The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

NEW YORK, Tuesday—While in Japan, I found time to see the coronation film of Queen Elizabeth II. It was both impressive and moving. The Queen has a radiant and gentle personality, but there is no lack of strength or determination in this slight young figure and in her serious face. She looked weary as she waved to the people from the balcony of Buckingham Palace at the end of the day. Later in my journey, while in London I had a brief visit with the Queen and I was happy to see that the lines of weariness had disappeared.

While watching the film I thought it must have been a long and emotional experience for the Queen Mother, too, thinking of her own husband's coronation not so many years ago and all that she has been through since then.

Speaking of films, I was visited one afternoon in Tokyo by some people who are deeply disturbed by the use the Communists are making of certain Pacific war films which are being exported from the United States and shown in Japan. They are money-making films but, unfortunately, the reaction is anything but helpful to friendly relations between Japan and the U.S. More of these films are going to be produced in the near future, I am told. I don't question but what our Hollywood producers will make money, but I doubt if it is a service to the United States to remind people of what has divided us in the past when we are trying to build friendly relations for the future.

After our talk about films, we had a round table discussion with some publicists and journalists which proved very interesting for two of the guests had just returned from the U.S. One of them was discussing McCarthyism and he wondered whether McCarthy would not do for us in the United States what Hitler had done to Germany. The impression created by our valiant Senator is that he desires to become a dictator, deciding what should be said and thought by all the people within our borders. I might add that I found this same impression is held by people in all of the countries I visited.

Of course, films and Senator McCarthy are not the only things the people of Japan have to think about. They have many troubles of their own. I spent some time with Mr. Ichimada, Governor of the Bank of Japan. He is the recognized authority on the economic problems of Japan and I found it a great privilege to have this short time to hear what his solutions are to some of these problems.

Mr. Ichimada feels the development of power in his country is a prerequisite to the development of their industrial potential and he says that ways and means must be found to increase the production of power. Japan's export trade must increase, particularly to southeast Asia and anything we can do to increase the purchasing power of such countries as Burma, Thailand and Indonesia is indirectly a service to Japan in the end.

Our Point Four program has been doing a great deal in this direction, but I don't know how much the Mutual Security Administration has taken the place of Point Four, nor do I know at the moment how much we actually are able to do under Congress' new economy budgets.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 9, 1953

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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