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“Shortly before the attack in 1941 President Roosevelt called him [Don Smith] to the White House for a meeting concerning a Top Secret matter…At this meeting the President advised my father that his intelligence staff had informed him of a pending attack on Pearl Harbor, by the Japanese. He anticipated many casualties and much loss, [so] he instructed my father to send workers and supplies to a holding area…on the West Coast where they would await further orders to ship out, no destination was to be revealed. He left no doubt in my father’s mind that none of the Naval and Military officials in Hawaii were to be informed and he was not to advise the Red Cross officers who were already stationed in the area. When he protested to the President, President Roosevelt told him that the American people would never agree to enter the war in Europe unless they were [attacked] within their own borders.…He [Don Smith] was privy to Top Secret operations and worked directly with all of our outstanding leaders. He followed the orders of his President and spent many later years contemplating this action which he considered ethically and morally wrong.” (FDR also contacted high-placed Red Cross officials in the weeks before Pearl Harbor to prepare them for casualties that would result from the impending attack. This was revealed by Helen Hamman, the daughter of Don C. Smith, former director of War Service for the American Red Cross, in a September 5, 1995 letter to a Senate panel.)

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War: 1941. World War II