FDR - Jean Edward Smith [389]
FDR had assumed he was going to Hawaii to referee a knock-down, drag-out fight between the Army and the Navy. Instead, consensus arrived quickly. MacArthur and Nimitz agreed that the Philippines should be recovered with the forces available in the western Pacific and that, contrary to the view of the Joint Chiefs, Japan could be forced to surrender without invading the Japanese homeland. “It was highly pleasing and unusual to find two commanders who were not demanding reinforcements,” wrote Leahy.99
MacArthur had expected the worst but was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. The president, he said, had conducted himself as a “chairman” and had remained “entirely neutral,” while Nimitz displayed a “fine sense of fair play.”100* Leahy thought FDR was “at his best as he tactfully steered the discussion from one point to another and narrowed down the areas of disagreement between MacArthur and Nimitz.”101 The only discordant note was Roosevelt’s health. “He is just a shell of the man I knew,” MacArthur told his wife, Jean. “In six months he will be in his grave.”102
From Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt sailed to Alaska. On July 31, while under way, he received a cable from the White House that Missy LeHand had died of a cerebral embolism earlier that day. She had never recovered from her stroke three years earlier. Eleanor, along with James Farley and Joseph Kennedy, attended her Cambridge funeral, presided over by Bishop (later Cardinal) Richard Cushing. FDR issued a moving personal statement.103 Writing in The New York Times, Arthur Krock noted that Roosevelt had now lost two of his most trusted advisers, Louis Howe and Missy LeHand.104 Rosenman said, “She was one of the most important people of the Roosevelt era.… She was the frankest of the President’s associates, never hesitating to tell him unpleasant truths or to express an unfavorable opinion about his work or about any proposed action or policy. I feel that had she lived she could have so lightened his wartime burden that his own life would have been prolonged.”105
Roosevelt mourned silently, but Missy’s death took its toll. He spoke informally to the troops at Adak, Alaska, on August 3, and then suffered an attack of angina a week later while delivering a speech to Navy Yard workers at Bremerton, Washington. FDR had been out of the country twenty-nine days and had traveled 10,000 miles by ship, a voyage that in past years would have restored him. But the Bremerton speech sent shock waves through the country. Roosevelt had intended the speech to be an informal report to the American people on his travels together with some reassurances on the progress of the war in the Pacific. He had written it two days before delivery and had not bothered to polish it—a surprising lapse since the speech was to be broadcast nationally and would be his first opportunity to address the country since the Democratic convention. He spoke from the fantail of a destroyer, facing a brisk wind, standing on braces he had not worn in almost a year. The heavy rocking of the ship forced him to hold on to the lectern with both hands, making it difficult to turn the pages. All of this affected Roosevelt’s delivery, which was rambling, halting, and indecisive.106
Ten minutes into the speech, the president experienced excruciating chest pains that extended to both shoulders. Despite the pain he gamely persevered with the speech, sweating profusely for the next fifteen minutes, until the discomfort subsided. When he finished speaking, he returned to the destroyer captain’s cabin and collapsed into a chair. Dr. Bruenn cleared everyone out, administered an electrocardiogram, and took a white blood count, but found no abnormalities.107
Rosenman, listening to Roosevelt