When S.F. played a vital role in U.N., lasting world peace
Seventyfive years ago, on June 26, 1945, one of the most momentous events of the 20th century took place in San Francisco. On that day, delegates from 50 countries signed the Charter of the United Nations in the War Memorial Opera House.
The creation of the U.N. was the triumphant culmination of a long, arduous process that had begun in the darkest days of World War II. President Franklin Roosevelt planted the seeds of the future world body in January 1941, when he made his famous call for “four freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
That August, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued a procla
mation laying out the general principles of an “effective international organization.” On New Year’s Day 1942, 26 countries fighting the Axis signed the Declaration by the United Nations, pledging the signatories to a maximum war effort and forbidding them to make a separate peace.
In February 1945, the “Big Three” — Roosevelt, Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin — met in Yalta, where they called for a conference in April at which the allied nations would prepare the charter of an international organization “to maintain peace and security.”
They decided to hold the conference in an unexpected city: San Francisco.
As Stephen C. Schlesinger writes in “Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations,” the idea came to U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius in a dream two months earlier. When he awoke, Stettinius wrote, “I saw the golden sunshine, and as I lay there on the shores of the Black Sea in the Crimea, I could almost feel the fresh and invigorating air from the Pacific.” Thinking the choice of San Francisco might dramatize the Pacific war, which was still raging, Roosevelt agreed.
Invitations were sent out on March 5. As the conference date approached, Roosevelt fought hard to resolve a host of knotty issues, each of which could have prevented the U.N. from being born.
Although exhausted and visibly ill, Roosevelt was determined to make the U.S., the only superpower still intact as the war came to an end, the linchpin of an armed international security system “while the forge of war was still hot enough to fuse nations together.” He told his closest journalistic confidante, Anne O’Hare McCormick, that “all his hopes of success in life and immortality in history were set” on launching the U.N.
Roosevelt planned to attend the San Francisco conference. But on April 12, just 13 days before it was due to open, the man who had guided the United States through the Depression and World War II died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
One of the steepest learning curves in presidential history now fell on Harry Truman, who knew virtually nothing about the issues involved in setting up the U.N. But Truman, also a committed internationalist, crammed hard and was ready when the conference opened April 25.
San Francisco was also ready, having pulled off a daunting organizational task. Officials had found hotel rooms and other lodging for 850 delegates, 2,650 staffers and 2,500 journalists. The meetings were to be held in the War Memorial Opera House and the adjoining Veterans Building.
Military police swarmed the streets and antiaircraft guns were installed atop buildings near the Civic Center. Restaurateur George Mardikian was given the task of feeding the conference. He recalled, “We cooked the food in the basement of the Veterans Building and then transferred it through a tunnel to the restaurant set up in the basement of the Opera House. We had to set up an entirely new kitchen in order to feed 2,000 people at each meal.”
Ordinary San Franciscans went out of their way to be hospitable to the delegates. That willingness extended to some of the workers involved in the conference.
Journalist Alastair Cook recalled “a crew of printers who had to work through two nights to print up the charter in time for the signing. There was trouble from some of them. And one Chinese American printer said to me, ‘I have a wife and family too. If the delegates mean this sentence, I work all night. If they don’t, not.’
“The sentence he pointed to was a single phrase — ‘the dignity and worth of the human person.’ Somebody told him they meant it, and he worked. He was the first man I ever met who, in the jargon, implemented the charter of human rights.”
After two months of exhausting work and sometimes brutal negotiations, the delegates came up with a charter acceptable to all. On the night of June 25, they unanimously approved it, along with the World Court. Thunderous applause filled the Opera House.
The next morning,
Truman arrived to give a worldwide address at the conference’s closing plenary session. Half a million cheering, flagwaving people turned out in the streets to greet him.
Later that day the ceremonial signing session was held at the Opera House. The charter lay open on a large table in the center of the auditorium, surrounded by the new blue and white flag of the United Nations and the 50 flags of the attending countries.
“It looked like half of San Francisco was crowded into the balconies,” Mardikian recalled. “There were people from every walk of life. I’m sure the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt was there.”
Truman gave the final address. He opened with a spontaneous line: “Oh, what a great day this can be in history!”
The charter, Truman said, meant that “we all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please . ... This is the price which each nation will have to pay for world peace.”
The charter did not officially go into effect until October. But it was in San Francisco that the United Nations was born. As Saudi monarch Ibn Saud said in his closing address, “From now on, indeed, San Francisco should be called the city of peace.”
Gary Kamiya is the author of the bestselling book “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco,” awarded the Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/ portals. For more features from 150 years of The Chronicle’s archives, go to sfchronicle.com/vault. Email: metro@ sfchronicle.com