CRUCIBLE OF A GENERATION
Crucible of a Generation tells the story of the fifteen days surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor through the pages of eight leading American newspapers.
Focusing on publications such as The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune , J. Kenneth Brody paints a vivid picture of U.S. political culture and society at a
pivotal moment in the nation’s history. Brody considers the papers in full, from
headlines to “help wanted” ads, in a text richly illustrated with archival images,
wartime posters, and editorial cartoons. The book provides a compelling snap-
shot of the United States and the role of the media at a time of dramatic tension
and global change.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J. Kenneth Brody served as a World War II naval officer in the Atlantic, Medi-
terranean, and Pacific theaters. He practiced law in Seattle and was executive
vice president of a Fortune 500 company, and then retired to write the history of
his era. He is the author of The Avoidable War and The Trial of Pierre Laval.
CRUCIBLE OF A
GENERATION
How the Attack on Pearl Harbor
Transformed America
J. Kenneth Brody
First published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of J. Kenneth Brody to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-4128-6505-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-4128-6557-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-11320-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
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FOR KATE AND DON
“All I know is what I read in the papers.”
—Will Rogers
CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments
x
Author’s Note xi
Prologue: Fifteen Fateful Days xii
PART I
Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941
1
1 The Sunday Papers
3
2 A World at War, a Nation at Peace
6
3 Facing the Gathering Storm 17
4 As We Were 29
PART II
Last Week at Peace: December 1–6, 1941 41
5 Monday, December 1, 1941 43
7 Wednesday, December 3, 1941 70
8 Thursday, December 4, 1941 89
viii Contents
9 Friday, December 5, 1941 105
10 Saturday, December 6, 1941 117
PART III
“Day of Infamy”: Sunday, December 7, 1941 129
11 A Quiet Morning in America 131
12 What America Knew 140
13 What America Didn’t Know 143
14 The Answer
148
PART IV
First Week at War: December 8–13, 1941 151
15 Monday, December 8, 1941 153
16 Tuesday, December 9, 1941 166
17 Wednesday, December 10, 1941 182
18 Thursday, December 11, 1941 195
19 Friday, December 12, 1941 209
20 Saturday, December 13, 1941 220
PART V
First Sunday at War: December 14, 1941 229
21 All in It Together 231
22 A First Class Temperament 242
Epilogue: Americans All 248
A Note on Sources 253
Index 257
FOREWORD
Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States
of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the
Empire of Japan.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
The death of up to an estimated eighty million people in World War II chal-
lenges comprehension in today’s world of negotiations and limited wars. The
military forces of the United States suffered more than 400,000 deaths. What
was the country’s state of mind in the days surrounding America’s entry to this
most pervasive of all wars?
J. Kenneth Brody addresses this question through its newspapers. Newspa-
pers at their best put facts together and in doing so reflect the face of the age.
Dame Rebecca West, the great British novelist and political journalist, tells us that
without the face of the age set before us we will imagine it. Brody uses The New
York Times , The Washington Post , The Atlanta Constitution , Chicago Tribune , Houston Chronicle ,
The Denver Post ,
Los Angeles Times , and The Oregonian as his windows
reflecting the face of 1941 America. His review of what was published in these
newspapers from November 30 to December 14, 1941—the week before and the
week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—tellingly demonstrates the sin-
gular and critical role newspapers played in the pre-television, pre-Internet 1940s.
The daily newspapers presented a composite view of the interests of their readers
and reveal the mindset of the populace of that time. Brody has captured the mood
of the country during this critical period, demonstrating both the diversity of the
nation and its ultimate unity. He portrays the monumental effort the war required,
against the background of the full range of day-to-day life in wartime America.
Sandy Rowe
Former Editor
The Oregonian
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For their contributions to this work, the author is deeply indebted to many,
including the following: Anne Ekstrom whose clarity of words and thought
grace every page of this book and for her boundless commitment to it; Arthur
Levinson for his thoughtful, incisive commentary; Rebecca Peer of Peer Project
Management who maintained the manuscript over its gestation; Sandra J. Brody
whose loving care of the author and of his work was essential to its successful
completion. Thanks to all.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As the epigraph suggests, this book is about the world as observed by the Ameri-
can newspaper reader through his newspaper. To best reproduce this newspaper
reader’s experience, the book is organized in chapters covering successive news-
paper editions for the days from November 30 to December 14, 1941. The date
identifying each
newspaper story is its date of publication rather than its dateline.
The dateline (except as noted) is the day before the date of publication.
The Sunday papers of December 7, 1941, were printed and distributed before
the momentous events at Pearl Harbor took place. The December 7 chapters
therefore present a summary narrative of what happened that day—as well as what
was reported in the newspapers—to bridge the gap between the days before and
the days after.
PROLOGUE
Fifteen Fateful Days
This is the story of fifteen fateful days, from Sunday, November 30, to Sunday,
December 14, 1941. These were the days that saw the traditional America of yes-
terday standing hesitantly on the sidelines of a world in flames, in Europe, in Africa
and in Asia, and finally plunged, not by its own will but by the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, into a new role in a new world, the world of today and of tomorrow.
Not simply a chronology of events, this book is a kaleidoscopic view of Amer-
ica’s domestic and foreign policies, of its society at every level, of its varied peoples and cultures and its economic underpinnings, its racial anguish, its tone, temper and
flavor as the nation slowly emerged from the travail of the Great Depression on
its way to greatness in a war-torn world of which it would be, if not the last, then
surely the world’s best hope. The great struggle of the isolationists for America’s
heart and head and the rhythms of daily life in America were played out against
the backdrop of the inexorable and totally unsuspected approach, day by day, from
November 30 to December 7, of the Japanese Pearl Harbor Striking Force.
The story is uniquely told from the pages of eight great American newspapers
to which Mr. and Mrs. America looked for that information and understanding
only their newspapers could supply.
Protected by its oceans, America had watched the rise and expansion of Nazi
Germany and the collapse of the French and British armies in Europe. Japan was
as vocal and unyielding in its own campaigns of aggression in China, Manchuria,
and Southeast Asia, seeking natural resources to sustain its ambitions for a Greater
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It was met head on by American financial and
economic sanctions in an attempt to defend American interests in the Philippines
and in China. To meet Japanese Prime Minister Tojo’s challenges, America based
its policy on concepts of morality and ineffective treaties of long ago.
The forces of isolationism had powerful leaders: Charles A. Lindbergh, Herbert
Hoover, Senators Taft, Nye, and Wheeler. Their base was in America’s heartland, the
Midwest, and their voice was the Chicago Tribune . Isolationism was often ingrained with a distrust of the New Deal. And so it was that the Chicago Tribune that hit that
Prologue xiii
city’s newsstands and front porches on the morning of December 7 flatly accused
the President of treason even as the bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor.
The dominant figure on the American scene was the President, Franklin D. Roos-
evelt, seen here in a triumphal progress through the Georgia countryside to his favor-
ite retreat at Warm Springs and seen, too, at the congressional podium commanding
the attention of the nation and of the world. This is a portrait of the nation he led.
The defense buildup had awakened a slumbering economy, lending enormous
relief to a stricken nation as it built a vast array of ships, planes, and weapons, pre-
sumably for the use of others. Humble factors advancing the economy could be
seen through help wanted ads for machinists at a dollar an hour. Men’s suits were
two for $39.95 and a five-course steak dinner cost a dollar. The prices of homes
from $5,000 in California tracts for aircraft workers to Beverly Hills mansions at
$25,000 tell more than simply price. The sellers clearly indicated who was wel-
come to buy and who was not, and the same designations could be seen in the
help wanted ads. They told what race and what religion might hope to land the
job. The prices of groceries and of used cars, what buyers from the hinterlands
came from New York to buy—cheaper dresses, basement corsets, and millinery—
offer a portrait of another age.
So it was with the culture, with the formally portrayed brides of The New York
Times Sunday Edition in contrast to the let-it-all-hang-out wedding stories of
The Times today. Social America ran the gamut from the debutantes of the Junior Assemblies of New York and Charleston’s St. Cecilia Ball to Minnesota farm girls
showing prize cattle at a livestock exposition and a Georgia ten-year-old whose
mother made her the best-dressed girl in her school class on a budget of $7.69 for
the year. Here are the faces of America, including the “old timey” Texas preacher
who lived on $2.00 a week and wouldn’t trade his cabin for the state capitol.
Other aspects of the culture are warmly noted: the movies that Americans
loved; the great days of the New York theater, the books Americans read, the
modern art that confused and discomfited them, the sermons they heard, and the
radio programs that helped make the country one. All these combine to shape a
cultural portrait of the America of then.
The book tells of the indignities and injustices heaped upon black Americans
and black America’s dignified response. The pundits, led by Walter Lippmann,
debated America’s role in the world. Estimates of the military and economic
strength of Japan versus the United States were widely diverse. Among them were
Secretary of the Navy Knox’s boastful claims of naval superiority.
Here are some what-ifs of history. What if Japan’s path of conquest had avoided
the Philippines and other American interests? The Pearl Harbor attack resolved all
that and the nation stood as one, including, and handsomely, the Chicago Tribune .
James “Scotty” Reston, in a moving report of the congressional response to the
attack, told how a great nation went to war.
The fog of war shrouded Pearl Harbor but that did not prevent optimistic esti-
mates of America’s successes. The public attitude was one of cheery confidence—
victory would neither take very long nor cost very much. There were reports of
American victories and Japanese defeats that never happened. The recruiting stations
were flooded with eager aspirants, and at schools, colleges, plants, and workplaces
xiv Prologue
Americans joined in a spirit that would be sorely tried before long. There were false
alarms of air raids in San Francisco, whose Army commandant grumpily observed
that real bombs would teach the public a lesson. And there were raids that never
came on the East Coast. When Germany and Italy declared war on the United
States on December 11, 1941, the American people were truly engaged in a World
War. But what if Germany and Italy had not, of their own volition, joined the issue?
Would the United States have carried the war to Africa and Europe then?
America was and is an amalgam of personal lives and life stories, and this was
never truer than in the fifteen fateful days beginning November 30, 1941. The
First Lady was not only the Assistant Director of Civil Defense but carried on
an extraordinary schedule of eve
nts that reflected her interests and her passions.
Joseph Reid, age eleven, wrote to the Navy offering his services as a cabin boy
which, he had read in Treasure Island , was the only berth available to a youth of his age. The commandant of the Naval District sent a sympathetic reply. Lucyle
Richards, cowgirl and pilot, on trial for the murder of her lover, cattleman Frank
Dew, was acquitted by a weeping jury and went on to ferry bombers to Britain.
Margelee Hollingsworth of Acadia, Florida, population 4,055, came to the nation’s
capital to be a clerk-typist for the Navy, an adventure that only a short time before
would have been unthinkable. These are representative samples of the events that
occur and the vignettes that populate this book.
With Crucible of a Generation in hand, step onto the stage and into the world of America of November 30, 1941, as the pageant unfolds and the America of yesteryear metamorphoses, under Japanese bombs on Pearl Harbor, into the country
it is still becoming today.
FIGURE 0.1 Lower Manhattan seen from the S.S. Coamo leaving New York, 1941.
Soon chartered as an army transport ship, the Coamo would be sunk in the Atlantic on December 2, 1942—with the largest loss of life on a U.S. merchant vessel during the war.
Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-fsa-8a37403.
PART I
Last Sunday at Peace
November 30, 1941
1
THE SUNDAY PAPERS
FIGURE 1.1 San Francisco newspaper vendor, December 8, 1941.
Photo by John Collier. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-fsa-8c33704.
4 Last Sunday at Peace: November 30, 1941
November 30, 1941, marched in its measured steps from the Far East across the
broad expanse of the Pacific, across meridians of longitude and time zones and
across the continental United States. It was Sunday, and Sunday brought with it
in the metropolis, and in cities large and small, the Sunday papers.
Long before the emergence of the electronic marvels that would bring the news
of the world to the palm of one’s hand or to a computer screen, long before the