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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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office to give blood. She went along with all the others. The whole family was called out and they all went down. Her grandmother was with them, and all the servants. They were all dressed in cotton dresses. She said, “I don't suppose I looked so young.” Anyhow, nobody gave me a thought. They scrubbed my aim and took my blood when my turn came. I just knew it had to be. I knew that it was a part of everybody's duty. When I got through, the woman who had taken my blood came out to the next room with me. All the adults who had given blood were being given a big shot of whiskey to brace them up. The nurse who was to give the whiskey came to me and she looked at me. She said, ‘How old are you, my dear?'

“I said, ‘Ten.'”

“She looked around and said, ‘Oh, for God's sake, get me some orange juice.' She didn't have the nerve to give me whiskey, although they had the nerve to take my blood.”

It was a strange sense of the emergency of the thing and of the way in which everybody lined up to his duty in Hawaii.

The picture we got from Knox, who telephoned, and from Admiral Leahy, who was there and was the President's adviser on so many of these things, was a very terrifying one. It was really a picture of disorder. I'm sorry to say that's the way I felt about it. In my own mind I kept turning it over, “How could there be a surprise attack? How could it be





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