By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.
Like nothing had done to that point, Nazi Germany’s occupation of Paris on June 18, 1940 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) nomination to an unprecedented third term as President of the United States the following month, alerted the American people to the threats to their nation posed by Europe’s Second World War. While during his first two terms as president, FDR had used his pulpit to educate the public about those perils, sentiment consistently weighed heavily toward non-intervention in the war. The summer of 1940 saw a shifting in the attitude, one toward building up the nation’s defenses, which resulted in an eventual outpouring of material aid from America to the Allied countries, shoring up America’s military forces, and instituting the nation’s first peacetime draft in its history.
Having gone into effect in September, the Selective
Service Act of 1940 placed all men between the ages of 21 and 35 eligible for
one year of military service. Marlin Landon “Bob” Gaffin, having turned 21 on
January 20, 1941, and the president’s swearing into office for his third term
on the same day, the lives of both men thereafter are to be defined primarily
by their involvement in World War II.
Following his nomination for his third term, FDR explained his motivation for defying the country’s traditional policy of two-term presidencies. He stated that he had suffered many sleepless nights over his own right to refuse the call to duty when the young men and women of his country were facing the call to serve. He said, “Like most men of my age, I had made plans for myself, plans for a private life of my own choice and for my own satisfaction…These plans, like so many other plans, had been made in a world which now seems as distant as another planet. Today all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger. In the face of that public danger all those who can be of service to the Republic have no choice but to offer themselves for service in those capacities for which they may be fitted. Those, my friends, are the reasons why I had to admit to myself, and now to state to you, that my conscience will not let me turn my back upon a call to service.”[1]
The summer of 1941 also saw the opportunity of a new kind of personal life for Bob embodied in the alluring Dorothy Boldman of Cedar Fork, Ohio, a particular private life, like the president’s, that by year’s end will be held delicately in the balance while America’s foreign affairs unfold. Meanwhile, Bob ventures no more than thirty miles southwest of the farm of his parents in search of employment that he is confident will set the pattern for the home-life for which he hopes with Dorothy. In an illustration of Bob’s plucky nature, Bob writes to his mother from Blanchester, Ohio where he has found a job: …We sure had a time coming up here. We done all right till we got on the other side of Fayetteville. We had tire trouble and didn’t get here until 9:30. I went to work Monday morning…When I went to work the boss asked me if I could drive a truck and I said sure I could. He asked me if I could handle the tractors and I said I could, so I went to work. Ha – Ha. Well a fellow has to tell a few [lies] once in a while. But I operated them like an old hand and kind of fooled them. Ha. They just seemed to come natural to me or something…
While
the tone and content of the letters exchanged among Bob and his correspondents
during these months are amazingly devoid of any allusion to, or speculation
about, the war, especially in view of the fact of the institution of the draft,
writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh, in her
journal, which later is published in book-form, portrays a picture of
civic-minded and politically-savvy individuals whose thoughts and daily lives
are deeply influenced by the government’s stance on the war. At that juncture, she
states in her journal the greatest issue of speculation was whether or not
Washington DC would go one step further and finally grant Great Britain’s request
that American ships convoy, or in effect, act as full-metal and armed shields
to British supply ships crisscrossing the Atlantic. She writes of the high
tension in Washington, a state of affairs she speculates cannot go on. At the
same time, she sympathizes with Roosevelt’s dilemma regarding establishing a
convoy system, a predicament based on the fact that doing so will require
transferring ships from the Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic. Such a move would
render America’s presence in the Pacific so thin that the president fears it
will encourage the Japanese to ever greater expansion into the Pacific. But by
mid-August, FDR seems to waver in his position, and in a secret meeting off the
coast of Newfoundland with Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great
Britain, the British leader comes away from the meeting convinced that FDR has
agreed to America’s convoying of British ships as far as Iceland.
But still the president is disinclined to step up his nation’s presence in the European war to such a degree. With Germany’s breaking of its non-aggression treaty with Russia and its placement of troops on the Russian border, FDR is often of the opinion that he should just sit back and let Russia handle Germany – or better still, let the two repressive dictator-nations wipe each other out. In his characteristic manner, the president adopts a stance of “wait and see.”
Bob Gaffin spends his workdays in Blanchester and heads home for the weekends where he cuddles with Dorothy on the front porch of her parent’s Peebles, Ohio country home nestled peacefully beneath a pitch black sky alight with stars. In New York City, top-drawer matrons such as Anne Morrow Lindbergh in mink coats, Made-in-Paris chapeaus, and Estee Lauder’s “V” for “Victory” lipstick read Vogue’s latest issue sporting models in military garb in front of “Bundles for Britain,” while fuzzy-cheeked American military recruits pack the subway trains to take in the sights. All the while, spanking new Made-in-America airplanes buzz a sky streaked with searchlights.
Bob’s desire to marry Dorothy in the near future is dashed on November 18th when a letter arrives, one informing him that he has been drafted into the Army. A letter of a few days later tells him to report to the Reception Center at Fort Thomas, Kentucky.
Ft. Thomas, Ky. Dec, 4, 1941…Dear Mother: Will write you this evening to let you know I am O K and hope everyone are well. Well, I’m in the army now (as the slogan goes) and its not so bad so far. Of course we haven’t had any actual training yet. I sure hated to leave civilian life, but we can’t help it…Your loving son, Bob
As tensions mount dangerously in the Atlantic theater of the war, the Japanese continue to aggress against their neighbors in the Pacific, and like the Nazis, have set against the land and resource-rich territories beyond the borders of their own land. Their resolve strengthened by the Tripartite Pact signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan, a pledge in support of one another if attacked by any outside enemy, the three aggressors strike, conquer, and plunder their ways across their particular hemispheres, to this point, almost none the worse for wear, and nearly with impunity.
Roosevelt retaliates by placing an embargo against Japan: no more exportation to Japan of aviation fuel and highest grade steel and scrap iron. Japan responds by seizing oil-rich Indochina. The Roosevelt administration hits back by freezing all of Japan’s assets in the United States and cutting off all exports of oil to the country. Intended to halt the advance of the Japanese, the embargo ricochets and Japan counters with a threat to move in on the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies and other East Asian regions rich in natural resources. Several back and forth negotiations between the two countries failing, Japan and the United States are approaching a collision of epic proportions.
Lulled to complacency by the promises of their president to keep their boys out of foreign conflicts, the American people conduct their daily business and personal lives as usual, unaware that warfare on a level never before seen was lying in wait for them.
In his address to Congress, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”[2] In the Fireside Chat on the radio where he talked to the nation about the Declaration of War with Japan, in part he said:
MY
FELLOW AMERICANS:
The
sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific provide the
climax of a decade of international immorality.
Powerful
and resourceful gangsters have banded together to make war upon the whole human
race. Their challenge has now been flung at the United States of America. The
Japanese have treacherously violated a long-standing peace with us. Many
American soldiers and sailors have been killed by enemy action. American ships
have been sunk; American airplanes have been destroyed.
The
Congress and the people of the United States have accepted that challenge.
Together
with other free peoples, we are now fighting to maintain our right to live
among our world neighbors in freedom, in common decency, without fear of
assault.[3]
A letter from his mother to Bob illustrates the shock of the nation at the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor that hurls the United States into the war: Monday Morning, Dec. 8, 1941…Dear Son. I will try to write some this morning. I was so nervous yesterday I just couldn’t write and not much better this morning…Bobby we heard down at the church last night that war had been declared. It sure does worry me. I just can’t help it. They tell me if I don’t be careful I’ll go crazy. But I don’t know. They surely can’t take you though until they get you trained. Of course I know that I am just one Mother in thousands. We will just have to trust in God. Of course you know that we are praying for you, and that will help you along…
Even as the greatest challenge of both of their lives has been placed before them with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and while Bob with his characteristic curiosity and composure is in the throes of noting the vastness of the differences between the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), in which he had served as a teenager, and that of the military, FDR is experiencing an odd form of relief. Japan’s strike against the American Fleet in Hawaii, while creating an enormous crisis for the president, at the same time, it lifts from him the solemn mantle of a choice between war and peace for his country, and as noted by his wife, he is serener than he has been in a long time.©
The above is a work of creative non-fiction by multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene. Her books are available worldwide on Amazon.
Image: “I WANT YOU” poster.
Recommended Reading: WAR WITHIN AND WITHOUT, DIARIES AND LETTERS 1939 – 1944, Anne Morrow Lindbergh; THE ROOSEVELT PRESENCE, The Life and Legacy of FDR, Patrick J. Maney.
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