Sunday in hell, p.97
Sunday in Hell, page 97
Baggage! Her trunk with the rest of her most prized possessions. The twelve Tennessee wives and their baggage. She had the driver take her back to the pier to pick up the wives. They could bring their carrying cases, and any other baggage, like her trunk, they would have to have Matson ship it to Seattle. En route back to Pier 30N, she asked him what all the time on the cab would cost.
His answer once again was an unforgettable surprise. “Nothing, Mrs. Border. No charge. I’m glad to do it. I’ll bring the other ladies from the pier to the ticket office, for transportation to the airport.”
He made good on his promise. He made enough trips back and forth to deliver all 13 to the ticket office for their rides to the airport. Pregnant, frequently-seasick Barbara Batchelder threw up in the car on the way to the ticket office, but they got their baggage shipped, made it to the airport on time, Barbara got freshened up, and they left for a grand night flight to Seattle.
In the quarters of Captain and Mrs. George I. Springer in Puget Sound Navy Yard there was a flurry of activity as Captain Springer located the twelve cots and bedding to set up in the attic for the arriving guests who were coming home from Hawaii and war in the Pacific.
Exterior of the San Francisco Airport, circa December 1941. SFAMC
Interior of the San Francisco Airport, circa December 1941. SFHC
United Airlines Flight 11, the 21-passenger, Douglas Mainliner Club DC-3 named “City of Seattle,” which flew Joey Border and the Tennessee Twelve to Seattle, the night of 31 December 1941. They arrived in Seattle at midnight. SFAMC
United Airlines Flight 11 made brief stops in Oakland for sixteen minutes, Medford, Oregon for five minutes, and Portland for ten minutes. At each stop the pilot taxied the DC-3 Club Mainliner, named “The City of Seattle,” to the terminal, shut down one engine to offload and onload passengers and baggage, and then took off again. The weather was kind for the flight home, and they arrived in Seattle at midnight.
It was the end of a long, perilous, unforgettable journey, a joyous flight home, and joy was there to greet her. Bob had rounded up husbands and transportation for the other twelve wives and driven Joey’s mother to meet her. They arrived at the Springer’s quarters, and the next morning, she wrote the last diary entry in her entire life. The last words were. “…Beautiful flight - landed at midnight - Bob & mom met me in Seattle - So happy & so thrilled - home & in bed at 2:30 -…—–And so on for life—–”31
Chapter 14
Love and Sacrifice
Desperate affairs require desperate measures.
Admiral Viscount Nelson
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor provoked a profoundly righteous anger among the American people. A wave of patriotic indignation over Japanese duplicity and brutality swept the country. Isolationism virtually evaporated as a public issue, and all political parties closed ranks in support of the war effort.
While the country rapidly united in confronting enemies across both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the pain of the shattering surprise, bitter losses, and unrelenting controversies growing out of the attack eventually mandated an intense, deep look into the events leading to the disaster. On 9 December 1941, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, in his visit to Oahu, began the first of eight official investigations leading to the post-war Joint Congressional Committee investigation, which lasted from 15 November 1945 until 23 May 1946.
The committee’s exhaustive examination of facts led to twelve major conclusions and twenty-five recommendations, the recommendations couched in terms of “principles” addressing supervisory, administrative and organizational deficiencies found in the Military and Naval establishments. President Harry S. Truman released the Congressional report to the public on 20 July 1946.
Not too surprisingly, the questions the committee posed and the conclusions and recommendations reached did not - and probably never will - satisfy the suspicious, the cynics, or those naturally disposed to conspiracy theories regarding cyclically-restated beliefs President Roosevelt and perhaps a small group of conspirators knew how, from where, and when the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming, deliberately withheld the information - and restrained the Army and Navy’s daily operations that might have otherwise discovered the oncoming enemy fleet. Nevertheless, the committee found no evidence of a conspiracy, and over the years, after repeated examinations of existing and purported “new” evidence, such allegations have been firmly refuted with facts and logic.
On 11 December 1941, the United States declared war on Germany and Italy, the same day the two Japanese allies announced earlier they were at war with the United States. Indeed, in retrospect, despite the immediate tactical success the Japanese achieved at Pearl Harbor and in the six months afterward, the attack proved to be a monumental blunder. Allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy after signing the Tripartite Agreement of 27 September 1940, Japan, firmly seated in the brutal triumvirate of new totalitarians, had fully unleashed the dogs of war in the Pacific. To this day, World War II remains the ultimate measure of worldwide catastrophe and the most destructive war in human history, having taken an estimated 60 million lives.
On 31 December 1941, later the same morning Joey Border and twelve other Tennessee wives arrived in San Francisco hoping to be reunited with their husbands at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz formally took command of the United States Pacific Fleet. Early the following month, President Roosevelt dramatized the magnitude of the effort the war demanded by proclaiming a new set of production goals - 60,000 airplanes in 1942 and 125,000 in 1943; 45,000 tanks in 1942 and 75,000 in 1943; 20,000 antiaircraft guns in 1942 and 35,000 in 1943; half a million machine guns in 1942 and as many more in 1943; and 8 million deadweight tons of merchant shipping in 1942 and 10 million in 1943.
Vanished were the two illusions that America could serve only as an arsenal of democracy, contributing weapons without the men to wield them, or, conversely, that the nation could rely solely on its own fighting forces, leaving other anti-Axis nations to shift for themselves. “We must not only provide munitions for our own fighting forces,” Roosevelt advised Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, “but vast quantities to be used against the enemy in every appropriate theater of war.” A new Victory Program boosted the Army’s ultimate mobilization goal to 10 million men, and the War Department planned to have 71 divisions and 115 combat air groups organized by the end of 1942, with a total of 3.6 million men under arms. As Army planners had predicted back in the spring of 1941, the United States now seemed destined to become “the final reserve of the democracies both in manpower and munitions.”
Late in December 1941 President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met with their advisers in Washington (the ARCADIA Conference) to establish the basis of coalition strategy and combine immediate measures to meet the military crisis. They faced an agonizing dilemma. Prompt steps had to be taken to stem the spreading tide of Japanese conquest. On the other hand, it seemed likely that the coming year might see the collapse of Soviet resistance and of the British position in the Middle East. In this difficult situation the Allied leaders made a far-reaching decision that shaped the whole course of the war. Reaffirming the principle laid down in Anglo-American staff conversations in Washington ten months earlier, they agreed that the first and main effort must go into defeating Germany, the more formidable enemy. Japan’s turn would come later. Defeating Germany would involve a prolonged process of “closing and tightening the ring” about Fortress Europe. Operations in 1942 would have to be defensive and preparatory, though limited offensives might be undertaken if the opportunity offered. Not until 1943 at the earliest could the Allies contemplate a return to the European continent “across the Mediterranean, from Turkey into the Balkans, or by landings in Western Europe.”
Another important action taken at the ARCADIA Conference was to establish the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS). This was a committee consisting of the professional military chiefs of both countries, responsible to the President and Prime Minister for planning and directing the grand strategy of the coalition. Its American members were the Army Chief of Staff, General Marshall; the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold R. Stark (replaced early in 1942 by Admiral Ernest J. King); and the Chief (later Commanding General) of the Army Air Forces, Lieutenant General Henry H. Arnold. In July 1942 a fourth member was added, the President’s personal Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy.
Since the CCS normally sat in Washington, the British Chiefs of Staff, making up its British component, attended in person only at important conferences with the heads of state. In the intervals they were represented in Washington by the four senior members of the permanent British Joint Staff Mission, headed until late in 1944 by Field Marshal Sir John Dill, the former Chief of the British Imperial General Staff. Under the CCS a system of primarily military subordinate committees grew up, specifically designated to handle such matters as strategic and logistical planning, transportation, and communications. In summary, in the Pacific theater of operations, the United States and its Allies were to remain essentially on the defensive - but that didn’t last long.1
Mobilizing American Military and Industrial Might
In response to the attack on Pearl Harbor and declarations of war against Japan, Germany and Italy, the United States mobilized armed forces and a war production base like none ever seen in the history of the world. With the 1940 census reporting a population of slightly more than 131 million, America built the mightiest seagoing fighting force in the history of the world, consisting of 40 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, 24,000 aircraft, manned by 3.3 million men, plus a Marine Corps of 480,000 men.2
Complementing the two-ocean power of the United States Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, the nation’s shipbuilding industry produced an incomparable sealift capability. When the war began, the United States had only about 1,340 cargo ships and tankers. Despite the loss of 733 merchant ships of more than 1,000 gross tons prior to the September 1945 victory over Japan, the number of ships controlled by the War Shipping Administration grew to 4,221 with a deadweight tonnage of 44,940,000. Liberty ships and Victory ships comprised the great majority of additions to the merchant fleet, with approximately 2,400 being Victory ships (with another 300 built in Canada), an improved and faster cargo carrier constructed beginning in 1942.3
This vast fleet of merchant ships carried the materials and men needed for victory to all parts of the world. Between 7 December 1941 and the surrender of Japan 268,252,000 long tons of cargo left United States ports. About three fourths of this cargo was carried in ships controlled by the War Shipping Administration. Imports during the war ran to 70,652,000 tons of dry cargo and 35,118,000 tons brought back in tankers. A large part of this cargo was carried on ships defended by Navy Armed Guards. From the outbreak of war to 30 November 1945, over seven million Army personnel and more than one hundred and forty-one thousand civilians were transported overseas. The great majority was carried in Army and Navy transports and in merchant ships.
The Navy armed 6,236 of these ships to the end of World War II. Of this number 4,870 were United States flag ships; 244 were United States owned but under foreign flag; the rest were foreign owned and foreign flag ships. Armed Guards were placed aboard nearly all of the 5,114 United States owned and United States flag ships.4
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines resulted in a significant, but temporary, loss of strength for the U.S. Navy and initially placed the Navy in a defensive posture in the Pacific. The only weapon system immediately available to take the war to the enemy was the U.S. Submarine Force. President Roosevelt’s pre-war decision to conduct “unrestricted submarine warfare” in the event of hostilities with Japan, hastened the wartime success. Throughout the war, the growing U.S. submarine force was employed in attacks on Japanese merchant shipping as well as on Japanese fleet units when the opportunity presented itself. In both these tasks, the American submarine force was aided by magic-intelligence derived from broken Japanese codes. The Japanese Navy, with Mahanian intellectual roots, prepared tardily and insufficiently for an undersea onslaught not directly related to the “decisive battle” like those the Empire had waged in wars past. The American Navy won a spectacular victory.
The Japanese Merchant Marine lost 8.1 million tons of vessels during the war, with submarines accounting for 4.9 million tons (60%) of the losses. Additionally, U.S. submarines sank 700,000 tons of naval ships (about 30% of the total lost) including 8 aircraft carriers, 1 battleship and 11 cruisers. Of the total 288 U.S. submarines deployed throughout the war (including those stationed in the Atlantic), 52 submarines were lost with 48 destroyed in the war zones of the Pacific. American submariners, who comprised only 1.6% of the Navy, suffered the highest loss rate in the U.S. Armed Forces, with 22% killed.5
When war came with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Army leaders envisaged the eventual mobilization of 215 divisions, 61 of them armored, and 239 combat air groups, requiring a grand total, with supporting forces, of 8.8 million men. Five million of these would be hurled against the European Axis. War planners emphasized that victory over the Axis Powers would require a maximum military effort and full mobilization of America’s immense industrial resources.6
On 7 December 1941 the Army consisted of 1,685,403 men (including 275,889 in the Army Air Force) in 29 infantry, five armor, and two cavalry divisions. While this 435 percent increase since September 1939 was a magnificent achievement, brought about in large measure by bringing the National Guard and Reserves on active duty, shortages of equipment and trained personnel were still serious. Over the following three and a half years the Army expanded a further 492 percent, to 8,291,336 men in 89 divisions: sixty-six infantry, five airborne, sixteen armored, one cavalry, and one mountain infantry.
On 16 December 1944, forty-three divisions were deployed in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), including two airborne, ten armored and thirty-one infantry. Sixteen more divisions were preparing to join them. One armored division was on its way to the front. One airborne, one armored, and two infantry divisions were in England awaiting shipment to France. One airborne, three armored, and seven infantry divisions were in the final stages of training in the United States or were en route to Europe, but would not be deployed as complete units on the continent prior to the end of 1944.
At the end of the war in Europe there were a total of sixty-one divisions in the ETO: fifteen armored, forty-two infantry, and four airborne (one airborne division, the 13th, did not enter combat). Also, there were seven divisions in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO): one armored, five infantry (including one composed of African-American troops, the 93rd [designated Colored in the segregated Army of that era]), and the 10th Mountain. There were twenty-one divisions in the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO); one cavalry (dismounted), nineteen infantry (including one that did not enter combat, the 98th, and one that was Colored, again, units of the 93rd), and one airborne.
The nation’s factories produced a total of 100,408 light, medium and heavy tanks; tank destroyers, self-propelled artillery (officially called gun motor carriages or howitzer motor carriages) and other armored vehicles, to equip the Army and Marine Corps divisions, and provide lend lease supplies to our Allies.7 In addition, literally hundreds of thousands of trucks and jeeps came off America’s assembly lines to help move American and Allied armies forward against the enemy.
The Army Air Force expanded to a maximum of 16 Air Forces, 8 Air Divisions, and 91 Wings totaling a maximum, in July 1944, of 2,403,056 men and women serving at 1,479 airfields or bases and other locations during World War II. At peak strength that year, the Army Air Force was 31 percent of the total Army. To equip the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps with aircraft and send lend lease aircraft to Allies, American manufacturers delivered 295,959 aircraft: 158,880 to the Army Air Force; 73,711 to the Navy and Marines; and another 3,714 to other U.S. units, such as ground forces. The United Kingdom received 38,811; the Soviet Union 14,717; China 1,225, with an additional 4,901 to other nations. Among the totals, the Army Air Force received 99,487 combat aircraft; the Navy and Marines, 56,695; 8 went to other services; the United Kingdom 27,152; the Soviet Union 13,929; and other nations 3,172.8
The build-up in America’s armed forces included women and black Americans in unprecedented numbers. There were 140,000 women in the Army - including 38,000 in the Army Air Force; 100,000 in the Navy; 23,000 in the Marine Corps; 13,000 in the Coast Guard; 74,000 in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps; and over 1,000 Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). More than 25,000 women applied for WASP training, 1,830 were accepted and paid their own way to training in Texas. The program graduated 1,078 pilots who flew 60 million miles during operations - including overseas - ferrying aircraft of all makes and models. Accidents took the lives of 38, some in training. The WASP organization was disbanded 20 December 1944. They were considered civil service workers and weren’t recognized for their military service until 1977, the year the Air Force graduated its first post-WASP women pilots. Congress granted veteran status to those who served as WASP, and in 1979 issued official honorable discharges.9
Though blind biases and crippling prejudices against black Americans continued throughout the war to foment a tragic state of race relations in the United States - a blight on the nation’s enshrined ideals and evolving American culture - America’s black men and women answered the call to arms in unprecedented numbers. In the Army and Army Air Force, though black leaders repeatedly protested the services’ practices of segregation and restraint in placing black Americans in combat units, between December 1941 and June 1945, the number of black Americans serving increased from 99,206 to 694,818.10 Similar practices affected the placement of black Americans almost entirely in service organizations in the Navy and Marine Corps, nevertheless, approximately 165,500 blacks served in the Navy, 19,168 served in the Marine Corps, and another approximately 5,000 in the Coast Guard.11
