Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Resilience: A Country at War

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

On today’s episode in our series, Resilience, we talk about what happened immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of over 2,400 American servicemen. How did the US government respond and how quickly did they mobilize? What, exactly, became the plan, and how did they carry it out? Joining us for part of the episode is Professor Lorraine Bannai. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome. Welcome to the next episode in our series, Resilience, the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a shock to the entire nation. One eyewitness said, it was awful. Great ships were dying before my eyes. Strangely enough, at first, I didn't realize that men were dying too. So let's talk about what happened immediately following the attack and the death of over 2,400 American servicemen. How did the U.S. government respond and how quickly did they mobilize? What exactly became the plan and how did they carry it out? I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.

In our last episode, we heard from author Craig Nelson, and he briefly mentioned a few things that I want to talk about more in depth today. So let's start back in the U.S. Capitol in the afternoon of December 7th, 1941. President Roosevelt had been wrapping up his lunch in a study on the second floor of the White House when the phone rang. A White House operator connected FDR to a man who insisted on speaking with him immediately. connected FDR to a man who insisted on speaking with him immediately. That man was Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, and he relayed the news that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor just after 8 o'clock in the morning, local time. While the president's aide was in disbelief,

Roosevelt knew immediately that it was true. He said, quote, It was just the kind of unexpected thing that the Japanese would do. And at the very time they were discussing peace in the Pacific, they were plotting to overthrow it. The White House became a flurry of activity. Roosevelt and his advisors spent the rest of the afternoon and late into the evening gathering reports from Hawaii and planning the next steps. The next step for Roosevelt? Addressing Congress and asking for a declaration of a war against Japan. Roosevelt dictated his speech to his secretary, Grace Tully.

And while we know it now is one of the most famous speeches made by a U.S. president, it did go through some draft changes. Originally, Roosevelt had Grace write down the phrase, a date which will live in world history, which was later amended to the more reverberating, a date which will live in infamy. Hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI rounded up nearly 1,300 Japanese American community and religious leaders, arresting them without charging them with a crime and freezing their assets. The FBI searched the private homes of thousands of Japanese-American residents on the West Coast, seizing items that were considered contraband, like shortwave radios. In order to justify these actions, people like Lieutenant General John DeWitt

prepared a report that was filled with known falsehoods, such as examples of sabotage that were later revealed to be the result of cows, for example. The families of the nearly 1,300 community and religious leaders didn't see their loved ones again for years. didn't see their loved ones again for years. At 12.30 p.m. the next afternoon, about 24 hours after his phone call with Frank Knox, the House of Representatives, Roosevelt addressed Congress and the nation who listened on their radios.

The speech began. Yesterday, December 7th, 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. And it concluded six minutes later with... With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941,

a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire. Before the day was through, Congress approved a joint resolution declaring war on Japan. Roosevelt addressed the nation again on December 9th during a radio fireside chat, saying in part, We are now in this war. We are all in it, all the way. Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories,

the changing fortunes of war. It's important to note that during both his speech to Congress and his fireside chat, FDR carefully constructed his words. The United States was declaring war on Japan only and was not officially at war with Germany or Italy. But that changed pretty quickly two days later when Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The U.S. responded in kind and quickly declared war on the two countries. Across the nation, news of the attack and Roosevelt's call for war spread quickly, and Americans began to consider what came next. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a man named Alan Lomax, who was a consultant working on a project for the Library of Congress, sent out a telegram to the project's field workers

in 10 different towns across the United States. He asked these field workers to record the reactions of ordinary Americans to the bombing and Congress's declaration of war. Let's take a listen. This first clip was recorded in Austin, Texas, on December 9th. Mr. Drogic, what do you think about Japan's action last Sunday?

I think they were all wrong. Well, for what reason? Do you think there was any justification, whatever, on the part of Japan for making that attack? I don't think there was any. What do you think the United States should have done then? Declare war on them. In other words, you were behind Roosevelt's resolution. 100%. That's good.

Do you think that all America that's falling, I mean all of your associates that are falling in, are pretty well behind? As far as I can see, all of them. But not all Americans were sure how they felt about the United States going to war. Here's a young woman listed as Miss Fargo from Bloomington, Indiana, who was interviewed on December 10th. From a student standpoint, I wonder if we don't lean a little bit towards this, especially when we heard the president's speech the other day and heard this unanimous, enthusiastic reaction from our congressman. We've been brought up for the past 19 and 20 years to abhor a war and to treat it as something

that is not a part of our culture. And then in the past few years, I don't believe we are too surprised at the Japanese action because we've seen what they've done in the past and we've watched them fairly closely. But weren't we a little bit used to the idea that we wanted to avoid everything at all costs and then this sudden foreign war policy thrown upon us was rather a shock to this generation because I for one was rather surprised at the congressman the other day cheering so enthusiastically and And yet, I think if I were there, I probably would have done the same thing. Well, we might assume that Ms. Fargo's hesitancy was uncommon. It's closer to the truth that many Americans weren't sure how they felt about the war. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, there had been a pretty robust anti-war effort spearheaded by a popular public figure, Charles Lindbergh.

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before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Yes, the Charles Lindbergh who piloted his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, from New York to Paris in 1927. A flight that made him the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. He was an instant American hero. Lindbergh was extremely popular

in Europe, too, and he moved with his family to Britain in the late 1930s after the murder of his two-year-old son and the very public trial that followed. They spent a lot of time touring the continent and favored Germany. In October of 1938, Germany's minister, a leader of the Nazi party, Hermann Goering, presented Lindbergh with the service cross of the German eagle to honor his services to world aviation. Lindbergh was criticized harshly in the press for appearing to be cozy with the Third Reich, but he recovered and maintained his popularity with the American public. The Lindberghs returned to the United States just months before the start of World War II.

Lindbergh became vocal about his opinion that the U.S. should maintain neutrality. At the time, more than 80 percent of the American public shared his opinion that the U.S. should not become involved in the European conflict. A few weeks after Germany invaded Poland, Lindbergh gave a series of nationwide radio addresses, similar to the way FDR gave his fireside chats. He called for isolationism and used some pretty pro-Germany language. He said, from 1936 to 1939, as I traveled through European countries, I saw the phenomenal military strength of Germany growing like a giant at the side of an aged and complacent England. In England, there was organization without spirit. In France, there was spirit without organization. In Germany, there were both.

The longer I lived in Europe, the more I felt that no outside influence could solve the problems of European nations or bring them lasting peace. They must work out their own destiny, as we must work out ours. He also made some anti-Semitic remarks about Jewish ownership of the media in the United States, saying that we must ask who owns and influences the newspaper, the news picture, and the radio station. If our people know the truth, our country is not likely to enter the war. Through it all, his speeches and addresses made headlines, and people found themselves polarized. He had both ardent supporters and disgusted critics. Dorothy Thompson, an outspoken journalist who wrote out against Hitler, dismissed Lindbergh and her column as nothing more than a pro-Nazi recipient of a German medal. Lindbergh's position was in complete contrast with that of President Roosevelt,

by the way, and the two men often seemed to be using their radio addresses to debate one another. In fact, at one point, Lindbergh publicly resigned his commission as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps, saying that he had no honorable alternative after Roosevelt questioned his loyalty. honorable alternative after Roosevelt questioned his loyalty. In 1940, Lindbergh spoke to the newly formed America First Committee. The America First Committee was a nationwide organization started at Yale University that opposed American intervention in the war, and it had some pretty high-profile members. It was started by Robert Douglas Stewart Jr., whose father chaired the Quaker Oats fortune. Two future presidents were former America First members Gerald Ford and John F. Kennedy, as was the future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. Lindbergh officially joined the group in April of 1941.

During a speech Lindbergh gave in Des Moines, Iowa in September of 1941 called, Who Are the War Agitators? He told the crowd that the Roosevelt administration, the British, and the Jewish people were pushing the country toward war. His public support began to wane, and the anti-Semitic undertones of his Iowa speech severely damaged the reputations of both Charles Lindbergh and the America First movement. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. officially entered the war, the America First Committee quickly disbanded. Its members dispersed, and many of them joined the active-duty military. But Charles Lindbergh, remember, had previously and very publicly resigned his commission during his spat with Roosevelt. He ultimately did express public support for the U.S. war effort and even went so far as to appeal to

General Arnold to be reinstated, but no one in the War Department was willing to support a man whose loyalty to the United States hadn't always seemed solid. Roosevelt and his administration were not keen on reinstating an officer who had spent the last two years making them out to be the bad guys. Denied, Lindbergh instead entered the war effort as a civilian, serving as a consultant to the Ford Motor Company and the United Aircraft Corporation. He flew 50 missions in the Pacific Theater as a civilian consultant. It's also interesting to note that Henry Ford was wildly anti-Semitic and spent a large portion of his own fortune publishing things in newspapers denouncing Jews. In weeks following the attack, suspicion of Japanese Americans increased. West Coast newspapers, military leaders, and political figures, including then-California Attorney General Earl Warren,

we talked about in our previous series, Momentum, all said there was no way to distinguish loyal Japanese Americans from the potentially disloyal Japanese Americans. He publicly agreed that the Japanese were, quote, loyal Japanese Americans. He publicly agreed that the Japanese were, quote, ideally situated to carry into execution a tremendous program of sabotage on a mass scale. Warren later wrote in his 1970s memoir that he had deeply regretted the removal order, and my own testimony advocating for it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens. He said, whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school, and friends, it was conscience-stricken.

It was wrong to react so impulsively without positive evidence of disloyalty. Public hysteria and racism skyrocketed on the West Coast. Los Angeles' Mayor Fletcher Brown contributed to the alarm, saying, Right here in our own city are those who may spring to action at any appointed time in accordance with a prearranged plan. to action at any appointed time in accordance with a pre-arranged plan, wherein each of our little Japanese friends will know his part in the event of a possible attempted invasion or air raid. Away from the West Coast, politicians in cities and states were also beginning to make public statements. Idaho's governor, Chase Clark, was particularly vicious, publicly saying, a good solution to the Jap

problem in Idaho and the nation would be to send them all back to Japan and then sink the island. Japanese American residents in states like Washington, California, and Oregon were forced to endure new heights of scrutiny and insults from their neighbors. One woman recalled, wherever I went, I felt so self-conscious and embarrassed. I went to the library once, and this handsome woman, about 50, in a pretty dress, gray-haired, tall, looked at me and stuck her tongue out. I couldn't believe it. And then on the bus in Los Angeles, I heard two women in front of me. They knew I could hear. They were saying one thing is certain. We should get all them Japs, line them along the Pacific Ocean, and shoot them. President Roosevelt received contradictory

advice about what steps to take next. His military advisors recommended barring persons of Japanese descent, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, from the West Coast as a safeguard against the potential for espionage and sabotage. But the Justice Department initially questioned the necessity of such drastic measures. Ultimately, the shock of Pearl Harbor and Japanese advances and atrocities in the Philippines, which we talked about in Episode 3, fueled the already tense race relations around the nation. Roosevelt approved the military's proposal. Professor Lorraine Benai has written and spoken widely on the wartime Japanese-American incarceration and its present-day relevance. Here she is speaking about Executive Order 9066. The weight of the country turned on Japanese-Americans. There was the call of the popular press and politicians on every level for

the removal of Japanese-Americans to take place. Hearing those calls, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. And that order was basically a blank check. It was really broadly written. And it basically delegated to the Secretary of War and any commanders that he appointed to basically impose any restrictions on movement of any person anywhere in that person's discretion. And it was written that broadly. Pursuant to that, Congress passed a statute that said that any military order that would be issued pursuant to that mandate would be a federal crime. In other words, anyone who disobeyed a military order could be prosecuted.

It's important to note that while Roosevelt essentially succumbed to political, military, and public pressure to forcefully remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast, he wasn't exactly hesitant about it. Roosevelt had shown a lifelong hostility toward Japanese Americans. Greg Robinson, who is the author of By Order of the President, writes, FDR had a long and unvaried history of viewing Japanese Americans in racialized terms, that is, as essentially Japanese in their identity and emotional allegiance. In the years before World War I, Roosevelt considered immigration part of the

Japanese threat to the West Coast. During the 1920s, when Roosevelt urged better relations with Japan, he supported immigration restrictions and legal discrimination in order to deter Japanese American settlement. And leading up to the war, President Roosevelt and a number of his military advisors had spent years tracking the loyalty of Japanese Americans. The Office of Naval Intelligence kept tabs on Japanese communities as early as 1936, and Roosevelt escalated it from there by ordering lists of Japanese Americans in Hawaii to be recorded, just in case they ever needed to be rounded up in an emergency. And in 1940, Congress enacted the Alien Registration Act, which required adult resident aliens to register annually with the government.

Roosevelt's track record indicates that it took very little convincing for him to issue Executive Order 9066. The order, issued on February 19, 1942, authorized the military to exclude any or all persons from areas of the United States designated as military areas. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the executive order creating the relocation centers, but the principal architects of the relocation program were four men, John J. McCloy, who was the Assistant Secretary of War, and three U.S. Army officers, Major General Alan Guion, Colonel Carl Bendiston, and Lieutenant General John DeWitt. John DeWitt, who was at the time a 62-year-old decorated four-star Army general, is the most well-known implementer of Executive Order 9066. He used its vagueness to create a two-step plan for the rounding up of what he called undesirables. DeWitt wasn't

exactly known for having a reasonable, laid-back attitude about things. He was in San Francisco the evening after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when air raid sirens were sounded. An estimated 35 Japanese warplanes were supposedly sighted above San Francisco Bay on a reconnaissance mission. DeWitt was furious about the lack of precautions the city took during the air raids. He blasted leaders at a civil defense council meeting the next day saying, death and destruction are likely to come to the city at any moment. The people of San Francisco do not seem to appreciate that we're at war in every sense. I've come here because we want action and we want action now. Unless definite and stern action is taken to correct last night's deficiencies, a great deal of destruction will come.

And he took it even further by saying that it might have been a good thing if the planes had dropped bombs to awaken the city. He said, if I can't knock these facts into your heads with words, I'll have to turn you over to the police and let them knock them into you with clubs. When the city's leaders turned the tables on DeWitt and said people were wondering why he failed to give orders to fire on the planes, DeWitt said, I say it's none of their business. San Francisco woke up this morning without a single death from bombs. Isn't that enough? He was clearly not a man who was used to having his thoughts or actions called into question by the people around him. It was DeWitt who recommended that the 1942 Rose Bowl football game, normally played in Pasadena, California every New Year's Day, should be moved to a different location. He worried that the

well-attended game would put a target on the city. For the first and only time in its history, For the first and only time in its history, the 1942 Rose Bowl game was moved across the country to North Carolina. By early January 1942, DeWitt became an outspoken proponent of incarcerating Japanese Americans. In fact, he initially also made the suggestion that German and Italian-descended citizens also faced detainment. And although no more attacks on the U.S. came from Japan, and no espionage or sabotage efforts on the part of Japanese-Americans had ever been uncovered by the FBI or the military, DeWitt assumed it meant that a large-scale effort was imminent. What came next would change the lives and futures of Japanese Americans forever. Thanks for joining me today, friends. It was so good of you to be here. I'll see you next time.

Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review or sharing a link to it on your social media? All of those things help podcasters out so much. Here's Where It Gets Interesting is written and researched by executive producer Heather Jackson. Our audio engineer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. See you again soon. you