After Pearl Harbor

...There is very little of the sense of horror and drama that overtook this same country sixty years later after September 11, 2001...

...These were slapstick baubles starring such comedians as Jimmy Durante and Phil Silvers recycling the cliched jokes of training camp life: The drill sergeant gets splashed by the private driving through a mud hole and sends him to peel potatoes...

...Starved, oppressed, Hirohito's 72,000,000 slaves accept their lot with fatalism," was a typical summary of Japan in Life magazine...

...Politically, there were interesting differences between the reaction to Pearl Harbor and this year's attack...

...Shortly after the war started, General George C. Marshall gave an off-the-record briefing to a group of correspondents on the condition that none of it be printed...

...In fact, he continued, the war was being fought to preserve the "imperial supremacy of the pound," and Americans were "engaged in saving the economic system of internationalism and the imperial regime of the British Empire...

...In New York a radio announcer broke into the regular broadcast, "Japanese bombs have fallen on Hawaii and the PhilipDavid Brooks is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...There was a bigger difference then between highbrow magazines and mass market magazines...

...The highbrow magazines were much more critical and downbeat...

...One story in that newspaper predicted it would take 10 years...

...Four days after Pearl Harbor, the New York Times reported, "The Senate again broke into bitter and personal exchanges today as new demands were made that American losses in men, ships, planes and defense facilities in the Pacific be spread in detail, and at once, upon the public record...

...We now return you to the Polo Grounds" for the New York Giants game...

...The hit movies in 1941 were sugary effusions such as Babes on Broadway with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland dancing up a storm...

...Krock proceeded to publish the news under his own byline in the Times, on the pretext that he personally had not given his word...

...The newspapers ran mammoth headlines atop each day's front page edition, updating readers on the momentous events, but there was also room for front-page levity...

...News of the Pearl Harbor attack came over the radio during the third inning...

...There was also a general embrace of wartime censorship...

...American culture really has changed, and you can measure some of the changes by comparing the media then and now...

...All the weak bad things are only shadows beside our destiny now...

...They wanted to transform the way Europeans and Japanese lived, but they wanted to return to the American status quo when the nasty business of saving democracy was over...

...Americans were proud of their leaders...

...We have developed a hair-trigger sensitivity to the possibility that we may be hubristic...

...Most of all, they were proud of their ability to exert power as a force for good abroad...

...We know that we were able to endure and triumph in a 40-year Cold War...

...And yet when you look at today's media and compare them with the media of 60 years ago, it is clear that these days, our Americanness is more of a problem...

...Some who deal with news in Washington have come to the conclusion in the last few weeks, and come to it reluctantly, that government censorship is needed," the TRB columnist in the New Republic announced...

...We know what extraordinary things our country proceeded to achieve during World War II and in the immediate postwar period...

...In Seattle, mobs smashed the windows of stores that disregarded the blackout rules...

...Though Americans clearly feared German armies more than Japanese ones, there were warnings not to underrate the enemy in the Pacific...

...The hero falls for the pretty daughter of the camp commandant who catches them in an after-curfew clinch...

...We sense a contrast between our selfishness at home and the heroic war efforts of those who serve abroad...

...But the popular press in those days evinced no such guilt, and seemed unconscious of any friction between domestic pleasure and foreign combat...

...When Pearl Harbor finally came, it was not a great shock, the papers testify...

...the doves were on the far right, and Pearl Harbor had delivered a crushing blow to those isolationists...

...Instead, the dominant mood is one of relentless cheerfulness...

...Everybody had a patriotic duty, it seems, to be optimistic...

...In New York, the gossip columns noted that Joe DiMaggio and Franchot Tone had dined at Sardi's...

...What Coughlin called internationalism today's leftists call globalization...

...A similar sense of release was expressed by the Oregonian: "America—the greatest ship of state the world has known—is now a-sail, pressing for victory...

...Nippons, a team of Japanese Americans...

...A few days after Pearl Harbor, Father Coughlin, the strident radio priest, argued that World War II was a class war that would pit the rich nations (Britain, France, and the United States) against the have-not nations (Japan, Germany, and Italy...

...The Boston Globe had a running feature called "War Headlines A Year Ago" to remind readers where the war had stood 365 days before...

...There were scoreboard-type tables showing what a vast lead America had over the Axis powers in industrial production...

...The country's people saw no reason they should curtail their normal pleasures unless absolutely compelled to...

...Arthur Schlesinger, whose essays were everywhere in the weeks around Pearl Harbor, had a piece in the Nation arguing that if the Republican party was to have a future it had to jettison its heartland isolationism and embrace the East Coast establishment's internationalism...

...Texaco ran a series of advertisements describing life on U.S...

...The left and the Dewey wing of the GOP were then comfortable with the assertive use of American power...

...In the newspapers and magazines of 1941 there are juxtapositions that are jarring to our eyes...

...More then than now, life went on as before...

...Finally, America would get to do its part...

...America was also proud of its way of life...

...Each weapon was invariably described as the most formidable of its kind...

...In 1941, recriminations started almost immediately...

...Christmas celebrations went on as planned...

...News was closer to the mark with its forecast that "1942 and most of 1943 probably will be years of defense, years when preparation is being made for attack...

...There are no accounts of people crying or hugging each other for support...

...And people took the war effort seriously...

...The players paused for a minute before resuming the game that Paramount went on to win 6-3...

...The baseball owners' meetings in Chicago on December 8, 1941 went on as scheduled, with the Chicago Cubs acquiring a catcher...

...The Pittsburgh Post Gazette editorialized: "Like Gulliver bound by a multitude of small cords, the United States has been bound down by its own confusion...

...It's normal for a country to think highly of itself...

...Life did a story called "How to Tell Japs From the Chinese" which identified supposed Japanese facial features...

...We worry about being overbearing and causing people in other countries to hate us...

...Today we feel guilty about our consumerism, our interest in material things...

...In the first place, in 1941, after a decade of economic depression, Americans were co-religionists in a cult of peppiness...

...One explanation has to do with technology...

...Other explanations for the different responses are unrelated to technology...

...Meanwhile on the left, the Nation ran an essay called "Fruits of Appeasement" on the need to confront anti-Americanism with stern power...

...When you step back and contemplate the range of post-Pearl Harbor media, you are struck by how extraordinarily proud of itself America then was...

...Franklin Roosevelt sent a message to Congress a few days later that announced, "The long-known and the long-expected has thus taken place...

...The final outcome is not in doubt...

...We have become a country disproportionately familiar with our own failures...

...It was natural to be a combatant and a consumer both...

...The America Firsters, the Christian Front, the Coughlinites, the Mothers' Movement, and all other such groups were to be forgiven for their past protests, which had prevented America from being fully prepared for the war, so long as they enlisted in the fight now that it was here...

...mail boxes are located in several parts of the ship...

...They knew the war would be "long and grim," as the New York Times editorialized...

...But there was also something deeper and more inspiring than all the Dale Carnegie bonhomie...

...These bourgeois activities were not considered frivolous or somehow corrupting...

...Over the past weeks, when I've mentioned to people that I was reading through the post-Pearl Harbor press, they inevitably commented that I was probably encountering a lot of racist "Jap" bashing...

...We are more anxious about ourselves...

...On one page, a gripping story recounts an American setback in the Pacific, while on the facing page, a headline offers "How to Improve Your Bowling" or "Escape to the Sun: Florida has the cure for what's going to ail a lot of Americans this winter...

...It ran: "3 Sons Slain, 2 Left Alive for Vengeance...

...This World's Fair prose style carried over into descriptions of our military leaders and equipment...

...In their minds, if the press of the period is any indication, the war had started in 1939...

...The society columns carried on pretty much as before...

...Americans took the news, good and bad, with admirable serenity," they wrote in their first post-Pearl Harbor edition...

...Voters Wanted Strong Action Against Japan for Years, Gallup Institute Poll Finds," was the headline of a piece in the New York Times...

...It was proud most of all of its economic might...

...Americans after Pearl Harbor seemed to feel suddenly fulfilled, as if a great burden had been taken from their shoulders, the burden of inactivity, the anxiety that America had been shirking its global responsibilities...

...Merchandisers and resident buyers discounted the view that buyers' trips to the markets here next month would be cut to any substantial extent," a business reporter noted...

...It never would have occurred to journalists in 1941 to wonder why the Japanese hated Americans, or to think there could be any merit in their point of view...

...It had to happen...

...What's striking is not those pieces from 1941, but our present-day perception of ourselves...

...One searches for reasons why Americans responded so cheerfully to the disaster of 1941 and so, well, melodramatically to the disaster of 2001...

...Harvard president James B. Conant told 8,000 exuberant Harvardians, "We must consciously develop a psychology of attack...

...There was no thought of canceling the White House Christmas Tree festivities in 1941...

...And there were a few opinion pieces in which the Japanese were treated as clever little demons...

...In our uncertainty about ourselves, we respond to disasters with an emotional sensitivity that would have been foreign to our countrymen 60 years ago...

...Americans at the start of World War II did not appear emotionally wounded the way they did after the attack on the World Trade Center...

...But in other respects things were different...

...A splendid floor show and general dancing were enjoyed," the Globe noted...

...Public opinion must be loud in demanding that we face the offense whenever and wherever possible...

...An editorial in the New Republic thundered, "The real sin at Pearl Harbor was a sin of which all America was guilty: the sin of complacence, overconfidence, inertia, the reluctance to abandon our soft and easy way of life...

...But by and large, Americans did not see their unpre-paredness for war as a reason to indict their former life as soft, materialistic, or somehow corrupt...

...Indeed, the Hollywood Reporter described a December 7 amateur baseball game between the team from Paramount Studios and the L.A...

...Auto Makers Look Forward to Postwar Task, See Use for Huge Additional Facilities," ran a Post headline after the attack...

...On December 9, the Boston Globe ran a story—headlined "New England Toilet Goods Ass'n and Guests Enjoy Christmas Party"—reporting on festivities held at the Parker House the evening after the attack...

...It's very different to hear of an attack over the radio or read about it in the newspaper—and to watch images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center again and again on television...

...In other words, of all the things to know about the American reaction to the attack from the Pacific, the one foremost in many Americans' minds is the one that is most discreditable to the United States...

...If you look through American magazines and newspapers in the weeks following the Japanese attack that launched the Second World War you feel like you are looking at a nation that is mainlining Prozac...

...There are no articles in which people described where they were when they heard the news or how they felt...

...And so Americans entered the war with a surge, eager both to enjoy what they could at home and to press on to transform the world abroad...

...Regular U.S...

...The conservatives used many of the same arguments one finds on the left now...

...And it's true...

...On Broadway itself, George Abbott's Best Foot Forward featured dozens of 18-year-olds prancing and singing and cavorting...

...The enthusiasm wasn't felt merely in the editorial offices, but also on the streets...

...This is a reflection of where the emphasis has been in American culture of late...

...The Pennsylvania Turnpike, winding its way through beautiful hill country, is perhaps America's most magnificent motor highway," Life enthused in December 1941...

...There were some similarities between the American responses to December 7 and September 11...

...The first movies that came out about the war were military comedies such as You're In the Army Now and Tanks a Million...

...There were a few who made this accusation—magazine mogul Henry Luce among them—but most people apparently wanted to carry on with as many of the old ways as possible, and as soon as possible...

...Two worlds are opposed and only one will survive...

...The final political contrast is the broadest: The belligerent voices were on the left...

...They were proud of the weapons they were building...

...Leland Powers, a gay red hat above her checked black and white suit...

...There were numerous stories describing the efforts of college presidents to restrain their students, most of whom wanted to enlist immediately...

...Americans did not by and large believe that the war had started on December 7, 1941...

...Conant insisted that the United States could not permit Germany and Japan to negotiate a surrender until they were economically and psychologically crushed...

...Flags flew everywhere after both events...

...Byron Price, a former AP reporter, was subsequently named chief censor...

...The Talk of the Town pieces stuck to their normal mood, but with a war twist—cute things private school boys said during airraid drills, the thrill society matrons felt at being air-raid wardens...

...The enemy is formidable and, far from being insane, he is well prepared and devilishly shrewd," Walter Lippmann wrote...

...In December 1941, some newspapers were already carrying regular updates of the conflict such as "World War II: Day 839...

...In fact, there was relatively little...

...The Globe reported comings and goings at the December 8 Women's Civic Federation's lecture on the arts: "Mrs...

...warships: "Soda fountains aboard modern cruisers and battlewagons are a part of the up to date equipment...

...There were many cartoons in which Japanese were treated as devious slant-eyed snakes...

...Whatever American feature they described was inevitably marvelous...

...The next day, the Boston Globe opined, "The attack made by the Japanese yesterday against Hawaii did not come as a surprise to many in the country...

...Rather, the pieces emphasized Japan's political system...

...Now, of course, America has greater reason to think well of itself...

...USA's Strength is the Power to Produce" was the headline above one Plymouth advertisement...

...The Times correspondent apparently told Arthur Krock, who was not there, about the substance of the briefing...

...pine Islands...

...A Bob Hope musical comedy called Louisiana Purchase opened in December 1941, featuring lines of bathing suit-clad beauties and songs with such titles as "Everybody Dance" and "It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow...

...Our commentators are now more apt to emphasize the limits of American might, to argue that Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever arena we are likely to enter is bound to be a quagmire...

...It reads like a cold warrior's tract...

...But, at least at this point in the war, most of the coverage of Japan was not racial...

...A few weeks later, the magazine hosted a symposium of Republican heavyweights, from Dewey on down, who basically agreed...

...One sacrificed for the common good where one could, and one enjoyed the commercial pleasures when possible...

...America went to war not in the spirit of Sparta, but in the spirit of Macy's, Gimbel's, and Sears...

...When we are reminded of post-Pearl Harbor America, the first thing that pops into many heads today is that we had racist attitudes and we interned Japanese Americans living on these shores...

...The report emphasized that Japan's wealth was concentrated in just a few hands, that Japanese women were horribly treated, that a twisted warrior ethos caused Japanese men to pay undue deference to the emperor...

...Still, the coverage of the isolationist groups was contemptuous, and liberal magazines were always on the lookout for backsliding on the right...

...In Dallas, 2,500 people had just finished watching Sergeant York starring Gary Cooper at the Majestic Theater when news of Pearl Harbor was announced...

...Almost nobody canceled basketball games or hockey games in December 1941, though most major sports took a week off after this year's tragedy...

...It's a weakness unbecoming to a great democratic power as it embarks on a long campaign against an indisputably evil set of foes...

...Like most of his peers, Walter Winchell didn't mention international events in his first wartime column...

...Popular culture and popular conversation were relentlessly upbeat...

...The initial excitement is dying down," a New York Times writer noted on December 11, 1941—four days after the attack!—and radio schedules were returning to normal...

...In 1943: The turn will probably come...

...But at the bigger magazines, a tone of relentless boosterism prevailed...

...Jap Ambassador Buys Drawers," was the headline above a Washington Post story about an attache from the embassy who went shopping for underwear just after Pearl Harbor...

...I hope we blow them to hell," a Western Union messenger told a Boston Globe reporter...

...Charles Miles (Jean Carpenter) adding a bright note with her fetching red quilted blouse . . . Mrs...

...The newspapers and magazines devoted enormous amounts of space to detailing how much steel America produced, how much coal it mined, how much wheat it grew...

...Being happy was a sign of success...

...The New Yorker didn't allow the disaster at Pearl Harbor to interrupt its light, charming patter...

...There was an overwhelming sense of national unity, with the same sort of United We Stand posters...

...Those cords are broken now...

...The trouble with America, said President Roosevelt on August 19th, is that too many Americans have not yet made up their minds that we have a war to win and that it will take a hard fight to win it," Life had reported in September 1941...

...There was a characteristic headline in the Washington Post about a family that had lost three sons at Pearl Harbor...

...There was a pause, a pin-point of silence, a prolonged sigh, then thundering applause," Time magazine reported...

...Today, we fret more and worry that we have been corrupted by affluence or relativism...

...Stone wrote in the Nation on December 8, 1941.The editors of Life magazine w w agreed...

...He was the subject of glowing profiles in many papers...

...Even as people switched to wartime roles, they kept their mind on the occupations they would return to when peace was restored...

...It wasn't yet cool to be thoughtfully gloomy or alienated...

...Life magazine did publish photographs of the dead at Pearl Harbor—some of the pictures were graphic, including corpses lying about in the morgue—but these didn't come out until three weeks after the attack...

...Writing in the Nation, Jonathan Daniels summed up the mood: It is the hour for elation...

...Here is the time when a man can be what an American means, can fight for what America has always meant—an audacious, adventurous seeking for a decent earth...

...So the first response was one of anger and determination, mixed with a strange exhilaration...

...At Columbia, a dean told a gathering of 1,700 students not "to lose your heads" and "go rushing off just because you feel that you must do something right away...

...Keep tuned to this station for further details...

...The stock market trudged along...

...A board of inquiry was formed, and the Knox Report came out in a matter of weeks, assigning responsibility for the losses...

...And yet America had remained on the sidelines...

...In other words, America went to war with radical visions for the world but conservative visions of home...

...They were proud of themselves...

...And why shouldn't they have been...

...And at convenient intervals are the attractive, colonial Howard Johnson restaurants where tired motorists can stop for a bit of relaxation and hearty refreshment...

...Americans were not in denial...