Means of Ascent (9 page)

There was, however, an interruption in his plans:
Pearl Harbor.

I
N THE OPENING SPEECH
of Lyndon Johnson’s 1941 campaign, the line that had drawn the most enthusiastic applause was one he delivered after warning of the possibility of war, and of the need for America to be prepared: “
If the day ever comes when my vote must be cast to send your boy to the trenches—that day Lyndon Johnson will leave his Senate seat to go with him.” Finding as the campaign
progressed that that pledge was a surefire crowd-pleaser in patriotic, militaristic Texas, with its glorious history of wars against Mexico and the Comanches, he repeated it day after day, in person and over the radio, on courthouse lawns in small towns and in big-city auditoriums. He played variations on the sentence. He promised that if war came, he would never ask for a desk job in Washington; that when the shooting started he “
would be in the front line,
in the trenches, in the mud and blood with your boys, helping to do that fighting.” He promised that “
If Hitler makes this an all-out war, I shall vote in the Senate for war.… And when I cast my vote I shall tear up my draft number and join the boys picked to defend our homes and our God and our liberties. I shall never vote for war and then hide behind a Senate seat where bullets cannot reach me.” The promise to be “in the
trenches” became almost the theme of his campaign. Printed on postcards, under the headline “
WE NEED COURAGE LIKE THIS
,” it was mailed to hundreds of thousands of Texans. Gearing up for the next campaign, he constantly referred to it; when a reporter asked if he would run in the July, 1942, primary, he said, “
I may be scrubbing the deck of a battleship by next July.”
And newspapers kept referring to it, too, friendly newspapers approvingly, hostile newspapers with considerably more skepticism, particularly in the
Hill Country, where Lyndon Johnson’s boyhood
and college acquaintances recalled instances—notable, in that rough society—of his physical cowardice. When, on October 7, 1941, Johnson stated that Roosevelt’s issuance of his “shoot-on-sight”
order—authorizing American warships to fire on German submarines—meant that “the United States is
already in that war,” Colonel
Alfred Petsch, publisher of the Hill Country’s largest newspaper, the
Fredericksburg Standard
, which circulated in Johnson’s own Pedernales Valley, noted that when the Congressman had originally made his pledge, “
a number of
persons … sarcastically characterized Mr. Johnson’s fighting intentions,” and added, in thinly veiled sarcasm of his own, that it was now time for the pledge to be redeemed:

Nor was the skepticism confined to the Hill Country. An editorial in the
San Antonio Light
asked Johnson to enlist “
some time ago.”

“Trenches,” of course, had never been a serious possibility, unless the United States Navy were to drastically alter its methods of operation, for Johnson had enrolled as a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve about two years before. But after he had sat in the House on December 8, the day after
Pearl Harbor, and heard Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech—in which the President told the nation,
“Today all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by the overriding public danger”—he and
Warren Magnuson, a fellow member of the House
Naval Affairs Committee who was also a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve, went to the office of Admiral Chester Nimitz, a Hill Country native with whom both Congressmen were acquainted, and had Nimitz sign forms placing them on
active
duty. That evening, Johnson
wrote Welly Hopkins, “
When you get back to Washington, I may be ‘somewhere on the Pacific’ Who can tell?”

One of the two young Lieutenant Commanders did indeed go to the Pacific. When the Navy balked at assigning a Congressman, and one with little training, to a ship heading into combat, Magnuson appealed to Naval Affairs Committee Chairman
Carl Vinson, who “requested” that the Navy do so, saying that it would be invaluable to his committee to have a member with actual combat experience. Within a month, Magnuson was at sea, aboard an
aircraft carrier that, during his five months on board, was the target of Japanese bombs, torpedoes and shellfire in battles off the
Solomon Islands.

Johnson did not go to the Pacific. He went to the White House—to ask for a job in Washington. He took with him a letter requesting “active duty with the fleet,” but it was
pro forma:
the subject he wanted to discuss was a proposal he had previously made to merge the National Youth Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps into a single agency to be known as the Civilian Youth Administration. Now he wanted to make two new proposals
to Roosevelt: that the new agency concentrate on wartime training programs, and that he be appointed its director. And when the President, in the midst of a somewhat hectic day, gave him no chance to do anything more than announce that he had gone on active service (the President simply “
said he understood and told me goodbye”), Johnson didn’t go back to Nimitz for assignment to a ship, or for any other assignment that might
lead to combat, but to the office of his good friend and political ally—and substantial contributor to his 1941 Senate campaign—Undersecretary of the Navy
James V. Forrestal, for a different type of assignment. In orders which he appears to have virtually drafted himself (a note from Forrestal asks, “Lyndon,
how do you want these orders to read?”), the warrior was dispatched to Texas and the West Coast, for an
inspection tour of shipyard training programs, and assigned to an office being established in San Francisco by the Navy for liaison with the government of New Zealand. Still lobbying for the Civilian Youth Administration directorship, Johnson didn’t leave even for this assignment for another two weeks, during which time he sent Roosevelt a Christmas turkey “as big as a beef” and a note of reminder: “
I am very hopeful that we can work out
plans for consolidation of our youth agencies in a single agency for defense workers. Today, I’m leaving for the West Coast. When I return I will have a firsthand picture. I hope I may have a chance to put in my nickel’s worth before an order is issued.” When he did leave, he went with an entourage—his wife, who had brought along a portable typewriter so that she could type his letters; his administrative assistant, John Connally, who
had enlisted in the Naval Reserve; and his old college friend and NYA subordinate,
Willard Deason, who had been installed in
a strategic post with the Bureau of Naval Personnel. And he arranged for billets for his troops in one of Los Angeles’ best hotels. On January 2, 1942, he wrote Tom Clark, then an Assistant United States Attorney General in Los Angeles, “
Will probably get out to Los Angeles the latter part
of next week.… Will you put your Jew clothes on and contact Town House Hotel and tell them you have a couple of ‘desperadoes’ coming in that want a good rate on a double room.” Arriving on the West Coast—to be greeted by a note from Roosevelt of thanks for the turkey and not a word about the reminder—the group traveled to shipyards in San Diego and San Francisco, with Lady Bird spending the days visiting “
art
galleries and all.”

Johnson loathed his work with the liaison office; it was, he said later, “
a paper-shifting job, placating the Navy and placating the New Zealanders; it was nothing; I had given up my seat in Congress for nothing.”

Another reality of naval life was forcefully brought home to him on this trip in an encounter with an Admiral whom he failed to salute—and who called this oversight to his attention in a manner which he would, as President, recall jokingly as “rather memorable.” Until that encounter, he was to say, “I did not fully appreciate that my uniform completely concealed my status as a congressman” or “the fact that I looked like any
other junior officer and … was expected to salute my superiors.”

After he was President, Johnson could joke about the encounter; it wasn’t a joking matter at the time. Seated on the dais of the
Naval Affairs Committee, he had watched Chairman
Carl Vinson treat Admirals as if they were cabin boys; in his limited dealings with them, Johnson had himself become accustomed to their deference. In uniform, positions were reversed: Admirals, Captains and full Commanders would be giving him
orders, and while in civilian life submission was customarily cloaked in civilities, in the military the reality of who gave orders and who took them was harsh and uncompromising. This was not a reversal he was prepared to tolerate. The woman who had worked alone with him in
Richard Kleberg’s congressional office,
Estelle Harbin, had seen that: “
He couldn’t stand not being somebody—just could not
stand
it.” Not only in Washington but in San Marcos, at college, it had been noticed that Lyndon Johnson could not endure being only one of a crowd; that he needed—with a compelling need—not merely to lead but to dominate, to bend others to his will, not to take orders but to give them. Of his boyhood, in Johnson City, a companion says, “
if he couldn’t lead, he didn’t care much about
playing”; this aspect of his personality had been expressed in a particularly striking fashion on the vacant lots where the boys played baseball. The young Lyndon Johnson, although a notably awkward athlete, certainly no pitcher, would give life to a saying usually used only
figuratively: during the days of his father’s affluence, he would, among those impoverished youths, often possess the only baseball; if he was not allowed to pitch, he would
literally take his ball and go home. Now this pattern was repeated. After he had been in California for little more than a week, he asked the Navy-New Zealand Command for permission to “
settle a personal problem” and hurriedly returned to Washington, to lobby Roosevelt for a high wartime office. Roosevelt gave him an appointment but no satisfaction. His dealings with Johnson had always been political, and in them the President had been the fox, but
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the lion now, and he may have felt that a high administrative post for a young Congressman with administrative experience only as a state director of the National Youth Administration was not appropriate. Johnson did, however, make arrangements that would minimize saluting—and, indeed, any contact at all with Navy officers. He arranged to be relieved of his liaison duties. In the office directly across the hall from Forrestal’s was Professor
J. W. Barker of Columbia University, who had been named a special assistant in the Navy Department to study labor problems. Johnson met, and charmed, Barker, who asked that Johnson be dispatched, as his assistant, to make another inspection tour of training programs at West Coast shipyards. On January 29, Johnson, again accompanied by John Connally, left on this assignment.

T
HE HEADLINES
that morning said “
ENEMY 90 MILES FROM SINGAPORE”
and “
TWO MORE AMERICAN TANKERS TORPEDOED
,” and dispatches were reporting grim fighting on
Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines and a great naval battle raging in the Macassar Strait. Johnson managed to leave the impression with
his wife and staff that active service in a combat zone might be imminent, and Lady Bird believed this.

So did Sam Rayburn. When Johnson had risen in the House to face the unsmiling figure on the triple dais and say, “Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for an indefinite leave of absence,” Rayburn’s coldness toward Lyndon Johnson had melted in an instant. And before his first trip to the West Coast, Johnson wrote Rayburn. He was worried about the Speaker’s health, he said; he hoped Rayburn would take care of himself. The letter was signed
“Just one who respects you and loves you—LBJ.” And now, when Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson and John and Nellie Connally left for Union Station, where the two young men in uniform would board their train, Rayburn went along to see them off, standing silently amid the tumult of the giant concourse jammed with men in uniform going off to war, their women kissing them goodbye.

T
HE NEXT TEN WEEKS
were among the most tragic of the war. In the Pacific, the tiny garrisons on Guam and Wake Island were overwhelmed—the remnants of the decimated
Pearl Harbor fleet had tried to relieve Wake’s defenders but had been turned back—and Singapore fell. The battles of the Java Sea and Sunda Strait were lost, and the Navy reeled from blow after blow. America’s eyes were on the
Philippines—first on Bataan, where, through almost all those ten weeks, American troops held out in the face of terrible odds, and then on the underground tunnels of Corregidor, where 631 men of the last surviving regiment huddled around shortwave radios, hoping for word of a relief convoy, until they lost hope and stopped listening.

During those ten weeks, Lyndon Johnson and John Connally traveled up and down the West Coast, visiting shipyards in San Diego, Burbank, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. “
We would go to the shipyards, and meet with Navy Training Officers and with contractors’ representatives to discuss installing training programs and show them how to use the training manuals that Dr. Barker had developed,” Connally recalls.