Sunday in Hell, page 5
In the United States economic adversity returned, leading to more government spending. The increase did ease the situation a little, but led to further disillusionment with the New Deal. On 16 February the second Agricultural Adjustment Act was signed by President Roosevelt. It maintained the soil conservation program; provided acreage allotments, parity payments, marketing quotas, and commodity loans to farmers, and authorized crop insurance corporations and the “ever-normal granary” proposals of Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace.
The continuing recession prompted passage of the Revenue Bill of 1938 by Congress, on grounds the tax concessions were needed to stimulate business. The bill reduced taxes on corporations and was supported by Republican and Democratic opponents of the New Deal.
In June President Roosevelt signed the Wage and Hours Act, raising the minimum wage for workers engaged in interstate commerce from 25 cents to 40 cents an hour. The act also limited work hours to 44 per week in the first year of the law, dropping to 40 hours the third year. In passing the law, Congress declared its power to ban interstate shipment of products made by unlawful exploitation of child labor.
The 10 April annexation of Austria by Germany, followed by Hitler's growing pressure on Czechoslovakia began affecting a shift in the American government's interest in foreign affairs. On 26 May the House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (HUAC) was formed. For the first time, isolationism vs. limited intervention became an active issue. Talk was widespread about the possibility of war, but few believed it likely. In September concerns were heightened when the European crisis was brought on by German demands in the Sudetenland, then part of Czechoslovakia.
Though President Roosevelt sent private memorandums to Britain, France, Germany and Czechoslovakia on 26 September, recommending arbitration, the Munich Pact was signed on 29 September by the Czech and the British prime ministers. In effect, the Pact surrendered the Sudetenland to Germany along with all Czechoslovakian fortresses on the frontier with Germany. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, key figure in the negotiations with Adolf Hitler, returned to England and announced he had secured “peace in our time.”
In 8 November’s congressional elections the Democrats lost seven Senate seats but kept a 69-23 majority, with four seats going to minor parties. In the House Democrats lost 70 seats, for a 261-164 majority, with four seats going to minor parties.
Technological advances continued at a steady pace in 1938. James Slayter and John H. Thomas of Newark, Ohio, perfected methods to manufacture fiberglass. The government issued patents for nylon, the pioneer synthetic fabric and Du Pont manufactured toothbrushes with nylon bristles, the first product to reach the market. Scientists made further advances in atomic physics.
On 23 June, civilian air transportation in the U.S. came under federal control with the passage of the Civil Aeronautics Act, which established the Civil Aeronautics Authority as an independent agency of the federal government. The agency regulated the licensing of civilian pilots, use of airways, introduction of new equipment, and rules of flight. Howard Hughes won the International Harmon Trophy for his flight around the world in the record time of three days, 19 hours, and 14 minutes.29
Pan American Airways Suspends Pacific China Clipper Service
Using the Martin M-130 seaplanes, Pan American Airways had become the dominant transoceanic airline. By the final months of 1937, the Clipper service had gained a reputation as a dependable and elegant service that literally reduced the size of the world. On regular flights across the Pacific, the bulk of the cargo was mail, leaving room for usually eight to ten passengers who could stretch out in three large compartments, and a larger, combination lounge and dining salon. During the 18-to-20 hour flight from San Francisco to Hawaii, passengers could enjoy cocktails in the lounge and formal evening meals. Although uncomfortable in comparison to current-day standards, passengers did not seem bothered by the loud noise of the four engines that droned for the total flight time of about 60 hours spread over five days en route to Manila. So famous were the Pan American Clipper flying boats that even Hollywood joined in the chorus of praise by producing a movie named “China Clipper,” starring Humphrey Bogart.
Pan American’s ambitious plans for expansion were tragically cut short, however, when two Clippers, the Samoan Clipper and the Hawaiian Clipper, crashed in 1937 and 1938 within six months of each other, killing all on board. With only two Martin flying boats remaining, the company was forced to cut its schedule by 60 percent. Public confidence in the Clipper service plummeted and passenger business dropped off sharply.
During the same period Pan American’s monopolistic practices in the international market began drawing fire from many quarters, including pioneer aircraft builder Grover Loening, who resigned from Pan American’s board, citing “the monopolistic aims of...one company in a tragic blunder of overexpansion, under-preparation and overworking...” The U.S. Department of Commerce subsequently withdrew its authorization for Pan American to use American Samoa as a landing point. The company’s chief executive officer temporarily turned his attention to transatlantic routes.30
The US Navy Continues to Modernize
On 30 September 1937 the Navy commissioned the aircraft carrier Yorktown (CV-5) at the Naval Operating Base in Norfolk, Virginia. Yorktown was the second Navy combatant designed and built as an aircraft carrier. Under construction since 21 May 1934, sponsored by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt - the President’s wife - Yorktown was launched on 4 April 1936. Nearly twice the length and displacement tonnage of the converted Langley (CV-1), the big, new carrier was fifty feet longer and displaced 5,300 tons more than Ranger. The second carrier in the Yorktown class, the Enterprise (CV-6), launched 3 October 1936 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, Newport News, was commissioned 12 May 1938.
In November 1938 the U.S. Army Signal Corps subjected their early radar to exhaustive tests by the Coast Artillery. Developed in 1936 and demonstrated before the Secretary of War in 1937, the new technology would prove to be invaluable to the nation’s defense in the years to come.
During 14-18 November, delegates to the annual convention of the Committee for Industrial Organization met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and unanimously elected John L. Lewis president. On 13 December, the Works Progress Administration issued a report indicating federal relief dropped to 2,122,960, compared with 3,184,000 the previous year. The National Safety Council put the number of automobile-related deaths for the year at more than 32,000. About one third of the fatalities involved pedestrians. Collisions between motor vehicles accounted for almost 9,000 deaths.
In the meantime, movie attendance dropped 40% for the year. The top moneymaker of 1938 was “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which made Walt Disney famous around the world, and became a film classic. On 30 October Orson Welles staged his radio play “War of the Worlds,” based on the novel by H.G. Wells. The realistically performed news reports of an invasion from Mars caused widespread panic, demonstrating the power of the new medium to influence large numbers of people. Author Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel Prize for Literature with her novel, The Good Earth, another of her popular stories set in China.31
The Subtle Preparations for War in Hawaii
While attitudes in the continental United States toward accelerating international violence remained essentially unchanged in the mid-30s on into the year 1938, subtle changes began occurring in Hawaii. They began as undercurrents not directly related to war.
In 1935 a lava flow that threatened the city of Hilo on the “big island” of Hawaii, led to suggestions for formation of a major disaster council. In January 1938, an earthquake brought about a meeting of Honolulu city-county department heads and certain other persons to discuss “all phases of precaution against possible disaster.” Only such disasters as “earthquake, epidemic, tidal wave or conflagration” were mentioned. While the word “war” wasn’t publicly mentioned and discussions didn’t result in action either, the seeds of organized preparation for a major emergency had been planted. Events involving Japan’s deepening incursion into China would eventually be the catalysts for spurring Hawaii toward preparations for a possible attack on the islands.32
In November 1936, the first of three important events had been set in motion, which placed the Japanese firmly on the path to general war. The Japanese Army negotiated an Anti-Comentern Pact with Germany and Italy, intended to check the Soviets’ ambitions in the Far East. Then came the Miyazaki Plan of 1936-37, which involved the expansion of heavy industry to enable Japan to wage a total war for three years. Next began the “special undeclared war” in China, when the Japanese clashed with Chinese forces outside Peking on 7 July 1937.
Japan's special undeclared war started with a series of successes in 1937, but began to bog down in late 1938. To initiate their 1937 campaign against coastal cities and territories, the Japanese had drawn down their garrisons in Manchuria. They were attempting to swallow a giant, and as Napoleon learned in Czarist Russia in the early 19th century, success at first mushroomed, then the enemy began to mount counterattacks using guerrilla warfare. By the end of September 1937, the Japanese had dispatched ten divisions to northern China, and five to Shanghai. The Chinese Nationalist Army evacuated Shanghai after 11 November 1937, and the Japanese moved against Nanking, which fell on 13 December amid scenes of mass murder, rape, torture and pillage.
Guerrilla attacks began in early 1938, and guerrilla war and banditry spread into Manchuria. During 1938, clashes with the Soviets erupted. The Japanese then faced the need for increasing security in Manchuria while continuing their aggressive offensive in China and avoiding further serious clashes with the Soviets.
Japan’s drive deeper into China required expanded control of the Chinese population, and spawned a series of internal problems affecting trade, finance, and the need for a larger merchant fleet. The growing need for a merchant fleet for import and export was competing with a determined Naval rearmament program in overcrowded shipbuilding yards. Congestion in shipyards was causing massive construction delays in their Navy’s most important fleet units, thus dragging out their preparations for three years of general war. A side effect in the eyes of the Western democracies was Japan’s drive for expansion and dominance in the Far East appeared to be slowing. Japan could have her Miyazaki Plan to prepare for three years of war, but she couldn’t have the plan and a war in China simultaneously. Then, beginning in August 1939, came a series of jolts that, for a time, disillusioned the Japanese and their now firmly-in-control, militarist regime.
On 23 August Germany signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, preparatory to the Wehrmacht’s invasion of Poland nine days later. The signing effectively negated the Anti-Comentern Pact Japan had signed with Germany and Italy in 1936, and occurred as Soviet forces were quite literally taking apart Japanese forces in Mongolia, at the battle of Nomonhan. Defeat of the Japanese in Mongolia, disillusionment with Germany and a new-found respect for Britain and France, which had finally shown the will to resist Hitler, caused Japan to make for the sidelines after September 1939, the month general war exploded in Europe.33
Germany invaded Poland on 1 September. On 3 September Britain and France declared war on Germany. In response on 3 September, first Belgium, and then the United States - in a fireside chat by President Roosevelt - declared their neutrality, while on the same day thirty Americans died when a German submarine sank the British passenger ship Athenia. The following day, Secretary of State Cordell Hull advised U.S. citizens to travel to Europe only under “imperative necessity.” On 17 September, as the German Army was driving east, deep into Poland, the Soviets struck west into Poland, completing the country’s overwhelming, aggressive dismemberment by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
At the beginning of 1939, America was remaining aloof from the struggles besetting the Europeans and Chinese. Historical novels had never been so plentiful. Among books published that year was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, a powerful novel centered on an Oklahoma farm family who lose their farm to the bank and travel to California to seek work as migrant farm laborers. The book, described as a proletarian novel examined in moving detail the plight of the Okies, and by extension the plight of all people caught up in tragic circumstances not of their own making. The novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and was the basis for a motion picture classic.
Also published in 1939 was Adventures of a Young Man by John Dos Passos, the first novel of trilogy entitled District of Columbia; The Wild Palms by William Faulkner, a novel; Captain Horatio Hornblower by C.S. Forester; Collected Poems by Robert Frost; Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter, a collection of stories; and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg, four volumes of history. On 1 May the Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; for biography, to Benjamin Franklin by Carl Van Doren; for history, A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott; for poetry, Selected Poems by John Fletcher; and for drama, Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert E. Sherwood.
As the year progressed, film producers contended with the prospect of losing entirely the lucrative European market. Nevertheless, this was the year of “Gone With the Wind,” one of the most expensive and most successful movies of all time.
On 10 May the Methodist Church issued a Declaration of Union which reunited some 8,000,000 American Methodists after 109 years of division. The conflict had begun in 1830 with the first of two major crises, which first separated the Methodist Protestant Church from the Methodist Episcopal Church over the question of Episcopal authority, and the second which further separated the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, from the Episcopal Church in 1844.34
Aboard the USS Tennessee—
On 1 June Midshipmen Karl Border and his younger brother, Bob Border, graduated with the US Naval Academy’s class of 1939. Karl, who began keeping a diary when he entered the Academy the summer of 1935, recorded the event, intending to mark the beginning of a long, proud, happy life of service and camaraderie. On 24 June, the brand new ensigns reported aboard the battleship Tennessee (BB-43), in San Pedro, California, which had been her Pacific Fleet homeport since 1921. Their father, a senior Navy captain after 34 years of service, had, in the background, quietly intervened in behalf of his sons to obtain their assignments to the same ship after they graduated from Annapolis. Again, Karl captured the lifelong memory in his diary.35
Captain (USN) Lee S. Border, USNA Class of 1905 (center), and his two sons, Ensigns Robert L. Border (left) and Karl F. Border, graduation day, 1 June 1939. Borders’ Collection
USS Tennessee (BB-43), Underway, 27 September 1939, with roommates Ensigns Bob and Karl Border on Board. USN
Peacetime service in the battleship divisions, as on all Navy combatants, involved an annual cycle of training, maintenance, and readiness exercises. Tennessee’s yearly schedule included competitions in gunnery and engineering performance and an annual fleet problem, a large-scale war game in which most or all of the United States Fleet was organized into opposing forces and presented with a variety of strategic and tactical situations to resolve. Beginning with Fleet Problem I in 1923 and continuing through Fleet Problem XXI in April 1940, Tennessee had a prominent share of these battle exercises.
Yet her individual proficiency was not neglected. During the competitive year 1922 and 1923, her crew made the highest aggregate score in the list of record practices fired by her guns of various caliber and won the “E” for excellence in gunnery. In 1923 and 1924, her crew again won the gunnery “E” as well as the prized Battle Efficiency Pennant for the highest combined total score in gunnery and engineering competition. During 1925, she took part in joint Army-Navy maneuvers to test the defenses of Hawaii before visiting Australia and New Zealand. Subsequent fleet problems and tactical exercises took Tennessee from Hawaii to the Caribbean and Atlantic, and from Alaskan waters to Panama.36
Four days after Bob, Karl, and their classmates joined Tennesse's crew, and were readjusting to life on America’s west coast - and in the Navy’s Battleship Force, Pacific Fleet - Pan American Airways was reaching overseas again, this time from America’s east coast. Transatlantic passenger air service began on 28 June when the Dixie Clipper, one of Pan American’s huge, new B-314 flying boats, left Port Washington, Long Island, with 22 passengers aboard, and reached Lisbon, Portugal 23 hours and 52 minutes later.
While the German’s 1 September invasion of Poland forcibly nudged the United States toward war allied with the Western Democracies, pragmatic reluctance fueled by the drag of lingering isolationism and a glaring lack of preparedness, continued to hold the nation in check. President Roosevelt’s transfer of fifty destroyers to Great Britain, and his fireside chat declaring the nation’s neutrality the same day 30 Americans died during the sinking of the British ship Athenia, clearly demonstrated the dilemma the nation faced.
Nevertheless, on 18 October, by presidential executive order, the United States closed all her ports to belligerent submarines. On 4 November the U.S. Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1939, repealing the prohibition of arms exports in the 1937 law, and authorizing the “cash and carry” sale of arms to belligerent powers.
Ernest Orlando Lawrence of the University of California received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of the cyclotron and for subsequent discoveries in the field of radioactivity, specifically the study of artificially radioactive elements. With Lawrence’s invention of the cyclotron, nuclear scientists had an invaluable instrument with which to produce subatomic particles required for study of nuclear reactions. The invention also proved to be a crucial milestone in the research and development of atomic weapons.37
