Twilight of the Gods

by Twilight of the Gods (retail) (epub)

  The last day of the president’s visit was largely devoted to visiting wounded servicemen recently returned from combat in the Marianas. The motorcade rolled into downtown Honolulu, where the narrow streets were flanked by packed crowds of spectators held back by national guardsmen. The president’s car pulled to a stop outside the army’s 147th General Hospital, where doctors and nurses were drawn up in ranks on the front steps. Patients stood on crutches or sat in wheelchairs, and a camera caught one earnest serviceman saluting the president with an arm wrapped in a plaster cast. After an hour touring the wards, FDR was back in the car and off to Naval Air Station, Honolulu—now the Honolulu International Airport—and then to Hickam Field, where one of the big four-engine Douglas “flying ambulances” had just touched down and taxied to a stop. As stretchers were lowered from the plane, patients were carried directly to the side of the president’s vehicle. To their astonishment, wounded men just evacuated from Guam suddenly found themselves face to face with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The presidential daily log noted, “What a surprise and cheer those boys showed on unexpectedly facing FDR.”78

  Among servicemen in the Pacific, there had been a pervasive feeling that the “folks back home” had forgotten them. The struggle against Nazi Germany had dominated print, radio, and newsreel reporting—and that was doubly true during that summer of 1944, when Allied forces were pouring into France and driving toward Paris. Since the start of the war, they had seen FDR touring military bases and war plants in every corner of the mainland United States, and they had seen him in exotic international locations such as Morocco, Egypt, and Persia. Until now, perhaps, they had not expected to see the president of the United States in the Pacific. His visit told them that they were not forgotten. The point deserves emphasis, because FDR’s trip to Hawaii has often been framed as a publicity stunt to boost his reelection campaign.

  At the Navy Yard, long rows of sailors stood along the route, saluting in unison as the motorcade hove into view. Men drawn up in ranks were under orders to gaze dead ahead—but as the president’s car swept past, many could not resist stepping forward, wide-eyed and gaping, to try for a better look. Thousands of civilian yard workers were gathered three or four deep along the route. More were hanging out of the second- and third-story windows of administrative buildings. The motorcade drove into and through several cavernous workshops, then paused briefly at the submarine piers, where submarine crews stood to attention and saluted in unison. Stopping abreast of the battleship Maryland, then in drydock, the president received a short briefing on the ongoing repairs to her hull, which had been damaged five weeks earlier by an aerial torpedo off the coast of Saipan.79

  The last stop of the day’s inspection tour was the new Aiea Naval Hospital, which sat atop a hill east of Pearl Harbor. The motorcade pulled up shortly after three o’clock to find an expectant crowd gathered on the front steps. The staff and about fifty ambulatory and wheelchair patients were drawn up in ranks to greet the president, and the upper-story windows were crowded with more doctors, nurses, and patients who seemed eager to see the spectacle. A row of men standing on crutches saluted together, in unison. The president was to speak directly from the back seat of the open touring car, as he had been doing these past three days, and the communications team stepped forward to set up two microphones. One was for the public-address system, the president was told, and the other for the motion picture crew. As at Schofield two days earlier, FDR’s befuddled queries were broadcast through the loudspeakers: “Which is which, that one or this one?” The crowd tittered; the nurses appeared especially entertained. Nimitz, seated next to FDR, smiled tolerantly. “I never can get accustomed to these new contraptions,” the president told his audience. “I’m doing it twice, once for the movies and once for you good people.”

  Judging by the three minutes of rambling, unscripted remarks that followed, FDR had not given a single moment’s thought to what he might say. He chatted with the assembly in a relaxed, conversational tone. He was glad to see them, he said; he had brought greetings (“at least in theory”) from their families at home. He mentioned his personal role, together with that of Dr. McIntire, in conceiving and designing the Aiea hospital. He lauded the great gains that had been made since the First World War in caring for battlefield casualties, assuring his audience that “the whole country is very, very proud.”80 Whatever the state of his health, the president’s voice was strong, and its familiar velvet tone was intact. Smiling warmly, he tossed his head and put the microphone down. The crowd’s applause seemed wholehearted.

  As always, the cameras were turned off before Mike Reilly lifted the president from the car and transferred him into his wheelchair. The photographers and film crews were not permitted to follow the president as he toured the 5,000-bed hospital, but several witnesses recorded their impressions. The wards were filled with young men who had been maimed in the fighting on Saipan and Guam. Many had lost limbs, or the use of limbs, or had suffered other grievous wounds from which they would never fully recover. To them, the handicapped Roosevelt embodied the possibility of a successful and fulfilling life. Dr. McIntire recalled that the president “wheeled through every ward, stopping at bedsides for chats, maybe a pat on the back, his voice as warmly affectionate as though the broken soldiers and sailors were his own sons. Always there was a kindling of new light in dull, despairing eyes.”81 In one ward, McIntire went ahead and was talking to a marine who “did not seem to have a whole bone left in his body.”

  His face, ravaged by pain, was set in lines of utter dejection, but when he looked around and saw who was approaching, the youngster’s mouth flew open in the widest and most delighted grin I have ever seen. “Gee!” he exclaimed. “The President!” So it was down the whole long line of beds in every ward. Not one of us but felt, actually felt, the wave of hope that swept the hospital as shattered men saw before them not merely the President of the United States but another human being, once struck down as they themselves were stricken, who had triumphed over physical disability by force of will and invincibility of spirit.82

  McIntire, Leahy, and Rosenman each individually attested that they were deeply moved by the scene at Aiea. So indeed was the president. “I never saw Roosevelt with tears in his eyes,” Rosenman recalled; “that day as he was wheeled out of the hospital he was close to them.”83

  THE PARTY WAS DUE TO SAIL from Pearl Harbor on the Baltimore that evening, but one last chore awaited the president. The “three ghouls” of the wire associations had not been invited on the various inspection tours—they had not been permitted anywhere near the president—and had been complaining about it with rising vehemence to Nimitz’s press officer, Waldo Drake. At last, Steve Early (from his office in Washington) agreed to schedule a press conference. It took place on the manicured lawn of the Holmes villa on Waikiki Beach, with FDR seated on a wicker garden couch and the journalists drawn up in a semicircle. The three wire service men were joined by about two dozen war correspondents accredited by Pacific Fleet headquarters. The coconuts on the palm trees that towered overhead had been removed, lest one should fall and strike the president.

  In the film footage, Roosevelt appears physically exhausted. His shoulders are visibly slumped and his head sags as he speaks. But he offers a genial smile as he greets the reporters and shakes several hands. Leahy and Nimitz stand at the end of the couch, the latter with his arms folded over his chest; both admirals appear to listen with intense interest.84

  FDR began off-the-cuff, speaking of his admiration for the military personnel and civilians of Oahu, who had recovered so dramatically from the carnage of December 7, 1941. He called the conference with MacArthur and Nimitz “one of the most important we have held in some time.” Seeing General MacArthur again, after an interval of seven years, had been personally gratifying. It had been essential to hear his and Nimitz’s firsthand views in advance of the big strategic decisions that lay ahead. So valuable was the conference, said FDR, that it would have been “aw
fully hard to get along without it.”85

  Questions followed, but the president gave the newsmen little of substance. Was another major offensive being planned in the Pacific? Yes, he replied, but that could be deduced from the pattern of the war up to that point, so it should not be considered news.

  Was there to be any new “emphasis or speedup” in the Pacific offensive?

  “Neither one nor the other.”

  Would General MacArthur liberate the Philippines, as he had pledged to do?

  “We are going to get the Philippines back, and without question General MacArthur will take a part in it. Whether he goes direct or not, I can’t say.”

  The remaining half of the press conference was devoted to the Allied doctrine of “unconditional surrender.” A reporter (not identified) asked, “Are we going to make that our goal out here in the Pacific?”86

  Defining “unconditional surrender” had been a recurring nuisance since FDR had first articulated the controversial formula—suddenly and rashly, it seemed to many—at a press conference in Casablanca in January 1943. Although the doctrine had been discussed in Allied conferences, British prime minister Winston Churchill had not agreed to it before the president blurted it out to an audience of international newsmen. The president’s public statement made it a fait accompli, however, and Churchill was left with no choice but to affirm British support. FDR was determined to avoid a reprise of the peace that followed the First World War, when a German “stab in the back” myth ignited the rise of the Nazi party. But many Allied military and civilian leaders privately believed that broadcasting a demand for unconditional surrender was a costly blunder—that the Axis nations would seize upon the announcement as evidence that the Allies intended to destroy and enslave them, thus reinforcing the determination of their military forces and civilians to fight to the last ditch. Some historians of the Third Reich have concluded that FDR’s announcement undercut anti-Hitler plots within the German army, and may have prolonged the European war.

  Apart from the immediate boost it provided to Nazi and Japanese domestic propaganda, the “unconditional surrender” formulation was troublesome because it was ambiguous. It was easier to define it in the abstract than to explain how it would be applied in practice. Efforts to clarify it only tended to raise more questions. Whatever answers were given in public could be (and were) seized upon and distorted by the Axis propaganda mills.

  FDR drew his inspiration from an apocryphal version of the meeting between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, at the close of the American Civil War. Because the formula would assume great importance in the last phase of the Pacific War, it is worth quoting FDR’s response to the journalist’s question in full.

  “Back in 1865,” he told the newsmen, “Lee was driven into a corner back of Richmond, at Appomattox Court House. His army was practically starving, had had no sleep for two or three days, his arms were practically expended.”

  So he went, under a flag of truce, to Grant. Lee had come to Grant thinking about his men. He asked Grant for his terms of surrender.

  Grant said, “Unconditional surrender.”

  Lee said he couldn’t do that, he had to get some things. Just for example, he had no food for more than one meal for his army.

  Grant said, “That is pretty tough.”

  Lee then said, “My cavalry horses don’t belong to us, they belong to our officers and they need them back home.”

  Grant said, “Unconditional surrender.”

  Lee then said, “All right. I surrender,” and tendered his sword to Grant.

  Grant said, “Bob, put it back. Now, do you unconditionally surrender?”

  Lee said, “Yes.”

  Then Grant said, “You are my prisoners now. Do you need food for your men?”

  Lee said, “Yes. I haven’t got more than enough for one meal more.”

  Then Grant said, “Now, about those horses that belong to the Confederate officers. Why do you want them?”

  Lee said, “We need them for the spring plowing.”

  Grant said, “Tell your officers to take the animals home and do the spring plowing.”

  There you have unconditional surrender. I have given you no new term. We are human beings—normal, thinking human beings. That is what we mean by unconditional surrender.

  As Civil War history, the account was badly mistaken. Twice during his earlier campaigns in the West, but not at Appomattox, Grant had demanded the “unconditional surrender” of a rebel force. In each case (Fort Donelson and Vicksburg), Grant subsequently engaged in face-to-face negotiations with the opposing commander, and agreed to a surrender with conditions. At Appomattox, Grant did not insist that Lee surrender unconditionally, even as a formality, and he readily agreed to put the Confederate general’s conditions into the surrender document.

  But the factual errors did not matter so much as the themes Roosevelt intended to emphasize in this parable of Grant and Lee. He was determined that the Axis powers should recognize that they had been utterly and permanently defeated. No doubts or ambivalence on this score could be permitted to intrude into the proceedings, either at the time of surrender or in the long lens of history. Therefore, it was necessary to insist upon the formality of an unconditional surrender. Behind that formality, however, lay the implied promise of a magnanimous peace. It might even be said that the lesson of FDR’s parable was that if the Germans and Japanese would first agree to surrender unconditionally, they could anticipate that all reasonable requests would subsequently be granted. But what requests were reasonable? And how could the defeated nations know in advance, without appearing to bargain? Therein lay the intractable problem with the “unconditional surrender” formulation. It was, in a sense, a paradox. In plain terms, it stated that the victors would treat the vanquished as they chose, without regard to their wishes or interests. But its tacit meaning, according to FDR, was very nearly the opposite.

  A reporter at Waikiki laid his finger on the problem when he asked a follow-up question. Would the Allies, like General Grant, offer to feed the defeated Axis armies? FDR dodged the question—rather curtly, it seems from the transcript. But such questions would continue to be asked, and the answers would continue to flummox Allied leaders. Every attempt to clarify the formula only prompted more questions, and that irksome cycle would continue even after FDR’s death, literally until the last week of the Second World War.

  As the Baltimore put to sea that evening from Pearl Harbor, Admiral Leahy collected his thoughts and committed them to his diary. General MacArthur, he observed, “seems to be chiefly interested in retaking the Philippines,” and had not yet given much thought to the endgame in the Pacific. But both MacArthur and Nimitz had expressed agreement in principle that “Japan can be forced to accept our terms of surrender by the use of sea and air power without an invasion of the Japanese homeland.”87 In the long run, Leahy believed, this consensus of the two theater commanders—that an invasion of Japan should be avoided—was to have greater significance than the immediate question of whether to strike first at Luzon or Formosa.

  The potential use of atomic bombs had not yet entered the calculation. FDR and Leahy were among the handful of Allied leaders who were fully briefed on the Manhattan Project. MacArthur and Nimitz knew nothing of it, and would not be informed until the following year. In the summer of 1944, it was not yet clear whether the bomb could be built at all, or whether it would be ready in time for the war’s final act. Admiral Leahy, who had once been a naval explosives specialist, doubted that it would work. Still, he was absolutely sure that the war could be (and must be) won by some combination of a sea blockade and aerial bombardment, followed by a truce and a peaceful occupation of Japan by Allied forces.

  But if the Pacific War was to end with a bloodless surrender, someone in Tokyo would have to speak for the Japanese regime. Who was that to be? A prime minister, a general? Or was it to be Hirohito, the putatively divine Showa emperor? With victor
y in sight, the “old Japan hands” in the Allied governments were debating a critical unknown. What exactly was Hirohito’s status? Was he a figurehead, a puppet controlled by the military? Or did he wield real power? Could he play the part of Lee to FDR’s Grant? The answers bore heavily on strategic and diplomatic choices that Allied leaders would have to confront well before the end of the Pacific campaign.

  FDR and his representatives had repeatedly asked Josef Stalin for assurances that the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan after the defeat of Nazi Germany. In mid-1944, this was the American government’s single greatest objective in its diplomacy with Moscow. But would the Red Army really be needed against Japan? That obviously depended on the relative durations of the Pacific and European campaigns. But even putting that dimension of the problem aside, another vital uncertainty loomed ahead. In the event that the regime in Tokyo did surrender, would Japan’s vast overseas armies—in Manchuria, Korea, China, and elsewhere—also lay down arms? Or would they fight to the last man, as they had done in every battle of the war? Many Allied military commanders stated flatly that no Japanese ground force would ever willingly surrender, even if the government in Tokyo gave up—and predicted that they would have to be eradicated root and branch in whatever territory they occupied. If that was the case, the Americans badly wanted the Soviets to invade Manchuria and destroy Japan’s million-man Kwantung Army. Likewise, they wanted the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek to do most of the fighting (and the dying) in China. On the other hand, if Hirohito could be persuaded to order his far-flung armies to capitulate, and if those armies would obey the distant man-god’s command, the Pacific War might be won more quickly and with less bloodletting than the pessimists anticipated. In that case, the Russians might not be needed in the war against Japan, which meant that the Americans need not horse-trade with Stalin for his commitment, which would alter the balance of power in the complicated global struggle that was not yet called the Cold War. These various and perplexing considerations would come to bear on vital decisions in the year to come.