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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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was no question in his mind that they were going eventually to try to drive the British and everybody else out of the Pacific. At that moment the British were the strongest in the Pacific. People hadn't thought much about the French in Indo-China, or anything of that sort. The British were strong in the Pacific and for generations had kept a kind of Pax Britannica in Asia. It was on these occasions that the President would make his little joke about “Ernie King's ocean.”

Stimson, of course, contributed a good deal to the conversation. The rest of us, I think, didn't have much to say, except general consternation at the direction that things seemed to be taking.

So far as that conversation that day was concerned there was never a flicker of an idea expressed by anybody that the Japanese might at this time engage in war with the United States. It was never discussed what would happen to the Japanese situation if the United States was drawn into the European war, because it was taken for granted that once we were at war with Germany we would also be at war with Japan. But I never heard in any Cabinet meeting any murmur of a thought that the Japanese might attack the United States at any point. That may have been in the minds of some people who had more to do with the strategy than I had, but I never heard it mentioned.





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