Pearl Harbor Christmas by Stanley Weintraub Read Free Book Online Page A

situation on Wake itself, sixty marines fought on uselessly with their bolt-action 1903 Springfields. A chunk of shrapnel scraped the scalp of Private First Class Artie Stocks after ripping off his British-style World War I–vintage helmet and lodged in the bank behind him. He picked it up. Embossed on the fragment was the identification, “Made in Ohio USA.” American companies until ordered to cease had profited from scrap metal sales to Japan.
    Frustration abounded. U-boats had begun torpedoing tankers so close to the brightly lit Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico seaboards—fine target background not yet blacked out—that watchers ashore could see ships ablaze. (And five more submarines would leave pens on the Bay of Biscay on Christmas Day.) Hong Kong’s beleaguered and backtracking garrison was still gamely “holding out.”
    According to published reports from General MacArthur, American and Filipino troops had the situation in Luzon “well in hand,” which was, as Washington knew, unrealistic at best, as was his claim that many Japanese troop transports had been sunk by coast artillery and tanks. No artillery had defended the landing sites, and no tanks. Only carefully vetted reports from correspondents were permitted through MacArthur’s censorship. For the North American Newspaper Alliance, Royal Arch Gunnison reported under a Nichols Field dateline—the airbase had been devastated by Japanese bombers—that he was permitted to state that Nichols Field had been “lightly bombed” and that the morale of ground crews was “excellent.” He saw “three mud-covered green-dungaree boys” lifting a wounded comrade out of a machine-gun pit. It was “nothing much,” the injured soldier told Gunnison, “just a slight burn here in the side.” One of the others in the ground crew “cursed the Japanese in the most complete manner I have ever heard anyone told off”—perhaps a clue to what really occurred at Nichols Field, soon to be abandoned.
    MacArthur’s own regal communiqués, largely self-aggrandizing fantasy, made him a headlines hero. Of 142 issued by his headquarters before his escape to Australia on March 11, 1942, 109 communiqués identified only one person—Douglas MacArthur.

    FROM HIS BEDROOM Churchill dictated to John Martin a telegram to the British War Cabinet in London. “There was general agreement,” he noted,
    that if Hitler was held in Russia he must try something else, and that the most probable line was Spain and Portugal en route to North Africa.... There was general agreement that it was vital to forestall the Germans.... The President said that he was anxious that American land forces should give their support as quickly as possible wherever they could be most helpful, and favoured the idea of a plan to move into North Africa being prepared . . . with or without [Vichy French] invitation.
    It was agreed to remit the study of the project to Staffs.... It was recognised that shipping was plainly a most important factor. . . . In the course of conversation the President mentioned that he would propose at forthcoming conference that United States should relieve our troops in Northern Ireland, and spoke of sending three or four divisions there. I warmly welcomed this, and said I hope that one of the divisions would be an armoured division. It was not thought that this need conflict with preparations for a United States force for North Africa.
    Lord Halifax returned to his embassy worried about “how remote my mind and thoughts are from Winston’s and Max [Beaverbrook]’s.” Realizing how unprepared the United States remained, Churchill’s positive slant on future operations as he intended to guide them appalled Halifax. He worried whether the PM by force of personality and experience of war, however flawed, could impose his strategic ideas on the Americans. Churchill had failed in Norway in 1940 and again in Greece, to even heavier losses, earlier in 1941. Events had thrust Halifax