by Toland, John
Churchill’s pulse count was one hundred, and Moran warned him it was because of “all the stuff” he drank. “It will soon fall,” said Churchill cheerfully but a moment later became gloomier than ever and stared at Moran, eyes popping. “I believe man might destroy man and wipe out civilization. Europe would be desolate and I may be held responsible.” He went on in this vein for several minutes, then suddenly asked, “Do you think my strength will last out the war? I fancy sometimes that I am nearly spent.”
A night’s rest returned the Big Three to the equable relationship of the first day. At lunch Stalin was clearly delighted at Roosevelt’s unsolicited suggestion that Russia be granted use of the warm-water port of Dairen in Manchuria. And at dinner Churchill acted as if nothing had happened the night before. Stalin, however, was ill at ease. First he sniffed the cocktails suspiciously and asked Interpreter Birse, who had been placed at his left, what they were made of. Birse’s explanation “failed to allay his doubts” and he took whiskey neat. Good, he said, but ordinary vodka was better. He sat uncomfortably on the edge of his chair, dismayed by the array of knives and forks in front of him. “It is a problem which to use,” he confided to Birse. “You will have to tell me, and also when I can begin to eat. I am unused to your customs.”
Churchill, in a sentimental mood, announced that it was his sixty-ninth birthday party and that, in the Russian manner, anybody could propose a toast at any time. He himself began with a toast to the King, then praised his two comrades in exaggerated terms. He lauded Roosevelt for devoting himself to the weak and helpless and for preventing a revolution in 1933, and declared that the Marshal deserved the title of Stalin the Great.
Stalin’s reply diverted the attention of the waiter serving “Persian Lantern,” a huge ice cream pudding sitting atop a block of ice with a lighted candle inside. Absently the waiter let the platter tip, and the pudding slid off the ice onto Pavlov’s head. With ice cream oozing down his hair and face and onto his shoes, the imperturbable interpreter didn’t skip a word: “Mr. Stalin says that the Red Army is worthy of the Soviet people.…”
Stalin abruptly turned his sarcasm on the British Chief of Staff. “General Brooke,” he said, staring directly at him, “has not been very friendly to the Red Army and has been critical of us. Let him come to Moscow, and I’ll show him that Russians aren’t bad chaps. It will pay him to be friends.”
Brooke rose, locking Stalin’s eyes with his own. “I am surprised that you should have found it necessary to raise accusations against me that are entirely unfounded. You will remember that this morning while we were discussing cover plans Mr. Churchill said that ‘in war Truth must have an escort of lies.’ You will also remember that you yourself told us that in all your great offensives your real intentions were always kept concealed from the outer world. You told us that all your dummy tanks and dummy aeroplanes were always massed on those fronts that were of an immediate interest, while your true intentions were covered by a cloak of complete secrecy. Well, Marshal, you have been misled by dummy tanks and dummy aeroplanes, and you have failed to observe those feelings of true friendship which I have for the Red Army, nor have you seen the feelings of genuine comradeship which I bear towards all its members.”
Stalin’s face remained inscrutable. He turned to Churchill and said, “I like that man. He rings true. I must have a talk with him afterwards.”
It was another tense moment, but it was quickly over and was followed by a succession of toasts. Leahy was bored, but it amused King to see Stalin hopping up from his chair and trotting around the table to clink glasses. After dinner Stalin lingered on as if reluctant to let the evening end. Churchill approached him and, equally expansive, said, “England is becoming a shade pinker.”
“That’s a sign of good health,” Stalin replied. “I want to call Mr. Churchill my friend.”
“Call me Winston. I call you Joe behind your back.”
“No, I want to call you my friend. I’d like to be allowed to call you my good friend.”
Churchill was equal to this: “I drink to the proletarian masses!”
“I drink to the Conservative party,” said Stalin.
For the Russians, Teheran was largely successful, since they had achieved what they most wanted, a firm date for the second front. The first meeting between Roosevelt and Stalin had also seemed to point the way to closer co-operation in the future. Although Roosevelt had found the Marshal more tough-minded than he had imagined, he was “get-at-able.” As the two men parted, Roosevelt said, “We came here with hope and determination. We leave here friends in fact, in spirit, and in purpose.”g
Churchill was “well content” with the military solutions reached at Teheran, but not Brooke. “One thing is quite clear,” he wrote in his diary, “the more politicians you put together to settle the prosecution of the war, the longer you postpone its conclusion!”
The round of meetings was still not over. The Americans and British returned to Cairo to iron out their own major problem—whether to concentrate almost everything on Operation Overlord or carry on the powerful offensive Roosevelt had promised Chiang Kai-shek.
King and Leahy led those arguing that the promise to the Chinese should not be broken. What if China dropped out of the war? This would free hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops to fight MacArthur and Nimitz. The British countered that Teheran had changed everything. Stalin’s promise to join in the attack on Japan once Germany was beaten made China much less important for final victory.
On the afternoon of December 5, after more than two days of fruitless discussion, the deadlock was dramatically broken. Roosevelt sent a laconic private message to Churchill: BUCCANEER IS OFF. This was the Bay of Bengal operation, the point of contention. Churchill was so delighted that he phoned Ismay and said cryptically, “He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.”
A message, prepared by Roosevelt and Hopkins, and approved by Churchill, was sent to Chiang Kai-shek:
CONFERENCE WITH STALIN INVOLVES US IN COMBINED GRAND OPERATION ON EUROPEAN CONTINENT IN THE LATE SPRING GIVING FAIR PROSPECT OF TERMINATING WAR WITH GERMANY BY END OF SUMMER OF 1944. THESE OPERATIONS IMPOSE SO LARGE A REQUIREMENT OF HEAVY LANDING CRAFT AS TO MAKE IT IMPRACTICABLE TO DEVOTE A SUFFICIENT NUMBER TO THE AMPHIBIOUS OPERATION IN THE BAY OF BENGAL SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH LAUNCHING OF TARZAN [Burma operation] TO INSURE SUCCESS OF OPERATION.…
As 1943 drew to an end, so did the time for talk. Men on the battlefield, not at the conference table, would make the next decisions.
* Churchill later wrote Robert Sherwood that he had not heard Roosevelt use the phrase until the press conference and that he himself wouldn’t have used those words. Still later, however, he admitted in a statement to Parliament that the words had been mentioned previously, “probably in informal talk, I think at mealtimes.”
† Admiral Morison wrote: “It was a grisly task, but a military necessity since Japanese soldiers do not surrender and, within swimming distance of shore, they could not be allowed to land and join the Lae garrison.… Several hundred swam ashore, and for a month there was open season on Nips in Papua; the natives had the time of their lives tracking them down as in the old head-hunting days.” Japanese survivors of this massacre still resent reading American stories castigating their aviators for shooting Americans in parachutes while regarding the strafing of helpless Japanese as a “military necessity.” Both instances, in their eyes, were military necessities.
‡ Japanese communications officers never suspected their code had been broken. To the end of the war they were convinced it was “unbreakable.”
§ When the Americans stormed in to take Kiska with almost thirty-five thousand troops, they could find nothing but three mongrel dogs. This inspired a GI ballad, “Tales of Kiska,” which included these lines:
It took three days before we learnt
That more than dogs there simply weren’t.
ǁ In the next few weeks the Emperor expressed his displeas
ure a number of times. On August 5 he upbraided Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama for the series of defeats in New Guinea and the Solomons. “We can’t continue being pushed back inch by inch. Constant setbacks will produce a great effect not only on the enemy but on the third nations. When are you going to wage the Decisive Battle?” “Things have gone wrong for us everywhere,” Sugiyama replied, “I am deeply sorry.”
Three days later the Navy was the target of His Majesty’s displeasure. “What in the world is the Navy doing?” he asked Hasunuma. “Isn’t there any way we can get our men to attack the enemy? They are gradually being pushed back and losing their confidence. Couldn’t they somehow deal the enemy a heavy blow somewhere?”
a That the average Japanese saw only the idealism in the Co-prosperity Sphere was indicated by the winning slogans in a contest held by the Japan Times & Advertiser:
“Japanese Action Spells Construction
Enemy Action Spells Self-Destruction”
“With Firmness We Fight
With Kindness We Build”
“Fight Onward till Asia Is Asia’s Own”
“In the Freedom of the East
Lies the Peace of the West”
b Paradoxically, white skin has been a mark of feminine beauty in Japan since earliest times. There is an old proverb: “White skin makes up for seven defects.” Early in the Meiji period writers began expressing their admiration for the white skin of Westerners, and in the 1920’s Japan’s favorite movie stars were Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo. This predilection is illustrated in Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel The Love of an Idiot. He compares a Japanese girl, Naomi, with a Russian woman:
The latter’s skin color … was so extraordinarily white, an almost ghostly beauty of white skin under which the blood vessels of light violet color were faintly visible like the veining of marble. Compared with this skin, that of Naomi’s lacked transparency and glow and was rather dull to the eye.
Expression of this preference for fair skin and Occidental features had to be banned while Japan was proclaiming itself the “champion of the colored nations” in the battle against “whites.” But the fact remained that the Japanese did not consider themselves to be “yellow.” The women preferred, and still do, to call the color of their skin komugi-iro (wheat color); and the word for lighter shades of their own skin was shiroi (white). Traditionally, white was always the color of virtue; the hero in the kabuki theater, for example, always wore dazzling white make up, a popular symbol similar to the white hat of the “good” cowboy in American movies.
c These actions are perhaps understandable under the pressure of war hysteria, but the postwar attitude of the government is difficult to equate with democracy. Little indemnity was paid to people who had lost their land and most of their personal possessions through no fault of their own. Damages were estimated at $400,000,000 but only $40,000,000 were paid in reparations—ten cents to the dollar.
The case of some 4,000 depositors in the California branch of the Yokohama Specie Bank is particularly shameful. The government seized all the bank’s assets as “enemy property,” thus freezing the life savings of these depositors. It took the Office of Alien Property until 1957 to decide to return this money—at the rate of two cents to the dollar. It was such a miserly sum that only 1,600 depositors applied for the refunds. These people appealed the low rates and a court finally ordered the OAP to pay them the rest of their savings. On learning this the other 2,400 depositors asked for their money but were told by the OPA that they had lost title to it, since they had neglected to accept the original 2 percent offer. It was not until October 24, 1966, almost twenty-five years after Pearl Harbor, that the Supreme Court finally agreed to hear their appeal. On April 10, 1967, the Court reversed the decision and remanded the case to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” At last, on August 1, 1969, the case was settled in favor of the depositors “approximately at the prewar rate without interest.”
d The Indonesian political leader, Sukarno, was not invited. According to Kenryo Sato, Tojo opposed giving Indonesia independence at this time because Japan’s war effort depended on her raw materials, and Indonesia was not “quite ready to handle all that treasure.”
e Tojo’s adviser, Kenryo Sato, drafted the original declaration and meant what he wrote. Critics of the draft argued that his strong statement on racial prejudice might backfire, but Sato maintained that oppressive as the Japanese sometimes were in their occupational policies, racial discrimination was never practiced. “Why hesitate to use this article when it is a reality?”
At the League of Nations, the Japanese had previously attempted to insert a racial-equality paragraph in the resolution endorsing the “principle of equality of nations.” Britain blocked the measure, and Woodrow Wilson, chairman at the time, ruled it should not be instituted “in view of the serious objections of some of us.” Only Britain and the United States voted against the resolution.
f There was a plan to assassinate the Big Three at Teheran. It had been devised by SS Sturmbannführer (Major) Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favorite commando—who had recently rescued the imprisoned Mussolini—with the help of the Führer and Himmler. But Skorzeny could get little specific information from the lone German agent planted in Teheran by the Abwehr (military intelligence), and informed his superiors that a successful assassination or kidnap operation was impossible. According to Hitler’s Plot to Kill the Big Three, by Laslo Havas (published in 1969), half a dozen Germans were subsequently parachuted into Iran but were killed before they could carry out their mission, largely through the efforts of a double agent, Ernst Merser, and an adventurous American, Peter Ferguson. In 1970 Skorzeny wrote that he had never heard of this operation. “I honestly doubt,” he added, “that the action ever took place.”
g Six months later Roosevelt told the author Edgar Snow that he had tried his utmost to convince Stalin of America’s friendliness and his own good intentions. “In fact the biggest thing I accomplished at Teheran was to get Joe Stalin to see some of my own problems here. I told him, ‘You know, I have troubles you don’t have at all. You don’t have to worry about being re-elected for instance.’ … I also told him something about our press and how to interpret it. ‘Don’t get hot under the collar,’ I said, ‘every time Colonel McCormick or Hearst takes a crack at you. They don’t represent me or my Administration and they don’t represent the majority of the people.’ He seemed relieved to hear that.”
19
To the Marianas
1.
After Guadalcanal, world attention was centered on Europe, where the military action was accelerating. With the fall of Sicily, the drive up the boot of Italy and the surrender of that country by Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the Allies ruled the Mediterranean. Germany itself was being pounded from the air, at night by British Bomber Command and during the day by the U. S. Eighth Air Force. The Ruhr was practically destroyed and Hamburg had been leveled by a fire storm.
In Russia, Hitler’s Sixth Army had been wiped out at Stalingrad in one of the greatest military debacles of history, and with the help of U. S. Lend-Lease and British aid, the Red Army was already storming west. By October 1943 it had recaptured some 300,000 square miles, including Kharkov, Smolensk and Orel to approach the historic gates of Kiev.
On the other side of the world, Operation Cartwheel—the two-pronged drive of MacArthur and Halsey on Rabaul—was proceeding steadily but sluggishly. These were battles of attrition and though the Japanese contested every phase, their supplies were so limited and they had so little shipping and air support that they were unable to stem the inexorable Allied tide.
Halsey’s amphibious force had cleared New Georgia by mid-August. Its defense cost so many planes, ships and troops that Imperial Headquarters finally did what men like Kenryo Sato had been urging for months—ordered a cessation of all further reinforcements to the Solomons; the garrisons of each island would have to
hold off the Americans as best they could, for as long as possible, and then withdraw by barge and destroyer. Against tactics born of such desperation, Halsey relentlessly continued up The Slot—to Vella Lavella, to Choiseul and finally to Bougainville, where fourteen thousand Marines landed on the first day of November. It was the last stop before Rabaul.
MacArthur was making even slower progress on New Guinea. Checked in his drive up the east coast on the twin garrisons of Salamaua and Lae, which had been sent only 750 reinforcements and an order to “stand fast,” he launched a triple attack—one by ground, one by sea and one by air. While Australian and American infantrymen slogged up toward Salamaua, an amphibious force landed on the coast above Lae, and seventeen hundred parachutists, personally observed by MacArthur, dropped to the west. The parachutists and amphibious troops converged; they captured Lae in eleven days and neutralized Salamaua. MacArthur was at last in position to launch his assault across Dampier Strait to New Britian—and Rabaul.
Operation Cartwheel was moving, but its cost in time was more than expected and gave new weight to a decision made at the end of November in Cairo which was obscured by British-American disagreement on priorities: that the main thrust toward Japan should be through the small islands of the central Pacific. It would lead through the Gilbert and Marshall islands to the Carolines, and then up toward Japan itself—and would be commanded by Admiral Nimitz.
MacArthur was informed that Rabaul would be neutralized, not taken, and his drive to Tokyo—by way of New Guinea and the Philippines—would proceed as planned but with reduced priorities. But he would not accept relegation to a secondary role. The Central Route, protested MacArthur, was “time-consuming and expensive in our naval power and shipping” and his route could be “supported by land-based aircraft which is utterly essential and will immediately cut the enemy lines from Japan to his conquered territory to the southward.”