The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (37 page)

After lunch the mayor, as he was leaving, said: “My wife never asks me where I have been nor whom I have seen, but she always asks me what I have had to eat. Today, I can truthfully say I did not have too much!”

I put in many hours every day at the Office of Civilian Defense, carrying on my own work at home by toiling every night. In the White House someone makes the rounds every hour to see that all is well. One morning my husband said: “What’s this I hear? You didn’t go to bed at all last night?” I had been working on my mail without regard to time, and when it began to get light, I decided it was not worthwhile going to bed. The man patrolling the house had seen my light under the door, heard me moving about and had reported it to the household, and someone told my husband. I did not do that very often, however.

I soon discovered that the thing I had feared was true! I could not take a government position, even without salary or paid expenses, without giving ample opportunity for faultfinding to some members of the opposition in Congress and even to some of our own party people who disagreed with certain policies. I did not much mind what they said about me, but when I found that anyone I appointed was in trouble merely because I appointed him, I did mind.

I hope that, despite these troubles, at least the trip I made with Mayor LaGuardia the night after Pearl Harbor was helpful. If I was able to give impetus to the work on the West Coast and, by the mere fact of going out there, to quiet many of the rather hysterical fears prevalent at that time, then the country benefited and the trip justified my short term of office in the OCD.

Pearl Harbor day began quietly. We were expecting a large party for luncheon and I was disappointed but not surprised when Franklin sent word a short time before lunch that he did not see how he could join us. He had been increasingly worried and frequently at the last moment would tell me that he could not come to some large gathering that had been arranged. The fact that he carried so many secrets in his head made it necessary for him to watch everything he said, which in itself was exhausting. In addition, anxiety as well as the dampness had made his sinus bad, which necessitated daily treatments of his nose. I always worried about this constant treatment, for I felt that, while it might help temporarily, in the long run it must cause irritation. Sometimes Franklin decided to eat alone in his study, sometimes he had Harry Hopkins or a secretary eat with him, or some person with whom he wished to talk privately.

Harry Hopkins ate with Franklin in the study that day and there were thirty-one of us at lunch. By the time lunch was over the news had come of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but we did not hear it until we went upstairs, when one of the ushers told me. The information was so stunning that there was complete quiet, and we took up our next occupation in a kind of vacuum. I saw my guests off, and waited till Franklin was alone to slip into his study, but I realized he was concentrating on what had to be done and would not talk about what had happened until this first strain was over. So I went back to work.

A few minutes after three o’clock the secretaries of war and navy, Admiral Beardall, my husband’s naval aide, secretaries McIntyre and Early, and Grace Tully were all in Franklin’s study on the second floor of the White House. They were soon joined by General Marshall and the secretary of state. Later, when my husband and I did have a chance to talk, I thought that in spite of his anxiety Franklin was in a way more serene than he had appeared for a long time. It was steadying to know that the die was cast. One could no longer do anything but face the fact that this country was in a war; from here on, difficult and dangerous as the future looked, it presented a clearer challenge than had the long uncertainty of the past.

The next day was a busy one for us all. I went to the Civilian Defense Office that morning at nine o’clock as usual, but came back to the White House shortly before twelve to go with my husband to the Capitol to hear him deliver his message to a joint session of Congress. I was living through again, it seemed to me, the day when President Wilson addressed the Congress to announce our entry into World War I. Now the President of the United States was my husband, and for the second time in my life I heard a president tell the Congress that this nation was engaged in a war. I was deeply unhappy. I remembered my anxieties about my husband and brother when World War I began; now I had four sons of military age.

It was a very impressive occasion, one of those occasions when a spirit of unity and strength prevailed. There was no criticism—only an acceptance of the fact that something had happened to us which, as a nation, we had to face.

We knew that the Pearl Harbor attack had set us back a long way, that before us stretched endless months of building up our forces. We might have to retreat, because we had been a peace-loving people and as a nation had not wanted to prepare for war. We had been denied the wherewithal to fortify our islands in the Pacific by people who backed their representatives in Congress in the feeling that Japan did not want war with us. Many believed that only our insistence on preparation for war would force Japan to make war on us. The mistakes of those who thought that way are obvious today, but before Pearl Harbor they were not so obvious, and many patriotic people honestly believed that Japan was not planning war on us. The war in China was far away, and they thought that was all the Japanese were interested in. They did not realize that we were an obstacle to the fulfillment of the Japanese schemes for complete domination in the Pacific.

In retrospect, it is easy to see things that were obscure at the time. My husband had long suspected that these Japanese dreams of grandeur and domination existed. I remember his concern about Guam and the other islands of the Pacific as far back as when he was assistant secretary of the navy. His suspicion of Japan was based on his own ideas of what made the Pacific safe for us, and in all the war games in the Pacific Japan was always the enemy. But anyone who dared to voice such suspicion would immediately have been called a warmonger. After Franklin’s message to Congress, war was a grim reality to the whole country.

From the Capitol I went straight back to the Civilian Defense Office and stayed there most of the afternoon. I got home at a quarter before six and Miss Thompson and I were at the Washington airport at ten minutes past seven, ready to start with Mayor LaGuardia to the West Coast. As I was leaving, I had a glimpse of Elliott, who arrived to make an overnight stop at the White House. He was taking training in navigation and was on a final flight before graduation. The course had been speeded up because of the war. Immediately after that, Elliot went on patrol duty on the West Coast.

Miss Thompson and I were still working in a small forward compartment on the plane when they brought me a message that had been received by the pilots: a San Francisco paper had announced that the city of San Francisco was being bombed by the Japanese. I was asked to tell Mr. LaGuardia. Just before our next landing I awakened him, and he put his head out of the curtains, looking for all the world like a Kewpie. When I gave him the message, he asked me to get off when we landed and telephone the Washington airport for verification, saying: “If it is true, we will go direct to San Francisco.” It was so characteristic of him that I glowed inwardly. One could be exasperated with him at times, but one had to admire his integrity and courage. I telephoned and found that it was a rumor without verification, so I went back to the plane and the mayor decided we should continue to Los Angeles.

As we proceeded we began to receive instructions. First the pilot had orders to land us at Palm Springs, but finally we were allowed to land at an almost completely deserted airport in Los Angeles. There everything was shrouded in mystery, since most airline travel had been stopped.

Mayor LaGuardia had a field day talking to everybody about fire-fighting equipment and defense preparation. As he could not go down to San Diego, I left him in Los Angeles and went without him; it meant that he was ahead of me the rest of the trip, so I got the full impact of his visits on all the officials. His complete courage and lack of fear had a wonderful effect on everyone, but I did not know and never have known how much all our plans, both his and mine, really helped, since so much equipment was lacking that they could not do many of the things that were considered essential. He did get the organizing of doctors and medical supplies started and he did a great deal to spur the reorganizing of fire departments. I talked about the other activities, going up as far as Seattle on this trip. I worked all day and traveled to my next stop by night train since no planes were flying after dark. It was a queer sensation to be on a train with all the lights concealed—even the headlight on the locomotive was dimmed—and no lights to be seen outside.

I was back in Washington on December 15. I had been gone seven days and had traveled and worked unceasingly. That same afternoon Elinor Morgenthau and Justice Justine Polier, Betty Lindley and Anna Rosenberg, all of whom were helping Elinor, came to give me the latest news of the OCD from the office front. We discussed plans and policies and then some gossip, but I was getting hardened to gossip. Never did I have a more unfavorable press than at that time, but I did not give it much thought. I knew someday I would be out of it and if it did Franklin no harm, I had no feelings about it for myself. Franklin stayed serene and untroubled through it all.

There was gossip, too, about Harry living in the White House. Some people felt that since he had not been elected to any office he should not live there at government expense. They never seemed to understand that all the food eaten in the White House is paid for by the President and that therefore Harry was no added expense to the taxpayers.

And Harry did indeed do all—and more—that Franklin expected of him. Once the war was started and he grasped the seriousness of the situation, he put the running of the war ahead of everything else. As far as he was concerned, war needs were paramount. My husband felt the same. I, however, could not help feeling that it was the New Deal social objectives that had fostered the spirit that would make it possible for us to fight this war, and I believed it was vastly important to give people the feeling that in fighting the war we were still fighting for these same objectives. It was obvious that if the world were ruled by Hitler, freedom and democracy would no longer exist. I felt it was essential both to the prosecution of the war and to the period after the war that the fight for the rights of minorities should continue.

I wanted to see us go on with our medical program not only in the field of military medicine but in the whole area which concerned children and young people. I thought the groundwork should be laid for a wide health program after the war. Harry Hopkins could not be bothered. He felt that money could not be diverted to anything which did not have a direct bearing on the fighting of the war. He was probably right, but I never could entirely agree with him.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, all activity in the White House centered more than ever on preparations for war. The Supply Priorities and Allocation Board began its meetings, and Franklin had more and more appointments with the military people and with people like Mrs. Anna Rosenberg, who was one of his close links with labor. Next to military operations, labor was the most important consideration in our preparation for war.

The Russian ambassador came on two occasions to see my husband; and Crown Princess Marta of Norway, who must have been deeply troubled through all those days, came to gain reassurance and talk over the situation.

Meanwhile I continued working at the Office of Civilian Defense, organizing a youth division. I also tried unsuccessfully to get the Cabinet wives to take some responsibility for the hordes of girls pouring into Washington to work in the various departments.

The whole OCD episode was unfortunate. I had been reluctant to take the job and had done so only at the insistence of Harry Hopkins and another of my husband’s advisers. Franklin himself was neutral, though he told me he thought it would help Mayor LaGuardia. When the mayor found what a controversial person I became he was appalled at having me; and I did not blame him for disclaiming any responsibility for the “dreadful” things that some members of Congress felt I had done. After the mayor resigned from the OCD I was instrumental in obtaining his successor. The mounting wave of attack in Congress finally convinced me that I was not going to be able to do a real job in the OCD, so on February 20, I, too, resigned, leaving Judge Landis a prickly problem which he handled well.

It is history that as soon as Prime Minister Winston Churchill heard of the Pearl Harbor attack he made up his mind to come to the United States. His trip was top secret and none of us knew until shortly before he arrived that he was coming.

A few days before his visit, my husband sent for Miss Thompson and asked her whom I had invited to stay in the house over Christmas. He also asked to see the list of people invited to dinner. In all the years that we had been in the White House he had never paid much attention to such details, and this was the first time he had made such a request. He gave no explanation and no hint that anything unusual was going to happen.

When we learned that Mr. Churchill was coming on December 22, everyone scurried around to get ready. The Monroe Room on the second floor had to be turned into a map room and an office for the British delegation, and we shifted beds around to make room for all our Christmas guests.

My husband, on that memorable day of December 22, saw the Russian ambassador, the Chinese ambassador, and the Dutch minister, besides filling innumerable other engagements. He left shortly before six in the evening to meet the British prime minister, and they all arrived at the White House at six-thirty. We had quite a houseful, but it represented only a small quota of those who came over with Mr. Churchill.

I had been asked by Franklin to have tea ready in the West Hall for our British guests, but I found on their arrival that they preferred more stimulating refreshments. We were seventeen at dinner that night. I had come back to Washington that morning on the night train from New York City and had spent a good part of the day at the Office of Civilian Defense. I had gone to the Salvation Army Christmas party, to a Catholic Charities Christmas party, and the Alley Christmas tree programs, so I had added a good deal to the already heavy official program of the day. I still remember that as time wore on that evening I caught myself falling asleep as I tried to talk to my guests.