Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

a rumor that had circulated during his sea voyage to Hawaii and Alaska that summer—that Fala, the president’s dog, had accidentally been left behind on an Aleutian island, and that a navy destroyer had been dispatched from Seattle to retrieve him. The story was nonsensical on its face: How could the dog have been forgotten by the entire presidential entourage? How could his absence have gone unnoticed until the party returned to Seattle? Why send a ship instead of a plane? But it was repeated widely in the anti-FDR press. As the rumor snowballed, the destroyer was upgraded to a cruiser, then to a battleship, and the cost of the imagined rescue operation rose as high as $20 million. After a week or so, Admiral Leahy felt compelled to deny the story publicly, causing it to vanish from the headlines. But FDR knew that his opponents had overreached, and he was not going to let the opportunity pass.