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idea for years. The operation of abandoning the Philippines was worked out as a technical, skillful operation, the idea being to evacuate and abandon with as little loss of life as possible. The problem was to get the military personnel from the northern provinces out. That was depicted later on in the newspapers as being a brilliant operation. I remember Henry Stimson saying, “It's the same operation. Any officer above the rank of lieutenant knows how to do this.”

The general conversation therefore was very serious on that day. There was a real understanding on the part of the members of the Cabinet that it was a facing of a terribly serious situation, frightening. One thing that one recalls is that there was a complete sense of confidence in the American Navy. Nobody asked, “Just where is the American Navy? How are they dispersed?” Of course, we wouldn't have asked that. It would have been extraordinarily bad form to have asked. You would have been promptly told that the admirals had charge of that, which you knew anyhow. It was strictly the business of the Navy to take care of itself, but there was complete confidence. Knox said that the Navy was in good shape, that our Navy building was not up to what it ought to be, but that we were advancing. We had a first class Navy anyhow.

One thing that kept coming through was that we must be extraordinarily careful that nothing that we did was