The Last Empress by Hannah Pakula

Author:Hannah Pakula [Pakula, Hannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781439148938
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

IT CERTAINLY DID not take May-ling long to follow Willkie back to the United States. She had been vacillating about a trip to consult doctors about her health, and a letter written by Eleanor Roosevelt a month earlier indicates that an invitation from Washington was already lying on her desk. Although there had been some previous discussion at the White House about inviting the generalissimo’s wife, it was not until Pearl Harbor that Roosevelt’s advisers suggested that such a visit might not only help give the appearance of a united front in the Pacific theater but also counter Japanese attempts to suggest that the war was about the white versus the yellow race. Eleanor’s letter outlined the benefits that a visit to the United States would confer. “I have discussed the matter [of a visit] with my husband,” the first lady wrote Madame Chiang, “and we both feel that a visit with us at the White House would not only enable us to get to know you better and to secure a better appreciation of China’s problems, but would also, in large measure, serve the ends of publicity.… We could, of course, send a comfortable plane for you.”

Six week after Willkie’s departure from China, on November 27, May-ling arrived in Florida, via a special stratoliner provided by the U.S. War Department.* She left for New York the same day and was met at the airport by Harry Hopkins. He drove with her to the Harkness Pavilion of New York Presbyterian Hospital, where she had taken a suite under a false name, reserving the rest of the rooms on the twelfth floor for her staff. Harry Hopkins and T. V. Soong were friends, and their daughters attended the same school. This may have been one of the reasons Madame had sent word to Roosevelt that she was “most anxious” to see Hopkins “before she talks business with anyone else.” A better reason was that Hopkins was directing Lend-Lease at the time. On the way to the hospital, she told Hopkins that she wanted it made clear to Roosevelt that she had only come to the United States for medical treatment, then launched into complaints about Stil-well, who “does not understand the Chinese people and… made a tragic mistake in forcing Chiang Kai-shek to put one of his best divisions in Burma where it was later lost.” She followed this “more forcibly than I had heard anyone express it before her belief” in the importance of defeating Japan before Germany. “I did not argue this point unduly with her,” Hopkins added, “beyond saying that I thought such a strategy was unfeasible.”

Owen Lattimore, Chiang’s political adviser, who had traveled on the same plane with May-ling, was deeply offended by her when they arrived in New York. According to Lattimore, the generalissimo’s wife “still seemed to consider me a part of the household” until the moment their plane landed. “When Madame Chiang was received at the foot of the gangway by Harry Hopkins,” Lattimore said, “she immediately turned her back on me, and from that moment on cut me dead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.