At the White House

Pennsylvania Avenue was wet with autumn showers; the tires of the big, shiny sedan sang until it slowed for the turn into the White House drive. As the big machine stopped, with the air of quiet pomp that only official cars achieve, the wind bent trees out across the wide, wet lawns. The burly man in the back seat--Admiral James Otto Richardson, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet--did not appear to notice. He had arrived punctually at 1 o'clock; he got out quickly, and walked into the executive mansion, looking straight ahead.

He was led down the hall, ushered into the President's office. After a few minutes Admiral William D. Leahy came in. The three men ate lunch at the President's desk.

When the dishes were cleared, the office door stayed closed. The trio talked tensely, often sitting forward while cigaret butts piled up in the big tray on the desk. The door did not open until 3 o'clock.

Later that afternoon, President Franklin Roosevelt said at his press conference that he had merely been brushing up on his geography; he and the Admirals had been looking at maps. The real story of the meeting was never told until Admiral Richardson told it last week before the Pearl Harbor Investigating Committee,.

Differences. On that day, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 1940, Gone With the Wind was playing and draft boards were getting ready to induct their first man. Franklin Roosevelt had just signed a $1 1/2 billion defense appropriation, and was about to light into Wendell Willkie. He was still an energetic and abidingly confident man. His guests, even when they disagreed with him, found him irresistibly full of good humor.

But Admiral Richardson, talking across the gadget-littered desk, did not respond to the President's ebullience. He was in tensely worried ; he had been brooding for months over the crowded anchorage at Pearl Harbor, the fleet's lack of manpower, ammunition, shore defenses, a proper supply train. Neither the Navy nor the nation, he had concluded, was ready for war.

Stolidly, in the face of the President's confidence, he asked to be allowed to play safe, to withdraw the fleet from Pearl Harbor, base it on the Pacific Coast, and use it to defend the Western Hemisphere.

The President shook his head. He wanted a hole card on the table. He needed the fleet in Hawaii as a "restraining influence on Japan." "But," protested "Joe" Richardson, "Japan has a military government which knows our fleet is undermanned . . . unprepared. . . ." "Despite what you believe," the President said, "I know that the presence of the fleet in the Hawaiian Islands has had--and is now having--a restraining in fluence."

Richardson went on arguing, with stubborn formality: "Mr. President, I still do not believe it . . . I know that our fleet is disadvantageous disposed for preparing for, or initiating war operations."

Stubborn Men. There was silence. Then the President responded to his instinct for allowing other men the chance to save face when he opposed them. He could be convinced about bringing the fleet back, he said. But only, he added, "if I can be given a good statement which will convince the American people and the Japanese that ... we are not stepping backward." The Admiral asked a blunt question: "Are we going to enter the war?" "Not," said the President calmly, "if the Japs attack Thailand [Siam], the Kra Isthmus or the Dutch East Indies.

Perhaps not even if they attack the Philippines." But the Japs "could not always avoid making mistakes. ... As the area of operations expanded, sooner or later, they would make a mistake and we would enter the war." Admiral Richardson strode briskly out of the White House, knowing that he had failed to convince the President.

Two days later Navy Secretary Frank Knox called Richardson in, told him the President was afraid the Japanese might take "drastic action" when Britain re-opened the Burma Road to China. In such an event, Franklin Roosevelt wanted to set up a Navy patrol which would cut off all traffic between Japan and the Americas. The Admiral was "amazed." Stubbornly he began arguing again--the fleet was not ready for such a task. If it tried, war would surely result. Loud, hearty Frank Knox was annoyed. Said he: "Richardson, we have never been ready, but we have always won. ... If you don't like the President's plan, draw up one of your own."

Reflection at a Distance. The Admiral went back to Hawaii. There, with the warm trade wind riffling papers on his desk, he drew up a gloomy (and prophetic) memorandum on the danger of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. He never again saw or heard from the President.

Four months later he was removed from his command. Secretary Knox explained, "Jim, the last time you were here you hurt the President's feelings."

The new Pacific commander, and the last CINCUS, was Admiral Husband E. Kimmel--who was to hear the roar of Japanese bombs exploding amid the anchored fleet on Dec. 7, 1941.

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