By Edwin Cooney
On Monday, January 6th, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood before Congress and gave his seventh State of the Union Address. It was to be a unique address in several ways. First, its deliverer was President-elect for the third time. Second, the president laid out his Lend-Lease proposal empowering the president to lend or lease needed materials to governments in their struggle with Fascism and Nazism. It was a proposal which a year or two before might have become an article for his impeachment had powerful isolationist Republicans and Democrats had their way. Finally, FDR enunciated his "Four Freedoms” concept that all people everywhere in the world were entitled to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four freedoms would be part of the Atlantic Charter issued that August by FDR and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill.
Two Mondays later on January 20th, FDR and Vice President-elect Henry Agard Wallace were inaugurated — Wallace for his first and only time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt for his third term and with Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes presiding for his third and last time over a presidential inauguration ceremony. On Tuesday, March 11th, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act with a large number of Republicans abandoning their almost traditional isolationism to meet the emergencies in both Europe and Asia.
If early 1941 political philosophy and foreign policy were formed around the ideal, baseball statistics and the men who performed them were real. On Friday, May 15th, 1941, both Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams began their torrid hitting adventures. DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak started in Chicago when he went 1 for 4 off the White Sox's Edgar (Eddie) Smith. Between May 15th and July 17th, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games with a .408 average. The streak ended on Thursday, July 17th in Cleveland when the Indians' infielders Ken Keltner and Lou Boudreau made three sparkling plays off DiMaggio. During that time, Williams would bat as high as .488. Ted Williams would not only finish the season with a .406 batting average, he had hit a dramatic home run in the Tuesday, July 6th All Star Game to give the American League a 6 to 5 victory in the bottom of the ninth inning in Detroit. Additionally, 1941 would be the final year for two great pitchers, Dizzy Dean, and Lefty Grove. Even sadder, Monday, June 2nd would see the passing of Lou Gehrig ending his two year battle against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. (Perhaps the most moving part of Lou Gehrig's funeral at Christ Episcopal Church in Riverdale, New York was when Reverend Gerald V. Barry explained to the mourners why there was no eulogy saying "we don't need one because we all knew him!” Perhaps Lou Gehrig offered his own best eulogy when he asserted on Tuesday July 4th, 1939: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth!")
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On Saturday, May 10th, Rudolf Hess, Hitler's second in command, parachuted into Scotland on a "peace mission” that infuriated Hitler and puzzled everyone else. On Saturday, May 24th, the German battleship Bismarck sunk the HMS Hood. On Monday, the 26th of May, the HMS Ark Royal crippled the Bismarck's steering system and the following day the ship was finally sunk.
On Tuesday, June 24th, FDR promised Lend-Lease assistance as had Winston Churchill two days after Germany invaded the USSR, despite both men's violent dislike of Communism.
On Friday, July 25th, FDR froze all Japanese assets in the United States and suspended all trade with Japan in retaliation for Japan's invasion of French Indochina the previous day. This action by the president would largely be the cause for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor later in the year.
Between Saturday, August 9th and Tuesday, August 12th, President Roosevelt met with Prime Minister Winston Churchill aboard the USS Augusta and the HMS Prince of Wales off the grand banks of Newfoundland in Canada. The result was the largely symbolic Atlantic Charter which established the principles for the grounds for which the coming war and post war institutions (such as the United Nations) would be promulgated.
People born in 1941 include singer Joan Baez on Thursday, January 9th, former Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney on Thursday, January 30th, Ed Bradley of Sixty Minutes who was born on Sunday, June 22nd, and Senator Bernie Sanders who was born on Monday, September 8th, 1941. Perhaps the most culturally significant “birth” occurred on Thursday, May 1st when General Mills began selling CheeriOats, later to be renamed Cheerios!
Not far behind was the Tuesday, July 1st birth of commercial television. The first commercial over WNBT Channel 1 occurred during a Dodgers Phillies game. The commercial was for Bulova watches. It was a ten second commercial showing a Bulova watch superimposed over a map of the U.S. with a voiceover saying "America runs on Bulova time!”
It was on Thursday, September 11th, in a stern national radio broadcast, that FDR responded to an increasing number of German attacks on naval and merchant shipping, stating that the Navy would "shoot on sight" any Axis vessel found within the zone that the president had designated back on Friday, April 11th as being vital to U.S. interests.
The 1941 World Series was the only national lighthearted event left in the year. The Brooklyn Dodgers, under fiery manager Leo Durocher, was about to tie the mighty Yankees in the fourth game of the series on Sunday, October 5th at Ebbets Field. The "Bums" had a 4 to 3 lead when pitcher Hugh Casey struck out the Yankees' Tommy Henrich — except that catcher Mickey Owen failed to catch Casey's sharp breaking curve. Henrich was safe at first when suddenly "the wheels" came off Brooklyn pitching. The Yankees scored four runs to win the game 7 to 4. The Monday, October 6th game, also at Ebbets Field, was the end for the Dodgers despite a respectable performance by Whitlow Wyatt. Wyatt, following a Tommy Henrich fifth inning homer, decked Joe DiMaggio who, after flying out, went after Wyatt. It was all short-lived though. The Yankees won the game and the series 3 to 1. It was the Yankees' 32nd World Series game out of the previous 36 World Series contests.
On Monday, November 3rd, Joseph Grew, the American Ambassador to Japan, warned Secretary of State Cordell Hull that Japan might launch a surprise attack on United States military positions. This information was passed on to FDR during the Friday, November 7th cabinet meeting.
On Monday, November 17th, Japanese Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura was joined in Washington by special envoy Saburo Kurusu for a series of intense negotiations which ultimately would fail. (Post war documents reveal that neither man was aware of the Japanese government’s intention to attack Pearl Harbor.)
On the morning of December 7th, 1941, President Roosevelt was relaxing on the second floor of the White House with his stamp collection. Shortly after 1 pm. he received a phone message informing him that at 12:55 eastern time, Japanese air squadrons had attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Nineteen ships, including six battleships, were sunk or damaged. In addition, 2,403 soldiers, sailors and civilians were killed. One thousand one hundred additional personnel were wounded.
FDR would ask Congress for a Declaration of War in a five minute address on Monday, December 8th shortly after noon, eastern time. On Thursday, December 11th, Germany and Italy would declare war on the United States.
The year would end with Winston Churchill visiting the White House, addressing a Christmas tree decorating ceremony on Wednesday, December 24th, and addressing a public session of Congress on Friday, December 26th.
Yes, indeed, 1941 began with the ideal but closed with the starkly real!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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