uninvited were turned away, albeit politely. But down the hall were the navy's public relations offices, whose doors were wide open. “Well, after all, there is a difference between the Navy's intelligence office and its publicity bureaus,” a reporter wryly noted.
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However, with the new flood of enlistees, what the navy needed more than anything else were good typists.

The navy banned cables to and from Hawaii and the Philippines, and Uncle Sam banned outright the sending of any news whatsoever to Japan, Germany, Italy, and Finland.
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The Service also asked the press to take care in stories given to them by the next of kin about servicemen who had been killed or wounded, or about the location of their current billet. And never were the names of ships to be published in connection with any sailor. “Voluntary censorship” was bandied about, but the government also warned of enforcing the 1918 Espionage Act.
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State and local agencies swung into service quickly, motivated as much by fear, anger, and disinformation as patriotism. Defense preparations were being organized in every city, town, village, and hamlet of America. Volunteer guards were placed around utilities. Judges and magistrates swore in citizens to pledge to defend America. Police stations were swarmed with volunteers. A volunteer auxiliary police force was forming in Los Angeles, with thirty thousand citizens wanting to sign up.
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The dome to the state house in Sacramento was blacked out, and all forest lookout stations went on a 24/7 basis.
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The Boulder Dam was also put under twenty-four-hour guard, and Route 93, which crossed over the dam, was closed to traffic.
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New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, head of Washington's Civil Defense program, issued a six-point program for “civilians in areas subject to possible aerial bombing.” Rule Number One was “Keep Cool. Above all, keep cool. Don't lose your head.”
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People stopped working to listen to war news, colleges let students out of class to listen to speeches by FDR, and pedestrians gathered around parked cars to listen to the radio. The war was everywhere and was quickly being injected deeply into the body politic of America.

And yet life went on. Hedda Hopper's Hollywood gossip columns appeared nationwide, Americans went to movies, went to work, went to church, went on with their lives, albeit with a shadow looming over all people and all activities.

“There's a war on!” was a refrain that was only beginning to be heard. Movie theatres began to paint over the upper lights of their marquees in order to lessen the chance of them being seen from the air. People were spending a lot more time looking up in the sky. Women's silk stockings—“a prized possession this year”—were still available at J.J. Haggarty Department Store in Los Angeles, but this wouldn't last.
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Nash was touting their newest car, claiming it would get “25 to 30 miles on a gallon!” and had air conditioning.
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Marriage announcements and marriages and Christmas parties continued. Advice columns, such as “The Gentler Sex” by Malvina Lindsay, informed women readers of “the desperate wife who decides to have an affair because of her husband's infidelity.”
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It foreshadowed the sea change in sexual attitudes and activity on the home front, when men went off to war and left their wives and girlfriends behind. After the war, when confronted with pregnant wives, many returning GIs never properly did the math and assumed that the babies were theirs.

Meanwhile, frostbite sailing races were still being held on the Chesapeake, Christmas shopping went on, women still bought fashionable shoes, men bought pipes and trench coats and “snoots” at Macy's and jewelry for their wives at Garfinckel's department store, accidents happened involving drivers and pedestrians. The Women's Pages (later known in the post-war world as “Style” sections) carried new recipes and fashion tips. One advice columnist, Dorothy Dix, admonished her female readers, “Men are slaves to beauty, yet when they marry they pass looks up.”
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Babe Ruth signed a movie deal with Metro-Goldwyn Mayer to appear in a film about his former teammate, Lou Gehrig.
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Yet there would be a real and tangible and permanent change in America. “Textiles, wool and cotton goods will become scarce,” cited the
Wall Street Journal
.
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The paper noted that soon leather would also be in short supply.

The paper forecast what no one else in journalism had yet. A radical change in America was coming. “War with Japan means industrial revolution in the United States. The American productive machine will be reshaped with but one purpose—to produce the maximum of things needed to defeat the enemy. It will be a brutal process. It implies intense, almost fantastic stimulation for some industries; strict rationing for others; inevitable, complete liquidation for a few.”
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Americans would also have to learn to do without or with less—or find another source or substitute—of products that had come in from the Far East. “Primarily, these are rubber and tin. Secondarily, there is coconut oil, tungsten, chromium, copra, tung oil, palm oil, manila hemp, jute, graphite. Sugar too.
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Civilian use of Copper, Lead, Zinc and other vital metals to disappear.”
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The nonmilitary use of copper, as an example, was prohibited or severely curtailed for “building supplies and hardware, house furnishings and equipment: dress accessories: jewelry, gifts and novelties: burial equipment: automotive, trailer and tractor equipment, and a miscellaneous list which runs from fire-fighting apparatus, toys, beauty parlor equipment, barber shop supplies, bicycles, chimes, bells, keys, and a host of other items.” Five hundred and fifty thousand tons of copper would be needed for shell casings and cartridges in 1942.
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Chrome would also shortly be curtailed. It was used for automobile bumpers, bun warmers, toasters, coffee thermoses, irons, and had dozens of other nonmilitary applications. Welders, who had threatened a strike, now called for burning their American Federation of Labor membership cards.
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American housewives tossed in the sponge when told there would be a severe curtailment of sponges. Not only would the war cause disruption in supply, but a blight in the Atlantic had wiped out whole beds. Back then, sponges were not made synthetically.