In the days after Pearl Harbor, Axis diplomats were sent to luxury U.S. resorts
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Version 0 of 1. It was a single line in a biography of William “Wild Bill” Donovan — head of the CIA’s precursor, the OSS — that sent Harvey Solomon on a six-year odyssey through archives, news clippings and recollections from the aging children of foreign diplomats. The sentence noted that after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt wanted Axis diplomats out of their Washington embassies as quickly as possible and had them sent to remote mountaintop resorts. “One sentence,” Solomon said. “I thought, ‘I’ve never heard that story. Let me look it up.’ ” When Solomon found there was no book, the Takoma Park author decided to write one himself. The result is “Such Splendid Prisons: Diplomatic Detainment in America During World War II” (Potomac Books). The book tells the odd story of how more than a thousand Japanese, German and other enemy diplomats and their families whiled away the early months of World War II at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., and the Homestead in Hot Springs, Va. Talk about your gilded cage. “Americans were outraged that our enemies were being put in such luxurious places,” said Solomon, 67. “As one American wrote: ‘Wouldn’t any old cabin be good enough?’ ” No, the U.S. government decided. “The word the government always used was ‘reciprocity,’” said Solomon. “We treated the Axis diplomats very well, and we hoped in return our diplomats would be treated very well.” As it happened, they weren’t. U.S. diplomats held in Germany and Japan experienced deprivation — they were in war zones, after all — but this wouldn’t be apparent until the two sides swapped their diplomats in the summer of 1942 in carefully-choreographed exchanges. The rationale behind sequestering the diplomats was apparent even before the full scope of the Japanese attack was known — and before Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States four days later. On the afternoon of Dec. 7, Japanese and German diplomats busily burned documents in their Washington embassies. “There’s a famous picture of the Japanese carrying papers into the backyard of their embassy and setting them aflame,” Solomon said. “The German embassy was doing the same. The boiler in the basement was gobbling up and destroying reams and reams of paperwork. The particles were floating up the chimney and landing on Massachusetts Avenue.” The diplomats could not be allowed to communicate with their home countries or have access to sensitive U.S. media or intelligence sources. The Appalachian resorts were isolated, but close enough to Washington to allow visits by representatives from neutral Switzerland, Sweden and Spain. The State Department negotiated a flat rate for room and board: $10 a day per “guest.” Said Solomon: “It was a low rate even at that time, but the hotels realized they suddenly would have a huge number of paying customers at a time they would have had virtually no paying customers.” The Homestead and Greenbrier had closed for the season and were only too eager for the money. Guards were hired, and guard shacks were built. Perimeters were laid out, and rules established. The Germans started arriving at the Greenbrier on Dec. 19. At the end of December, the Japanese were sent to the Homestead. Later, Italians, Hungarians, Romanians and Vichy French would be deposited at these and other East Coast hotels. As it turned out, the luxury resorts were well known to some of the people detained there. Some had vacationed there previously, including German commercial attache Theodore von Knopp and Japanese journalist Masuo Kato. It was a weird existence: boredom, irritation, inconvenience, intrigue. Friction grew among the supposed allies. There were spats between the Germans and the Japanese. The Italians didn’t seem to get along with anyone. A lot of the detainees killed time shopping in the resorts’ gift shops. That’s where they met Lucy Cornett. Her father, W.W. Buran, ran the men’s stores at the two hotels. She remembered the regimented way the Japanese exercised in the hotel pool. And decades later she recalled an odd encounter on a frozen pond at the Greenbrier. “The diplomats weren’t allowed to go very far,” said Solomon, who interviewed Cornett, now 93, for his book. “The pond was within that distance.” As Cornett was skating on it, a stylishly-dressed German couple approached speaking fluent English. “They asked if she knew how to do crossovers,” Solomon said. “She said she didn’t, and they taught her.” It was German ambassador Hans Thomsen and his wife, Bébé. Part “Grand Hotel,” part Patrick McGoohan’s trippy 1960s TV series “The Prisoner,” the story would make a great movie. Someone should be talking to Harvey about securing the film rights to his book. (On April 29, Harvey Solomon will speak at the Silver Spring Library, 900 Wayne Ave. He will speak at the Smithsonian Associates on July 22.) Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly. |