Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  ER dismissed the countless editorials and snide letters. “I am not in the least disturbed,” she wrote to Paul Kellogg. “It is purely political and made by the same people who have fought NYA, CCC, WPA, Farm Security, etc.” As long as there was work to be done, she would not go quietly into obscurity. Walter Winchell, one of the journalists friendly to her cause, ended his weekly broadcast with the hope that the House of Representatives would reread their bill of 8 December and noted that “it was a Declaration of War on the Axis—not Mrs. Roosevelt!”

  Tiny Chaney and Melvyn Douglas both appreciated ER’s broadcast of 22 February, in which she berated the “small and very vocal group of unenlightened men” who renewed “the age-old fight of the privileged few against the good of the many.” It was time, ER asserted that Sunday, to develop “a feeling of deep gratitude to the writers, actors, artists and musicians who always give so generously of their time and talents. . . . It is apparently alright for businessmen to come to Washington to give their services on an expense basis, but not for an actor. We should be grateful to these businessmen, and we should be equally grateful to men like Melvyn Douglas.”

  Although ER had lost her institutional base from which to build a “people’s movement,” she did not become depressed. Rather, her anger ignited a fighting spirit. Right away she demanded that army and navy officials give “more recognition” to Negroes in the armed forces. “She proposed a colored flying squadron and colored tank units.” She also “aided various eligible Negroes” who sought to be admitted as navy officers “by communicating with Navy officials and the press.” ER was part of the effort to honor the African-American hero Doris “Dorie” Miller, a U.S. Navy mess attendant third class, who on 7 December, during the bombardment of his ship at Pearl Harbor, manned a machine gun against Japanese planes.

  One of the most remarkable aspects of ER’s tenure as first lady was that the press gave her views a full airing, particularly in times of crisis. “What does Eleanor think?” was never far from the public’s mind, and reporters were careful, solicitous even, to honor that and to ask ER for her opinion on political, cultural, and social developments. She never shied away from articulating people’s fears and knew how to allay their deepest anxieties.

  • • •

  Her role was transformed by FDR’s Executive Order 9066, dated 19 February 1942, by which Japanese-Americans—U.S.-born citizens and their parents—would be evacuated from their West Coast homes by military transport and confined in internment camps. Her husband’s decision to issue it stunned her. She had long opposed Justice Department plans for the handling of Japanese-Americans in case of war. In November she had asked Attorney General Francis Biddle about them. On 4 December 1941 she had publicly broadcast her conviction that “no law-abiding aliens of any nationality would be discriminated against by the government.” For months, her columns had emphasized civil liberties, the Bill of Rights, and due process. EO 9066 was a violation of everything she understood about her husband’s commitment to law and justice, and everything she believed represented America.

  FDR had never before indicated support for this idea. Rather, during Churchill’s last White House dinner, on 13 January, the conversation involved the need to protect over one million “enemy aliens,” longtime residents in the United States as well as refugees from Germany, Italy, and Japan. ER had urged FDR to “do something” to counter the discrimination and harassment they were already facing. Churchill had suggested the United States adopt Britain’s policy of investigative “loyalty tribunals” to separate “the goats from the sheep.” The British had “interned the goats and used the sheep,” he proudly noted. ER rejected that idea, since, she insisted, it would increase unjustified suspicion and prejudice. There was enough bigotry already.

  She had then turned to another dinner guest that night to ask for his view. She had invited the author Louis Adamic for dinner that night because she had been moved by his recent book on exporting American democracy to Europe, Two-Way Passage. At the dinner table the Slovenian-born Adamic suggested a government effort to counter the growing anti-alien hysteria, especially on the West Coast. FDR had seemed to agree. Adamic pointed out that the current political and press campaign to demonize aliens constituted an alliance between old-style bigots and California’s agricultural interests, who saw an opportunity to end competition from Japanese farmers. The dinner guests seemed generally to agree that the FBI and military intelligence could handle any disloyal elements among the Issei (those born in Japan) and their Nisei children (born in the United States), and that the Justice Department and other federal authorities clearly realized that these two groups were loyal.

  After the dinner, ER and her party attended a Philadelphia Orchestra concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini, which stimulated further conversation. Although the Japanese were the primary targets of the moment, Italians and Germans were also suspect. Toscanini, himself an exile from Fascism, as he traveled around the country, endured the indignity of being stopped at every crossing to be “photographed and examined.” “I must say this situation seems to me rather tragic,” ER wrote. “There is an element of comedy, however, in suggesting that Arturo Toscanini needs thus to be classified.”

  Even Churchill, in their last White House conversation, had seemed to reject Britain’s 1940 mass roundup of “enemy aliens,” mostly refugees. Attorney General Biddle too had seemed determined “to avoid mass internment.” Yet FDR signed the removal order in Biddle’s presence: the attorney general had finally acquiesced to the president’s argument that the decision was military, to be carried out by his military advisers.

  ER was blindsided by EO 9066, which ended due process, derailed habeas corpus, and eliminated the most fundamental rights of Japanese-American citizens. In issuing it, FDR violated his own commitment to the Atlantic Charter and his own rhetoric regarding wartime aims. How had it happened? Why, despite assurances from a great range of advisers, had he caved to the brutal press diatribes and bluntly racist congressional campaign to remove all Japanese-American residents from the West Coast?

  To head the War Relocation Authority, which would carry out EO 9066, the president appointed scholar and Department of Agriculture official Milton S. Eisenhower, the younger brother of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Milton Eisenhower considered it the worst assignment of his life. Subsequently he wrote approvingly of ER’s objection to internment: “I see absolutely no reason why anyone who has had a good record—that is, who has no criminal or anti-American record—should have any anxiety. . . . This is equally applicable to the Japanese who cannot become citizens but have lived here for 30 or 40 years and to those newcomers who have not yet had time to become citizens.”

  ER was never reconciled to EO 9066. To be sure, she understood the pressures her husband was under. Japan had overpowered Burma and Singapore and invaded the Philippines and New Guinea, and the Dutch East Indies, India, and even Australia were at risk. Still, this decision perplexed her. What was the message? Whose interests were served? If FDR could imprison Japanese-Americans by executive order, then why could he not designate sites for the rescue and safety of endangered Jews? And why could he not end segregation in the military and the defense industries? February 1942 marked a turning point in their relationship. She was appalled by his action, and by his refusal to listen to so many of the people he had once depended upon.

  The vast majority of Japanese evacuated from their homes were American-born U.S. citizens, mostly under twenty. According to historian Greg Robinson, the others were “virtually all permanent residents, whose average age was over 50.”

  Only days after Pearl Harbor, Henry Morgenthau was pressured to seize “thousands of small businesses owned by Issei and Nisei” from California to Utah, but J. Edgar Hoover rejected the idea: now that Japanese-Americans were under surveillance, their phones were tapped, and monitors were in place, all that was necessary had been achieved. Morgenthau too rejected the propos
al, as well as the campaign to remove countless Japanese-Americans to some remote place “behind barbed wire,” as “hysterical,” “impractical,” and wrong. To the end of his life, for over thirty years, Milton Eisenhower “brooded about this whole episode,” since it illustrated “how an entire society can somehow plunge off course”:

  The evacuation of Japanese-Americans from their homes on the coast to hastily constructed assembly centers and then to inland relocation centers was an inhuman mistake. [Over 120,000] American citizens of Japanese ancestry were stripped of their rights and freedoms and treated almost like enemy prisoners of war. Many lost their homes, their businesses, their savings. . . . How could such a tragedy have occurred in a democratic society that prides itself on individual rights and freedoms? How could responsible leaders make such a fateful decision?

  Federal and state officials disagreed among themselves. Two California military officials, General John DeWitt and Major Karl Bendetsen, were slow to call for mass arrests but supported alien registration and coastal evacuation. Congressman Leland Ford (R-CA), in conjunction with Hearst columnists, began the drum roll “for mass internments in concentration camps.” Anti–New Deal journalist Westbrook Pegler insisted, “To hell with habeas corpus.” California governor Culbert Olson and state attorney general Earl Warren agreed with the “best people” of California, meaning the Native Sons of the Golden West and various agricultural associations: round up Japanese-Americans and send them away. General Mark Clark and Admiral Harold Stark, chief of U.S. naval operations, dismissed the idea that Japanese-Americans presented any danger, but bigotry grew shrill as southern congressional voices joined the removal chorus. “This is a race war,” declared Mississippi congressman John Rankin. “Damn them!” Remove “Japanese barbarism” from the “white man’s civilization.”

  ER met with Dr. Jerome Davis and Dr. Dri Davis, YMCA activists who investigated and sought to alleviate the miseries of the “appalling” number of “prisoners of war the world over.” Prisoners suffered not only from food deprivation but from “barbed wire sickness,” brought about by days with “nothing to do mentally or physically,” while knowing that their friends and families were “anxious about them, and yet have no way of working towards [their] release.” ER urged her readers to consider this “horrible situation” and realize that anything that might be done for “enemy prisoners” had a “double incentive,” since our ability to help “Allied prisoners of war depends upon the work done with the enemy prisoners.”

  Milton Eisenhower too pondered FDR’s decision, and the human tragedies it engendered. As head of the War Relocation Authority, he set out to evacuate and relocate the Japanese-American communities of California, Washington, and Oregon as “smoothly, quickly, and humanely as possible.” Biddle urged him to establish relocation centers that included schools, work programs, courts, and all facilities for “self-governing.”

  Exhausted, ER flew to Seattle to be with Anna, who was to have surgery. From there she wrote to Elinor Morgenthau, who had served so well at the OCD and who, like ER, worried about her sons, somewhere in battle. The two army mothers, sharing the same fears and emotions, consoled each other. “I’m afraid no one can be very objective about the war,” ER wrote, “and of course you worry about Henry and Bob and their friends and all young people now. It is just a horrible nightmare that has to be lived through and the only way is to live from day to day and not die a thousand deaths from apprehension if one can help it!”

  In her column, she counseled, “These are days to store up memories which will see us through whatever may lie ahead.” She concluded with her only public reference to Japanese removal: “I am very happy to see that there is established a War Relocation Authority, which will have charge of the program for relocation and employment of persons who must be moved out of military areas. Unfortunately, in a war, many innocent people must suffer hardships to safeguard the nation. One feels that a program which provides work is certainly better than having nothing to do.” ER was hopeful that Eisenhower’s alliance with Clarence Pickett of the AFSC would render aspects of the situation bearable.

  Subsequently, ER visited several camps and helped young Nisei find work, attend college, and serve in the military. At one point she asked FDR if they might adopt a Japanese-American family, but he refused—the Secret Service would never allow it.

  A new dimension of caution and emotional distance had entered the first couple’s relationship. ER was no longer informed about her husband’s priorities and could no longer understand many of his decisions. Henry Morgenthau, too, was puzzled by FDR’s uncharacteristic dismissal of the human hardships his order entailed. He approached FDR hoping to develop a program to “secure fair prices, guarantee land values” for Japanese-Americans, and ensure the safety of their property left in storage, but FDR dismissed the idea: “I am not concerned about that.” As a result, Japanese property losses were vast, estimated at $400 million in 1942 dollars, the equivalent of over $5 billion today.

  Two months later Morgenthau met privately with FDR to discuss the Treasury Department’s investigation of Argentine assets in the United States, and whether they might be seized as reprisal for Argentina’s support of subversive Nazi efforts. Previously, they had agreed about the serious nature of Axis activity in Latin America, and FDR had supported Morgenthau against the State Department, which opposed his study. Then he seemed to change his mind. Morgenthau was confused by the president’s “sudden shifts.”

  FDR explained his reversals in an extraordinary statement: “You know I am a juggler, and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does. . . . I may have one policy for Europe and one diametrically opposite for North and South America. I may be entirely inconsistent, and furthermore I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war.” Perhaps that willingness to change his mind as the situation demanded gave him flexibility. But close friends and allies noted his cunning, his inability to be bound to agreed-on positions.

  His new and differing stances on so many issues was emotionally difficult for ER. She countered the juggler with various strategies. She remained attentive to her roles as first wife and hostess and dutifully served as FDR’s surrogate whenever he asked her to. After Anna recovered from her surgery, ER returned from Seattle refreshed. “It did your mother a world of good to see you and the family,” Tommy wrote Anna. “She was in grand spirits when she returned and has been ever since.”

  The night of ER’s arrival, Joe Lash joined her and Tommy for the drive to Hyde Park to spend the weekend with FDR. Despite some moments of tension, it was surprisingly agreeable. “Many times I wanted to disagree with the president,” Joe noted in his diary, “but kept quiet because I felt he wanted a rest from incessant arguing and being on his guard.” ER “goes after him because so few people disagree with him.” She explained to Joe that she considered it “important that someone tell him how others are reacting” and deliver the opinions she gathered in her travels. “But even ER these days wonders whether she has a right to.”

  As always, FDR was able to separate his private and political lives. Around the fireside for drinks and then at dinner, there was much spoofing and banter. The serious conversation was limited to misinformation in the media. ER cooperated with the need for pleasantries. There were no disagreements, and after dinner around the fireplace Diana Hopkins, Harry’s daughter, read a book, and everybody “chatted amiably”—ER with FDR, Joe with Harry Hopkins, and Tommy with Grace Tully. It was an unusually harmonious evening.

  That Monday ER and Tommy went through SDR’s Manhattan town house, with the aim of sorting through the family possessions and dispersing them among her children. ER was considerate of her family’s feelings, promising Anna she would distribute “the linen and silver” when she visited the Big House.

  She had chosen her new apartment at 29 Washington Square, in Greenwich Village, with the thought that she and FDR would sha
re that fully accessible space. It was not only “very comfortable, there is light & sun & I hope air even in summer!” Tommy noted, “once we are settled, your mother hopes to stay put.”

  Joe helped ER to move into it, before leaving for the service. Upon his induction, he told reporters, “I just want to be the best soldier I can be.” ER hosted a festive dinner and hoped that with his being a Spanish Civil War veteran, “they don’t make things too hard for him but he seems resigned to anything.”

  But the first lady was unhappy with the ongoing tensions around the White House, which were now having an impact on their summer plans, Tommy noted. ER still felt responsible for Diana Hopkins and invited her with a friend to spend “the summer with us at the cottage.” Since “Diana is no cherub,” Tommy was pleased that Harry Hopkins agreed “to employ a maid to look after them,” and everybody was relieved that Hall’s friend Zena Raset was free and willing, since “she can swim, sew, etc.”

  Hick was still in residence, “to please your mother,” Tommy told Anna. She wryly added, “It is so nice for her to find someone to welcome her when she returns. . . . You will gather that I am not in a sympathetic mood.” Actually, Tommy continued to deplore ER’s “satellites,” including Joe Lash and Trude Pratt, although she was so polite to them they did not suspect the depth of her disapproval.

  The next week “Elliott dropped from the sky,” after a forty-five-hour trip from Liberia. “He has some kind of dysentery but they completed their mission.” He was distressed by the imperial legacy, ER wrote Anna. “Africa was a shock to him, he can’t get over the disease & filth & how the natives have been exploited. He brought back 18,000 plates & they photographed everything they went after.” Although their “plane fell to pieces” and they almost crashed in the desert, he was home—and ER was profoundly grateful.