American Liberia Relations During World War II

The picture above is that of the Honorable Lester Aglar Walton, United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Liberia, from 1935 to 1946. Lester Walton was appointed United States Minister (Ambassador) in July 1935, in what was then called the "Negro post", because Liberia and Haiti were the only places were the People of Color held ambassadorial positions. Minister Walton was accredited to Liberia at a time when Liberia faced one of the major political crisis in its history. Five years earlier, President Charles D.B. King and his Vice President resigned, after the League of Nations' investigation of slavery and forced labor implicated key Liberian leaders. When Edwin J. Barclay, the new President of Liberia, refused to implement measures recommended by the League of Nations (measures that could have compromised the independence of Liberia), the Franklin Roosevelt Administration refused to recognize the new Liberian Government. When Lester Walton arrived in Liberia, he helped to push for US recognition of the Barclay Administration. A few years later, during World War II, when the strategic importance of Liberia was paramount to the United States, Lester Walton helped Liberia to get the resources needed from the United States Government to construct the Free Port of Monrovia, the first port constructed in Liberia. He presided over the Liberia-Pan Am deal which established the first international Airport (Roberts Field) in Liberia. He also raised "the question of the restoration to Liberia of the territories which Liberia lost to France...during the past century..." with the US State Department.

While assisting the Liberian Government, Lester Walton was critical of the corruption and the human rights violation perpetrated by Liberian Government officials against their own people. In a letter to the US State Department dated March 2, 1940, Ambassador Walton noted that there were Liberian officials who had "...the reputation for acquiring a big bank account on a small salary." On the human rights violation against the indigenous people, an act that had caused the United States to suspend recognition of the Barclay Administration, Walton wrote Harry Mcbride (he served in Liberia as Financial Advisor to the Liberian Government under the Loan Agreement) that, "Forced labor, vicious exploitation of the natives by Frontier Force, unjust and excessive fines are some of the contributory factors to occasion resentment and dissatisfaction, impelling many natives to reluctantly settle in Sierra Leone."

Lester Walton was born in St. Louis Missouri in 1882, and died in 1965. He received honorary degrees from Lincoln University (1927); Wilberforce University (1945); and the University of Liberia in 1958. His former and later careers were in journalism. He wrote for the St Louis Star, New York World, and the New York Amsterdam News.

$Liberian workers$ Liberian laborers at the Firestone Plantation Company, in Harbel, Liberia, hauling latex for the Allied war effort.

What was Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, the most powerful and most dominant Allied leader of World War II, doing in Liberia in January 1943? What was he doing in a small tropical West-African country while the earth was consumed by war? What was he doing in Liberia while the Battle of Stalingrad, between the Russians and the Germans raged? Why did he insist on going to Liberia despite the fact that he had a very bad cough and cold, and his doctors had advised him not to make the trip? The answers to these questions lie in the special role Liberia played in the war effort. During World War II, Liberian territory was used by United States and British military forces to ferry American soldiers, and American and British war supplies from Parnamirim air base in Natal, Brazil, to the North African war theatre. Additionally, Liberia was the only source of natural rubber for the Allies. Writing in his memoirs, "THE MEMOIRS OF CORDELL HULL", (Volume II, p. 1186), former Secretary of State, Cordell Hull wrote, "With Japan's occupation of the Rubber producing areas in the Far East, Liberia became of greatly increased importance to us as one of the few remaining available sources of natural rubber." On this trip to Liberia, President Roosevelt had four key issues to discuss with Liberian leaders: (1) finalize plans to establish United States military bases in Liberia, which were to be used as a springboard to transport American soldiers, military hardware, and supplies to North Africa; (2) to reaffirm Liberia's commitment to continue supplying the United States with natural rubber; (3) the United States and its allies wanted all German citizens in Liberia expelled, because they posed security threat to the United States and its allies; and (4),Roosevelt wanted Liberia to abrogate its neutrality, and declare war on Germany and its Axis.

An honor guard of African-American troops, from the 41st Engineers and Defense Detachment, under the command of Colonel A. A. Kirchoff, welcoming President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Roberts Field, Liberia, in 1943. President Roosevelt had just arrived in Liberia, after a four hour flight from Bathrust, Gambia.

Severing diplomatic relations with Germany and expelling all German citizens from Liberia was a difficult decision for Liberia to make for several reasons: (1) German merchants in Liberian ran the Liberian economy; (2) Germany was Liberia's major trading partner; and (3), most of the doctors in Liberia were Germans. Despite the fact that Liberia found itself between a rock and a hard place, she willingly agreed to expel all German residents and declare the full might of the Liberian economy against Nazi Germany and the Axis.

Liberia's declaration of war against the mighty German military machine might sound comical to some, but Liberia's possession of natural rubber, one of the most important strategic natural resources during the war, made her declaration of war against Germany, one more nail on the coffin of Nazi Germany.

From 1940 to 1945, rubber was analogous to the United States, what crude oil was in the 1970s--it was scarce worldwide, and it was expensive. There were two reasons for this demand: first, Japan had invaded and confiscated the world's major sources of natural-rubber supply in the Far East ( Malaysia (a.k.a. Malaya) and Singapore); and secondly, because scientist were still working on the creation of synthetic rubber, and whatever information the industrialized world had on synthetic rubber was still at its experimental stage.

After the Japanese confiscated the world's major sources of rubber supply in Malaysia and Singapore, the demand and the price of natural rubber in the United States rose to an astronomical level, while supply continued to dwindle. This situation created a national crisis in the United States because natural rubber was a strategic commodity in the war effort. Natural rubber was needed to build tires for war planes, military jeeps, aircraft guns and sensitive radar equipments. Natural rubber was also required to build portable bridges, gliders, oxygen masks and many other war supplies. American civilian industry also needed rubber for commercial uses, especially tires for private and commercial vehicles. The civilian and military demand for rubber was so monumental, and supply was so exiguous relative to demand, that a law was enacted in the United States, reducing the speed limit to 35 miles per hour, and limiting the mileage of individual cars to 5,000 miles per year, to preserve the life of tires.

Since Liberia was the only country where the United States and its allies could obtain their supply of natural rubber, and because Liberia had a special relationship with the United States, and since Liberia and the world faced a global menace from Adolf Hitler, President Barclay assured President Roosevelt that Liberia would supply all the natural rubber that the United States and its allies needed for the war effort.

In addition to supplying this strategic resource to the Allies, the Liberian Government also granted to the United States, use of its territory to store war supplies and to construct military bases in Montserrado County and Grand Cape Mount County at Fisherman's Lake.

An African-American soldier greeting President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Roberts Field, Liberia, 1943.

The provision of war supplies to the North African war zone was difficult, expensive, and time consuming. United States military supplies were taken from Florida, transported through South America to Brazil, then flown from the Parnamirim air base in Natal, Brazil to the military depot at Roberts Field, where 5,000 African-American troops stored and maintained the inventory. From Roberts Field, the war supplies were flown to Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.The use of this South American-Liberian corridor to transport American soldiers and war supplies to North Africa was necessary, since shipping in the North Atlantic Ocean had become hazardous to American war and merchant vessels. German U-boats had taken complete control of this Atlantic-Ocean corridor. The situation became even more problematic for the allies after the fall of France in 1940. Hundreds of allied ships were sunk by German submarines in this region. To make matters worse, not even the best military planes could make the direct flight from the United States to North Africa. In General Eisenhower's "Crusade in Europe," he admitted that he seriously considered using Liberian territory as the initial staging ground for the invasion of North Africa and Europe. Liberia's strategic location from Brazil and the North African war zone was so important to the Allies that American and British military personnel almost came to blows, because the United States military refused to let the British military fly its military supplies through Roberts Field. The situation became so tense, that the matter had to be settled between President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at their meeting in Casablanca.

This map shows how the United States military moved thousands of soldiers and war supplies from the United States to Liberia. The men and supplies were then taken to North Africa. The trip began from Miami, through Central America, to Brazil, then to Liberia. [Source: courtesy, The New York Times, Tuesday April 26, 1994]

This American military presence in Liberia had an affirmative impact on the Liberian economy, and a stabilizing effect on the social and political relationship between the Liberian state and Liberians of the indigenous class who were resident in the provinces of Liberia. Liberia began this special relationship with the United States by converted its national currency from the British pound sterling to the United States dollar; United States Lend Lease funds were made available to the Liberian Government, to subsidize the construction of Liberia's first port, the Freeport of Monrovia; the first major airport, Roberts Field, was constructed by Pan Am and the U. S. Government; American military engineers began the construction of major roads from Monrovia to the interior of Liberia; from 1939 to 1945, Liberia consecutively registered favorable balance of trade, which amounted to $25.9 million during the six-year period, that amounts to $754 million in current dollars; Liberian Government revenue rose from $827,000 in 1939 to $1.9 million in 1945, an increase of 133.9 percent; and the artificial boundary drawn between Liberia and its provinces was broken. Thousands of laborers from the interior of Liberia descended on the coastal region, especially to Roberts Field and Firestone Rubber Plantations, in search of jobs. This massive migration of indigenous Liberians, which the Liberian Government had previously attempted to restrain by legislation (Liberian territory extended for 40 miles in the interior), and through an agreement with Firestone Plantations Company in the 1920s, was subsequently erased. Indigenous Liberians and their families began to get some of the social and economic benefits that they paid for through the hut tax. Their children attended Liberian public schools; they received health care and other services that were not present on the same scale, or not present at all in the interior. On September 14, 1943, Secretary of State, Cordull Hall, wrote President Roosevelt the following in a letter about United states relations with Liberia: "Our relations with Liberia from a strategic point of view have never been of more importance ... as a result of the war, Liberian economy has been oriented almost entirely to the United States".

The downside to this American military presence were charges that African-American troops murdered, physically abused, and denigrated indigenous people who lived adjacent to the base. Civilians venturing around the military facilities were reportedly shot at and sometimes killed with impunity. The town adjacent to Roberts Field was even named "Smell-no-Taste" by the local people, because they complained that they smelled the American food, and either never tasted it or never had enough of it. It must be pointed out that these are charges that have been made by eyewitnesses over the years, but have never been investigated and substantiated. It is possible that the firing were warning shots, intended to keep out people from sensitive military equipments and supplies.

On a more leisure note, African-American soldiers reportedly named a red-light district which was close to Roberts Field, "camp followers." This was where American soldiers came to look for women of ill repute.

President Edwin Barclay, sitting between Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and President Roosevelt, and President-elect William V.S. Tubman, sitting next to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, visited Washington, DC in May 1943. [picture, courtesy of the New York Public Library]

This is the picture of Paramount Chief Akoi Tellewoyan of the Boday & Wubormai Chiefdoms, Lofa County, and Vice President Richard Nixon of the United States. He had just robed Vice President Nixon with the traditional Liberian gown and hat, conferring the title of honorary paramount chief on the American Vice President. The occasion was Vice President Nixon's visit to Liberia in March 1957. He was then estimated to be in his nineties, but still a very strong and healthy man.