Pearl Harbor Christmas (29 page)

Sources

The annotated minutes of the “Arcadia” conference in Washington, December 1941–January 1942 have been published in full as
Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1968). FDR’s press conference texts are drawn from the 1941 volume of
Complete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin D. Roosevelt
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1972). Press account sources are cited in the text. Drawn from them is
One Christmas in Washington: The Secret Meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill That Changed the World,
by David J. Bercuson and Holger H. Herwig (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2005). However, the meeting was never secret; almost from the moment that Churchill arrived in the United States. Churchill’s published accounts are in his multivolume
The Second World War,
fudged and altered, as detailed by David Reynolds in
In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War
(New York: Random House, 2005).

Cabinet meetings in Churchill’s absence and reports to him are in Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, eds.,
Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke. War Diaries 1939–1945
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

What Washington was like then, aside from sources noted below or in the text, can be found in David Brinkley,
Washington Goes to War
(New York: Knopf, 1988), hereafter Brinkley; and Doris Kearns Goodwin,
No Ordinary Time
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), hereafter Goodwin.

En Route

Churchill’s preparations for Washington, his Atlantic voyage, and his stays in Washington and Ottawa are described in many sources, notably Martin Gilbert,
Winston Churchill: Road to Victory, 1941–1945
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), and Martin Gilbert, ed.,
The Churchill War Papers, vol. 3. The Ever-Widening War, 1941
(New York: Norton, 2001); the diaries of Sir Charles Wilson (Lord Moran),
Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966); Mary Soames, ed.,
Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); and Jon Meacham,
Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship
(New York: Random House, 2003). The Churchill-FDR correspondence is collected in Warren Kimball, ed.,
Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, I
(New York: HarperCollins, 1988).

FDR in the White House in December 1941 is detailed in Conrad Black,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom
(New York: Public Affairs Press, 2003), and more anecdotally in Goodwin, above. For Harry Hopkins in the White House, see Robert Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History
(New York: Harper, 1948).

December 22, 1941

Aside from long extracts in the press, Roosevelt’s press conferences were printed in their entirety in
Complete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin D. Roosevelt
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1972), for this period, volumes 17–18, 1941.

Ambassador Litvinov’s meeting with FDR (and later meetings during the week) is described by Averell Harriman, with Elie Abel, in
Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin 1941–1946
(New York: Random House, 1975). Intimate accounts of Churchill ensconced in the White House are from butler Alonzo Fields,
My 21 Years in the White House
(Greenwich, CT: Greenwood Press, 1961); secretary Grace Tully,
F.D.R., My Boss
(New York: Scribner, 1949); cook Henrietta Nesbitt,
White House Diary
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948); map room assistant William M. Rigdon,
White House Sailor
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962); and FDR friend and dinner guest Huybertie Hamlin (as Mrs. Charles Hamlin) in “An Old River Friend,”
The New Republic,
April 15, 1946.

The Eden party’s departure from Russia and later at sea is described by Oliver Harvey in John Harvey, ed.,
The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey
(London: Collins, 1978). Admiral Leahy’s reports from Vichy throughout are from his
I Was There
(New York: 1950). David Reynolds in chapter 16 of his
In Command of History: Churchill Writing and Fighting the Second World War
(New York: Random House, 2005) states that the PM uses “sleight of hand” in his
The Grand Alliance
volume, noting that he wrote four strategy papers on the voyage, not three, concealing his “continued complacency about Singapore,” omitting significant messages from London, and fudging his texts in his favor.

The war in Malaya from the Japanese side is drawn throughout from Masanobu Tsuji,
Singapore: The Japanese Version
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961). Hong Kong’s doomed defense is chronicled by Tim Carew in
The Fall of Hong Kong
(London: Anthony Blond, 1960). Wake Island’s resistance is from Bill Sloan,
Given Up for Dead: America’s Heroic Stand at Wake Island
(New York: Bantam, 2003), and Matome Ugaki,
Fading Victory. The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941-1945,
ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katharine V. Dillon, trans. Masataka Chihaya (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991). Further references to Ugaki’s diary are from this edition.

December 23, 1941

The return of the
Akigumo
from Pearl Harbor is recorded in
The Pearl Harbor Papers
, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon (McLean, VA: Brassey’s, 1993). The German navy’s blockade runners, and cooperation with the Japanese, here and later, through New Year’s Eve, are drawn from John W. M. Chapman, ed. and trans.,
The Price of Admiralty: The War Diary of the German Naval Attaché in Japan, 1939–1943, IV: 10 September 1941–31 January 1942
(Ripe, Sussex: Saltire Press, 1989). The travails of various vessels in Admiral Hart’s fleet evacuating Manila through New Year’s Day 1942 are recorded in J. Daniel Mullin, ed.,
Another Six Hundred: A True History in Narrative Form, on the Employment of Destroyer Division 59, and Other U.S. Asiatic Fleet Destroyers during the First 35 Days of World War II, Written by a Man about Himself and Others Who Were There
(Mt. Pleasant, SC: privately printed, 1984). Events in the Philippines from the Philippine perspective here and through January 1, 1942, are drawn from the ironically titled, given its beginnings,
Triumph in the Philippines 1941–1946, prepared by the Combat History Division, G-1 Section, Historical Bulletin, XVI
(Manila: Philippine Historical Association, 1972).

Sylvia Beach’s recollection of the German officer seeking
Finnegans Wake
is from her notebook on Christmas presents, 1940–1945, in the Sylvia Beach Papers, Princeton University Library, CO 108, Box 22, Folder 6, as quoted by Charles Glass,
Americans in Paris. Life and Death under Nazi Occupation
(New York: Penguin Press, 2010).

The voyage of the
Regnbue,
through to New Year’s Day, is described by A. J. Liebling in the posthumous
Just Enough Liebling
(New York: Far-rar, Straus and Giroux, 2004). The removal of the founding American documents from Washington is from Brinkley, above.

December 24, 1941

MacArthur’s escape from Manila to Corregidor and subsequent life on the island is described by Geoffrey Perret in
Old Soldiers Never Die
(New York: Random House, 1996); William Manchester in
American Caesar
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1978); S. Weintraub in
Fifteen Stars,
above; and Teodoro A. Agoncillo,
The Burden of Proof: The Vargas-Laurel Collaboration Case
(Manila: University of the Philippines Press for the U.P.-Jorge P. Vargas Filipiniana Research Center, 1984).

December 25, 1941

Göring at Rominten Heath is from David Irving,
Göring
(New York: Morrow, 1989). The Roosevelts’ Christmas presents are described by Grace Tully in
F.D.R., My Boss,
above. The effect of Missy LeHand’s absence is described in Goodwin, above. Nimitz’s appointment and arrival in Hawaii is recalled by Rear Admiral T. Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, in
“And I Was There”
(New York: William Morrow, 1995). General Marshall’s Christmas dinner is recalled by Katherine Marshall in
Together: Annals of an Army Wife
(Atlanta, GA: Tupper and Love, 1946). For Christmas Day in Hong Kong, see Charles Barman,
Resist to the End: Hong Kong, 1941–1945
(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009).

December 26, 1941

Boxing Day on Malta is reported by Paul Fussell in
Wartime
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). General Guderian’s removal from the Russian front is described by Alister Kershaw in his
Hitler 1936–1945. Nemesis
(London: Penguin Press, 2000).

Churchill’s angina pectoris, kept secret for twenty-four years, was revealed by Charles Wilson (Lord Moran), above. The tale of his being discovered in the altogether after his morning bath was first related in Sherwood, above. That Churchill first denied it as lacking in dignity is suggested by Reynolds, above. Map Room accounts are from Rigdon, above. David Lilienthal’s diary entry on the PM’s speech is from his
The TVA Years 1939–1945
(New York: Harper & Row, 1964). Tire rationing details are from an AP dispatch in the
New York Times,
December 26, 1941.

The arrival at Fort Knox of the founding documents is from Brinkley, above.

December 27, 1941

“Operation Archery” is described in Combined Operations: Operation Archery (
http://www.combinedops.com/vaagso.htm
). Albert Speer’s meeting with Fritz Todt is from Gitta Sereny,
Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth
(New York: Knopf, 1995). Stilwell’s letter is from Barbara Tuchman,
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945
(New York: Macmillan, 1971). Eisenhower on his crowded days appears in a volume on his early diaries, ed. Robert Ferrell, and in the multivolume
Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower,
ed. Alfred D. Chandler and his successors (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), from which all Eisenhower documentation herewith is extracted. The relocation of archives documents to Fort Knox here and later is from Brinkley, above.

December 28, 1941

Marshall’s rejoinder to Churchill on handling a tank is from Weintraub,
15 Stars,
above. The saga of
Peary
and his sister vessels in the fraying Asian Fleet is, as before and after, from
Another Six-Hundred
, above. MacArthur ordering
Lepanto
gold stock from Corregidor is from Carol Petillo,
Douglas MacArthur: The Philippine Years
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981). The Eden return journey from Russia is from Harvey, above. The St. Pierre and Miquelon controversy is from the
Arcadia
papers, above.

December 29, 1941

“Operation Arthropoid” was described by Michal Burian in 2002 in “Assassination–Operation Arthropoid” (
http://www.army.cz/images/id_7001_8000/7419/assassination-en.pdf
); and in Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic (
http://www.army.cz/images/id_7001_8000/7419/assassination-en.pdf
). The relocation of Japanese embassy personnel is described in Brinkley, above. Admiral Stark’s consoling message to Admiral Kimmel is quoted in Gordon Prange, et al., in
At Dawn We Slept
(New York: Penguin, 1981). MacArthur’s new life on Corregidor on the 29th and 30th is described by Geoffrey Perret in
Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur
(New York: Random House, 1996). Churchill’s arrival in Ottawa is in Gilbert (above) and Meacham (above).

December 30, 1941

Yousuf Karsh’s portrait taking of Churchill is described in Maria Tippett’s
Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).

Sylvia Beach’s recollection of the German officer’s return to Shakespeare and Company, and her concealing her stock and closing down the shop is from an interview by Niall Sheridan with Miss Beach in
Self Portraits: Sylvia Beach,
a documentary on Radio Telefix Eireann (RTE), Dublin, 1962, as quoted in Charles Glass,
Americans in Paris,
above.

December 31, 1941

Admiral Ugaki is recorded from his diary (above). Admiral Yamamoto is quoted in S. Weintraub,
Long Day’s Journey into War
(New York: Dut-ton, 1991, 2001). Hitler on New Year’s Eve is from Kershaw, above. For Wenneker and Halder, see above.

Turner Catledge reports from Churchill’s returning train in
My Life and the Times
(Evanston, NY: Harper & Row, 1971). Lucy Monroe singing the National Anthem and Pétain’s “Frenchmen!” radio address are in William K. Klingmann,
1941: Our Lives in a World on the Edge
(New York: Harper & Row, 1981).

January 1, 1942

Vassily Grossman’s letter to his wife from the Russian front is from Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova, eds. and trans.,
A Writer at War: Vassily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941–1945
(New York: Pantheon, 2005). Anne Rochon’s letter to FDR about Missy LeHand is quoted in endnotes to Goodwin, above.