United States Navy People

"For extraordinary heroism, distinguished service, and conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty as commander of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3, in Philippine waters during the period from 7 December 1941 to 10 April 1942. The remarkable achievement of Lt. Comdr. Bulkeley's command in damaging or destroying a notable number of Japanese enemy planes, surface combatant and merchant ships, and in dispersing landing parties and land-based enemy forces during the four months and eight days of operation without benefit of repairs, overhaul, or maintenance facilities for his squadron, is believed to be without precedence in this type of warfare. His dynamic forcefulness and daring in offensive action, his brilliantly planned and skillfully executed attacks, supplemented by a unique resourcefullness and ingenuity, characterize him as an outstanding leader of men and a gallant and intrepid seaman. These qualities coupled with a complete disregard for his own personal safety reflect great credit upon him and the Naval Service."

"PT boats are very, very, in many ways, very fine to keep at sea at long times and do varied jobs. Well, since D-day, my boats have been out here in the line from 10 to 14 days at a time. We often run out of food, we have trouble with the weather, but the boys are taking it fine. I think we've done the hardest thing of all, kept on our toes for whatever might have happened."

"As far as the Breakout is that...Breakout, itself is concerned, it was dark, and it was a rather rainy, misty night. We went at high speed, ran through the mine fields, which we knew like the palm of our hands...no problem at all."

"I don't know what a hero is. This business of the captain taking all the credit, ordering someone else and so forth -- that's not it. The men who do the actual fighting, man the guns, they're the guys that really win the war."

"This man directs less than any man in the business. As a matter of fact, he doesn't direct—he doesn't want any actor to give an impression of him playing the part. He wants the actor to create the part—that's why he hired him, because he saw him in this part."

"Godard and [[Ingmar Bergman|[Ingmar] Bergman]] have always admired him, Mr Nixon says he loved him and those who have nothing but disrespect for the average commercial movie will seldom hear a word against John Ford. Yet at the same time he has also been accused of everything under the sun from being a political reactionary to a moral sentimentalist. There was no doubt that he could make awful movies that extolled the American way of life in the most simplistic way. There was no doubt also that the old values of rough frontiersman integrity suited him best..."

"I only met John Ford once. On the steps of MGM one evening. We were introduced by mutual friends. People spend a lot of time comparing my work to his. Most of that's bullshit. First of all, I don't like most of his later films. I love The Informer and Grapes of Wrath and—what was that other one?—Tobacco Road. His best Western is '. Fonda was sensational in that. I hated '. I loved the book but I thought the movie was shit. But I suppose he didn't like much of what I did, either. I think we're very different."

"A good picture, as we all know, starts with a story. The next thing is to tell that story pictorially. [...] Fast-moving, pictorial, not overloaded with dialogue. You could see that picture without dialogue and know what it was all about. That was the secret of John Ford's pictures. You could run any one of his pictures silent, and you'd still know what they were all about."

"He was the first to dare use very lengthy long takes, going against Hollywood rules. He wouldn't cut to a closer shot. No one has been able to generate as much emotion as Ford does in long shots; watch The Grapes of Wrath and Young Mr. Lincoln."

"John Ford came in and I was very scared of him. A rough character. I heard he despised the English, so I invented an Irish grandfather and told tales to him that simply were not true. [...] I found Ford to be a very curmudgeonly taskmaster, but always very fair. He always knew what he wanted in a scene. He never overshot. God help you if you didn't deliver what he wanted. And he liked me well enough that I finally told him that my Irish grandfather was fictional. He roared over that one. We've been close friends ever since. He used me a lot over the next few decades."

"He didn't direct you. He never told you what to do. He would talk to you, mostly about something completely different, and you find yourself doing the right thing. It was really very spooky—what he did."

"Do you know that Eugene O'Neill loved ' [(1940), based on a cycle of O'Neill's one-act sea plays]? Every month he had a print screened for him. It's a little thing that made me very proud of this picture."

"Never. It's awful. When I am asked why I hardly ever move the camera, I answer that the actors are better paid than the stagehands and grips, so it's normal that they should work and move about a little more. You should never use technical gimmicks to create emotion."

"I think "laconic" is a good word for John Ford and for his technique of direction. No big deal about communication with John. Terse, pithy, to the point. Very Irish, a dark personality, a sensitivity which he did everything to conceal, but once he said to me while I was doing a scene with Ray Massey, "Make it scan, Mary." And I said to myself, "Aha! I know you now!"."

"Maureen O'Hara is one of the actresses I most dislike. Everybody thought I was her lover. Actually, I hated her and she hated me, but she was right for the parts."

"John Ford was the quintessential American director, an intuitive film maker with no intellectual pretensions who made movies as he wanted to make them, and in the end found them to be as popular with the buffs as with the general public. ... And the true test-of his genius is the fact, that, as cinema fashions have come and gone, his reputation has seldom faltered."

"Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and the subsequent John Ford movie promulgated a populist mythology about depression-era migrants to California who were dubbed "Okies," no matter what southwestern or midwestern state they hailed from. But most Californians regarded Okies as dirty, shifty, lazy, violent, and ignorant."

"The people who say such things are crazy. I am a Northerner, I hate segregation, and I gave jobs to hundreds of Negroes at the same salary the whites were paid. I had production companies hire poverty-stricken Indians and pay them the highest Hollywood salaries for extras. Me, a racist? My best friends are black: , and a caretaker who has worked for me for thirty years. I even made ', about a character who was not just a nice black guy but someone nobler than anybody else in the picture. They wouldn't let me make that picture because they said that a movie about a 'nigger' wouldn't make any money and couldn't be exhibited in the South. I got angry and told them they could at least have the decency to say 'Negro' or 'colored man,' because most of those 'niggers' were worth better than they. When I landed at there were scores of black bodies lying in the sand. Then I realized that it was impossible not to consider them full-fledged American citizens."

"I've only been influenced by somebody once: prior to making Citizen Kane, I saw Stagecoach forty times. I didn't need to learn from somebody who had something to say, but from somebody who would show me how to say what I had in mind; and John Ford is perfect for that."

"You won't like what I am going to say, because the people who I admire are the least-valued by cinema intellectuals; it seems like a tragic misunderstanding to me. My favorite filmmaker is De Sica: I know I'm upsetting you. And John Ford. But the Ford of twenty years ago, the De Sica of twelve years ago."

"The only director who does not move either his camera or his actors very much, and in whom I believe, is John Ford. He succeeds in making me believe in his films even though there is little movement in them. But with the others I have the impression that they are desperately trying to make Art."

"I never make visual references to Ford in my films, but I did remind my cameraman of Ford's very economical use of the close-up and careful handling of space. The first close-up of John Wayne in ' comes after 40 minutes! One of the top stars of the time! Still, he is incredibly powerful and present in the film. So I tried to do something similar here, partly in reaction to so many films shot today in the style of TV. I wanted to do an intimate story in wide shots, and it seemed appropriate, because the audacious use of space would emphasize the historical dimensions. That's also Ford, because my film is about values, and Ford's always are, too. Ford is one of the few classic American directors whose emphasis is on the collective rather than on the individual. I have read critics who believe he is reactionary, but they forget not only how nonjudgmental he is; he has a sense of the group's responsibility, of their mutual need. In ', John Wayne says, "This is work for a professional," but not in Yellow Ribbon, where they come and say, "How can we help?"."

"What? [...] I understood the question but what does it mean? [...] I don't have a method. I tell them what to do. They do it. If I'm not satisfied, I correct their errors, I tell them to raise their voice, or to emphasize such-and-such sentence, and they do it again; that's all. Anyway, most of the time the actors are very good friends of mine and I know their personality and their range. There's no method involved there.""

"As for the director, John Ford, from my first meeting with him to the day the picture was completed I knew I was in the hands of the consummate professional. I felt safe and secure with him. If I argued a line of dialogue with him or objected to a bit of business, I can now assure you it was more to assert my ego than it was to attack him. Almost entirely throughout the film, when we clashed, it turned out he was right and I was wrong. The main point to be made is that he would sit me down and show me where I was wrong. He is a totally remarkable director and one of the few deserving a place in the Pantheon. I'm told he's aging now, and cranky; well, I'm aging now, and cranky, but I bet if the right script came along (and were still around to write it), John Ford and I could knock the shit out of it."

"Very early, I was a film buff.... I learned from everything. You learn for just meeting John Ford."

"Sometimes Ford failed to grasp the meaning of a question that a European director, or American directors like Elia Kazan, Richard Brooks, , or would have had no trouble assimilating. For example: How do you direct your actors? Ford couldn't understand the rationale for such a question. It seemed truly odd to him. Not dumb--like the radio journalist who asked him about "Fantastic Ride" [La Chevauchee fantastique is the French release title of Stagecoach]--but odd, and he didn't know what to answer. Since he was physically rather intimidating, with his one eye that seemed to peer deep inside of you and his piratelike countenance, even the bold could easily get flustered."

"Stanley Kubrick and are the only ones that appeal to me—except for the old masters. By which I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford.[...] With Ford at his best, you feel that the movie has lived and breathed in a real world."

"When I think about my district, which is a lot like most other Republican districts in America, with a large manufacturing base, a large agricultural base, for too long the Republican Party establishment sold us out to Wall Street and we were outsourcing our manufacturing jobs to China and our agriculture to Mexico. For too long, the Republican Party was not the party of working people. President Trump made us the party of the working class. If we don’t adapt our Republican Party agenda recognizing that, I don’t think we win elections in 2022 and 2024."

"Prior to December 7, it was evident even to me... that we were pushing Japan into a corner. I believed that it was the desire of President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill that we get into the war, as they felt the Allies could not win without us and all our efforts to cause the Germans to declare war on us failed; the conditions we imposed upon Japan—to get out of China, for example—were so severe that we knew that nation could not accept them. We were forcing her so severely that we could have known that she would react toward the United States. All her preparations in a military way — and we knew their over-all import — pointed that way."

"On the evening of August 14, the White House press corps was invited into the Oval Office. President Truman was seated behind his desk, with his cabinet secretaries, military chiefs, and aides standing behind him. Their beaming faces told the tale. The president came directly to the point. The Japanese government had accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and therefore, the Second World War was over. The reporters rushed back to the press room, and moments later the news was on the wires. Soon a boisterous crowd gathered outside the White House gates. Admiral Leahy noted in his diary: "A noisy celebration is going on in the city with all motor cars sounding their horns, and great crowds of shouting people milling in the streets and bringing traffic to a standstill. The radio is bearing for the news of the celebration in cities from Los Angeles to Boston, in all of which the populace seems to be celebrating the war's end with noise in crowded streets. Leahy did not approve. He felt that the occasion called for calm, thoughtful, dignified reflection, "but the proletariat considers noise appropriate and the greatest number of people in democracies must have their way.""

"Admiral: You do not seem to approve!"

"Dear Admiral: I am writing this on the train going 90 mi. an hour. I hope you will be able to read it. I received your letter enclosing an article by Constantine Brown. I wish I could get my hands on him and on the fellow who gave him the false information in the first place. I want you in the White House. I have the utmost confidence in you. You tell me what you think. While you and I don't see eye to eye on some things, we are always frank with each other. Don't you pay any attention to any lying stories the gossipers write. It's part of the political farce as it's played in this country. The opposition try to hurt me by hurting my friends. Please don't let it bother you. When I have anything to say to you, I'll say it to you. You are my friend and I am yours come hell or high water. Sincerely, Harry S. Truman"

"Leahy had been personally close to FDR, he told Truman, and was "distressed" by his death. He was inclined to retire from the navy and from his position as White House chief of staff. But Truman needed him for the sake of continuity, if nothing else, and asked him to stay on the job to help him "pick up the strands of the business of war." After Truman gave assurances that he would adhere to the same decision-making procedures used by FDR, Leahy agreed to remain on the job for at least a few more months. It turned out that he served another four years, to the end of Truman's first term in office."

"Admiral Leahy has largely disappeared from the national mind. Despite the enormous power he wielded during World War II, a war the United States fought to his strategic ideas more than any other and a conflict that still shapes America's identity, there are today no William D. Leahy foundations, public schools, statues, or libraries. As his greatest service was in the White House, the US Navy has remembered him more shoddily than they should. In 1962, a new guided missile cruiser, the USS Leahy (DLG-16), was named for him. It was the best ship of its class, and would serve with distinction into the 1990s, but it was hardly a vessel worthy of the highest-ranking sailor in American history. A simple marker, in a small park in Ashland, Wisconsin, sandwiched between Lake Superior and a highway, serves as one of America's few tributes to a man who, more than any other, helped America triumph in World War II. Leahy would have preferred it that way."

"King, in addition to heading the Navy, served as a member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, which also included General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, General Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, Chief of Staff of the Army Air Forces, and, later, Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the President. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the British Imperial Chiefs of Staff, when meeting together, comprised the Combined Chiefs of Staff, the senior executive body controlling Allied military operations. The CCS delegated most of the control of Pacific theater operations to the JCS, who for this function relied heavily on the advice of Admiral King."

"Historians have concluded that Truman grew into the role of commander in chief, and eventually proved more than equal to the job. But in the spring and summer of 1945, the growing pains were evident- and the decisions he must confront during those early weeks were among the most important of his presidency. In his diary, Bill Leahy expressed concern about the "staggering burdens of war and peace that [Truman] must carry." Privately, according to Leahy's son, the admiral regarded his new boss as a "bush-leaguer." He had been accustomed to speaking his mind to Roosevelt, knowing that the late president was "captain of the team" and might accept or reject his advice according to his own judgment. But Truman did not yet possess the confidence or independence to buck his advisers. Truman was in their hands, Leahy told another aide, which meant everyone who advised the president bore heavy responsibility, and must be absolutely sure they were right. In his diary and his subsequent memoir, Leahy betrayed no sense of responsibility or culpability for the new president's relative ignorance. One is struck by this lack of self-awareness in a Washington statesman otherwise respected for his wisdom and good judgment. Whatever he knew or did not know about the state of FDR's declining health, Leahy had been at the late president's elbow for most of the last year of his life. He certainly knew enough to anticipate that Truman might be thrust into the role of commander in chief at any moment. Leahy was the White House chief of staff and the chairman of the JCS. What steps did he take to ensure that the vice president was properly briefed? Who else had that duty, if not himself? No adequate explanation has ever been provided for this breakdown in the basic procedures of sound constitutional government."

"During the closing days of 1944 King received the final promotion of his naval career. On 11 December the Congress passed a bill authorizing the appointment of four Fleet Admirals and four Generals of the Army. The President immediately named Leahy, King and Nimitz to the naval five-star rank (Halsey later became the fourth.), and Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower and Arnold to the corresponding grade in the Army. The Senate confirmed these appointments on 15 December 1944, and on 20 December- the third anniversary of his designation as Commander in Chief, United States Fleet- King took the oath of office as a Fleet Admiral in the United States Navy."

"To King, Leahy, Nimitz, and naval officers in general, it had always seemed that the defeat of Japan could be accomplished by sea and air power alone, without the necessity of actual invasion of the Japanese home islands by ground troops. In 1942, 1943, and 1944, while the attention of most of the Allied political and military leaders was concentrated on Europe, and while the war against Japan was left largely to King to manage with what forces he could muster, the Pacific war had proceeded largely upon this assumption. With the approaching victory in Europe a larger amount of attention was concentrated on the Pacific by people who had not previously been too greatly concerned with the problems of that war, and an increasing amount of high-priced thought was devoted to it, some of which seemed to King not strictly pertinent. From the time of the Teheran Conference there had been the political consideration of Soviet intervention in the war against Japan, and the Army had been convinced that the use of ground troops would be necessary. Upon Marshall's insistence, which also reflected MacArthur's views, the Joint Chiefs had prepared plans for landings in Kyushu and eventually in the Tokyo plain. King and Leahy did not like the idea, but as unanimous decisions were necessary in the Joint Chiefs meetings, they reluctantly acquiesced, feeling that in the end sea power would accomplish the defeat of Japan, as proved to be the case."

"Above all these sailors was the Commander in Chief, Franklin D. Roosevelt- a remarkable leader indeed. Unlike Winston Churchill, Roosevelt never imagined himself to be a strategist. In general he followed the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which included King, Marshall, and his own chief of staff, wise old Admiral Leahy. Thrice at least he went over their heads- refusing to redeploy American forces into the Pacific in 1942, insisting that Guadalcanal must be reinforced and held at all costs, and inviting a British fleet to participate in the Okinawa campaign. He also threw his influence in favor of MacArthur's desire to liberate Leyte and Luzon against the Navy's wish to bypass them. He was a tower of strength to Marshall, King and Eisenhower against insistent British pressure to postpone OVERLORD and shift DRAGOON from Marseilles to Trieste. The Navy was his favorite service- I heard him once, in his true regal style refer to it as "my Navy"- and he did his utmost to build it up and improve its efficiency both before and during the war."

"A few weeks previously Leahy had come to King's office one day and said that the President would like to have King cease using the customary term Commander in Chief, both in respect to the United States Fleet and the Pacific and Atlantic Fleets, and to alter these designations to Commander, United States Fleet, Pacific Fleet, or Atlantic Fleet, as the case might be. Thus there would be but one Commander in Chief, and that the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. King asked Leahy if that were an order or a request, and was told that it was not an order or a request, but the Leahy knew that the President would like to have it done. King therupon told Leahy that if Mr. Roosevelt issued an order, or a request, he would of course have to comply with it, but Leahy said that the President said that the President did not wish to issue a definite order, but simply would like to have it done. That was the last that King heard of that particular matter, but it came to mind when he heard of the President's forthcoming visit to Hawaii."

"To direct the actions of each supreme commander and to coordinate British and American military policy, ARCADIA established the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), a joint British-American undertaking composed of the three British chiefs- General Sir Alan Brooke (CIGS); Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord; and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal- and their American counterparts, Marshall, King, and Arnold. At Roosevelt's insistence the Combined Chiefs was headquartered in Washington, where its work was directed by Field Marshal Sir John Dill, who became the ranking British chief and Churchill's personal representative. Dill was joined in July 1942 by Admiral William D. Leahy, whom Roosevelt brought back from Vichy to become chief of staff to the commandeer in chief and, in effect, chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff. In retrospect, the establishment of the command structure to fight the war was an unprecedented achievement that reflected the extraordinary ability of Churchill and Roosevelt to saw off minor differences and find common ground. Roosevelt, unlike Lincoln, was also well served by his long familiarity with the Army and Navy and his ability to pick effective military subordinates. Leahy, Marshall, King, and Arnold were exactly the right men for the job, and they served in their posts throughout the war. In their own way they were ruthless taskmasters, loyal to the president, and, when pushed by FDR, worked effectively with their British counterparts."

"Admiral Leahy had served with Roosevelt since FDR had been assistant secretary of the Navy and enjoyed the president's complete confidence. Marshall, Roosevelt's personal choice for chief of staff, brought a single-minded, take-no-prisoners dedication to his task- combined with a remarkable sensitivity to political nuance at the highest level. Arnold, underneath his affable exterior, had a genius for organization urgently required to create an air force virtually from scratch. King, to some extent, was odd man out: fiercely Anglophobic, incredibly stubborn, not as gifted intellectually as his colleagues, but a powerful command presence that the Navy needed after Pearl Harbor. FDR said King shaved with a blowtorch, and it was that fierceness that propelled the Navy, even when King was wrong (as he was in early 1942, when he refused to convoy ships in American waters)."

"Fleet Admiral William Daniel Leahy's death was announced by the US Navy. On July 22 at noon, his casket was moved into the Bethlehem Chapel of the Episcopal Cathedral in Washington, DC, and for the next twenty-four hours his body lay surrounded by a naval honor guard before being brought into the nave for the funeral. His eleven honorary pallbearers consisted of his old friend Bill Hassett and ten naval officers who included his few remaining living friends from the Annapolis class of 1897. After the service, a motor procession brought the admiral to his final resting place in Arlington Cemetery. A nineteen-gun salute was fired, and then Leahy was laid beside his wife, Louise, where she had awaited him for seventeen years. Neither Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, nor George Marshall were in attendance. Newspapers marked his passing, but the articles were perfunctory and often mistaken. The New York Times noted how he had all but disappeared from the public mind, having lived as a "recluse" for the past for years. The Washington Post missed his importance entirely, writing, "Yet despite his inner position, his contribution to evolving defense concepts probably was not profound." When George Marshall died three months later, the reaction could not have been more different. President Eisenhower issued a public proclamation announcing Marshall's passing and extolling his greatness. He ordered that the national flag be flown at half-mast on all US government buildings, military facilities, and warships, both at home and abroad, and to be kept that way until after the funeral. both Truman and Eisenhower attended the funeral, and Truman described Marshall as "the greatest general since Robert E. Lee... the greatest administrator since Thomas Jefferson. He was the man of honor, the man of truth, the man of greatest ability. He was the greatest of the great in our time." The general's death was soon followed by a hagiographic biography, the foundation of Marshall scholarships, a Marshall library, Marshall public schools, Marshall awards- a whole industry to perpetuate his memory. To this day, historians claim, with scant evidence, that he determined US strategy in World War II."

"On the day that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur stood on the deck of the battleship Missouri and sternly ordered the Japanese representatives to sign the articles of surrender, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy was far from the scenes of power, delivering a routine speech for the president. Addressing the Midwest Farmer Observance, he spoke of responsibility and of duty, especially of the civilian's duty to make "our own system of government and our own way of life... work better in our land than other systems work in foreign lands. Let us not fear the competition of other systems." With the greatest war in history a thing of the past, it was time to rebuild the nation and the world. It was time to plan so that war would never again bring its destruction to man. In Leahy's mind the United States had a sacred duty of preserving the peace in spite of the dawning of the atomic age. His last years of service were dedicated to accomplishing that goal. There were those who believed, now that the war was over, there was no longer a need for a military chief of staff to the commander in chief. Despite the fact that the military men of the United States have never failed to yield to civilian direction and have never failed to lay down their offices when their terms have expired, there remains a paranoid lack of trust among many liberal newspapermen and politicians that the generals and admirals they have relied on to save them from the enemy somehow become the enemy when the guns have fallen silent."

"All admirals are supposed to be "crusty," and this characteristic is expected to continue into retirement. Leahy often seemed to be crusty, formal, and distant. He had a mean eye when he faced incompetence, stupidity, or neglect of duty. But there was kindness, tenderness, and compassion. He just didn't let those qualities show so much."

"[FDR] acknowledged needing a primary adviser to coordinate the army, navy and air force operations. In July, he appointed Fleet Admiral William Leahy as chief of staff to the commander in chief, US Army and Navy. Unlike modern presidential chiefs of staff, Leahy's job was related primarily to the military. The sixty-seven-year-old former chief of naval operations had also served as governor of Puerto Rico and ambassador to France after the Nazi takeover- a thankless job if there ever was one. FDR thought Leahy's experience and seasoning would make him an ideal power broker to the big egos of the military command. And he was comfortable with Leahy. Their relationship dated back to FDR's years as assistant secretary of the navy, when Leahy had commanded the secretary's dispatch boat and they'd become friends. "He said [at a press conference] that I would be a sort of 'leg man' who would help him digest, analyze, and summarize a mass of material with which he had been trying to cope singlehandedly," Leahy recalled."

"Always dependable, loyal, shrewd, and intelligent, Bill Leahy was next beside the president in the turbulent years of World War II and in the first few years of rebuilding, offering counsel and advice. Only Harry Hopkins was closer to Roosevelt, and no one on the military side was closer to Truman. George Marshall undertook more jobs for Harry Truman, but Bill Leahy was the one who was in the White House every day until his health demanded that he step down. To most laymen and to many naval officers, he is a forgotten name from the past, one of those shadowy figures whose name is given to buildings and ships, whose picture appearing in books of history is passed over as eyes fall upon the face of the man he is with. The reason for his lack of prominence is simple. He did his greatest work in the shadow of two dynamic presidents. He led no fleets during World War II, only one battle in his entire career, the Battle of Santiago in the Spanish-American War, from a gun turret aboard the battleship Oregon, after her famous cruise around South America."

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. We were the first to have this weapon in our possession, and the first to use it. There is a practical reality that potential enemies will have it in the future and that atomic bombs will sometime be used against us. That is why, as a professional military man with a half-century of service to his government, I come to the end of my war story with an apprehension about the future. These new concepts of "total war" are basically distasteful to the soldier and sailor of my generation. Employment of the atomic bomb in war will take us back in cruelty toward non-combatants to the days of Genghis Khan. It will be a war of pillage and rape of a society, done impersonally by one state against another, whereas in the Dark Ages it was a result of individual greed and terrorism. Thee new and terrible instruments of uncivilized warfare represent a modern type of barbarism not worthy of Christian man. One of the professors associated with the Manhattan Project told me that he had hoped the bomb wouldn't work. I wish that he had been right."

"Perhaps there is some hope that its capacity for death and terror among the defenseless may restrain nations from using the atom bomb against each other, just as in the last war such fears made them avoid employment of the new and deadlier poison gases developed since World War I. However, I am forced to a reluctant conclusion that for the security of my own country which has been the guiding principle in my approach to all problems faced during my career, there is but one course open to us: Until the United Nations, or some world organization, can guarantee- and have the power to enforce that guarantee- that the world will be spared the terrors of atomic warfare, the United States must have more and better atomic bombs than any potential enemy."

"It's important to get a mental picture of FDR at the time of his early sails with Bill Leahy. Roosevelt was an energetic and athletic thirty-three year old, easily motoring around on his own two legs. About the only similarity between this man who strode purposefully aboard the Dolphin and almost demanded his turn at the helm and the wheelchair-bound leader of the Allies three decades later was the pince-nez eyeglasses that perched on the bridge of his nose. The fact that Roosevelt was seven year Leahy's junior didn't stop him from calling the lieutenant commander "Bill." Naval etiquette, as well as Leahy's firm separation of familiarity from duty, demanded that Leahy call FDR either "Mr. Secretary" or "Mr. Roosevelt." But the two hit it off."