On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists took down the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. The event shocked the nation, and rallied support for the government to such an extent that opposing voices were silenced. It was repeated over and over that America was at war. To justify that claim, the attacks were everywhere compared with Japan’s “surprise attack” on Pearl Harbor in 1941. I thought the Pearl Harbor comparison was propaganda. The 9-11 attack was private terrorism. There had been attacks abroad against a Navy ship in Yemen and a couple of embassies in east Africa, but Americans were not expecting such a thing in New York or Washington, D.C. In contrast, the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy was a surprise only in the particulars. America was in an undeclared war with German submarines in the Atlantic and on the verge of war with Japan in the Pacific. In September 2001 the nation was at peace; in December 1941 we were one inch from the most horrendous war in human history. The situations were not the same.
For the 60thanniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, I wrote the next column, which ran in the Seattle Times of Dec. 5, 2001. It was based on my reading of the Times from September, October, November and December 1941. It sketches the overture to the Pearl Harbor attacks — a narrative much different from one Americans had just experienced regarding 9-11.
It was 60 years ago Friday that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. But the year 2001, for all the parallels, is but a pale shadow of 1941.
Before Sept. 11, there was nary a hint of an attack on the United States. A perusal of the Seattle Times in the three months before Dec. 7, 1941, finds it filled with war and foreboding.
We remember that the United States was at peace before being attacked by Japan. We remember wrong. America already had one foot in the war. We had enacted a military draft. Soldiers were in our movies, in ads, everywhere. On Oct. 30, the entire Third Army Division, 12,000 men, paraded through Tacoma. A war boom was on. In Seattle, there were traffic jams on East Marginal Way as 21,000 workers commuted to Boeing to assemble bombers for Britain.
And U.S. policy? The president was saying, “We shall do everything in our power to crush Hitler and his Nazi forces.”
You would expect such a bellicose statement after Dec. 7. He said it Sept. 1. He said it many times. Roosevelt was mentally at war with Germany months before it was official. He viewed Germany as a direct threat to the United States.
Many Americans did not. Ex-President Herbert Hoover said Sept. 17 that if the German army could not cross the English Channel, it could not cross the Atlantic. Anyway, Hitler had his hands full in Russia. Hoover urged Roosevelt to lay off the “war phobia,” which was stifling the freedom to dissent.
Antiwar forces, derided as isolationists, were finding it tough going. On Sept. 23, 1941, the America First Committee was denied the use of the Eagles Auditorium in Seattle because of its views. Its speaker, Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, D-Mont., used a rented theater half the size, with an overflow crowd.
Clerics made an issue of aid to Russia. In early October, when Roosevelt referred in a speech to the religious freedom guaranteed by the Soviet constitution, clerics erupted. Gerald Shaughnessy, the Catholic bishop of Seattle, denounced the president’s statement as deceptive.
That was on page one Oct. 3.
As these arguments swirled, the U.S. Navy began escorting convoys in the North Atlantic, with orders to fire if fired upon.
On Sept. 5, it was reported that a U-boat had fired on the destroyer Greer. On Sept. 12, the president said on the radio,
“I tell you the blunt fact that the German submarine fired first upon the American destroyer without warning, and with deliberate design to sink her.” That was true; but the Greer had been chasing the sub.
On Sept. 12, the president authorized the Navy to shoot first.
On Oct. 17, a U-boat torpedoed but did not sink the destroyer Kearny, killing 21 Americans, including five from Seattle. On Oct. 29, the Navy said the Kearny fired first — and issued no apologies. On Oct. 31, the destroyer Reuben James was sunk, with large loss of life.
Each of these was a page-one story in the Times, as were battles in Russia. There were fewer stories about Japan, most of them on inside pages.
In July, the president had embargoed shipments of oil to Japan, to protest its seizure of Indochina. On Sept. 2, the Japanese high command said Japan was being squeezed by the Allies, and that it might have to “break through the encirclement by force.”
On Oct. 17, a page-one banner proclaimed, “Japanese War Chiefs Rule!” Japan’s civilian prime minister had been replaced by Gen. Hideki Tojo, the war minister.
On Oct. 25, Henry Knox, secretary of the Navy, declared that a “collision” in the Far East was virtually inevitable.
On Nov. 5, Japan sent diplomat Saburo Karusu in what the Times called a “last attempt” to avert war.
On Nov. 25, Sen. Claude Pepper, D-Fla., whom the Times called an “administration mouthpiece,” said of Karusu, “If he’s come with a threat, we’ll throw him in the Pacific.”
On Nov. 27, the talks broke down on Japan’s demand that the United States stop helping China. This was on page 11.
On Dec. 6, Japan ominously recalled two attachés from Washington, D.C., the NYK Line recalled chiefs from Singapore and Bombay, and British forces went on alert in Singapore. That was on page one.
The next morning, Pearl Harbor.
A surprise? In specific, yes; in general, no.
In that sense and in the scale of conflict that followed, Dec. 7, 1941, had little resemblance to Sept. 11, 2001.
© 2001 The Seattle Times