FDR - Jean Edward Smith [323]
All right. And now here is this Nation called Japan. Whether they had aggressive purposes to enlarge their empire southward, they did not have any oil of their own. Now, if we had cut the oil off, they probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had war. Therefore, there was—you might call—a method in letting this oil go to Japan, with the hope—and it has worked for two years—of keeping war out of the South Pacific for our own good, for the good of the defense of Great Britain, and the freedom of the seas.39
Roosevelt announced the freeze of Japanese assets on July 26. It was coupled with a freeze on Chinese assets and a military order placing the Philippine armed forces under American command.40 Later that afternoon the War Department announced that General Douglas MacArthur had been recalled to active duty to command U.S. forces in the Philippines.* “If there is going to be trouble in the Far East,” Roosevelt told his military aide, Pa Watson, “I want Douglas to be in charge.”
The chain of circumstances leading to MacArthur’s recall is unclear. What little documentation exists suggests MacArthur took the initiative with a letter to FDR’s press secretary Steve Early (an old friend) on March 21, 1941, offering his services to the president. “Isn’t that fine? It is just what I would expect Douglas MacArthur to do,” said Roosevelt. Pa Watson, the president’s military aide, thereupon wrote MacArthur that Roosevelt “wants you in your military capacity rather than any other.” MacArthur replied, “This would naturally be my choice and I am gratified beyond words that this is his decision.”
The War Department was less enthusiastic about MacArthur’s recall than FDR was. By the end of May 1941 MacArthur had heard nothing from Washington and dispatched another letter to Early stating he had booked passage back to the United States and planned to settle in San Antonio. There is no paper trail of what happened next, but apparently FDR made his wishes known to Stimson and Marshall. Early wired MacArthur to sit tight, and on June 20, 1941, Marshall wrote that he and Stimson agreed that “your outstanding qualifications and vast experience in the Philippines make you the logical selection for the Army in the Far East should the situation approach a crisis.”41
After the order freezing Japanese assets was announced, FDR departed Washington for Hyde Park, and four days later he left for New London and the trip to Newfoundland to meet Churchill. There is no doubt about his intentions. The freeze was designed to disconcert the Japanese, but the flow of oil was to continue. Daniel Bell at Treasury was aware of that; Ickes, who had been named petroleum coordinator, was aware; and so was the State Department. “The President’s chief objective in the Pacific for the time being,” Sumner Welles told his British counterpart, Sir Alexander Cadogan, at Argentia, “is the avoidance of war with Japan.”42
The export licenses Japan required fell under the jurisdiction of the interdepartmental Foreign Funds Control Committee, a subcabinet body chaired by Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The committee had the sole authority to release the frozen funds. As fate would have it, Acheson was one of the leading hawks in the administration, who had long favored a full embargo of oil shipments to Japan. With Roosevelt and Welles out of the country and Hull taking the waters at the Greenbrier in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, Acheson asserted that the freeze order was imprecise and refused to thaw Japanese funds for any purchases whatever. With the breathtaking arrogance that became his hallmark, the future secretary of state maintained his action could not possibly provoke war in the Pacific since “no rational Japanese could