Eleanor

by Joseph P. Lash

  I know my husband always felt you had been honest with him. I remember his saying so. There were others he was not quite so sure about but I never heard him express a doubt about you and I have always had the friendliest of feelings toward you, and I hope we will have an opportunity to discuss how best we can improve relationships between our two countries.9

  She had felt a lack of candor at her first meeting with Prime Minister Yoshida, but subsequently they did talk freely at a luncheon on a Sunday when few others were present. She was not happy with what she learned:

  To my astonishment the Prime Minister said that of course Japan was going to rearm, though he would not say so openly for political reasons. There is a contradiction in this whole political situation here because the reactionaries are actually in power but they accepted and uphold the very liberal constitution which we forced upon them. They really do not believe in most of the measures which are actually accepted but the people do believe in them and they do not dare repudiate them, though I think they will try to whittle them away. . . .Mr. Yoshida was a charming host, easy and talkative, but I do not think he is a progressive in our sense of the word.10

  She was chiefly concerned with the status of women: the Mac-Arthur constitution was western and modern in its conception, but the underlying Japanese thought patterns and family structure were still almost feudal.

  It is always amusing to me that only a few of the men bring their wives to these parties and when the wives do come, they are usually very silent and they gather together afterwards and stay quite apart from the men. But the women who are working in different fields have appeared at nearly all the entertainments for me and I think it gives them a little lift to feel that the gentlemen are being so attentive to a woman.

  In Kyoto at a formal tea ceremony in a “very grand house,” for the first time “I really had to sit on a cushion on the floor and I am not very good at it, I am sorry to say. I wish I had preserved the Japanese women’s ability to flop down on their knees and sit on their heels and on their knees for an endless length of time.”11

  The women, except for the Japanese mother-in-law, served the men, too deferentially for Mrs. Roosevelt’s taste. She discovered that the Japanese mother-in-law was the key to the subjugation of the women, more perhaps than the men. The mother-in-law tyrannized the women in the household, especially her daughters-in-law. She ran everyone except her husband and her oldest son. All the family’s earnings went into the mother-in-law’s leather pouch and it was she who doled out the money, even to married sons and their wives. The daughter-in-law was practically a slave taking her bath last, arising early, preparing the food, and serving everyone else “before she kneels a step below her husband and his mother to eat her own meal.”

  “In the United States,” a young village woman asked her, “what do you do with your mother-in-law?” There was no single answer, she replied, and then turned to Minnewa, “Perhaps my daughter-in-law can answer your questions better than I can.” But Minnewa only blushed, shook her head, and refused to speak up.12

  Mrs. Roosevelt did not note the similarities between the dominating position of the mother-in-law in Japan and her own mother-in-law’s long years of matriarchal control. The need to fight Sara had long since abated. When Irene Sandifer mentioned that a book by H. A. Overstreet, The Mature Mind, cited Mrs. Roosevelt as an example, she protested, “I matured late in life; if I had matured earlier I might have been more tolerant of my mother-in-law.”13

  “On the level of women,” she wrote in her final report to Dean Carman,

  it is difficult to see, with the family system still untouched in rural areas and in the poorer areas, how great changes are going to happen quickly. . . .I can not help but feel there is a great lack in Japan of leadership from the upper class groups. The students need someone to look up to and to listen to. There just seems to be no one whom they feel is their friend. The women need some woman who will sit down and discuss their problems and try to find solutions even though they do not happen themselves to work in a factory or work on a farm. . . .Everywhere the women were willing to talk. . . .I think my being here has given the women quite a lift and added to their sense of confidence and importance. . . .14

  She had met many beautiful and charming princesses, ladies of good breeding, but they were not at the meetings of the women who were concerned with women’s rights. Except for Princess Chichibu (Setsuko Matsudaira), the widow of the emperor’s brother, they were not concerned with the conditions of the women workers in the factories or on the farms. “More and more I wanted to ask the Empress about this problem,” and her chance came on the final day of her stay when she was granted an audience by Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako.

  She drove into the moat-surrounded, high-walled palace with American Ambassador John M. Allison. He was in cutaway coat and striped pants, and she wore a dress with three-quarter sleeves, which, she had been told, was acceptable court costume provided she wore long gloves that met the sleeves. Inside the palace they were ushered through a series of rooms filled with furniture covered in pink damask, priceless carved objects, and lovely hangings, with attendants in each room bowing low. Finally they came into the audience chamber where they were seated with care. Their Majesties then entered and they all bowed to each other, and the empress, in a flowered kimono, seated herself on the sofa beside Mrs. Roosevelt. The emperor began the discussion, telling her of the great efforts he had made to prevent the war. It was an important avowal, and she thought the emperor was sincere and saw his statement as evidence that he would help the United States build up friendly relations in Asia. But she was impatient to draw the empress into the discussion. She turned to her and reported what she had seen in Pakistan and India of efforts to emancipate women. “We need more education,” the empress commented. Then she though for a moment and agreed that there were great changes coming about in the life of Japanese women. But she was anxious. “We have always been trained in the past to a life of service and I am afraid that as these new changes come about there may be a loss of real values.” What was Mrs. Roosevelt’s impression? That was her chance. There was less danger of old values being lost in a period of change, Mrs. Roosevelt replied, “when the intelligent and broadminded women who have had an opportunity to become educated take the lead to bring about the necessary changes.” She mentioned the emancipation work with women that the Begum Liaquat Ali Khan was doing in Pakistan.

  Here the emperor broke in: “Our customs are different, Mrs. Roosevelt. We have government bureaus to lead in our reforms. We serve as an example to our people in the way we live and it is our lives that have influence over them.” Mrs. Roosevelt did not feel she could press the matter further. But in writing about the audience, she presented as historical prophecy what she hoped would happen. She could not help believing that “the future may see greater leadership exerted by the women of high social status, including members of the entourage of the Imperial family.” After some talk of other matters, economic conditions, overpopulation, and the crown prince, Their Majesties arose, wished Mrs. Roosevelt a safe journey, and “left us, bowing again as they went out and, of course, we returned their bows.”

  When the embassy submitted the article that she wrote on the audience to court officials, they took exception to matters of style and substance. They preferred Mrs. Roosevelt to use the expression “cutaway” rather than “frock coat” in describing the men’s dress. She made too much of the regulations governing court dress for ladies, they felt, and there were too many references to the etiquette of bowing. They objected to her juxtaposition of the description of the empress’s lovely obi (a broad sash worn with a kimono) and the information that women who wove these intricate sashes often developed eye trouble. It might suggest the empress was callous. They did not take exception to the main burden of her article, that women’s emancipation in Japan might well start in the palace. She made the changes the court suggested in the manuscript that she submitted for magazine pu
blication, but not in her book, On My Own. However, the latter appeared in 1958, and she probably had forgotten the embassy’s memorandum. That occasionally happened, by then.15

  Minnewa flew from Japan to Honolulu to meet Elliott, but Mrs. Roosevelt and Maureen Corr headed for Hong Kong, their ultimate destination being Yugoslavia, where she would have a chance to observe how a governmental system that called itself communistic actually operated and where she had been promised an interview with the arch-rebel against Stalinism, Marshal Tito. In Hong Kong she was feted and shown the sights. She was briefed on the Chinese refugee problem and given “the English point of view” on the Far Eastern question “with a heavy hand,” she wrote her son John, who was asked to circulate her letters among other members of the family and close friends. She also met Mr. Keswick, “a British merchant whose firm, Jardine & Co., owns practically everything in Hong Kong” and who knew a good deal about Russell & Company, “Grandad Delano’s old firm.” She asked him about the stories assiduously circulated by Pegler and other anti–New Deal columnists that the Delanos had made money in the opium trade in the days of the clipper ships. All foreign merchants, Mr. Keswick told her, were obliged to take a small amount of opium in their cargos if they wanted to trade in tea.16

  There was a stopover in New Delhi for refueling and repair because the plane had been buffeted by hurricane winds in Calcutta. Mme. Pandit was waiting for her. They talked for twenty minutes and, informed the plane would be delayed another twenty minutes, Mrs. Roosevelt persuaded Mme. Pandit to go home. But the twenty minutes stretched into hours, and the passengers were finally taken into the city to a hotel. Mrs. Roosevelt decided to have her hair done.

  This was a waste of time because my permanent has come out completely because of the heat and climatic conditions, and the next day it was as straight as it could be and a perfect nuisance. I wish I had never tried to let it grow and yet I can’t bring myself to get it cut now that it is half grown.17

  It was a torrid July day in New Delhi, but Mrs. Roosevelt had had a hot Indian curry before boarding the plane. She loved it, she insisted to Maureen.

  The next fueling stop was in Istanbul, where the consul general, Mr. Macatee, was waiting for her although it was five in the morning. He was “a rather wispy, wan-looking” gentleman who wanted to take her and Maureen to a nearby hotel to bathe and rest. But Mrs. Roosevelt was determined to see Istanbul and, although the shops were closed, managed to visit three mosques and the walls of the city and then breakfast with Mr. Macatee’s wife and daughter on a balcony that overlooked the Golden Horn.

  Her plane arrived in Athens ahead of schedule. “This caused much consternation because all of the American Embassy could not come to meet us. There were quite enough of them, however.” David Gurewitsch joined Mrs. Roosevelt and Maureen here, and the three toured archeological diggings, visited the Acropolis at sunset, and she lunched with the king and queen. “I wished they had asked David because I hated going alone, but there were only a few members of their family there and both the King and Queen were charming.” She evidently did a little missionary work in the palace of the Hellenes, for she asked her son to send Her Majesty information about Berea and Antioch colleges, where work was a part of the curriculum, as well as material on the Henry Street Settlement and the Alfred E. Smith low-cost houses.18

  She landed in Belgrade in a drenching downpour. This was the first time she had been in a Communist country, and she felt a curiosity not unmixed with tension. Deposited in her hotel by welcoming officials, Mrs. Roosevelt looked out on the empty streets and, consulting with Maureen and David, decided that this was the moment to get a glimpse of Belgrade without official guides, interpreters, and hosts. So the three of them slipped out through a rear door onto the rain-darkened street and went into one shop after the other asking what wares they had to sell and their prices. “We thought we had stolen a march on them,” commented David, “but the next morning every question that we had asked in the shops was in the papers. That’s how secret we were.”

  She was briefed by the embassy, and saw the sights, and lunched with Vladimir Dedijer, the biographer of Tito, even though he was out of favor with the Communist party and Tito. Leaving Belgrade, she toured five of the six Yugoslavian republics, visited agricultural cooperatives, talked with Yugoslavian officials of every degree from Vice President Kardelj down:

  Everyone agrees that great changes have taken place in the last years, but that does not mean they are not communists. They are and what is more they are proud of being communists—but not Soviet Communists.

  In her next letter, she corrected herself:

  . . .I have now had a long interview over two days with the President and I have discovered that he looks on Communism as an ideal stage in which everybody receives according to his needs, the selfishness of human nature has been wiped out, nobody is greedy, everybody is satisfied with receiving what he needs and interested in the well being of others. He keeps telling me that it is socialism, which is only the first step toward Communism, which actually exists in this country. He calls himself a “social democrat” and says that he became a Russian Communist because of his term in prison and the belief that the Soviet Union alone cared about the well being of all the people. When he found that the Russians are as selfish and imperialistic as imperialist nations, he decided that his nation must develop in its own way and he did not want what existed in Yugoslavia to be called Titoism because he felt it might hinder the development of each nation according to its own way. Pretty interesting as a statement, isn’t it, but don’t spread it about because it is part of my article.19

  President Tito and his wife entertained Mrs. Roosevelt on Brioni, his vacation island in the Adriatic. There were several handsome speedboats about, and the president piloted one himself, insisting that Mrs. Roosevelt be his passenger. He was not without vanity, Mrs. Roosevelt observed to herself, and clearly loved power. But she was also impressed with him. “You cannot meet this man without recognizing that he was a real mind. He is a doer and a practical person.” She was interested in the relationship between Tito and his young, beautiful wife, who also had been a Partisan. She had just taken her examinations in Belgrade, she told Mrs. Roosevelt. “Examinations?” a puzzled Mrs. Roosevelt inquired. Yes, she had gone back to the university to complete her education. The president, Mrs. Roosevelt was pleased to observe, was proud of his wife’s determination to complete her education and encouraged her to do so.

  When she returned to Belgrade she had tea at the home of Jack Raymond, the New York Times reporter, with some U.S. correspondents who gave her “a pretty good idea of their observations since they have been here.” She, in turn, told the reporters how she had asked Tito whether his officials respected the rights of the individual citizen under the law, and Tito had replied with a story. In a village pub people were arguing about Tito and in loud voices expressing their hostility to him, to the annoyance of some good Communists who were at the next table. Finally one of the Communists had had enough and punched one of the most offensive critics on the jaw. For his loyalty, said Tito, the good Communist had gotten a month in jail. He had heard the story, Tito explained, from his police chief, Vice President Aleksandar Rankovic. “The only thing I believe in that story,” commented Jack Raymond with a chuckle, “is that Mr. Rankovic knew what was going on in that village pub.”20

  On the way home there were stops in Zagreb and Ljubljana, where they had dinner with Mrs. Roosevelt’s novelist-friend Martha Gellhorn, and in Vienna and Paris. Maureen Corr flew to Ireland, while Mrs. Roosevelt, joined in London by her granddaughter Sisty and Sisty’s husband, Van Seagrave, both of whom were with the Mutual Security Administration, drove down to Lady Reading’s “and had a delightful weekend.” She would get in on a Sunday, she informed John, but she did not want him to leave Hyde Park in order to meet her. She wanted to go to her new apartment on East Sixty-second Street, a small duplex which Esther Lape had located for her and which she had rented sight
unseen. It had a garden where her little dog Duffy might be let out to run, and provided easier access to her office at the AAUN than the Park Sheraton Hotel. “I will call you just as soon as I reach the apartment on Sunday,” she advised John. “It will be wonderful to hear your voices.” But John and Anne were at the airport, and she could not have been more pleased. There was the usual press conference, and the reporters asked her about Senator McCarthy.21

  Everywhere on her trip she had been asked about McCarthyism, she told them. “Things are certainly edgy and touchy,” she had written Sandifer from Tokyo, “and the extraordinary thing is how much attention is paid to Senator McCarthy. He really has done us a great deal of harm over here.” The first question asked of her during a visit to a winegrowers’ cooperative in Yugoslavia, she had written her Republican son John,