Everything seemed on track for another run. A statewide Johnson campaign organization was being set up. The Brown & Root plane was flying the candidate back and forth between Washington and Texas, and from city to city across the state, as in late October, 1941, he began an unannounced campaign; during a tour of shipyards in Beaumont, the Beaumont Enterprise reported, “the central Texas representative whom the President has called ‘My good friend’ … shook hands with more people than the average politician could see in a week.” And Johnson could scarcely restrain himself from making the announcement; asked at a private reception in Beaumont if he would run in 1942, he said, “When we have a prize fight” as close as the 1941 race had been, “it’s usually considered close enough to call for a return engagement, don’t you think?”
There was, however, an interruption in his plans: Pearl Harbor.
1 Here, and in several other places, I have recapitulated material—including quotations from interviews—from Volume 1, The Path to Power, because it seemed to me necessary to establish the context in which certain events of the present volume take place. (Among the other places are the descriptions of Lyndon Johnson’s early years in Congress, his relationship with Sam Rayburn, Lady Bird’s early years and the Rio Grande Valley.)
2
All Quiet on the Western Front
IN 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:
we still believe that Lyndon Johnson meant what he said during the campaign. We are confident that by his declaration of “being in the front lines, in the mud,” he meant just that; and that his army service would not find him dressed in shining boots and spurs, reclining in an easy chair behind a desk “nowhere near” the front.…
The war being now at hand, according to Mr. Johnson’s own declaration, his conduct will demonstrate to his critics and defenders what his campaign promise is worth.… So we feel certain that Congressman Johnson will soon be an enrollee in the United States draft forces.… We believe the Congressman will live up to his often repeated promises. But of course we may be wrong and the Congressman’s disparagers may be right. It is up to Congressman Lyndon Johnson whether or not he will live up to his promise.…
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.
THE 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.
THE 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.
And, Connally says, “We had a lot of fun.” They traveled by train, two tall, black-haired young Texans, dramatically handsome in their Navy blue and gold uniforms, having the good times of young sailors at war but not at sea. Jesse Kellam, Johnson’s one-time subordinate at the Texas NYA and now its director, came out to the Coast to join them, ostensibly to facilitate the inculcation of NYA on-the-job training techniques in the shipyards. Although notably little inculcating was done, there was a lot of partying, and a lot of practical jokes: when Kellam got drunk at a party one evening, Johnson had a photographer fake pictures of Kellam and some girls, and in the morning showed them to Kellam, who pleaded with Johnson not to show them to his wife. On one train trip, with both Johnson and Kellam high, a post-midnight wrestling match got out of hand; Connally was able to break it up only by pouring cold water over them, and then pulling Kellam away from Johnson and locking him out of the compartment. “The next morning,” Connally recalls, “we got into Sun Valley, Idaho. Johnson got off—he was in a good mood; his hat was turned up—he was saying good morning to people, and someone replied, It may be good for you, but you kept us up all night.” The stops between trips were fun, too—particularly in Los Angeles, where the two officers were supposedly conferring with personnel of a shipyard there but spent considerable time in a more glamorous locale. Edwin Weisl, Sr., the politically powerful New York attorney and organizer of Johnson’s northeastern financial support, was counsel for Paramount Pictures, and he flew out to Hollywood and, in Connally’s words, “arranged things for us.” Johnson and Connally went to screenings and to parties with movie stars, ate in the famous Paramount Cafeteria, wh
ere they met Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd and Bonita Granville; Cecil B. DeMille said, “I want to introduce you to the greatest young singer in America” and presented them to Deanna Durbin. Johnson had never been satisfied with the posed photographs of himself that he sent out to constituents by the thousands, and Weisl arranged for long sessions with a Hollywood photographer so Johnson could determine the poses in which he looked best. In an effort to reduce the ungainliness of Johnson’s gestures during speeches, the photographer had the Congressman pretend to give a speech and photographed the gestures so Johnson could see them for himself. A voice coach was provided.
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