Now he had both critical attitudes and a very public feud. Marshall asked his operations man, Tom Handy, to figure out what the War Department should do, and Handy recommended pulling Ralph Smith out of the theater. Marshall agreed, and transferred Smith to Europe. Unless the Marines fought their way through Tokyo and kept going to Berlin, Ralph Smith would not encounter Holland Smith for the rest of the war.14
The Army-Marine problem on Saipan went far beyond “mere healthy rivalry,” Marshall told King. He informed King that he had transferred General Ralph Smith from the theater, and suggested they send both Richardson and Turner a message ordering each to ensure that the problem didn’t happen again.15
King had known of Howlin’ Mad’s temper long before the war, and King was one of the few men who could stop the rhino in his tracks. He was fond of Smith and his marines, but he saw the need to meet Marshall halfway. Besides, the Truman Committee had been inquiring into heavy casualties on Tarawa, and King didn’t want disgruntled Army generals handing the press a fresh ladle to stir the pot.
King sent Marshall a reply promising to squelch any public statements from naval sources on the subject. He made it plain that he was still angry with Richardson for appointing an Army board to pass judgment on the Navy, but he said he would talk to Nimitz about smoothing relations between the Army and the Marines.16
Marshall let the matter die down. He was glad to sweep it into the dustbin, because a far more divisive matter was about to unfold, and it would drag in the entire American high command.
FORTY-FIVE
MR. CATCH
THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE CURTAIN WAS RAISED ON SAIPAN, MACARTHUR opened the strategic debate again, setting Army and Navy on another collision course. In March, the Joint Chiefs granted MacArthur permission to drive north through the Admiralties and Celebes Islands toward Mindanao, the big southern island in the Philippines group. By June the chiefs had made no decision on Luzon. Unsure of themselves, they asked MacArthur and Nimitz to weigh in on a proposal to bypass Luzon and move against the island of Formosa.1
The memory of Luzon, home to Manila, Bataan, and Corregidor, haunted MacArthur every day. His headquarters, code-named BATAAN, reminded him of the men he’d left behind, and that memory called him back to Luzon like a pilgrim to Mecca. His “I shall return” pledge rang with the clarity of “Remember the Alamo” or “Don’t Give Up the Ship.” The centerpiece of MacArthur’s Pacific campaign had become a matter of personal honor.
Acutely conscious of his celebrity status back home, MacArthur pressed the case for Luzon with Marshall in sweeping moral terms. “We have a great national obligation to discharge,” he declared with the voice of the oracle Roosevelt so despised. “If the United States should deliberately bypass the Philippines, leaving our prisoners, nationals and loyal Filipinos in enemy hands without an effort to retrieve them at the earliest moment, we would incur the greatest psychological reaction.”2
Marshall quickly reassured MacArthur that the War Department wasn’t selling out either American prisoners or the Filipinos. But when the Joint Chiefs debated the question of bypassing Luzon in favor of Formosa, Marshall saw the Navy’s position as the more logical of the two. MacArthur’s arguments, it seemed to Marshall, were grounded in emotion. And politics.
Formosa was three hundred miles closer to Tokyo than northern Luzon. Distance made a difference, for less fuel pumped into Hap’s bombers meant more bombs carried to Japan. Mulling over the difficulties of an attack on either Formosa or Luzon, Marshall and King agreed that MacArthur was wrong to slog through the Philippines. “We should be going the slow way,” Marshall explained to Stimson. “We should be butting into the large forces the Japanese have accumulated in the Philippines. . . . We should have to fight our way through them and it would take a very much longer time than to make the cut across.”3
Marshall sent MacArthur a cable cautioning him that Formosa was not out of the question. Both options would remain under study, but he predicted, “A successful conclusion of the war against Japan will undoubtedly involve the use of a portion of the China coast.” Knowing that MacArthur wouldn’t like his message, he added, “We must be careful not to let our personal feelings and Philippine political considerations override our great objective, which is the early conclusion of the war with Japan.”4
• • •
Though they hadn’t made a firm decision on either Luzon or Formosa, in mid-June the Joint Chiefs asked MacArthur and Nimitz to submit proposals to accelerate the tempo of conquest. In early July MacArthur sent the Joint Chiefs a revised plan. He intended to hop to Mindanao in mid-November, then to Leyte the following month. Around April 1, 1945, he would launch a huge invasion—six assault divisions—at Lingayen Gulf on Luzon, and force the enemy off the island for good.5
King agreed that Mindanao needed to be taken, but he dismissed Luzon as strategically irrelevant. As he saw it, a base on Formosa would open a new supply route to Chiang, tighten the blockade of Japan, and starve the enemy into submission—a slow death, but a sure one. With Formosa in American hands, King doubted whether Luzon would even need to be taken before the war ended.6
King’s lead admirals, Nimitz, Halsey, and Spruance, privately told King they would prefer to take Luzon, for it would give the Americans air bases and a fine anchorage for operations against Japan’s small outer islands. But King didn’t budge. Ships and planes operating from Luzon wouldn’t cut the enemy lifeline, since Japanese tankers hugging the China coast would take shelter under a swarm of fighters based on Formosa. King would go along with an attack against Mindanao, then Leyte, Philippines midsection, but no farther.7
•
To satisfy his hunger for information about the Marianas, Admiral King visited Saipan while the embers of battle still smoldered. After a jeep tour of the island—passing through a hot sector with Nimitz and a carbine-toting Holland Smith—King flew east to Hawaii, where he spoke with Nimitz about an upcoming strategy meeting.
Roosevelt, King had learned, would be sailing to Pearl Harbor to talk strategy with MacArthur and Nimitz. It was a political gesture in an election year, but the strategic question FDR raised was real and relevant.
King wanted Nimitz’s personal assurance that he was committed to the “Formosa over Luzon” approach. Years later, leafing through the pages of his flight log, King recalled his instructions to Nimitz:
“All hands” knew that “F.D.R.” was en route to Hawaii for political reasons to show the voters that he was the C. in C. of the Army and the Navy. I also told him (Nimitz) that I believed that “F.D.R.” would make a deal out of his trip to “The Islands” because the “set-up” was fixed for him and the decision would be about going in to the Philippines (which MacArthur wanted) or into Formosa which the Navy wanted to do in order to cut the Japanese out of gas, oil, rice, etc., without which the Japanese couldn’t carry on the war. . . . After recalling the arguments on both sides I told Nimitz that he would be called before “F.D.R.” with MacArthur and with Adm. Leahy present and that I was not making any orders but he should please think the situation over when he (Nimitz) was called to speak.8
King later recalled, “I was quite careful not to give [Nimitz] any orders on this occasion, because if the decision was made to go to Formosa he would have to do it. It would be his own job. I pointed out the alternatives, but did not think it proper to tell him, which I could have done, ‘stick to Formosa.’”9
Proper or not, King would regret not ordering Nimitz to “stick to Formosa.”
•
Before Roosevelt could “show voters that he was the C. in C.,” he had some backroom business to transact at home. In June, Republicans meeting in Chicago nominated New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey for president. In a public letter on July 11, FDR told Democratic National Committee chairman Robert Hannegan that he would accept a nomination to run for office for a fourth term. “If the people command me to continue i
n this office and in this war, I have as little right to withdraw as a soldier has to leave his post in the line,” he said.10
Whether the people would command him to stay in office depended on what they thought about a few key issues. The first was management of the war, of course. That favored Roosevelt, who could show tangible progress in Europe, the Pacific, and the Mediterranean since December 1941. It also played against Governor Dewey, a prosecutor with no military experience—not even as nominal commander of the New York National Guard, which had been federalized before Dewey became governor.11
The second issue was FDR’s health. After his return from Tehran, he appeared fatigued. He suffered from bouts of what he and his doctors disingenuously called the “flu.” He complained of headaches, he had trouble sleeping at night, and his jaw would hang open as he watched movies. He would even doze off occasionally while reading his mail or dictating long passages to secretaries. “It was evident that the grind was becoming too severe for him,” remembered Grace Tully. “The next step might well be a real breakdown in his health or a dangerous decrease in the soundness and force of his judgment.”12
By March FDR’s famous voice had grown husky, his face pallid, his lips and nail beds bluish. He dropped hints that he wanted his cousin, Daisy Suckley, to have Fala should anything happen to him, and when the White House staff politely inquired how he was feeling, his routine answer was “Like hell.”
FDR’s daughter, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger, persuaded him to see a heart specialist at Bethesda Naval Hospital. “Appalled at what I found,” that specialist wrote later. Dr. Howard Bruenn, an experienced cardiologist, summarized the results of his exam. The president’s heart was enlarged, his blood pressure was dangerously high, and his left ventricle was on its last legs. He was a sick man whose hourglass sands were pouring fast. The only way he might prolong his life would be to rest, eat better, stop smoking, and avoid high-pressure activities. Like being president.13
FDR cut down on cigarettes and vowed to get more rest. He spent most of April in South Carolina at the 23,000-acre estate of his friend and adviser Bernard Baruch. He wore that broad, familiar smile, but reporters began asking Steve Early about rumors they heard of clandestine hospital visits. “Bunch of God-damned ghouls,” Roosevelt muttered.14
The commander-in-chief’s health raised a third big election issue: the vice presidency. As always, the party, not the presidential candidate, would select the vice presidential nominee, though the headliner naturally had a big voice in his running mate’s selection. Four years earlier, Roosevelt had supported the nomination of Henry Wallace, partly because he respected Wallace and partly as a sop to the party’s liberal wing. But Wallace’s eccentric beliefs in Eastern mysticism and his far-left views would probably drive moderate voters to Dewey. That would jeopardize the ticket’s chances in big states like New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California.
At the White House, Roosevelt caucused with a high-powered delegation of Democratic Party bosses. Chairman Robert Hannegan, Edward Flynn, the Bronx boss who helmed FDR’s 1940 campaign, and Chicago mayor Ed Kelly reviewed the bullpen of possible running mates. Roosevelt felt the best man for the job was Jimmy Byrnes, but Byrnes, a segregationist from South Carolina, was unpopular with labor. He also was born Catholic but quit the Church, alienating many voters outside the Solid South. Age, demographics, or inexperience ruled out other candidates, like Sam Rayburn of Texas, Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky and Supreme Court Justice William Douglas.15
That left Harry Truman, a moderate from Missouri who had made a name for himself investigating military waste. As a veteran of the First World War and a New Deal stalwart, Truman would appeal to both conservatives and organized labor, and he hadn’t made any racial comments that might hurt the ticket with liberals or Negro voters. By default, the bosses agreed that Truman would be the least dangerous running mate.
Whenever potential running mates came to Roosevelt for support, he subtly reminded them that he could not select the nominee, a limitation he played up to avoid any personal responsibility to would-be candidates. But everyone knew his preference would be decisive, and he clouded the issue by assuring both Wallace and Byrnes that each had his personal support.
On the morning of July 11, he shook hands with Wallace and told him, “I hope it will be the same old team.” He wrote a letter on Wallace’s behalf to Democratic convention chairman Senator Samuel Jackson, saying of Wallace, “I like him and respect him and he is my personal friend. For these reasons I personally would vote for his nomination if I were a delegate to the convention.”
Later that morning, he told Jimmy Byrnes, “You are the best qualified man in the whole outfit and you must not get out of the race. If you stay in you are sure to win.”16
FDR knew the party elders would orchestrate the balloting to ensure Truman’s selection, for the last thing they wanted at the Democratic convention was unbridled democracy. FDR could give Byrnes his assurances and pass off the vote as something beyond his control.
Similarly, his letter praising Wallace fulfilled a personal obligation wrung from him by an insistent friend. But the letter was so tepid by political standards that the Philadelphia Inquirer published a cartoon depicting Wallace as a barefoot farmboy standing before a locked convention door reading FDR’s missive: “Here’s a nice boy! But don’t hire him if you don’t want to! FDR.”17
They didn’t. When Democratic Party delegates met at Chicago Stadium on July 19, a Roosevelt-Truman ticket emerged the winner.
•
Voters thinking about Roosevelt’s fourth bid wanted to know that he had a firm hand on the levers of power, and FDR obliged them. On July 13, he left Washington with Leahy, Pa Watson, Hopkins, Fala, and a bevy of aides, Secret Service agents, valets, and Filipino cooks. He boarded his armor-plated Pullman car, the Ferdinand Magellan, and arrived in California on the nineteenth. Stopping in San Diego to watch Marine landing exercises, he mingled with sailors and visited the wounded. Then he boarded the cruiser USS Baltimore and spent the next four and a half days at sea.18
The journey to California, and from California to Pearl Harbor, was, as King knew, FDR’s way of dramatizing his role as commander-in-chief—and making sure the voters knew who was calling the shots. He could have easily summoned MacArthur and Nimitz to Washington at much less personal risk. But remaining in the capital would throw away the priceless political advantage of being seen as a true military leader in wartime, giving orders to men in uniform and making decisions other politicians could not.
It was an advantage FDR had every intention of pressing. Even the title “commander-in-chief” became a fixation with him. He asked Hull to refer to him as “commander-in-chief” rather than “president” at State Department dinners. At FDR’s request, one day Admiral Leahy came to King’s office—a rare excursion for Leahy—and told him the president wanted one of King’s titles modified. Leahy said that “Commander-in-Chief of United States Fleets” seemed too expansive when Franklin Roosevelt, president of the United States, was the Navy’s constitutional commander-in-chief.
King looked at Leahy. “Is that an order?” he asked.
“No,” said Leahy sheepishly, “but he’d like to have it done.”
King gave Leahy a hard stare. “When I get the orders I will do exactly that. Otherwise not.”19
Unwilling to put that kind of order in writing, Roosevelt let the matter drop.
• • •
FDR’s fourth presidential campaign stumbled on July 20, even before he left California. As he was about to leave his sleeping cabin on board the Magellan to watch landing exercises of the Fifth Marine Division, he turned white as a ghost and began to shake and shudder. As Pa Watson and Roosevelt’s son James looked on in shock, he gasped, “Jimmy, I don’t know if I can make it out. I have horrible pains.”
Jimmy’s first thought was to get a doctor, but Roosevelt refused. He and Pa
helped FDR out of his bed and stretched him out on the cabin floor to ease the pressure on his heart and lungs. His torso convulsed and his brow furrowed as he shut his eyes and waited out the pain. After a few minutes of sharp spasms, he opened his eyes and said calmly, “Help me up now, Jimmy.”
Jimmy and Pa managed to get Roosevelt upright and back on his bed. When he looked like he had recovered, the cabin door opened and unsuspecting valets entered. They wheeled the president into a waiting convertible.
Soon, he was on a bluff overlooking a slice of Oceanside, California, watching five thousand marines charge an “enemy” position, rifles cracking, mortars thumping, and flamethrowers billowing. Roosevelt leaned over the car’s side to watch the show as photographers snapped pictures of the mighty Marines and their commander-in-chief.20
Though his bout aboard the Ferdinand Magellan was kept hidden from the public, a more damning sign of his health emerged that evening when he broadcast his acceptance speech for his party’s nomination. Speaking from an observation car hooked up to the convention’s loudspeakers, Roosevelt’s speech buzzed over electrical lines to Chicago Stadium, where the party faithful listened to their three-time champion.
“I am now at this naval base in the performance of my duties under the Constitution,” he said, his voice low and solemn. “The war waits for no elections. Decisions must be made—plans must be laid—strategy must be carried out.” The job of the American people was, he said, “First, to win the war—to win the war fast, to win it overpoweringly. Second, to form worldwide international organizations. . . . And third, to build an economy for our returning veterans and for all Americans—which will provide employment and provide decent standards of living.”21
American Warlords Page 47
