Pearl Harbor Christmas Read Online Free PDF

dinner at 8.30. This we refused, and went early to bed.”
    Long warned not to send Christmas cards, as Nazism was in effect the new religion of the Reich , Germans were now forbidden to waste valuable paper by sending New Year’s cards, which had become a covert substitute. As minister of information and czar of public communication, Joseph Goebbels had already forbidden radio stations to play traditional Christmas hymns, with “ O Tannenbaum ” excepted, as its words made no reference to the holiday. Small tabletop Christmas trees had been a tradition for more than two hundred years, but trees were scarce, and their decoration—even with rationed candles—would create suspicion.

    IN WASHINGTON on Monday morning, December 22, the President, armed with newspapers, mail, and messages, planned to breakfast, as usual, in bed. Eleanor—as she was not on her own elsewhere—arrived at his bedside to tick off her own itinerary. FDR’s confidential messages were far more dreary than the trio of headlines in the New York Times , which published what was released to reporters and wire sources, or had passed army and navy censorship:
    80 JAPANESE TRANSPORTS APPEAR OFF LUZON
    U.S. SANK OR DAMAGED 14 U-BOATS IN ATLANTIC
     
    HITLER OUSTS ARMY HEAD, TAKES FULL CONTROL
    The Japanese were landing 43,000 troops at Lingayen Gulf, and MacArthur’s communiqués were nothing but boastful fiction or damage control to prepare the public for the worst. Army personnel on Luzon numbered about 15,000, plus 65,000 poorly trained and inadequately armed Filipinos, the best of them the Philippine Scouts. The German subs sunk off the Atlantic coast were equally fictitious, nothing more than depth charges dropped near suspected quarry that might have been fish. Hitler had indeed taken control of the Wehrmacht to forbid further withdrawals on the frigid Russian front. The newspapers set before the President would not report the end of resistance on Wake Island for two more days, but Admiral Ugaki’s diary on the 23rd—nearly a day earlier in Washington—recorded epic resistance by the overwhelmed marine garrison:
    One of the hardest nuts to crack, the attack on Wake Island, might have been finished this morning, but contrary to my expectations, no report has come out. Not only the senior staff but all of the staff were almost impatient. At last, about 1100, a telegram message came that the attacks had been made. They approached the coast at 0035, began to land against furious enemy resistance, besides high seas. At about 1100 the occupation . . . was finished. This is a great relief.
    It had been an unexpectedly difficult episode and did not conclude as rapidly as reported. The Japanese had lost twelve times as many dead as had the Wake defenders, a submarine sunk with all hands, and also the destroyer Hayate . Ugaki added his sympathy for the commander of the Fourth Fleet “for the awkward position into which he was thrown.” He feared the admiral’s suicide.
    The new giant battleship Yamato, at 73,590 tons displacement, the largest capital ship afloat, with long-range 18.1-inch guns, had just completed its shakedown trials and had entered Kure harbor, anchoring west of the Nagato . Ugaki went aboard to inspect it. He was not satisfied. It had been designed with “old ideas.” 2 Airborne torpedoes had sunk the Prince of Wales and the Repulse in “the Malay Sea Battle,” but the admiral mused hopefully that “big guns will have their chance some day.”
    The President’s chief butler, Alonzo Fields, reaching Roosevelt’s bedroom, was surprised to hear, floating out the door, Mrs. Roosevelt’s normally correct if not affectionate voice objecting, “Why didn’t you tell me? I can’t find Mrs. Nesbitt anywhere. If only I had known . . .” Henrietta Nesbitt was the White House head cook— chef was a term too elevated for her menus.
    Roosevelt noticed Fields waiting warily at the door and lowered the emotional temperature slightly.