Rumors

Dogs barking in Morse Code? You bet.

Do you believe that dogs barked messages to the Japanese in Morse Code? If you do, you may be interested in a few more rumors that circulated at the beginning of the war.

All Japanese are to be sent to Kahoolawe, where they will be left to starve.

Philippino plantation workers are sharpening machetes in the fields to kill the Japanese.

The water supply of Oahu is poisoned.

All the Japanese maids working at Pearl Harbor are spies.

Japanese pilots who were shot down were wearing McKinley High School rings.

During the first few weeks of the attack, islanders were in shock. The unthinkable happened. They were afraid and vulnerable, and due to information blackouts, they were left to the “coconut wireless” as their main source of news—and so the rumor mill was birthed.

Commercial radio stations were off the air, so many people listened to the police radio and accepted everything they heard. Of course, if someone called in about a paratrooper sighted in St. Louis Heights, it was true.

(The paratrooper was eventually identified as a Japanese-American Civil Defense Warden on patrol.)

Many of the “suspicious characters” reported to the police turned out to be policemen on patrol or Civil Defense Wardens checking on lights.

A man on an electricity pole signaling the Japanese with red and white lights was a Hawaiian Electric Company repairman.

A more serious report of Japanese supporters of the Empire having a secret meeting in Wailuku turned out to be a huddle of Japanese women buying groceries in a general store.

Bottom line: People were scared.

The local military tried to quell the rumors. It didn’t help when the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, after a brief visit to Pearl Harbor, held a press conference and stated, “Hawaii has been subjected to the most effective fifth-column work that has come out of this war.”

(As an aside, the only citizen convicted of spying for the Japanese was a German man named Otto Kuehn.)

Let’s take a look at a few of those rumors:

1. Dogs barking Morse Code to the enemy: If I have to refute this, you should spend time with chihuahuas.

2. All Japanese maids working at Pearl Harbor were spies. The basis for this rumor was that many Japanese maids and other workers did not show up for work on December 7th.

An Army report commented: “. . . the stories of maids, garbage collectors, small merchants and laborers being aware of the facts [knowing there would be an attack] can be dismissed as idle talk and the product of fantastic imagination on the part of individuals who knew nothing of all the facts involved.”

3. Japanese pilots who were shot down were wearing McKinley High School rings.

The FBI, the Army, the Navy, and local police forces took this accusation seriously. Not only was it not true, but in their investigation, they learned that “Japanese military discipline, even in peacetime, forbade the wearing of rings by servicemen. Also, as early as January 1939, the Japanese were urged to donate all gold and other ornaments to their country, and it was considered unpatriotic to wear jewelry.”

(For readers who are not familiar with McKinley High’s demographic, the substantial majority of students were Japanese, and locally, it was called “Tokyo High.” It was also the high school with an overwhelming number of volunteers for the 442nd Regiment, including Senator Dan Inouye.)

But sometimes, rumors fall through the cracks, and even newspapers can get facts wrong. The December 8, 1941, headlines of the Honolulu Advertiser screamed, “Saboteurs Land Here!” covering the false rumor of paratroopers landing in St. Louis Heights.

My July 10, 2023, tells that story:

For the next few newsletters, I’ll be writing about the rumors that were spread during the early weeks and months of the war. And yes, I will cover the infamous fabric store advertisement.

The posters in this newsletter were part of a project of the Hilo Junior Chamber of Commerce.