Teri Kanefield - Franklin D. Roosevelt

PRAISE FOR
THE MAKING OF AMERICA

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

The strength of this books is the generous use of Hamiltons own words... A solid introduction to a charismatic founding father.

Kirkus Reviews

ANDREW JACKSON

This book is an eye-opening, accurately researched, well-written depiction of Andrew Jackson and his presidency. Kanefield does an excellent job of describing Jacksons qualities as a leaderboth good and bad.

School Library Connection, starred review

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The author adroitly reviews the facts of Lincolns entire life... and covers a wide range of historical issues, giving readers a sense of the complexity of Lincolns time and the issues that divided the United States.

School Library Journal

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

Susan B. Anthony, who fought tirelessly for women to have the right to vote, is profiled in this very readable entry in the Making of America series.

Booklist

There is properly no history, only biography.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Making of America series traces the constitutional history of the United States through overlapping biographies of American men and women. The debates that raged when our nation was founded have been argued ever since: How should the Constitution be interpreted? What is the meaning, and where are the limits, of personal liberty? What is the proper role of the federal government? Who should be included in we the people? Each biography in the series tells the story of an American leader who helped shape the United States of today.

TO DAHVID

Title page: FDR in 1933.

All images used in this book are public domain (National Archives and Library of Congress) with the following exceptions: , courtesy of AP Images.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4197-3402-1

eISBN 978-1-68335-628-8

Text copyright 2019 Teri Kanefield

Edited by Howard W. Reeves

Book design by Sara Corbett

Published in 2019 by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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PROLOGUE:
America Under Attack

FDR in 1933

On the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, at about 8:30, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, was in his private suite on the second floor of the White House, reading his newspapers as he waited for his valet to help him into his wheelchair. For twenty yearssince an illness at the age of thirty-ninehed been paralyzed from the waist down.

As he waited, he flipped through the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, two Washington, D.C., papers, and even the Chicago Herald, a paper he despised. For the past two years, the newspapers had been blaring ominous news: German tanks rolled into Poland! Nazi Germany conquered Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg! The Nazis marched into Paris! German bombs were blitzing England! German tanks thundered into Moscow! Fascist Italy conquered Albania! Japan invaded Manchuria, China, and the oil production zones of Borneo and Central Java!

Now Japan and the United States were on the brink of war. The day before had brought alarming news when United States intelligence officers intercepted a fourteen-part message Japan had sent to its Western diplomat. At 3:00 p.m. the message had been sent to Washington, D.C., where intelligence officers set to work deciphering the code. Just before Roosevelt had gone to bed the night before, an officer had come to tell him that the first thirteen parts had been deciphered. They appeared to be a set of resolutions to the United States government detailing why negotiations had broken down.

That morningas Roosevelt was reading his newspapersintelligence officers across town were already at work, deciphering the final part. Within a few hours, they broke the code and learned that Japan planned to cut off diplomatic relations with the West at 1:00 p.m. on the East Coast, which would be 10:00 a.m. on the West Coast, and much earlier throughout the Pacific.

The officers concluded that Japan was planning a morning attack on the United States. The problem was that nobody knew where. So Secretary of War Henry Stimson ordered warnings telegraphed to United States military bases throughout the Pacific, beginning with the most likely targets of Manila and Panama. He had trouble telegraphing warnings to Hawaii because radio contact was broken. After some delays, he sent the alert by commercial telegraph.

By the time his warning reached headquarters in Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, it was too late: Japanese fighter planes were roaring over Pearl Harbor, unleashing a torrent of bombs, catching the sleepy harbor by surprise. The devastating attack obliterated almost the entire American fleet and killed twenty-four hundred sailors, soldiers, and civilians. It was the most catastrophic foreign attack in American history.

The USS Arizona as it appeared before the attack

Eleanor Roosevelt, the presidents wife, was entertaining guests for lunch. The president joined the group, but after a short time, he excused himself and wheeled himself from the room. I was disappointed but not surprised, Eleanor wrote later. The fact that he carried so many secrets in his head made it necessary for him to watch everything he said, which in itself was exhausting.

Roosevelt and his friend and advisor Harry Hopkins had their lunch in private, in what was then called the Oval Study. After they finished eating, Hopkins stretched out on a couch and they made small talk.

The phone rang. When Roosevelt answered, the White House operator told him the caller was Colonel Frank Knox, secretary of the navy. Put him on, Roosevelt said.