Extracts From President Roosevelt’s Press and Radio Conference at the Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia, April 5, 1945, 2 p.m.4
The President:
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It seems obvious that we will be more or less responsible for security in all the Pacific waters. As you take a look at the different places captured by us, from Guadalcanal, the north coast of New Guinea, and then the Marianas and other islands gradually to the southern Philippines, and then into Luzon and north to Iwo Jima, it seems obvious the only danger is from Japanese forces; and they must be prevented, in the same way Germany is prevented, from setting up a military force which would start off again on a chapter of aggression.
So that means the main bases have to be taken away from them. They have to be policed externally and internally. And as a part of the western Pacific situation, it is necessary to throw them out of [Page 197] any of their mandated ports, which they immediately violated almost as soon as they were mandated, by fortifying these islands.
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Q. Mr. President, on the question of the Japanese mandates that you say will be taken away from them, who will be the controlling government in those mandates, the United States?
The President: I would say the United Nations. Or—it might be called—the world, which has been much abused now, will have a chance to prevent any more abuse.
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Q. Mr. President, do you think we will have a chance to talk with you again on other subjects before you go, such as the three-to-one vote?
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The President: As a matter of fact, this plea for votes was done in a very quiet way.
Stalin said to me—and this is the essence of it—”You know there are two parts of Russia that have been completely devastated. Every building is gone, every farm house, and there are millions of people living in these territories—and it is very important from the point of view of humanity—and we thought, as a gesture, they ought to be given something as a result of this coming victory. They have had very little civilization. One is the Ukraine, and the other is White Russia. We all felt—not any of us coming from there in the government—we think it would be grand to give them a vote in the Assembly. In these two sections, millions have beto killed, and we think it would be very heartening—would help to build them up—if we could get them a vote in the Assembly.”
He asked me what I thought.
I said to Stalin, “Are you going to make that request of the Assembly?” He said, “I think we should.”
I said, “I think it would be all right—I don’t know how the Assembly will vote.” He said, “Would you favor it?”
I said, “Yes, largely on sentimental grounds. If I were on the delegation—which I am not—I would probably vote ‘yes.’ “That has not come out in any paper.
He said, “That would be the Soviet Union, plus White Russia, plus the Ukraine.”
Then I said, “By the way, if the Conference in San Francisco should give you three votes in the Assembly—if you get three votes—I do not know what would happen if I don’t put in a plea for three votes in the [Page 198] States.” And I said, “I would make the plea for three votes and insist on it.”
It is not really of any great importance. It is an investigatory body only. I told Stettinius to forget it. I am not awfully keen for three votes in the Assembly. It is the little fellow who needs the vote in the Assembly. This business about the number of votes in the Assembly does not make a great deal of difference.
Q. They don’t decide anything, do they?
The President: No.
By the way, this is all off the record.
- Copy obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N. Y.; for complete text, see The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944–1945 volume: Victory and the Threshold of Peace, compiled by Samuel I. Rosenman, p. 607.↩