The Waikiki Conference

THE PRESIDENCY

This week President Roosevelt, tanned, gay and relaxed, returned to the U.S. after 29 days and 10,000 miles of absence from the August heat of Washington --and from the flickering European War. Perhaps his most important accomplish ment was a good vacation. Incidentally he had made a little political hay.

Military Voyage. Boarding a Navy heavy cruiser, a one-year-old veteran of 15 Pacific engagements, the President left San Diego Naval base the day after his Fourth Term acceptance speech, to rediscover the Pacific War. He lolled and rested for five days as the big grey ship plowed westward. Just out of sight of Hawaii's majestic Diamond Head, squad rons of pursuit planes came over, and the blue water below bubbled with the scurrying of PT boats.

At Pearl Harbor, the first on board the cruiser was General Douglas MacArthur, in leather windbreaker and his jaunty marshal's cap. MacArthur had flown in that day from New Guinea.

"It's good to see you, Doug, "said the President to the General he had not seen in seven years, despite all the turns & twists of the Pacific war.

Franklin Roosevelt went immediately to the palatial, showplace home of the late Christian R. Holmes, on famed Waikiki Beach. The highway to the house was blocked to traffic, surrounded with barbed wire and guarded by platoons of marines. At the cream stucco mansion, until recently a rest house for Navy aviators, the President had a spacious, 50-foot bedroom ; the bathroom of Presidential aide Sam Rosenman had a sunken tile tub big enough to swim in. The Commander in Chief set up military headquarters on a sundeck overlooking Waikiki's long, rolling surf.

Military Inspection. The President then undertook a systematic, full-schedule inspection of Hawaii. In two days, touring about in an open Packard, his seersucker suit and Panama hat conspicuous among the gold braid of generals and admirals, he visited Marine and Naval air stations, Hickam Field, a jungle training center, ammunition dumps, supply bases, hospitals and Pearl Harbor itself.

At Schofield Barracks, in a broiling sun, he reviewed the Army's famed 7th Division, veterans of Attu and Kwajalein. Over the loudspeaker Franklin Roosevelt said: "Your Commander in Chief brings you greetings. . . ." The President's car had just stopped at one corner of Hickam Field when a huge ambulance plane wheeled in from Saipan. The President watched as 32 bandaged veterans were carried to waiting ambulances, stopped three stretcher cases to shake their hands.

At the Army's 147th General Hospital, Franklin Roosevelt made a tour of five wards, talking to the wounded, telling them they would soon be home. He stopped beside the bed of a young soldier suffering from a gangrenous lung condition. A tube was carrying penicillin and a potassium permanganate solution to the soldier's veins. "I hope you'll be feeling better soon," the President said. "Then you'll have a chance to come home. We're waiting for you." But the young soldier was so sick he just lay there staring at the ceiling with vacant eyes, not turning to look at the President.

At all functions, as the President toured the island, General MacArthur sat at his right, in the place of honor.

Military Strategy. On the second day, in the spacious, book-lined living room of the Holmes house, there was a brief military conference (90 minutes) with General MacArthur, Admiral Nimitz, Admiral William F. Halsey of the Third Fleet and Lieut. General Robert C. (Nellie) Richardson Jr., Army commander in the Pacific Ocean Areas. On the third day Franklin Roosevelt called in reporters for his only press conference of the trip, seating the newsmen on the lawn of the Holmes estate, under the palms, from which all coconuts had been thoughtfully sheared lest they drop on unprotected heads. The only noteworthy point: U.S. fighting forces will go back to the Philippines, he said, and General MacArthur will go with them.

Next day Franklin Roosevelt weighed anchor. As his ship headed north and west into the North Pacific fogs, the President cast a line overboard. His catch: one halibut, one flounder. At Adak, an as-yet-uncompleted base in the Andreanof Islands, Franklin Roosevelt went ashore, amid fog and mud, for a six-hour stay.

Last week the President returned to the U.S. mainland, landing at the teeming Bremerton Navy Yard, across Puget Sound from Seattle. The President reported to the nation over the radio, speaking from the bow of a destroyer, against a backdrop of 8,000 Bremerton workers and sailors. He gave them a rambling, folksy account of his voyage. He told them that Japan "cannot be trusted," but in the speech's 3,500 words there was but an incidental reference to the European war.

Political Hay. Some pro-Administration newspapers dutifully headlined the Waikiki Conference as a "War Council,'' but the meeting actually seemed to have little strategic significance. Pacific War plans, if for no other reason than the huge logistics involved, have been set long in advance. Had any major revision been contemplated, Franklin Roosevelt would almost certainly have brought along General Marshall and Admiral King. As it was, except for his personal chief of staff, Admiral Leahy, the chief advisers on the trip were Sam Rosenman, his speech writer, and OWI Boss Elmer Davis.

His political accomplishments were: 1) he had shifted the spotlight of attention to the unfinished Pacific War--insurance against Tom Dewey's argument that the next President would serve mostly in peacetime; 2 ) he had publicly extended the hand of friendship to Douglas MacArthur, drawing the sting out of the charge that MacArthur had been badly treated by the White House.

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