Free Pearl Harbor Christmas by Stanley Weintraub

Morgenthau “whether space might be found at [the Bullion Depository in] Fort Knox for these materials, in the unlikely event that it becomes necessary to remove them from Washington.” Morgenthau checked and allocated sixty cubic feet. Choices were made and procedures arranged and, sixteen days after war had broken out, MacLeish, with David C. Mearns, chief of the Manuscript Division, watched the preparations begin. “The documents were . . . wrapped,” Mearns recalled, “in a container stiffened at top and bottom with all-rag, neutral millboard and secured by Scotch tape, and inserted in a specially-designed bronze container, which had been scrupulously cleaned of . . . possible harmful elements, and heated for six hours to a temperature of about 90ºF to drive off any moisture. Empty space was then filled with sheets of all-rag, neutral millboard and the top of the container was screwed tight over a cork gasket and locked with padlocks on each side. It was late in the evening when work was suspended.” In the sub-basement carpenter shop the container was placed in rock wool in a metal-bound box to await shipment after Christmas.

    MUCH NEWS, like that episode, was withheld so that morale would not be affected by what looked like panic but was only prudence. An official censor had been appointed to monitor the release of news related to the war. He was Byron Price, fifty, the highly regarded executive news editor of the Associated Press, who was to control the media outside the government’s own press bureaus and have no authority to “originate” news. Yet the army and navy could, and did. The navy sank subs that never existed, and MacArthur invented counterattacks that never happened.
    Roosevelt and Churchill took a pass that evening, sharing drinks and dinner with Hopkins and a few household guests while the British and American staffs went to a dinner party for thirty-seven at the Carlton Hotel, hosted by Army Secretary Stimson and Navy Secretary Knox. Churchill delayed coming down, possibly because of telephone calls but perhaps also to forgo the President’s mixed drinks in favor of brandy supplied by Alonzo Fields. With guests about at dinner, business was shelved for reminiscence, Roosevelt recalling his support of the Boers while he was at Harvard, while Churchill, in South Africa promoting the Empire, was taken prisoner and, on escaping, earning acclaim at home. After Roosevelt added that schooling did not bring back many pleasant memories, Churchill put down his cigar and agreed. “When I hear a man say that his childhood was the happiest time of his life, I think, my friend, you have had a pretty poor life.”
    At the Carlton Hotel Stimson opened with a toast to George VI, which was responded to by Admiral Sir Dudley Pound’s toast to the President. At the close, Stimson, an artillery colonel in the earlier war, noted in his diary, “I recalled my recollections of 1917 when America had just declared war and a British mission for a similar purpose had crossed the ocean and came to us.” Now, he said, “twenty-four years afterwards the same situation was presenting itself, the same hope and ideal lay before us, and this time we must not fail, but must win the war and the peace.”
    After dinner they gathered in an adjoining room, Stimson recalled, “and chatted over our problems. There was a very hearty spirit of cooperation and good will evidenced on both sides and not a single note, so far as I could see, intervened to mar the earnest spirit of harmony and endeavor which pervaded everybody.” Churchill cabled to his Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, the Labour Party leader, “We live here as a big family in the greatest intimacy and informality, and I have formed the very highest regard for the President. His breadth of view, resolution and his loyalty to the common cause are beyond all praise.”
    Roosevelt may have retired early after his long dinner with the PM and Hopkins, but it is