by FDR
Speaker Rayburn and Majority Leader McCormack worked the corridors and cloakrooms assiduously but were unable to determine the outcome with any degree of certainty. More than sixty Democrats indicated they would vote against the bill. That meant the administration needed at least twenty Republicans to offset their defection. As the House reading clerk called the roll, tension on the floor mounted. The final tally showed 203 in favor, 202 against. Twenty-one Republicans had joined 182 Democrats to put the measure across. Rayburn banged his gavel and announced the results. A recapitulation was requested. Rayburn yielded, and the review showed the tally to be correct. “There is no correction of the vote,” he announced. “The vote stands, and the bill is passed. Without objection, a motion to reconsider is laid on the table.” His gavel came down and that was it. Despite vehement Republican objections Rayburn had gaveled the measure through. There would be no vote on a motion to reconsider. Passage of the draft extension act prevented the dismantlement of the Army on the threshold of war. Rayburn had pushed the Speaker’s power to the limit and had prevailed.93*
After Argentia, Roosevelt moved quickly to protect British shipping. When a German submarine fired torpedoes at the American destroyer USS Greer in early September, he seized on the incident to invoke a “shoot-on-sight” policy. “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.” The president said, “from now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril.”94* Later in the month, off Newfoundland, the Canadian Navy turned over a fifty-ship convoy out of Halifax to five American destroyers, which safely shepherded the vessels across the North Atlantic into the hands of the Royal Navy just south of Iceland.95
FDR always took the political stance of the Catholic Church seriously, and he worried about possible criticism of Lend-Lease aid to Russia. On September 3, at the suggestion of two American prelates who supported the administration, the president appealed directly to Pope Pius XII.96 “I believe that the survival of Russia is less dangerous to religion, to the church as such, and to humanity in general than would be the survival of the German form of dictatorship,” he wrote.
Furthermore, it is my belief that the leaders of all churches in the United States [including the Catholic Church] should recognize these facts clearly and should not close their eyes to these basic questions and by their present attitude on this question directly assist Germany in her present objectives.97
Considering the president was writing to the Pope, his tone was as sharp as diplomatic practice permitted. Whether Pius XII was convinced is doubtful. His response on September 20 skirted the issue.98 But the Pope, who as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli had lunched with Roosevelt at Hyde Park immediately after the 1936 election, chose not to take issue with the president. At the end of September he wrote the apostolic delegate in Washington calling his attention to an often-overlooked paragraph in the encyclical Divini redemptoris that distinguished between the Communist government of the Soviet Union and the Russian people, “For whom We cherish the warmest paternal affection.”99 By implication, aid to the Russian people was permissible—a position that was made explicit in a pastoral letter by Archbishop John Timothy McNicholas of Cincinnati in October.100
Roosevelt was hammered by personal tragedy in 1941. First Missy, then, on September 7, two weeks before her eighty-seventh birthday, Sara died. During the summer at Campobello her health began to fail. Eleanor assisted her return to Hyde Park and on Friday, September 5, called Franklin at the White House and suggested that the end was near. Roosevelt immediately left by train and arrived at Hyde Park the morning of the sixth. He spent the day sitting with Sara, describing his shipboard meetings with Churchill, filling her in on Washington gossip, talking of old times. That evening at dinner she seemed better. But at 9:30 she lost consciousness. A blood clot had lodged in her lung, and her circulatory system collapsed. Roosevelt sat with her through the night and most of the next morning. Just before noon her breathing stopped. Her son was at her bedside.101
Sara was buried next to her husband in the small cemetery behind Hyde Park’s St. James’ Episcopal Church. The eight men who had worked longest for the estate—including her chauffeur and butler—carried her coffin to the grave. The Secret Service watched from a distance. “I don’t think we belong in there,” said Mike Reilly, “even if Congress says we do.”102
Roosevelt remained at Hyde Park several days, sorting Sara’s things. He wore a black armband on the left sleeve of his jacket and would continue to do so for well over a year. Late one afternoon Grace Tully brought him a box he had never seen. She untied the twine that held it closed, and together, she and the president looked inside. They found a number of bundles wrapped in tissue, each carefully labeled in Sara’s firm hand. One held the gloves she had worn at her wedding. Another contained Franklin’s first pair of shoes. Others held his baby toys, his christening dress, a lock of his baby hair. Beneath the bundles were his boyhood letters written from Groton and Harvard. Roosevelt’s eyes filled with tears. He told Tully he would like to be alone. She hurried from the room. No one on the White House staff had ever seen the president weep.103
* Over the years allegations have been made that Churchill declined to order preparatory air defense measures for Coventry so as not to reveal that the British were able to decrypt (code name Ultra) German radio signals. To the contrary, the Air Ministry took prompt defensive action. Fighters were scrambled, bombers dispatched to hit the fields from which the German planes departed, and the antiaircraft barrage that night over Coventry was greater than any yet put up and succeeded in keeping the attacking aircraft at very high levels. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life 683–684 (New York: Henry Holt, 1991).
* “I try to get away a couple of times a year on these short trips on salt water,” said Roosevelt in his 1941 Jackson Day message to the Democratic faithful. “In Washington the working day of the President averages about fifteen hours. But at sea the radio messages and the occasional pouch of mail reduce official work to not more than two or three hours a day.
“So there is a chance for a bit of sunshine or a wetted line, or a biography or detective story or a nap after lunch. Above all there is the opportunity for thinking things through—for differentiating between principles and methods, between the really big things of life and those other things of the moment which may seem all-important today and are forgotten in a month.” 10 Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 82–83, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950).
* The phrase “arsenal of democracy” was first used by Jean Monnet, a representative of the French government in Washington, in a conversation with Justice Felix Frankfurter in late 1940. Frankfurter was struck by the phrase and suggested to Monnet that he desist using it until Roosevelt could make it his own. Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy also came upon the phrase (Monnet and McCloy were very close friends), and it was contained in a speech draft submitted to the White House by the War Department. When he saw it, Roosevelt said, “I love it,” and included it. Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt 260–261 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952); Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment 121 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
* At his press conference on July 5, 1940, Roosevelt gave an offhand answer to a question about his long-range peace objectives in which he casually alluded to five freedoms, two of them falling under the heading “freedom of speech.” The fifth freedom, freedom from want, was suggested by Richard L. Harkness, then with The Philadelphia Inquirer, later with NBC News. “I had that in mind but forgot it,” said FDR. “That is the fifth, very definitely.” Press Conference 658, July 5, 1940. 16 Complete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin D. Roosevelt 21–22 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1972).
† Willkie’s visit to England was the product of a December 1940 meeting between the chief British
intelligence agent in the United States, William Stephenson, and Roosevelt. When FDR asked how he could make a gesture to hearten the British, Stephenson suggested sending Willkie. Roosevelt liked the idea, and at a New Year’s Eve party Justice Frankfurter, evidently speaking on the president’s behalf, broached the idea to Irita Van Doren. Van Doren passed it on to Willkie, who was receptive. Final arrangements were made at a January 15, 1941, dinner at Van Doren’s Upper West Side apartment attended by Willkie, Frankfurter, the publisher Harold Guinzburg, and the writer Dorothy Thompson. Steve Neal, Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie 188–190 (New York: Doubleday, 1984).
* The Defense Aid Supplemental Appropriations Act passed the House 336–55 and the Senate 67–9. Among the items included in the first consignment to Great Britain were 900,000 feet of fire hose. Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt 272 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952).
* At cabinet Roosevelt said the patrols were a step forward. “Keep on walking, Mr. President,” replied Stimson. “Keep on walking.” Stimson diary (MS), April 25, 1941.
* Missy died in July 1944 without knowing the president had provided for her in his will. After her death, Roosevelt’s son James, whom FDR had appointed his executor, suggested to his father that he might wish to change his will. Roosevelt refused. “If it embarrasses mother, I’m sorry. It shouldn’t, but it may. But the clause is written so that in the event of Missy’s death, that half reverts to mother, too, so she gets it all. Missy didn’t make it, her half already has reverted to mother, and so the clause is inoperative. I don’t have to change it, so I won’t.” James Roosevelt, My Parents: A Differing View 108 (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1976).
* Shortly before the speech was delivered, Churchill’s private secretary, J. R. Colville, noted the irony in WSC’s warm support of the Soviet Union given his strong anti-Communist stance. “If Hitler invaded Hell,” Churchill retorted, “I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance 370 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951).
* From the Vatican, Harold H. Tittman, the president’s acting representative to the Holy See, advised Washington that in the Curia “the militant atheism of Communist Russia is still regarded as more obnoxious than the modern paganism of Nazi Germany.” Tittman to State Department, June 30, 1941. Quoted in William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War 547 (New York: Harper & Row, 1953).
* The journalist H. V. Morton, traveling with Churchill, grimly recalled the fate of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, chief of the imperial general staff, who was lost at sea when the vessel he was traveling in to Russia was torpedoed off the coast of Hoy in 1916. Morton, Atlantic Meeting 33 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1943).
† A crewman dressed as FDR, complete with pince-nez and cigarette holder, sat prominently on deck fishing while the ship sent regular bulletins ashore that all was well and the president was enjoying himself. Neither Grace Tully nor Eleanor was aware of Roosevelt’s deception; the cabinet was not informed; and the press was kept at a distance. Even the Secret Service was bamboozled, the White House detail avidly attending the Potomac from the shore. Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston 105–106 (New York: Random House, 2003); Grace Tully, F.D.R.: My Boss 246–248 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949).
* Roosevelt and Churchill dined alone with Harry Hopkins. The British commanders—Pound; Field Marshal Sir John Dill, CIGS; Air Vice Marshal Sir Wilfred Freeman; and Sir Alexander Cadogan of the Foreign Office—dined with their American counterparts at a “very good fork lunch” provided by Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander of the Atlantic Fleet. To their dismay the lunch was “entirely dry,” save for tea and a “cup of Joe”—Navy lingo for coffee—a derisive reference to Josephus Daniels, who removed alcohol from Navy wardrooms in 1914. (FDR and WSC were not bound by that regulation.) Theodore A. Wilson, The First Summit: Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay, 1941 85 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969).
* “We live by symbols and we can’t too often recall them,” Felix Frankfurter wrote Roosevelt when photographs of the service were published. “And you two in that ocean, in the setting of that Sunday service, gave meaning to the conflict between civilization and arrogant, brute challenge; and gave promise more powerful and binding than any formal treaty could, that civilization has brains and resources that tyranny will not be able to overcome.” Roosevelt and Frankfurter Correspondence, 1928–1945 612–613, Max Freedman, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).
* A twelve-month extension would have passed with less difficulty, but Rayburn and McCormack chose to go for the full eighteen months Marshall and Stimson requested. The bill passed by the Senate differed slightly from the House version, and rather than go to conference and face another vote in the House, the Senate simply adopted the House version (37–19) on August 14, 1941 (50 Stat. 886).
* The Greer “incident” was ambiguous. While on a mail run to Iceland, Greer was notified by a British patrol plane of a U-boat in the area. Greer shadowed the submarine using sonar but did not fire. She reported the sub’s location to the British plane, which dropped four depth charges but missed. The German U-boat commander could easily have assumed it was the Greer that had fired. He might also have assumed from Greer’s profile that it was one of the destroyers transferred to the British Navy by the United States. In any event, the U-boat fired two torpedoes at the Greer, both of which missed. Greer returned fire and loosed nineteen depth charges, which also missed. There was “no positive evidence that submarine knew nationality of ship at which it was firing,” the Navy told FDR. Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 287 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
TWENTY-THREE
DAY OF INFAMY
Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, DECEMBER 8, 1941
ROOSEVELT WAS CONSUMED by the war in Europe: his relations with Churchill, Lend-Lease, aid to Russia, and the struggle in the Atlantic. The military leadership—Stimson and Knox, Marshall and Stark—shared the president’s concern. As a consequence the deteriorating situation in the Pacific received less attention. Discussions with Japan were handled by the State Department, and subordinate commanders saw little sense of urgency. Vessels of the Pacific Fleet routinely put in at Pearl Harbor every Friday so officers could spend weekends with their families; the Army parked its airplanes wingtip to wingtip to minimize the number of sentries required; antiaircraft guns remained limbered so as not to alarm Hawaii’s tourists; and the island’s radar operated three hours a day. Military intelligence cracked the Japanese diplomatic code in August 1940 (MAGIC), but the Army and Navy initially assigned it such a low priority that it often required two weeks to translate the intercepts and occasionally as long as two months. “The island of Oahu, due to its fortification, its garrison, and its physical characteristics, is believed to be the strongest fortress in the world,” General Marshall assured Roosevelt in April 1941. “With the force available [to defend it], a major attack against Oahu is considered impractical.”1
American relations with Japan had been on a downward spiral ever since the Grant administration. President Grant had spent a month in the country during his world tour in 1879. “My visit to Japan has been the most pleasant of all my travels,” the former chief executive wrote from Tokyo. “The country is beautifully cultivated and the people, from the highest to the lowest, the most kindly and the most cleanly in the world.… The progress they have made in the last twelve years is incredible.… This is marvelous when the treatment of their people—and all eastern people—receive at the hands of the average foreigner is considered.”2 Grant was so captivated that one of the reasons he considered accepting a third term in 1880 was to improve American relations with China and Japan.3
Grant lost the Republican nomination to James A. Garfield, a
nd without his contribution Japanese-American relations deteriorated. Rather than accept Japan as a legitimate imperial power in Asia—such as the United States had become with its annexation of the Philippines in 1898—American policy, often colored with an ugly tincture of racism, became gratuitously condescending.4 After the Japanese victory over the Russian fleet at the Tsushima Strait in 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, who arbitrated the Russo-Japanese peace settlement at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, denied Tokyo’s claim for indemnity and ruled out significant Russian territorial concessions in Manchuria. As the Japanese saw it, the United States denied them the fruits of victory.5 The so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1908 closing off immigration from Japan fueled that resentment.* In 1913 the United States summarily dismissed Japan’s protest against California legislation forbidding Japanese citizens to own land in the state. In 1919 Woodrow Wilson rejected a Japanese proposal to include a declaration of racial equality in the League of Nations Covenant. And in 1924 Congress permanently barred Japanese immigration to the United States.6 But the most unforgivable action (in Japanese eyes) was American refusal to recognize Japan’s acquisition of Manchuria in 1932.
The Japanese takeover was scarcely unexpected or without precedent. As early as the Root-Takahira agreement of 1908, the United States recognized Japanese hegemony over Manchuria.7 Japan controlled the province’s economy, owned its principal railroad, and managed its seaports. And the fact is, there was little armed resistance (and certainly no atrocities) when the Japanese Army finally took complete control. The League of Nations formally condemned the action, however, prompting Japan to quit the League, and the United States responded with the Stimson Doctrine, promulgated by high-minded Henry L. Stimson, who was then Hoover’s secretary of state. The Stimson Doctrine declared that the United States would not recognize any territorial arrangements imposed on China by force. “The Western powers taught Japan the game of poker,” lamented the Japanese diplomat Yosuke Matsuoka, “but after it acquired most of the chips they pronounced the game immoral and took up contract bridge.”8
