Pearl Harbor Christmas (22 page)

As the PM left the White House with Dr. Wilson for Union Station (Mackenzie King traveled in a separate vehicle as did Churchill’s staff), he rolled down the window of his car, claiming that he was short of breath. “There seems no air in this car. Is it a stuffy night, Charles?” He put his hand on Wilson’s knee, saying, “It is a great comfort to have you with me.” The emotional effect of his heart seizure lingered.

Dinner hour at 7:30 found Roosevelt and Hopkins in their beds, exhausted. A butler reported, “Theys flat out in bed eating off trays.” Eleanor had concocted scrambled eggs, the first time she had done so since the hectic evening of Pearl Harbor.

December 29, 1941

A
LTHOUGH SOME DESTROYERS in Division 59 had weighed anchor and left Surabaja,
Paul Jones
and
Barker
remained, and
Ford
and
Pope,
damaged at Cavite, were still undergoing “minor overhaul.” Ensign Cross managed to create some errands ashore in the morning and “on the way, firmed up the dinner date with the little sales-girls in the jewelry shop. That evening he and [Lt.] Joe Harmon took off on their date. Harmon’s ‘blind date’ was a ‘knockout.’ They really lucked out in having the two most beautiful girls in Surabaja. The shop was closed and the four took off for the Dutch Naval Officer’s Club. There was a bit of commotion when they entered and were shown a table. Finally the Maitrè D went to their table and asked them to leave for the Club’s rules specified that only officers and [their] families were to be served.” The young women, very likely used to racial exclusion, “took it in stride and they all went to a small, neat café which was familiar to the girls and the four had a delightful time, with music, dancing, a few drinks. Conversation,
etc.
The evening ended with the hope that more would follow.” (But the destroyers soon departed. Harmon, later to become a navy pilot, would be killed in action flying an F6F “Hellcat” fighter.)

Victimized by friendly fire,
Peary
remained in mechanical trouble, continuing underway east of Celebes in early morning darkness with only one screw, yet making twenty-two knots. With steering from the bridge gone, the navigator called out directions to the captain on the afterdeck. Mooring between two Dutch islands in the Moluccan Sea group, the crew at daybreak lowered a motor whaleboat to the beach. At cone-dominated, volcanic Ternate they found “medical people” to treat the wounded while shipfitters welded and patched shrapnel holes in the stern. Seamen gathered large palm leaves to conceal the deck and blend in with the shoreline. Another trip in brought “lots of beer, bread and fresh fruit, and for the officers and CPOs some excellent Dutch rum.” A landing force brought to shore

plenty of mosquito nets . . . to ward off the large ants and mosquito [e]s. As lush fruit trees extended to the water’s edge, Chief Pharmacist’s Mate [Ed] Parker, with the Captain’s blessing, urged the men to get as much rest as possible and also pointed out that the last few days and nights had undoubtedly tightened up their guts, that the remedy . . . was close at hand, with all the mangoes. . . . All hands scattered, eating all the while and then gathering [fruit] for the future. The way the men buried their faces into the pink flesh of the mangoes until the juices ran down their mostly naked chests forecast, relative to Parker’s fear of constipation problems, [that] it would soon disappear. In anticipation, a small latrine area was dug.

Dutch settlers hoped that that
Peary
would remain and defend them, but all that Lieutenant Bermingham could do—his orders were for Darwin—was to turn over fifteen rifles, four Browning (“BAR”) automatic rifles, and four boxes of ammunition—4,800 rounds—to cope with the Japanese.
Peary’
s presence, Bermingham explained, was their real danger. A radio station high on a hill overlooking the ship overheard and reported that a Japanese landing attempt at Manado, from an offshore cruiser, had been turned away. (Manado, across the Moluccan Sea, would be attacked again, and occupied, on January 11. Ternate’s pathetic defenses would soon be useless.)

When two planes overhead that afternoon appeared to be Navy PBY reconnaissance craft, Bermingham ordered out the whaleboat into open water to flag them down, and he described to the airmen the friendly fire attack by the RAAF the day before. One of the pilots suggested that the
Peary’
s jury-rigged topside after the Cavite raid altered its recognition-book appearance from overhead and promised to return the next day to lead the ship out, skimming the surface for a distance to avoid giving away its location. Bermingham then ordered all fresh water use aboard cut off and men to wash themselves and their clothes at the beach. Lieutenant M. M. Kovisto, the executive officer, called the men to attention in order to hold a burial service for Seaman Quineaux, after which the captain eulogized the French-Canadian’s love of his adopted country. A sailor who died at sea by custom should be buried at sea. Weights, a line, and the body were placed on a canvas stretcher and stowed in the bow of the whaleboat. Bermingham “and a six-man firing squad embarked and the MWB went out to the end of the deep channel. After three volleys, the body was consigned to the deep.”

FROM LATERAL #3, one of the branch tunnels carved into the rock of Corregidor, where MacArthur now had a desk and makeshift headquarters, he drafted an urgent order to commandeer supplies for Bataan, which had been disastrously neglected both in peace and in war. Huge stocks of everything that might have been useful had been neglected, then left onshore to looters and the enemy. A few supply officers instructed to remain at Intramuros until the Japanese closed in hired barges and boats to haul food to Bataan yet were under contradictory orders from MacArthur to leave sufficient quantities for the population of Manila. In the central Luzon plain, at Cabanatuan, with no transport available, 4,500 tons of rice, enough to feed the 105,000 soldiers and refugees on Bataan for five months, had been abandoned to the Japanese, as well as 3,400,000 gallons of fuel and a half-million rounds of rifle ammunition. Barely days later, troops on Bataan were on short rations and even low in potable water.

Just before noon enemy bombers began raiding Topside. Fleeing residents, including Arthur and Jean MacArthur, huddled in a tunnel for three and a half hours while the general, refusing to wear a helmet, watched his house of several days collapse, and as the wreckage scattered and watchers flattened themselves to the ground, a Filipino soldier took off his own helmet and held it over MacArthur’s head. The general was unscathed, but Sergeant Domingo Adversario took a small shrapnel hit to his hand. MacArthur would award him a Purple Heart and a Silver Star, the beginning of his wholesale decoration of troops—and his inner circle.

Jean MacArthur with the general after their evacuation to Corregidor.
Courtesy MacArthur Memorial Library & Archives

IN MALAYA the Japanese began assaulting Kuantan on the eastern coast, almost parallel to Kuala Lumpur on the other side of the Kra Peninsula. A brigade of the 9th Indian Division, protecting cratered airfields that had no usable planes, fought them off until their British commander was taken prisoner. Then what was left of the brigade surrendered. “Why did your men raise their hands so quickly?” he was asked.

As Colonel Tsuji reported (in a somewhat stilted translation), the British officer explained, “When we defend the coast, you come from the dense jungle. When we defend the land, you come from the sea. Is it not war for enemies to face each other? This is not war. There will be no other way than retreat. . . .”

RETREAT WAS ALSO ON THE MIND of harried General Halder, who saw no other solution on the vast Russian front. “A very bad day!” he began his diary for December 29. In the Crimea, Count Hans von Sponeck, commanding, had withdrawn the 46th Division from the Kerch Peninsula “under the first shock of an enemy landing.... He has immediately been removed from his post, but the damage done can hardly be repaired.” In Army Group Center, in snow and ice,

the enemy’s superiority on the fronts of the Second Army and Second Panzer Army is beginning to tell. We did succeed in sealing the penetrations, but the situation on the overextended front, at which the enemy keeps hammering with ever new concentrations, is very difficult in view of the exhaustion of our troops.... The bulk of the enemy is advancing unchecked in the direction of Yukhnov (paratroop landings!). Kaluga and the salient to the north must be abandoned in order to collect forces strong enough to stem the enemy breakthrough across the Oka. On the army front to the north, partly heavy fighting resulting in enemy penetrations.

Everywhere on the Russian front in the north, after successive enemy breakthroughs “the army line had to be taken farther back again”—Halder’s euphemism for withdrawals. “At Führer Hq., dramatic telephone conversations with [Colonel-General] von Richthofen, who temporarily will take over command of VI Corps. . . .” Hitler had relieved yet another general, putting a pragmatic air force general in command of ground troops.

STILL AT SEA but in radio listening contact with England, Anthony Eden, according to Oliver Harvey, was “very annoyed at inadequate publicity given to our visit on B.B.C. midnight news.” While Churchill was acquiring broadcast time and newspaper headlines, the foreign secretary had been on a far more dangerous mission to a far more difficult allied head of state. Harvey assured Eden that the morning papers will give his return “the fullest treatment but he won’t be comforted. He has written a telegram [to his London office] he wants to have sent off as soon as possible. . . . (We can’t break wireless silence till midday.) He thinks we should have a photographer and a press officer with us. . . . What a curse publicity is. I can’t really feel it matters very much, though it is important that the Russians should not think we don’t attach enormous importance to the visit and their hospitality and that the British should also understand this.” Useful publicity, he thought, “can’t be overdone,” but he was getting no cooperation from his traveling colleague, career diplomat Sir Alexander Cadogan—“he just grunts and goes away to bed. ‘All prima donnas,’ he says.”