How to Hide an Empire

by Daniel Immerwahr

  35 hoped that experimental treatments: Farley, Cast Out Disease, chap. 5.

  36 “outspoken” … “hawk-like”: “Cancer Fighter, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads,” NYT, October 10, 1956.

  37 “A man of brusque manners”: Luis Baldoni, Testimony in Cornelius Rhoads Case, 1932, 1, folder 4, box 31, Reynolds Papers.

  38 “nervous half-hour visits”: Ashford, Soldier in Science, 44.

  39 refused treatment: C. P. Rhoads et al., “Observations on the Etiology and Treatment of Anemia Associated with Hookworm Infection in Puerto Rico,” Medicine 13 (1934): 353, 361.

  40 “experimental ‘animals’” … “If they don’t”: Susan E. Lederer, “‘Porto Ricochet’: Joking About Germs, Cancer, and Race Extermination in the 1930s,” American Literary History 14 (2002): 725.

  41 Dear Ferdie: Full letter reprinted in Truman R. Clark, Puerto Rico and the United States, 1917–1933 (Pittsburgh, 1975), 152–53.

  42 Clandestine villainy: The most thorough accounts are Lederer, “Porto Ricochet,” and Pedro Aponte Vázquez, The Unsolved Case of Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads: An Indictment (San Juan, 2004). For the view from the Rockefeller Institute, see Farley, Cast Out Disease, chap. 5.

  43 “in a moment” … “I have a high notion” … “loan”: Baldoni, Testimony, 5, 8.

  44 gave it to a man: “Patients Say Rhoads Saved Their Lives,” NYT, February 2, 1932.

  45 cover letter: Lederer, “Porto Ricochet,” 726.

  46 “confession of murder”: Douglas Starr, “Revisiting a 1930s Scandal, AACR to Rename a Prize,” Science 300 (2003): 574.

  47 “even worse”: James R. Beverley to Wilber A. Sawyer, February 17, 1932, reprinted in Aponte Vázquez, Unsolved Case, 35–36.

  48 “a mental case”: Lederer, “Porto Ricochet,” 734.

  49 Katz: Starr, “Revisiting a Scandal,” 573.

  50 “Where tyranny”: Juan Manuel Carrión et al., eds., La nación puertorriqueña: Ensayos en torno a Pedro Albizu Campos (San Juan, 1997), 234.

  51 four sticks of dynamite: Mathews, Puerto Rican Politics, 103.

  52 Riggs wrote to: E. Francis Riggs to Millard Tydings, January 3, 1934, and January 8, 1934, “Commission on Territories and Insular Affairs, 1933–December 10, 1934” folder, box 1, ser. 4, Tydings Papers.

  53 “Public order”: A. W. Maldonado, Luis Muñoz Marín: Puerto Rico’s Democratic Revolution (San Juan, 2006), 132.

  54 exploded on holidays: Dante Di Lillo and Edgar K. Thompson, “Pedro Albizu Campos,” supplementary report, February 26, 1936, 3, Albizu FBI File, sec. 1.

  55 “Some night”: Dante Di Lillo, “Pedro Albizu Campos,” report, April 4, 1936, 32, Albizu FBI File, sec. 1.

  56 “non-stop war”: La Democracia, October 26, 1935, discussed in Luis A. Ferrao, “29 Lies (and More to Come) in the Fictitious War Against All Puerto Ricans,” Diálogo UPR, September 24, 2015, www.dialogoupr.com.

  57 “There will be war”: Carl E. Stanford, report 100-3906, “Pedro Albizu Campos,” May 26, 1943, 5, Albizu FBI File, sec. 2.

  58 shoot-out with the police: Juan Manuel Carrión, “The War of the Flags: Conflicting National Loyalties in a Modern Colonial Situation,” CENTRO Journal 28 (2006): 112.

  59 “clean up”: “Zioncheck Offers to Clean Up Island,” NYT, May 14, 1936.

  60 “the most important”: Ronald Fernandez, The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico and the United States in the Twentieth Century, 2d ed. (Westport, CT, 1996), 128.

  61 hand-picked jury: Evidence presented by Rep. Vito Marcantonio in “Five Years of Tyranny in Puerto Rico,” Congressional Record, 76th Cong., 1st sess., appendix, 4062–69.

  62 gunfire erupted: Details all from Arthur Garfield Hays, Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Civil Rights in Puerto Rico, May 22, 1937.

  63 “common fact”: Edgar K. Thompson to Hoover, December 22, 1939, Albizu FBI File, sec. 2.

  64 “massacre”: Hays, Report of Commission, 28.

  65 “jocular letter”: “Porto Rico ‘Plot’ Fails at Hearing,” Washington Post, February 7, 1932.

  66 Time printed the letter: “Porto Ricochet,” Time, February 15, 1932, 38. On public relations, see Lederer, “Porto Ricochet.”

  67 didn’t impede him: A good overview of Rhoads’s career (though it omits Puerto Rico) is C. Chester Stock, “Cornelius Packard Rhoads, 1898–1959,” Cancer Research 20 (1960): 409–11.

  68 Chemical Warfare Service ran tests: See Committee on the Survey of the Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite, Veterans at Risk: The Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite, ed. Constance M. Pechura and David P. Rall (Washington, DC, 1993), and Susan L. Smith, Toxic Exposures: Mustard Gas and the Health Consequences of World War II in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ, 2017).

  69 race based: Susan L. Smith, “Mustard Gas and American Race-Based Human Experimentation in World War II,” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 36 (2008): 517–21.

  70 “from the Continental Limits”: William N. Porter to Commanding General, May 5, 1944; “200, San Jose Project” folder; box 56; Entry 2B, Misc. Series, 1942–45; CWS. This was part of a general War Department strategy of deploying Puerto Rican troops in the Caribbean to free up “continental” troops for combat, on which see Steven High, Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 1940–1967 (New York, 2009), 39–41.

  71 One GI: John Lindsay-Poland, Emperors in the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama (Durham, NC, 2003), 59.

  72 “cheap availability,” etc.: Jay Katz to David Rall, June 16, 1992, in Veterans at Risk, 388, 389.

  73 established medical testing stations: “Col. Rhoads Is Cited for Poison Gas Study,” NYT, May 6, 1945.

  74 He arranged to transport: Rhoads to Jake T. Nolan, August 31, 1944; “200, Bushnell Project” folder; box 56; Entry 2B, Misc. Series, 1942–45; CWS.

  75 recommended which gases: Cornelius P. Rhoads, “Estimates of the Extent of Ground Contamination Necessary for the Production of Casualties by Mustard Vapor Effects on Masked Troops in the Contaminated Area”; folder 470.6; box 154; Entry 4M, Subject Series, 1942–45; and Cornelius P. Rhoads, “The Assessment of Casualties Produced by WP and PWP,” September 19, 1944; folder 704; box 178; Entry 4B, Misc. Series, 1942–45; both in CWS.

  76 offered comments: See, for example, Rhoads to John R. Wood, August 13, 1943; “400.112 Mustard Liquid” folder; box 151; Entry 4A, Subject Series, 1942–45; CWS.

  77 “combating poison gas”: “Rhoads Cited for Gas Study.”

  78 to treat lymphoma: On mustard agents and medical uses, see Cornelius P. Rhoads, “The Sword and the Ploughshare,” 1946, reprinted in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 28 (1978): 306–12; Alfred Gilman, “The Initial Clinical Trial of Nitrogen Mustard,” American Journal of Surgery 105 (1963): 574–78; Peggy Dillon, National Cancer Institute, Oral History Interview Project, Interview with Joseph Burchenal, January 26, 2001, history.nih.gov/archives/oral_histories; Vincent T. DeVita Jr. and Edward Chu, “A History of Cancer Chemotherapy,” Cancer Research 68 (2008): 8643–53; and especially Smith, Toxic Exposures, chap. 4.

  79 divided the stock: Rhoads, “Sword and Ploughshare,” 312.

  80 Rhoads also recruited: DeVita and Chu, “History of Chemotherapy,” 8646.

  81 “frontal attack”: “Frontal Attack,” Time, June 27, 1949, 66.

  82 intolerance for alternative approaches: Rhoads especially sidelined approaches championed by women. See Virginia Livingston-Wheeler and Edmond G. Addeo, The Conquest of Cancer: Vaccines and Diet (New York, 1984), 72–79, 84–88; Ralph W. Moss, The Cancer Industry: Unraveling the Politics (New York, 1989), 478; and Matthew Tontonoz, “Beyond Magic Bullets: Helen Coley Nauts and the Battle for Immunotherapy,” Cancer Research Institute Blog, April 1, 2015, www.cancerresearch.org.

  83 “one of the most prominent”: Starr, “Revisiting a Scandal,” 573.

  84 “It was just totally shocking”: Eric T. Rosenthal, “The Rhoads Not Given: The Tainting of the Cornelius P. Rhoads Memorial Award,” Oncology Times, September 10, 2
003, 20. See also ibid.

  10. FORTRESS AMERICA

  1 inescapable daily presence: On this, I have learned much from Alvita Akiboh and her article “Pocket-Sized Imperialism: U.S. Designs on Colonial Currency,” DH 41 (2017): 874–902.

  2 coverage in The New York Times: New York Times Index: Annual Cumulative Volume Year 1930 (New York, 1931).

  3 “brown Polynesian people,” etc.: Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928; New York, 2001), 8. Mead’s silence on the colonial aspects of her subject is discussed in Derek Freeman, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (Cambridge, MA, 1983). Mead’s book contains only three instances of the term American Samoa (two of which are parenthetical), one colony (a classical reference, though), one navy, and no mentions of territory, empire, or imperialism.

  4 didn’t know where the island was: Hubert Herring, “Rebellion in Puerto Rico,” The Nation, November 29, 1933, 618–19.

  5 didn’t have a single federal official: That episode, in 1878–79, is described in A. P. Swineford, Alaska: Its History, Climate and Natural Resources (Chicago, 1898), 66.

  6 “It has been impossible”: Moorfield Storey and Marcial P. Lichauco, The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States (New York, 1926), 203.

  7 Anti-Imperialist League: Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900 (New York, 1968), 225. See also Jim Zwick, “The Anti-Imperialist League and the Origins of Filipino-American Oppositional Solidarity,” Amerasia Journal 24 (1998): 65–85.

  8 Pan-American Freedom League: Robert David Johnson, Ernest Gruening and the American Dissenting Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 67.

  9 “Not in all the years”: Oswald Garrison Villard, “Ernest Gruening’s Appointment,” The Nation, August 29, 1934, 232.

  10 quite a career: Johnson, Gruening, and Robert David Johnson, “Anti-Imperialism and the Good Neighbour Policy: Ernest Gruening and Puerto Rican Affairs, 1934–1939,” Journal of Latin American Studies 29 (1997): 89–110.

  11 spent only a single day: Ernest Gruening, Many Battles: The Autobiography of Ernest Gruening (New York, 1973), 181.

  12 Roosevelt rattled off his assessments: Ibid., 181, and Ernest Gruening, The Battle for Alaska Statehood (Seattle, 1977), xi.

  13 fantasizing about annexing: Lowell T. Young, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and America’s Islets: Acquisition of Territory in the Caribbean and the Pacific,” The Historian 35 (1973): 206.

  14 falling by two-thirds: David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999), 77.

  15 “infinitely more”: Brooks Emeny, The Strategy of Raw Materials: A Study of America in Peace and War (New York, 1938), 174.

  16 bought more sugar: A. G. Hopkins, American Empire: A Global History (Princeton, NJ, 2018), 517.

  17 “two kinds of territory”: Gruening, Many Battles, 229.

  18 colonies paid the cost: April Merleaux, Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness (Chapel Hill, NC, 2015), chap. 7.

  19 “reversal of opinion”: “Calvin Coolidge Says,” New York Herald-Tribune, May 25, 1931.

  20 “It would be a mortifying spectacle”: “The Philippines and Economics,” Christian Science Monitor, July 20, 1931, 14.

  21 comprehensive survey: Ten Eyck Associates, Philippine Independence: A Survey of the Present State of American Public Opinion on the Subject (New York, 1932), 31.

  22 “surely never happen”: Quoted in Manuel V. Gallego, The Price of Philippine Independence Under the Tydings McDuffie Act: An Anti-View of the So-Called Independence Law (Manila, 1939), 85.

  23 Quezon was a master politician: On Quezon’s career, see Carlos Quirino, Quezon: Paladin of Philippine Freedom (Manila, 1971), chaps. 3–5; Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Madison, WI, 2009), 187–88.

  24 “wonderfully trained”: McCoy, Policing America’s Empire, 188.

  25 mercury with a fork: John Gunther, Inside Asia, war ed. (1939; New York, 1942), 316.

  26 about four-fifths: O. D. Corpuz, An Economic History of the Philippines (Quezon City, 1997), 243.

  27 privately assuring his contacts: Herbert Hoover, Memoirs (New York, 1952), 2:361; Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946 (New Haven, CT, 1965), chap. 1; and Michael Paul Onorato, “Quezon and Independence: A Reexamination,” Philippine Studies 37 (1989): 221–31.

  28 ratified this version: The best guide to this complicated episode is Friend, Between Two Empires, part 3.

  29 governor-general predicted: Theodore Friend, The Blue-Eyed Enemy: Japan Against the West in Java and Luzon, 1942–1945 (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 33.

  30 “considered to be”: Philippine Independence Act, March 24, 1934, 48 Stat. 462.

  31 Quezon arranged a ceremony: Chronicled in Francis Burton Harrison, Origins of the Philippine Republic: Extracts from the Diaries and Records of Francis Burton Harrison, ed. Michael P. Onorato (Ithaca, NY, 1974), 17–18.

  32 “By his silence”: Gruening, Many Battles, 197.

  33 “revenge disguised as political freedom”: Luis Muñoz Marín, Memorias: Autobiografía pública, 1898–1940 (San Juan, 1982), 1:149.

  34 95 percent of Puerto Rico’s off-island sales: James L. Dietz, Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Development (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 120.

  35 “As a matter of cold actuality”: Theodore Roosevelt Jr. to Quezon, quoted in Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Colonial Policies of the United States (Garden City, NY, 1937), 187.

  36 reverse Philippine independence: Gerald E. Wheeler, “The Movement to Reverse Philippine Independence,” Pacific History Review 33 (1964): 167–81.

  37 “realistic reexamination” … “If our flag”: Paul V. McNutt, radio address, March 14, 1938, “Commonwealth (Administration) Philippines” folder, box 2, Padover File.

  38 “presentation of the facts”: “Quezon Proves to be Irresponsible!” Philippine-American Advocate, 1938, clipping in “Independence—Philippines” folder, box 4, Padover File.

  39 “wholehearted and unswerving loyalty”: Quezon, Loyalty Day Declaration, 1941, in World War II and the Japanese Occupation, ed. Ricardo Trota Jose (Quezon City, 2006), 14.

  40 one-peso commemorative coin: Thanks to Alvita Akiboh for drawing this to my attention.

  41 Britain annexing the Philippines: R. John Pritchard, “President Quezon and Incorporation of the Philippines into the British Empire, 1935–1937,” Bulletin of the American Historical Collection 12 (1984): 42–63.

  42 “as if he had a flagpole”: John Hersey, Men on Bataan (New York, 1942), 279.

  43 sexual failure: Michael Schaller, Douglas MacArthur: The Far Eastern General (New York, 1989), 11.

  44 a military genius: The MacArthur literature is extensive. I’ve relied mainly on Rem.; D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 1 (Boston, 1970); William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (Boston, 1978); Carol Morris Petillo, Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years (Bloomington, IN, 1981); Schaller, MacArthur; and Richard Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines (Woodstock, NY, 2001).

  45 “desperadoes”: Rem., 29. MacArthur describes Guimaras as “infested with brigands and guerrillas” but does not say which the men he slew were.

  46 Plan Orange: Earl S. Pomeroy, Pacific Outpost: American Strategy in Guam and Micronesia (Stanford, CA, 1951); Louis Morton, “Germany First: The Basic Concept of Allied Strategy in World War II,” in Command Decisions, ed. Kent Roberts Greenfield (Washington, DC, 1960), 11–47; Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts (Washington, DC, 1961); Louis Morton, The War in the Pacific: Strategy and Command: The First Two Years (Washington, DC, 1962); Timothy P. Maga, “Democracy and Defence: The Case of Guam, U.S.A., 1918–1941,” Journal of Pacific History 20 (1985): 156–72; Edward S. Miller, Wa
r Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945 (Annapolis, MD, 1991); John Costello, Days of Infamy: MacArthur, Roosevelt, Churchill—The Shocking Truth Revealed (New York, 1994); Brian McAllister Linn, Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997); and Galen Roger Perras, Stepping Stones to Nowhere: The Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and American Military Strategy, 1867–1945 (Vancouver, 2003).

  47 “not within the wildest”: Richard H. Rovere and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Mac-Arthur Controversy and American Foreign Policy (1951; New York, 1965), 44.

  48 “literally an act of madness”: Morton, War in the Pacific, 34.

  49 “both the Philippines and Hawaii”: Linn, Guardians, 147.

  50 Public opinion polls: Pomeroy, Pacific Outpost, 140.

  51 Fortune in 1940: “Fortune Magazine Survey XXVI,” “Fortune Magazine Survey” folder, box 1, Hawaii Equal Rights Commission Records, COM16, HSA.

  52 protested vigorously: John Snell to Fortune, January 27, 1940, along with other letters in ibid.

  53 war planners: Linn, Guardians, chaps. 4 and 6.

  54 “Sakdal rebellion”: Motoe Terami-Wada, Sakdalistas’ Struggle for Philippine Independence, 1930–1945 (Quezon City, 2014), 4.

  55 killing fifty-nine rebels: Ibid.

  56 court-martial: Linn, Guardians, 148.

  57 “an eleventh-hour struggle”: Rem., 109. MacArthur’s appointment as chief of staff ended, to his annoyance, while he was en route to the Pacific.

  58 “just another job” … “hopeless venture”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (Garden City, NY, 1967), 222, 225.

  59 worried that armed Filipinos: Ricardo Trota Jose, The Philippine Army, 1935–1942 (Manila, 1992), 64.

  60 “basic appreciation”: Daniel D. Holt and James W. Leyerzapf, eds., Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries and Selected Papers, 1905–1941 (Baltimore, 1998), 307.

  61 birthday card: James, Years of MacArthur, 1:564.

  62 “General, you have been”: As recounted by Eisenhower to Peter Lyon, reported in Lyon’s Eisenhower: Portrait of the Hero (Boston, 1974), 78.