THE RUINED 75TH BIRTHDAY

One of the most egregious violations of civil rights in the United States was the shutting away in internment camps of innocent American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Efforts have been made by subsequent Administrations and Congresses toward atonement through reversals of discriminatory policies and monetary reparations. The historical record of this catastrophic period spans a wide range of books and films and other instruments of documentation. As I often do when I am stumped as to my own approach to a topic, I sent a prayer out to my Muse. 78 years to the day following the signing of Executive Order 9066, which set the internment camp system in place officially, my storyline materialized from the ethers as a weary voice in my head identifying itself as a 75 year old Japanese-American grandmother of San Francisco, an entity that came through to me all the way from early 1942. -Linda Lee Greene, Columbus, Ohio USA, February 19, 2020

THE RUINED 75^TH BIRTHDAY

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

“On this date 75 years ago my mother squatted down in a field of a Japanese Farm Colony in California in which she cleared rows of dead strawberry vines. With the help of other women field workers around her, my mother grunted and groaned and soon gave birth to me right there on the ground. In that way, I joined the distinct world of my parents and my six brothers and sisters. My mother refused to go to their marriage bed with my father on any night in the many years thereafter, and so I was always the baby of our family. All the members of my family of birth have been gone for more years than I can count, but I am not alone. I married a nice man of a good Japanese family of whom my extremely traditional Japanese father approved. My husband and I had four children of our own. Not only am I a mother, but also a grandmother, one and two and now, three times removed.

            “My Japanese ancestors migrated to California from Hawaii at the end of the American Civil War. They had relocated to Hawaii from Japan to flee turmoil in the mother country. In Hawaii, the separate branches of my family took up lives as fishermen and workers in sugarcane fields. Opportunities were limited and their lives hard in Hawaii, however. Seeking greater prospects, my parents packed their meager belongings and hopped a ship that sailed to the Harbor of San Francisco. Upon arrival, their spirits were greatly challenged by open discrimination by some aggressively racist Americans. They faced a system of bigotry that prevented all the members of the immigrant group of which my family was a part ownership of land, participation in government and civic affairs, and even of citizenship. Nevertheless, they created self-contained communities with schools, food markets, and all manner of businesses of their own. They attained remarkable success in a particular method of cultivating and marketing of fruits and vegetables. Their agricultural achievements caused enormous envy among white farmers, which only heightened the resentment against my people.     

“Among my siblings, I was the only one designated officially as a Japanese-American. The American part of my nationality is due to the fact that I was born in the United States, which gave me automatic citizenship. All my siblings were born to my parents while they were still in Hawaii. My parents worked in the fields of the Japanese Farm Colony from the first days of their arrival in California. It was not until my smart and determined eldest brother saved enough money for me to purchase a restaurant in San Francisco that all the members of my family were able to stop the backbreaking field work and go to work in our new enterprise.

            “All through this past year leading to my 75^th birthday, my three daughters have planned the celebration of this day. They have tried to hide their arrangements from me, but in their excitement, they have chattered among themselves so loudly that I couldn’t help but overhear much of it. In this way I know they were putting together a birthday party for me so big and elaborate you’d think I was a queen. The entire community was going to be involved. I say ‘was going to be involved,’ because my birthday celebration has been canceled. It has been canceled because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by forces of Imperial Japan on the morning of Sunday, December 7^th of last year—less than three months ago, but in those few weeks, our lives have been turned upsidedown.

            “The very evening of that infamous Sunday, prominent members and religious leaders of our Japanese-American neighborhood were herded like cattle into official looking vehicles right under our noses and hauled away, never to be seen again. And each day since then, many more of our people, most of whom are American citizens just like me, have disappeared to imprisonment in camps thrown up in out-of-the-way areas of the nation for reasons of ‘preventing espionage on American shores,’ according to people at the head of the government. Our assets are frozen and our properties seized. Even though there is no credible evidence of spies for Imperial Japan among us, or of any other wrongdoing against the United States, still we are labeled as ‘dangerous,’ and shut away. We are loyal Americans, and like my son, are ready to fight any and all enemies of the country we love. This is the only home we have ever known, and we are good and productive citizens of the United States.

            “My son was informed yesterday by the authorities that all members of our family will be relocated by the end of the week. We are permitted to carry with us only one suitcase each of personal belongings. I have lived in my home since the day of my marriage 57 years ago. My husband and I made many memories here. It is the home of my children’s childhoods; the place in which my husband lived out his final days. Our restaurant has provided us a good living for three generations. Now we will lose all of it: our home, our business, our community, our friends, our way of life. My children, grandchildren, and I have no idea where we will end up, or if we will be allowed to stay together.

“I recognize that death will dog me when I am pushed out of my home and dropped into a remote and unfriendly compound closed-in by barbed-wire and patrolled by men lugging big and frightening guns. I must not give in to despair, which is death’s partner. I must go back and retrieve the lessons of my ancestors, people who endured treacheries far greater than this. I must evoke the example of my devout mother, a woman whose reverence for the Devine was complete, who lacked any capacity for wrongdoing or even for envisioning it. Her goodness was her strength. It was she who taught me to go within; to solace myself in the embrace of my soul; to bask in the peace that lies there; to bring forth the righteousness that is woven into every fiber of my being from the very first of my ancient ancestors—righteousness so strong it will break any tie that binds me, and might even influence my oppressors toward a fuller sense of humanity.”©  

#Japanese-Americans, #Japanese Farm Colony, #Internment Camps, #World War II, #Immigrants, #Executive Order 9066, #Pearl Harbor Bombing, #Hawaii, #San Francisco, #California, #Imperial Japan, #United States of America

The above essay is a work of historical fiction based on true events.

Images: A Japanese American family designated for removal to an American Internment Camp, circa 1942 to 1945, and Japanese immigrant farmers.

Multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene’s paperbacks and eBooks are available for purchase worldwide through Amazon. An overview of her latest novel, A CHANCE AT THE MOON is below:

Amid the seductions of Las Vegas, Nevada and an idyllic coffee plantation on Hawai’i’s Big Island, a sextet of opposites converge within a shared fate: a glamorous movie-star courting distractions from her troubled past; her shell-shocked bodyguards clutching handholds out of their hardscrabble lives; a dropout Hawaiian nuclear physicist gambling his way back home; a Navajo rancher seeking cleansing for harming Mother Earth; and from its lofty perch, the Hawaiian’s guardian spirit conjured as his pet raven, conducting this symphony of soul odysseys.

Was it chance or destiny’s hand behind the movie-star and gambler’s curious encounter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas? The cards fold, their hearts open, and a match strikes, flames that sizzle their hearts and souls. Can they have the moon and the stars, too? Or is she too dangerous? Is he? Can their love withstand betrayal? Can it endure murder?

While the cards at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas fail to distract them from their troubled pasts, on the side, the actress and the gambler play a game of ‘will they won’t they’ romance. Meanwhile, an otherworldly hand also has a big stake in the game. Unexpected secrets unfold brimming with dangerous consequences, and finally, a strange brand of salvation.

#Las Vegas, #Nevada, #Hawaii, #Big Island, #Coffee Plantation, #Caesars Palace, #A CHANCE AT THE MOON, #Linda Lee Greene, #Multi-award-winning Author, #Multi-award-winning Artist

Amazon Buy Links:

https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder-ebook/dp/B07Z44YN9X/  - EBOOK

https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder/dp/169984402X/ - PAPERBACK

             

              

MANHATTAN LIGHTS IN WORLD WAR II

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

Since the maiden descent from the top of One Times Square of the New Year’s Eve Ball, only in 1942 and 1943 was the tradition put on hold, and then it was due to the wartime “dimout” of the lights of New York City. While during those pivotal years of World War II crowds still congregated at the head of the forked square, they were eerily quiet compared to previous years, and a moment of complete silence at the stroke of midnight punctuated the poignancy of the ringing chimes atop the 25 story building.

On the night of January 13, 1942, the lights of Manhattan are still alight just enough to make of her an irresistible target to those wishing her harm. As the eyes of the unsuspecting, never-sleeping city are turned westward toward their Japanese enemies in the Pacific, a deadly-hungry German U-boat lurks off Manhattan’s eastern shore. Smelling choice meat, silently it surfaces, and its commander, like an overjoyed kid let loose for the first time with his daddy’s hunting rifle, takes aim and fires a whistling torpedo into the hull of an American oil tanker moored at Gotham’s watery fringe. His Aryan face flushed red with the adrenalin-rushed blood of his coup d’ état, with an all but silent hiss, his sleek submarine breaks the frigid skin of the water once more. Stealthily it slips back down into the murky sea, noses to the warmer waters of the south, and hunts for another twelve hours off the Atlantic shore of dazzling America. The German commander of that vessel stalks his quarry well. He adds seven more defenseless American ships to his kill-score by the time the night is through.

The many years of the Great Depression hollowed out the coffers of the United States, a condition worsened by its program of providing war supplies to Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and other allies during their several years of fighting Germany and its war partners. Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and Germany’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States of America, a sense of near hopelessness clouds the nation’s war effort, a despair owing to an American military that is almost non-existent, and what there is of it is ill-equipped and ill-trained to take on two formidable enemies in two separate theaters of war. In addition, Japan at Pearl Harbor crippled critically America’s Pacific air and sea fleet, involving the loss of life of 2,500 servicemen. In addition, Japan captured both American and British territory throughout the Asian Pacific, as well as the independent kingdom of Thailand. Between December 1941 and the spring of 1942, the Japanese are the dominant force in the Pacific and impose their will against a stretched and an anemic Allied military.

Prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American military commanders believed Hawaii to be beyond the reach of the fighting forces of Japan, and the same attitude held true regarding the continental USA. But if Japanese naval and air forces are destroying Allied interests in the Pacific and German U-boats are blowing up ships on the east coast of America, what might they do to Seattle, Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Diego? the American populace asks itself. Shaken to its core and in fear of a fate similar to that of Pearl Harbor, western Americans shroud their dwellings with blackout-curtains, issue official air-raid instructions, and stack the exterior walls of buildings from their foundations to rooflines with sandbags.

            His country barely holding on against German Luftwaffe bombings, in London, Great Britain’s Prime Minister, Winston Spencer Churchill solicits greater material aid from the United States and an increased number of escorts of Allied merchant ships as they maneuver the supply lanes of the frigid North Atlantic. Made perilous by wolf-packs of deadly German U-boats, like the oil tankers moored along America’s eastern shore, the merchant ships are easy prey for the cunning submarines.

Engaged in the bulk of the fighting against German troops along her lengthy and frozen front, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin resents his place at the bottom of the food chain of American aid, even as he revels in his role as the savior of the west at that time. It is a position he plans to use to his advantage at the end of the war when it comes time to divvy up the conquered territory. In his only resemblance to Stalin, other than hatred of the Nazis, Churchill has his eye on some choice new territory as well. Only Roosevelt bears no interest in gaining territory, even though his country will finance and supply the bulk of the equipment and the warriors of the conflict.

            America’s fighting men, most of whom are still in late-stage adolescence according to modern-day definitions, are called to service in the war through the first draft in the history of the country, and the people – bewildered – fearful – saddened, drop to their knees in prayer, and stunned mothers and fathers console one another as their homes systematically and rapidly empty of the brightest and best of their beloved, young sons. Reliance on their families, neighbor/friends, and faith in FDR sustains them, as well as the creed of their souls that “there never has been – there never can be – successful compromise between good and evil,” as their commander-in-chief reminded them from Washington, DC in his State of the Union Address at the opening of 1942. His cultured voice, reaching out across the radio waves and into the living rooms of his people, reassured them and inspired their commitment to the war effort.

Thus, America begins the long and torturous journey toward victory on the battlegrounds of World War II, the conflagration that is perceived by the force of its very magnitude as the lowest point in the history of the world.©

Image: Manhattan Skyline 1942

Multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene’s eBooks and paperbacks are available for purchase through Amazon.com. A CHANCE AT THE MOON, her latest multi-genre novel featuring romance, intrigue, and paranormal elements is described below:

Amid the seductions of Las Vegas, Nevada and an idyllic coffee plantation on Hawai’i’s Big Island, a sextet of opposites converge within a shared fate: a glamorous movie-star courting distractions from her troubled past; her shell-shocked bodyguards clutching handholds out of their hardscrabble lives; a dropout Hawaiian nuclear physicist gambling his way back home; a Navajo rancher seeking cleansing for harming Mother Earth; and from its lofty perch, the Hawaiian’s guardian spirit conjured as his pet raven, conducting this symphony of soul odysseys.

Was it chance or destiny’s hand behind the movie-star and gambler’s curious encounter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas? The cards fold, their hearts open, and a match strikes, flames that sizzle their hearts and souls. Can they have the moon and the stars, too? Or is she too dangerous? Is he? Can their love withstand betrayal? Can it endure murder?

While the cards at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas fail to distract them from their troubled pasts, on the side, the actress and the gambler play a game of ‘will they won’t they’ romance. Meanwhile, an otherworldly hand also has a big stake in the game. Unexpected secrets unfold brimming with dangerous consequences, and finally, a strange brand of salvation.

Amazon Buy Links Paperback - Kindle

A WORLD WAR II ARMY RECRUIT

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



US Army rookie, Pvt. Marlin “Bob” Gaffin, in early December, 1941 is based at Ft. Thomas, Kentucky Recruitment Center. The weekend following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, by way of a day pass, Bob travels a distance of less than four miles by bus to Cincinnati, Ohio to spend time with his boyhood friend, Bill Greene and his cousin, Ralph Dixon, both of whom are living and working in Cincinnati. On their first day together, they take in a movie in downtown Cincinnati. Bob notes in a letter to his mother that the price of admission for both Bill and Ralph was 40ȼ. Because he is a soldier, Bob got in for 20ȼ. He asserts in the letter that the show was a high-priced one!

            The news Bob omits from his letter is the fact that Bill had returned to Ft. Thomas with Bob for the purpose of enlisting, just as droves of young boys are doing across the nation. Bob withholds the news out of respect for Bill’s parents, whom might not have learned as yet of their son’s enlistment. Bill is eventually sent to Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Indiana for induction into the Army.    

            A major concern of Bob and his fellow recruits is their next destination. Bob is hoping to go to a warmer climate for his military training, to Virginia specifically. And as he watches his compatriots spattered to training camps across the country—to Texas, Missouri, Virginia and elsewhere, Bob learns that he will go to Ft. Knox, Kentucky, only about 240 miles away from his current location. Those early days of waiting at Ft. Thomas comprise time spent in nothing more demanding than keeping spic and span…No dirt in the Army…We haven’t done anything outside of scrubbing the floor and ourselves, he adds in his letter.

Apart from cleaning duties, Bob is disappointed that field drills are kept to a minimum. He dislikes lying around and waiting for assignment. Soon, field drills commence with a vengeance—sloshing in boot-sucking and foot-dragging mud, as rain is a consistent menace. That his body is a veritable pincushion for inoculations and vaccinations also annoys him, but like all things with stoic Bob Gaffin, he takes it in stride. 

            Bobbie Mendenhall and Woodrow Hoop, two of Bob’s homeboys, are in barracks with him at Ft. Thomas. Like towns everywhere, Peebles, Ohio, their tiny hometown, is quickly emptying of its brightest and best young men. Farm-boys, Bobbie, Woodrow, and Bob, all of whom have handled hunting guns since young boyhood, spend much of their time acquainting themselves with guns the likes of which they have never seen: 30-caliber, water-cooled, machine guns that shoot 380 bullets a minute; .45 automatic pistols; rifles, and as time goes by, 50-caliber machine guns. Bob predicts he will end up driving a truck or a half-track, stateside, he tells himself, for it is yet to sink into his consciousness that he will be shipped overseas. His is an unconscious look into his future, for indeed he will man a half-track, but on the battlefields of North Africa in the next year, followed by Italy and Europe ‘til war’s end.

            We are being issued the strictest of orders, to be ready to leave here for camp anytime. Maybe a week or in the next 10 minutes. All furloughs have been canceled until further orders. All reserves discharged were ordered to report to their draft boards at once, Bob explains in his letter to his mother. Ever the optimist, Bob states in a letter to his sister, Roma, I’ll save some Dinero (if I can) and then maybe I can come home. I can get a round trip ticket from here to Peebles and back for about $6.50. That’s awful reasonable. But the boys had to have $20 a piece for maintenance, they said. Of course that was just an old army gag to keep the whole company from wanting furloughs at the same time. You know 20’s are scarce in the army. But the Sergeant told me if I wanted a pass later on to get me a ticket to home and then to borrow a 20 from someone for a minute to show the Lieutenant, and I could get by. Ha. Ha. Tell everyone I said thanks for all the nice Christmas cards and presents…Well sis write and tell me the news, and I’ll do my best to come home before I leave for (God knows where) and tell everyone to write. Kiss Dot for me, will you? Bob’s letters to his worried mother, siblings, and his girlfriend, Dorothy “Dot” reliably end with I’ll be seeing you all, and tell everyone I said hello, and keep your chin up!©



The above is based on a true story and details of actual letters.



Image: Bob Gaffin 



Recommended Reading: GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS by Linda Lee Greene, a work of historical fiction chronicling the lives of the Gaffin and Greene families spanning much of the twentieth century. 

           

1941: THE WORLD WAR II YEAR OF INFAMY

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 18^th 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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[1] http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3318

[2] http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/digitalarchive/speeches/spe_1941_1208_roose…

[3] http://franklincollege.edu/pwp/bgaskins/EDE226/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt.html

THE FIGHTING FIRST LADY!

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



Well-worn suitcase in hand, her Red Cross uniform snug and no-nonsense, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt, forever known as Eleanor, and as she requests to be known to me, clip-clops in her stubby-heeled pumps to the airplane that will fly us from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, California. I would offer to unburden her of her suitcase, but I have learned that she would ignore my request. She is a self-sufficient soul—thoughtful to the extreme. She would deem surrendering her suitcase to me as an affront to my dignity as a human being, even though I serve as her assistant and helper on this trip. That her life has been one of wealth and privilege since its inception is not easily reconciled with the person I have come to know. Coddled she is not, nor does she wish it to be the case.

            Once again, she is going where her husband cannot go—he cannot go for the reason of his physical limitations, and because of the demands of his office as President of the United States of America. At this exact moment, he is at the war-planning conference in Quebec, Canada with Great Britain’s Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill. The trip will give the First Lady the opportunity to meet troops stationed on remote islands cut off from their loved-ones. In this way, she will act as a surrogate for the mothers across the land, both to bring comfort to the troops and to their mothers to whom she will report in her newspaper column, My Day.

San Francisco is our first stop on this steamy afternoon of August 17, 1943, and is the inauguration of our secret, six-week-long, twenty-five thousand miles journey into the dangerous war-zone of the South Pacific. Eleanor is not cavalier about the possible peril facing us. She wears no jewelry, having stored it away safely back home with instructions as to its distribution lest she never returns. I am breathless from her courage. Admiration of her fills me from stem to stern.

From America’s west coast, we ride the wind across the Pacific in an all-night flight, landing mid-morning in Honolulu, Hawaii, at Hickam Field. This place so near to Pearl Harbor is the portal of the anguish of America’s plunge into World War II, wrought by Japan’s attack on the American Fleet there. The base as well as aircraft at Hickam, parked wingtip to wingtip to guard against sabotage on that fateful December 7^th morning not two years ago, were also heavily damaged or destroyed. Nevertheless, the airfield has been in non-stop use since then. Viewing bullet holes and other artifacts of the attack on surviving structures is not an item on our agenda, and we press on three and one-half hours later to our initial South Pacific destination. I am not an easy flier and I busy myself with writing in my trip’s log to avoid the view outside the aircraft’s windows. “Bear in mind that the log you keep of the trip will be of great interest to me and will influence the war’s policy, no doubt,” the president said to me before he left for Quebec. I struggle to regain my equilibrium when we touch down on Christmas Island.  

The war in the Pacific stretches from the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska to Australia, 6,600 miles of contested ocean in between. Our trip will concentrate on visiting Allied forces in New Zealand and Australia as well as copious time spent island hopping to call on troops. There are seventeen Pacific islands on our schedule, their melodic names spanning half of the alphabet. The initial seven are Christmas, Penhryn, Bora Bora, Aitutaki, Tutuliua Samoa, Fiji, and New Caledonia, all to be visited during six whirlwind days. Our welcome at Christmas Island is chilly and officious. U.S. Admiral William “Bull” Halsey is visibly impatient and put-off by our presence. He has a war to fight and visits by “do-gooders” are nothing but a nuisance, as well as expensive in terms of resources required to meet their agendas. This is not to mention the extra security required to keep them out of harm’s way—an impossible task in actuality. The fighting does not stop because the First Lady of the United States of America has come to town. In fact, were it known, the fighting would intensify. Eleanor and I do not escape the admiral’s displeasure.

 “Whirlwind” is an understatement in describing Eleanor. Within our twelve hours on Christmas Island, she inspects two Navy hospitals, an officer’s rest house a boat-ride away, returns and inspects an Army hospital, reviews her son James’ former Marine battalion, delivers a speech at a service club, attends a reception, and is the guest of honor at a dinner given by General Harmon. Even Admiral Halsey said, “…I marveled at her hardihood, both physical and mental. She walked for miles, and saw new patients who were grievously and gruesomely wounded. But I marveled most at their expressions as she leaned over them. It was a sight I will never forget.” She talks to the wounded, touches them, and shows them her sincere interest and concern. The admiral apologizes to her for his crustiness upon our arrival, and expresses his gratitude to her for what she has done for his men. This is a sampling of the schedule she keeps throughout the entire trip, and its impact.

In her My Day newspaper column, she describes her visit to Bora Bora: “I went through the hospital, saw the Red Cross man, the headquarters building, tents, and mess hall and day room and outdoor theater in a colored troop area. There seems to be no trouble anywhere out here between the white and colored. They lie in beds in the same wards, go to the same movies and sit side by side and work side by side, but I don’t think I’ve seen them mess together, but their food is as good and everything just as clean in their quarters. Southern and Northern Negroes are in the same outfits.” Civil rights, both for women and colored citizens, is one of Eleanor’s passions. She fights tirelessly for their equality in education, housing, employment, and voting as basic human rights. Her stance is that the status of civil rights in a country is the litmus test of its strength as a democracy. Her efforts to have our military fully integrated have been thwarted, but she will not give up, if I know her.

Eleanor can never be accused of being a chameleon. Expediency holds no store with her. What you see with Eleanor is what you get. By the end of the trip she is thirty pounds thinner and the new best friend of thousands of Allied troops and their families, a triumph of loving, kinetic energy over discord and despair.©

Note: the above is a work of historical fiction based on actual events.



Images: Mrs. Roosevelt visits World War II troops in the Pacific Theater.



Recommended Reading: Eleanor Roosevelt’s My Day newspaper columns are available for view at online web sites.



Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase in eBook and soft cover at Amazon.com and by request at other booksellers.