Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. Last Sunday was December 7th, I wonder how many of you gave that day serious thought. My guest today will help us do that. Craig Shirley is a political consultant and a noted biographer of Ronald Reagan, and he’s also the author of, "December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World". Mr. Shirley, welcome to the program.
Craig Shirley: Thank you, Grant, thank you very much.
GR: We appreciate you making the time to be with us. So let me just start with a kind of a basic question about this historical event. What do you think is the most important thing about either the Pearl Harbor attack or its immediate aftermath that most Americans don’t know today?
CS: Well, I think the most obvious is that it completely changed America's outlook from being an isolationist country to becoming an internationalist country, that changed overnight. Isolationism had been prevalent in the United States from the end of World War One right up until December 7th, 1941. You know, there was a saying going around America after World War One that all we got was death, debt and George M. Cohan, and we became an increasingly internationalist country as we limited immigration from Japan as we passed various neutrality acts in the 1930s, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic president. And by 1941, everybody was isolationist. FDR, the White House, everybody knew war was coming, but everybody also had their head in the sand and wanted to avoid war at all costs with either Germany, Italy or Japan.
GR: Yeah. You know, your answer is interesting because it, that's exactly the question I was going to ask you a little bit later, but I'll follow up on it now. I was going to point to that isolation, but you already described it very well. And the fact that this was a very quick pivot point, I mean, it just, like you say, this changed overnight. And I was trying to think of, have there been any other similar moments in our history like that? The only thing that I could come up with was maybe the firing on Fort Sumter, but even then there was a lot of lead up to that and so I couldn't, you know, yeah.
CS: Yes. There was, I'm trying to think also, I suppose after, during the War of 1812, we barred immigration, obviously, from Great Britain and also, not from France, but from Great Britain and we became, we were somewhat of an isolationist country more because of the distance than anything else until Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay. And then we, obviously the Spanish-American War was an internationalist war. But we've gone through periods, you know, where we've been isolationist and internationalist and isolationist and internationalists again, but we've been pretty much internationalists since 1941, sometimes more expansively, other times less expansively. But even Trump, you know, people say he's an isolationist, but he did, he solved eight wars around the world. He’s solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and he's trying to stop the war in Ukraine. So even, you know, so he's accused of that, but it's really not true. It's just that I don't think he's as activist as other presidents have been in the past.
GR: Certainly seems more reluctant than previous presidents to commit ground troops and that seems to be a line that he has drawn on that. Well let me, let me go back to the, yeah go ahead.
CS: Let me just say one thing, Grant, is just that anti-communism animated a lot of that response on our part from 1946 up until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991.
GR: Right, right, yes, that was a that was a major part of our internationalism. Well, let me go back to this attack of the Japanese. And I think looking back on it now, it's hard, I think, to believe that an attack of that magnitude could have surprised the Americans so much. So how did the Japanese pull that off?
CS: You know, military planners still study it today because of the precision it was carried off with, because of the professionalism, obviously, the stealth that it was carried off with. Because don't forget, is that on December 7th and 8th, the Japanese just didn't hit Honolulu, they just didn't hit Pearl Harbor, they hit Wake Island, they hit the Philippines, they hit Indochina. They hit, you know, a half dozen different locations simultaneously orchestrated and organized, all at the same time, which was really, you know, just from the standpoint of accomplishment, it was a masterstroke in a way, because, you know, I mean, you just didn't think that they could get away with that. Of course they'd already been in China and they'd already gotten into bad relations with the United States because of their rape of Nan King and they probably murdered 250,000 civilians when they invaded China in 1939. So there was already bad blood there between the United States. I always believed China was an ally of the United States in 1939. But, I’m losing train of my thought, I guess, but is that we did everything we could to avoid war with Japan. The secretary of state, you know, set out a four point plan. He offered the Japanese something like $25 million, we would lift the oil embargo, we would lift the junk metal embargo and Japan, in turn, had to sign a proclamation of peace and that they would invade no more countries and they rejected this. So we really tried to avoid war with Japan before December 7th.
GR: Was it maybe the surprise then came from a little bit of wishful thinking that we would avoid that war?
CS: It was absolutely it was wishful thinking. But you know, it was also, you know, they moved a carrier fleet, four of their first line carriers and escort ships 4000 miles across the Pacific without being detected, then launched this completely surprise attack using 300 planes on Pearl Harbor. And when they did so, it reminded me what Frank Borman said. Frank Borman was an astronaut who was charged with the investigation of the fire of Apollo 1, and when he was testifying before Congress a senator asked him, he says, how did this happen? And he says, Senator, it was a failure of imagination. And that's what happened here, we just didn't believe, we didn't imagine that the Japanese would be so audacious or they would be so intent on war, Tojo was intent on a war. That they could transport these four carriers plus escort ships, refueling ships, and I think they made two stops in the Atlantic or the Pacific to refuel, then carried on, and then withdrew their forces without ever getting harmed whatsoever, not even a shot fired at them. And it was just, we never imagined that they would take that monumental step and initiate World War Two.
GR: I’m Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations, and my guest is Craig Shirley. He’s the author of, "December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World". So, we got a bit lucky, though, as bad as the attack was that day, regarding our navy. Briefly remind us of how that happened.
CS: Well, you're absolutely right, we were lucky in a number of ways. The Japanese main target was the, was our four aircraft carriers that were there, stationed at Pearl Harbor. But they had only recently left, two went back to San Diego to be repaired. One was down in the Coral Sea, that was Bill Halsey's carrier. He was out at sea, and so none of the carriers were actually there in Pearl Harbor, so they escaped the carnage. We were also lucky in another regard. And people have thought about this, is that everybody in America was mad that we didn't go out and attack the Japanese after they attacked us. But if we sent our ships out, they would have been slaughtered, we would've been wiped out. The Japanese ships had much better firepower, much thicker plating, and could survive an attack, whereas their shells would have gone right through the hulls of most of our ships. The ships were built much more for speed than for protection. And they would have been, the whole, you know, instead of losing 3,000 men as we did on December 7th, we would have lost maybe 30,000 men if we got into an open fight with the Japanese.
GR: And had much less of a navy.
CS: Yes.
GR: So, you obviously get into a lot of the stories about heroism and sacrifice on that day. Is there one story that sticks with you the most, after you wrote the book?
CS: Well, I got to think about that one, Grant, because there's so many stories.
GR: Yeah, it’s a tough question.
CS: There's so many stories. There's, is that the heroism of the nurses treating the injured, the badly injured sailors at the hospital, that in itself is worth a book right there. The nurses who have been killed, nurses who have been injured, who still managed to get back to the hospital and managed to treat many of the wounded, you know, in surgeries and drawing blood and, you know, applying anesthesia and doing whatever they could, so that in itself is one. I think also, you know, you have to say, Dory Miller's actions when she received the Navy Cross for need to be cited. Dory Miller was an African-American, was a ship's steward, was not trained for combat. And it's interesting, too, he was named Dory because his real name was Doris. And the story is, his father, his mother and father had five sons, and the father wanted a daughter, and he ended up with, Dory was the sixth and the father named Doris, even though he was a boy, because he wanted a daughter so badly. So he named him Doris, so he got the nickname Dory. But Dory went to the stern of a ship, manned a machine gun and managed to blast away at several Japanese zeros. And I think, in fact, he shot down several, but he was brave in the face of terrible tragedy and carnage all around him. And he later received the Navy Cross and, of course, the sad part of the end of the story of Dory Miller is that, he was we went back into combat, okay, I got one other good story too, I'll tell you, is that he went right back into combat and was lost in a battle, was killed in a battle (in) 1943 and was lost at sea, remains were never found. There's something like 80,000 Americans who were lost at sea in World War Two, lost in the Pacific, whose remains were never found. One other story I can tell you is that, you know, whenever I go out and give talks about my books, I always ask people, I said, you know, your history, your memories are so important to historians, and there are lots of repositories now on the internet. You know, there's the World War Two museum down in New Orleans and other places. Please record your stories, your big stories, your little stories, your stories about sacrifice or victory gardens or whatever else, is that because to the historians, they’re invaluable. And this one woman raised her hand and said, Mr. Shirley, I have a story.I said, what's that? She said, my father was on the USS Oklahoma on December 7th, 1941, which as you know, the only two battleships who were sunk and destroyed, were sunk, was USS Arizona, which was of course obliterated, and the USS Oklahoma, which took four Japanese torpedoes, capsized and sunk. It was later refloated, but it had to be fixed, be repaired substantially. But her father was a mechanic below decks and he was there when the ship capsized. And for a week he was in, he was hanging by a pipe in greasy, dirty, cold water. The sounds of men screaming all around him, screaming and dying. And he was there for a week until he finally heard the sound, you know, of course, sailors were tapping on the hulls. A week later, he heard the sound of acetylene torches, and the whole time he didn't know whether it was the Americans coming to save him or Japanese coming to kill him.
GR: Wow.
CS: But what is interesting, he wasn’t sent stateside, you know, said, well, you've got traumatic stress disorder, you have to go to recover at home. He was sent right back into the fleet and served all four years of the war.
GR: Wow. You're listening to the Campbell conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Craig Shirley. He's a noted biographer of Ronald Reagan and he's also the author of, "December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World" and we've been discussing that historical event. So, you mentioned a little bit earlier in our conversation that the focus of the United States post-World War Two being that of fighting communism, you know, opposing the Soviet Union. And I wanted to ask you a question that might be related to that in a way, and that has to do with the American views toward Japan and the Japanese. Obviously, they became very negative during the war. Today, they are our very good friends, and we see them as some kind of partial counterbalance in a way to China in that area of the world. When did our views toward them start to soften post-World War Two? Was there a particular event or development that was instrumental in that, or was it the Cold War that really shifted our thinking?
CS: I think it was a number of things, Grant. I think that Douglas MacArthur was, of course, the Supreme commander of the Pacific Forces and then became the steward of Japan after World War Two. And what he did to rebuild the Japanese society and economy and culture is absolutely amazing. He really should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize for what he did to rebuild Japan and bring Western values that, you know, women would get the vote and they would no longer be, you know, is that it was not state policy to discriminate against them anymore or, you know, or promote some kind of macho, which is what it was before the Shogun culture before and during World War Two, it no longer prevailed after World War Two. What he did with their industrial plant, with so many things, is that so they became, I think they really appreciated, the Japanese people really appreciate what Douglas MacArthur did for them. And that helped warm relations greatly between Japan, the United States, and, of course, the Communist philosophy was not something it was interesting to the Japanese people. They didn't they didn't want collectivism, they'd been introduced to the profit motive and they'd been introduced to consumerism. And that's what they wanted, a Western style economy and Western style government and a Western style society. And so that also repelled them from the Soviets and moved them toward the United States during the Cold War.
GR: And I wanted to ask this other question too. You have obviously spoken to a lot of people about this event. You've done a lot of talks about the book, and I was thinking about this, that among the Americans who weren't alive in 1941, which is the vast majority of us at this point.
CS: Yes.
GR: I imagine there is some kind of, still, some kind of generational divide in the immediacy of this event for people in their memories. I'll give you an example, take myself. My father fought in World War Two, Pearl Harbor is part of my working memory. Is there a generation where, in your experience, where this becomes ancient history for people like, that happened just a really long time ago, and it's not foremost in their mind?
CS: I think that's true, but what made World War Two different from, say, the Vietnam War or even World War One is that FDR, you'll never find me criticizing FDR. I think he was, together he and Churchill saved the world from fascism and from Nazism. You know, I mean, the New Deal didn't work, but FDR was trying to get the economy going. You'll never find me criticizing either Eleanor Roosevelt or Franklin Roosevelt, despite, you know, their being Democrats and my background is Republican, is that he got all the American people, all the American people had a stake in the war, it wasn't just the young men who were enlisting and who were then later drafted. My father was, as an example, my father was a Boy Scout during World War two. And his job, this is the government using the Boy Scouts, to hang up promotional posters at supermarkets and bars and restaurants and churches like, ‘Loose Lips Sink ships’, and, ‘Johnny Got His Zero’ he got another zero, you know, and stuff like that. And then my mother had her own victory garden, and I thought victory gardens before I started this book, I thought it was kind of a PR stunt by the FDR administration. My mother got indignant when I asked her about it because she's still alive, she's 94, she's still alive. And she got indignant, she said, I had a victory garden and everybody knew had a victory garden. And I did a little research, and I found by 1943, something like 40% of all vegetables eaten, consumed in the States were grown in victory gardens because we were sending everything overseas to not just the American fighting men, to the Russian fighting men, to the to the British fighting man, to the Australian fighting man, to the Chinese, to the free Chinese, to the French underground. You know, that's why I say FDR was literally president of the world during World War Two because he was arming and supplying all these other countries and not just the United States. So, I don't know where I'm ending up with this, but what he did, it really unified Americans to fight against the war. So as a result, everybody had a stake in the war. Everybody, you know, engaged in scrap drives and rubber drives and paper drives and everybody, you know, it's interesting, Grant, because in, I wrote about that four years, five years after December 7th, never once did I find a letter to an editor or editorial board, anybody complaining about the sacrifice or the rationing or anything. Nobody ever, nobody complained about going without gasoline or going with little gasoline. The national speed limit was set in during World War Two, the national speed limit was 35 miles an hour. Can you imagine driving from New York to California at 35 miles an hour?
GR: (laughter)
CS: You know, it would take you months. But nobody complained, nobody complained. Everybody was part of the effort.
GR: It was a different, yeah. I see what you're saying about the uniqueness of this particular time. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Craig Shirley. He's the author of, "December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World". I want to get you to engage, we've got about, oh, I don't know, 4 or 5 minutes left. I want to try to squeeze in maybe three questions if I can. First one is I want to get you to engage in a little alternative history if you don't mind. What do you think would have been America's path had the Japanese not attacked us that December?
CS: We would have continued to be an isolationist country. The United Nations would have never been created, we may not have gone into Korea, we may not have gone to Vietnam. We would continue being an isolationist country, you know, one of Newton’s three laws was that, you know, an object in motion has a tendency to stay in motion. Well, we were in motion toward isolationism. You know, very well that Charles Lindbergh might have been elected President of the United States in 1944 / 1948. It was interesting too is that everybody was isolationist. Republicans and Democrats were equally, they were all, Democrats and Republicans were all part of the America First movement. They were going to run candidates in every congressional district in 1942. We would have continued that way because the bad taste of World War One would have continued unabated throughout the next few succeeding generations. I mean, we may have become a little bit more internationalist in the face of communism, but I think we still would have remained more of an isolationist country than international country had Japan not attacked.
GR: And I guess I have to wonder what would have happened in Europe had that not happened. Let me ask you a related question to that, it's more depressing, actually. Let's imagine something like this were to happen today, god forbid, in our current political climate, do you think that this country would be able to unite the way it did in World War Two?
CS: No.
GR: Or do you think we would just immediately descend into mutual recriminations? It was your fault, no, it was your fault. Would the country be even further divided?
CS: You know, many republics fail in their third century. You know, Greece, Rome, France is on the fifth republic. Is that, I'm not sure that America is special enough to survive its third century. Because, now, let me just say, is that we've always been this nonsense about unity, we've only been united twice in our lives. That was for several years after December 7th, 1941, and for several months after September 11th. But even September 11th fell into sharp partisan disagreement over everything, our union deals and over the war and over men and material, over the economy, everything. And I think that it would just be the same way, only worse, is that we've been, historians will tell you that maybe 30% of the American people were against the war with, the Revolutionary War, the war with King George III in England. And as a matter of fact, is that after the Revolutionary War, 100,000 Americans got on sailing ships and left the United States because they did not want to live under Republican rule, small, our Republican rule, they did not want to live, they wanted to live under the British crown. And so they left and they went to Jamaica, they went back to Europe, they went a lot of places. And it's been that way every time, whether, the Civil War was about our very divisions and World War One, it took three weeks to agree on a war declaration, and three dozen congressmen voted against it. So those are the only two times, December 7th and September 11th.
GR: Okay, I’m going to put you on the spot this last question, you literally have five – ten seconds to answer it, but it's about movies about Pearl Harbor. They've made a bunch of them. My favorite still is, “From Here to Eternity”, but that's more of an interpersonal drama. Which one do you think does the best job of capturing what it was like?
CS: “Tora! Tora! Tora!”
GR: Okay, great. We'll have to leave it there, it was a fascinating conversation. That was Craig Shirley. And again, his book is titled, "December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World". It's a great read and you'll learn a lot about America when you check it out. Thanks so much for making the time to talk with me.
CS: Thank you very much. Merry Christmas.
GR: You too. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
