Photo of the Day

Reading the paper on Dec. 14, 1941

On the topic of the Pearl Harbor attack, a week ago today, the newspaper has little to say.

The USS Oklahoma during salvage operations in 1943. The ship lost 429 crewmen in the Pearl Harbor attack. She was righted and stripped of usable armaments but was too damaged to be repaired.

The Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, is on his return trip to Washington after traveling to Hawaii to inspect the damage.

He has refused to answer reporters’ questions, saying he’ll make no public statement until he has conferred with President Roosevelt.

Tojo was captured after the Japanese surrender. His suicide attempt failed. He was tried and convicted of war crimes and was executed by hanging in 1948. Right: American troops freed from a Japanese POW camp.

Yesterday, the Japanese War Minister, General Tojo, warned the Japanese people against ‘intoxication by initial victories,’ saying that, even though ‘right is on our side,’ a long war lay ahead.

As the Japanese continue their aerial bombardment of US air bases near Manila, the Army reports ongoing ground action there against the Japanese invasion force at its three Philippines landing zones.

Japanese map showing targets for its attacks on Dec. 8-10 [Japanese time zone], which initiated the "Great East Asian War." Left to right: Hong Kong, Kota Bharu, Singapore, Manila, Davao, Guam, Wake, Hawaii.

The US garrisons on Midway and Wake Island seem to be withstanding Japanese attacks at present, but communications with Guam have been severed, indicating the US installation there, with a civilian workforce and 550 US soldiers and Marines, has been captured.

[The Japanese attacks on Midway were brief and the US garrison there will hold but Wake Island will fall on December 23, 1941.]

Left: Japanese forces assault Hong Kong. Right: British surrender of Hong Kong, Dec. 25, 1941.

Japan has demanded the capitulation of the British crown colony of Hong Kong, declaring ‘Hong Kong’s fate is sealed,’ even as Chinese troops attempt to relieve pressure on the British garrison by engaging Japanese forces from the rear.

[The British will surrender Hong Kong to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941 after eighteen days of fighting.]

German forces in the Soviet Union, 1941.

The Soviet ambassador in Washington has dashed Allied hopes for a second front against the Japanese in Asia, saying his country will continue to focus its war efforts against Germany, where Hitler, he said, ‘is soaring to his doom.’

The ambassador’s announcement comes as Soviet forces, operating in heavy snow, are driving through German lines near Moscow and Leningrad, recapturing dozens of Russian villages, and forcing Germans into a headlong retreat.

Residents of Athens search for food debris in trash bins, 1941.

German occupation forces in France have executed one hundred young people alleged to have attacked German troops with guns or explosive devices, and an untold number of Frenchmen have been deported east to work in Nazi forced labor camps.

Radio Moscow, heard in London, reports that German and Italian troops in Greece are exporting all of the food they are able to get, and police have been called to disperse angry mobs of Greek citizens attacking food warehouses at the port in Piraeus.

Left: AustralisEXP map of the Strait of Magellan. Right: Drawing of Charles Darwin's ship The Beagle transiting the Strait of Magellan in his round-the-world trip, 1833.

The Chilean government has announced new defensive measures for the Strait of Magellan, which separates the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at its southern tip.

All coastal lighthouses are now closed and navigation of the Strait after dark is prohibited.

Chilean naval vessels will now escort vessels of any nationality along the 3,000-mile Chilean coast.

The Roosevelt family poses in the East Room, Christmas Eve 1941.

Celebrations will be held across the country tomorrow to mark the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

President Roosevelt has encouraged citizens to celebrate the day ‘with solemn fervor’ and the recognition that it is those freedoms which America is now defending in a world-wide conflict.

Grand Coulee Dam under construction. The project employed thousands of men during the Depression. The electrical power the dam generated enabled the production of aluminum needed in armaments and also plutonium which was used in the making of the atomic bomb.

The Federal Bureau of Reclamation announced yesterday the completion of the main structure of the Grand Coulee Dam across the Columbia River.

It was built with more than ten million cubic yards of concrete poured over the past six years.

[The final stages of the dam will be completed in 1942.]

Farmhouse in Westchester County, NY, 1936. Walker Evans photo.

Maria Butcher, age 37, a German-born mother of three from New York’s Westchester County, committed suicide yesterday by swallowing insecticide soon after her son, an Army private, came home on a two-day furlough.

Just before she died, Mrs. Butcher said she couldn’t bear the thought of war between her native and adopted countries or the thought of her son fighting against Germans.

Housing for Birmingham steel-workers, 1939.

And finally…

James McElveen, an eighteen-year-old messenger boy from Birmingham, Alabama, has sent the following telegram to President Roosevelt:

“I would like very much to join the United States Marines but have never grown any teeth.

I am in good condition in every other way, but they will not let me in.

I can eat as good as anybody who has a good set of teeth.

Please wire back collect if you can help me.”

******************************

I’ll see you on Monday.

— Brenda

Stories from the New York Times.