by FDR
In Washington, Attorney General Biddle found himself and the Justice Department fighting a rearguard action.* Stimson, who was keenly aware of the constitutional difficulties, believed a Japanese invasion of the West Coast to be a distinct possibility.37 Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy, the War Department’s point man for domestic security, shared that concern: “If it is a question of safety of the country or the Constitution of the United States, why the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.”38 In mid-February, when General De Witt asked the War Department for permission to evacuate all Japanese from the West Coast, the Army registered its opposition.39 General Mark Clark, the deputy chief of staff, told Stimson and McCloy that California was not endangered and that the Army was unwilling to allot De Witt any additional troops for evacuation purposes. “I cannot agree with the wisdom of such a mass exodus,” wrote Clark. “We must not permit our entire offensive effort to be sabotaged in an effort to protect all establishments from ground sabotage.”40† At that point Stimson could have turned De Witt down summarily. Instead, he referred the question to FDR.
Stimson called Roosevelt the afternoon of February 11. Singapore was under siege (it would fall four days later), and the president was preoccupied with military matters. “I took up with him the West Coast matter first,” Stimson recorded in his diary. “[I] told him the situation and fortunately found that he was very vigorous about it and told me to go ahead on the line that I thought the best.”41 FDR expressed no opinion on the evacuation and tossed the matter back to Stimson and the War Department. That was sufficient for McCloy. “We have carte blanche to do what we want to as far as the President is concerned,” he informed Fourth Army headquarters in San Francisco. “He states there will probably be some repercussions, and it has got to be dictated by military necessity, but as he puts it, ‘Be as reasonable as you can.’ ”42
The chain of events is clear: Roosevelt delegated the decision to Stimson, Stimson turned it over to McCloy, and McCloy made the call. “This does not exonerate Roosevelt,” wrote McCloy’s principal biographer, “but at the very least it was McCloy’s job to determine if military necessity justified such draconian measures.”43
One week later Roosevelt signed the executive order that had been prepared by the civilian leadership in the War Department. It authorized the department to “prescribe military areas … from which any and all persons may be excluded.” No explicit reference to the Japanese was necessary. When Attorney General Biddle registered a mild objection, FDR said it was a matter of military judgment. Having been blindsided at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt was unwilling to skimp on what constituted military necessity. “I did not think I should oppose it any further,” wrote Biddle.44
Japanese evacuees were forced to liquidate their property at fire-sale prices. White scavengers went through Japanese-American neighborhoods buying refrigerators for one dollar and washing machines for a quarter.45 The U.S. government made no effort to secure fair prices, guarantee land values, or ensure the safety of goods placed in storage. “I am not concerned about that,” FDR told Morgenthau on March 5, 1942.46 Estimates of Japanese property losses exceeded $400 million in 1942 dollars—the current equivalent of almost $5 billion. After the war Congress provided a meager $37 million in reparations. Forty years later another Congress awarded each surviving detainee an additional $20,000.
Though Roosevelt said he later regretted “the burdens of evacuation and detention which military necessity imposed on these people,” he showed no concern when he signed the measure on February 19.47 “I do not think he was much concerned with the gravity or implications of this step,” wrote Biddle. “He was never theoretical about things. What must be done to defend the country must be done. The military might be wrong. But they were fighting the war. Nor do I think that the constitutional difficulty plagued him—the Constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime President.”48*
The news from the Pacific was all bad and getting worse, and Roosevelt recognized American morale needed a pickup. Could the Army bomb Tokyo? he asked General Hap Arnold shortly after Pearl Harbor. Air planners in the War Department went to work but found no Allied airfield within range. The president turned to Admiral King: Could medium-range bombers, B-25s, take off from a Navy carrier? It sounded like a harebrained stunt, but King and Arnold put their staffs to work and by mid-January concluded that it might be possible. Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle was selected to lead the mission with a force of sixteen B-25s and an all-volunteer crew of airmen.† The B-25s were converted to carry extra fuel, and the pilots were trained to take off at short distances with heavy loads. But it was a gamble—so risky that neither the Army Air Corps nor the Navy dared attempt a practice carrier takeoff beforehand.
In early April the B-25s were lashed to the flight deck of the carrier Hornet, which rendezvoused with Vice Admiral William Halsey’s Task Force 16 a dozen miles north of Midway Island, some 1,100 miles from Honolulu. The task force, which included the carrier Enterprise, four cruisers, eight destroyers, and two tankers, steamed westward through heavy seas to a point 800 miles east of Tokyo, where the Enterprise’s radar picked up a Japanese patrol vessel much further from shore than anticipated. Doolittle had set 650 miles as the outside limit for the launch, but rather than risk discovery by continuing on, he ordered the takeoff immediately. With a forty-knot gale splashing water over the bow of Hornet and only 467 feet of deck in front of him, Doolittle led his planes into the air without mishap. The squadron arrived over Tokyo shortly after noon, dropped its bombs, and flew on toward prearranged landing fields in China. Because of the premature takeoff, none of the planes made it to its scheduled destination. Pilots flew until they were out of fuel and parachuted into Chinese territory. Some were captured by the Japanese. One died in prison, and three were executed after a show trial in which they were charged with attacking civilian targets. But of the eighty men who had volunteered for the mission, seventy-one survived.49
The damage in Tokyo was minimal. But the psychological impact was enormous. FDR was at Hyde Park working on his next fireside chat on April 18 when he received an urgent phone call from Washington. An intercepted Japanese radio broadcast had just reported in a tone of near hysteria that American planes were bombing Tokyo. A grin crossed Roosevelt’s face as he put in a call to White House press secretary Steve Early. Anticipating the questions that would be asked and savoring the moment of mystery, the president told Early “the bombers came from a secret base in Shangri-la”—a mythical land in the trackless wastes of Tibet depicted in James Hilton’s bestselling novel Lost Horizon.50
It was the first good news from the Pacific theater. Telegrams of support flooded the White House. Secretary Stimson, who had privately been critical of the president’s “pet project,” thought the raid had “a very good psychological effect both here and abroad.”51 Colonel Doolittle was awarded the Medal of Honor.
In Tokyo the attack came in the midst of a sharp disagreement between Yamamoto and the Japanese high command over future strategy. The high command wanted to consolidate Japan’s success, establish a ribbon of bases from the Bismarck Archipelago to American Samoa, and block the convoy routes from California and the Panama Canal to Australia and New Zealand. Yamamoto and the admirals of the Combined Fleet, intoxicated with victory, insisted it was time to finish the job begun at Pearl Harbor. They wished to seek out the remnants of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and defeat it in a decisive battle. The doctrine of “decisive battle” was a basic tenet of naval theology, and the Japanese admirals believed their opportunity was at hand.
For Yamamoto, Midway Island was the key. Whoever controlled Midway controlled the Pacific. If the island were in Japanese hands, Hawaii would be threatened with invasion. That would provide an important bargaining chip to force the United States to accept a negotiated settlement. If the Americans held Midway, the Japanese home islands would never be secure. Doolittle’s raid provided stunning confirmation of that. Yamamoto believed that if the Combined
Fleet moved against Midway, the U.S. Navy would be forced to give battle. Final victory appeared one step away.
Rather than choose between the two alternatives, the Japanese government elected to move south and simultaneously attack Midway. That stretched the resources of the Imperial Navy to the limit. At the beginning of May, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue led a South Seas invasion task force against Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea—a vital step if Australia was to be isolated. To ensure success, the high command added two carriers from the Pearl Harbor attack force. Fortunately, American intelligence had by this time broken the Japanese naval code and knew Inoue’s destination. Admiral Nimitz dispatched a two-carrier task force (Lexington and Yorktown) to intercept the invaders, and on May 4, 1942, battle was joined.
For the next four days the American and Japanese carrier groups engaged in one of the most complex naval actions ever fought. The Battle of the Coral Sea was unique in that the two forces were separated by 175 miles of open water. The warships never came into contact, there was no surface gunnery, and the fight was waged by carrier-based aircraft. Tactically the result was a standoff. The Japanese sank the Lexington and destroyed Yorktown’s flight deck; the Americans sank a light carrier and severely damaged one of the large Pearl Harbor carriers. More significantly, the United States lost thirty-three aircraft; the Japanese twice that number. Having lost air superiority, Inoue canceled the invasion and returned to his base at Rabaul. In the strategic sense, with the invasion thwarted, the Battle of the Coral Sea was an undisputed Allied victory.
A more serious setback awaited the Imperial Navy. On May 27, 1942, the anniversary of the Battle of Tsushima Strait, the Combined Fleet sailed triumphantly from the Inland Sea against Midway. With Nagumo’s four large carriers in the van, Yamamoto brought eleven battleships, sixteen cruisers, and fifty-three destroyers to attack what was left of the American Pacific Fleet. Yamamoto assumed personal command and sailed aboard his flagship, the 67,000-ton Yamato, the largest battleship afloat.* His battle plan was simple enough: Nagumo’s carrier vanguard would assault Midway, the American fleet would challenge, and then Yamamoto’s battlewagons, lurking in the rear, would move in for the kill.
Once again, as at Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto and Nagumo counted on surprise. But this time the tables were turned. Thanks to code intercepts, it was the American Navy that had advance warning, not the Japanese. With foreknowledge of Yamamoto’s intent, and fully aware of the enormous firepower he could bring to bear, Nimitz instructed his task force commanders to seek out Nagumo’s carriers but dodge his big guns.
The Japanese invasion force commenced its assault on Midway on June 4. At dawn Nagumo launched his first air strike, unaware that three American carriers—Enterprise, Hornet, and a quickly refitted Yorktown—stood off to the northeast. Believing his position secure, Nagumo ordered a time-consuming change of armament for his second attack wave just as his first wave returned to refuel. At that point, with his flight decks cluttered, American bombers and torpedo planes attacked. But Japanese antiaircraft fire and Zeros kept the attackers at bay, and by 10:24 Nagumo felt he had weathered the storm. None of his ships had been hit.
The next five minutes would change the course of history. Arriving at the precise moment when Nagumo’s protective screen of Zeros had been drawn down to refuel, two squadrons of American dive-bombers, one from Enterprise, the other from Yorktown, poured through the open sky to unload their bombs on the exposed Japanese carriers. Three were sunk and the fourth so heavily damaged the Japanese scuttled it. Deprived of air cover, Yamamoto reversed course and sailed the Combined Fleet back to Japan.
The Battle of Midway proved to be the decisive battle in the Pacific. With the loss of four large carriers, their aircraft and their pilots, Japan never regained naval superiority. In the two years following Midway the Japanese were able to launch only six battlefleet carriers. The United States added seventeen, as well as ten medium carriers and eighty-six smaller escort carriers. As Princeton professor Marius B. Jansen observed, “Technology and materiel may have sealed the ultimate verdict, but the months ahead required grinding determination and immense hardship in battles that produced some of the highest casualty rates in United States history.”52
Meanwhile, the situation on the Russian front remained grim. Hitler resumed his offensive in the spring of 1942, pressing southeast toward the oil fields of the Caucasus. Von Manstein overran the Crimea, a Soviet counterattack in the Ukraine failed dismally, and two German Army Groups crashed forward to the Don. Russian losses were staggering. By the end of May the Germans had killed or captured an additional 700,000 Red Army troops and destroyed more than 2,000 tanks and 6,000 artillery pieces.53
Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived in Washington May 29 to plead for assistance. Like Churchill, Molotov stayed as FDR’s guest in the White House. Unlike Churchill’s, the visit remained secret (Molotov bore the code name “Mr. Brown”) and the White House press corps scrupulously adhered to Steve Early’s request that nothing be published. Unaware of what he might find in Washington, Molotov traveled with basic necessities: black bread, sausage, and a loaded pistol tucked into his luggage, plus a secretarial pool that evidently did more than take dictation.54
“I am terribly busy with a visiting fireman from across the water,” FDR told his cousin Daisy Suckley. “He comes from Shangri-La and speaks nothing but Mongolian. We speak through interpreters: one, a Russian who speaks perfect English [Vladimir N. Pavlov]; the other, an American who has lived for years in Russia [Harvard professor of Slavic Languages Samuel H. Cross]! Two and two equals four.”55
Molotov wasted little time on social niceties. As soon as he met FDR in the Oval Office, he put the case for a second front. The balance of forces in Russia was slightly in Hitler’s favor, said Molotov. If the United States and Great Britain could mount a cross-Channel attack, it would drain away forty German divisions. These might not be first-line troops, but it would diminish Hitler’s margin of superiority. Molotov stressed that a landing in 1942, with the Russian front still intact, would be far easier than in 1943, by which time it might have collapsed. “If you postpone your decision, you will have eventually to bear the brunt of the war, and if Hitler becomes master of the continent, next year will unquestionably be tougher than this one.” Molotov requested a straight answer: Was the United States prepared to establish a second front in 1942?56
Roosevelt was sympathetic. Before Molotov arrived, the president had sent a memo to Marshall and King noting that “Our principal objective is to help Russia.… Russian armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis materiel than all 25 United Nations put together.”57 He turned Molotov’s question over to General Marshall. “Are developments clear enough so that we could say to Mr. Stalin that we are preparing a second front?” asked the president.
When Marshall said “Yes,” Roosevelt authorized Molotov to tell Stalin that “we expect the formation of a second front this year.”58 Roosevelt repeated the promise the following day. But at the urging of Marshall and King, who were uneasy about being tied to a precise time, he added that in order to build up materiel for opening a second front, the United States would have to cut back Lend-Lease supplies to Russia. Molotov bristled. What would happen if the Soviet Union agreed to cut its Lend-Lease requirements and no second front developed?
“You cannot have your cake and eat it too,” FDR replied. “Ships cannot be in two places at once. Every ship we shift to the English run means that the second front is so much closer to being realized.” Roosevelt then repeated his pledge for a second front in 1942, and Molotov agreed to advise Moscow of the reduction in aid shipments.*
On June 11, 1942, with FDR in Hyde Park and Molotov back in the Soviet Union, Washington and Moscow released a joint statement acknowledging the discussions. “In the course of the conversations full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942.” General Marshall had objected to
any specific reference to 1942, but Roosevelt overruled him. The president was concerned about public reaction to Molotov’s visit and wanted to strike a positive note. As with the ambitious production targets he had announced earlier, Roosevelt recognized the need to set goals that would keep the nation moving. He also hoped to solidify the coalition. “I am especially anxious that he [Molotov] carry back some real results of his Mission, and that he will give a favorable account to Stalin,” Roosevelt wrote Churchill. “I was greatly pleased with the visit. He warmed up far more than I expected and I am sure he has a far better understanding of the situation than when he arrived.”59
Washington’s announcement of a second front in 1942 energized Churchill. The last thing the British government wanted was a premature cross-Channel attack. The enormous battlefield losses of World War I, Churchill’s own unfortunate experience with the amphibious landing at Gallipoli in 1915, and an awareness of how ill prepared and unready the Western Allies, particularly the United States, were to take on the Wehrmacht made London doubly cautious about launching an invasion of the Continent.
Scarcely before the ink had dried on the Washington-Moscow communiqué, Churchill was in Hyde Park, determined to dissuade Roosevelt. The bumpy plane ride from Washington and the even bumpier landing at tiny New Hackensack airport disconcerted Churchill, but not nearly so much as careening around the Roosevelt estate in the president’s made-over Ford convertible with FDR behind the steering wheel. “I confess that when on several occasions the car poised and backed on the grass verges of the precipices over the Hudson I hoped the mechanical devices [by which Roosevelt drove] and brakes would show no defects,” he wrote.60 As at the White House, Churchill made himself at home, walking barefoot, going wherever he chose, whenever he chose. FDR enjoyed the informality. “There was something intimate in their friendship,” said Lord Ismay years later. “They used to stroll in and out of each other’s rooms as two subalterns occupying adjacent quarters might have done. Both of them had the spirit of eternal youth.”61
