Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LOS ANGELES – Local people say they can’t notice it, but I will swear that auto traffic in Los Angeles is not quite as thick as it used to be. Surely some people have laid up their cars.
The laying-up process is likely to snowball rapidly from now on. Tires are wearing out. I have one friend who is almost frantic. His tires are just hanging on from day to day, and he has to drive a long way to work. He’s in defense work, too.
Apparently there is a little bootlegging of tires, but my friend hasn’t even been able to get in touch with a good “tire-legger.” He’s had two or three up-the-alley tips, but they all turned into nothing at the last minute.
One thing that worries me is whether any plans are being made for mass transportation when the private tires give their last pop. Out here it is especially bad, because in these sprawled-out Southern California areas many people are driving 40 and 50 miles each way to work.
Somebody had better be thinking of something mighty quick, for if these masses can’t move back and forth to the factories the planes won’t stream out the front doors.
And speaking of airplane factories, they apparently aren’t as wonderful to work in as you might believe. They’ve simply got so big they’re soulless, like institutions.
The main complaint seems to be that there’s too much straw-bossing and suspicion. I know one man who just couldn’t stomach it and quit. He says it was, “Don’t stand here! Don’t look there! Where you going now? What’s that bulge in your hip-pocket?” all day long. There was just too much “system” and too little humanity.
On the other hand, he wasn’t all praise for the workers. He says there’s an appalling amount of clock-watching and of standing-around-doing-nothing.
He says that, on the morning after Pearl Harbor, he thought when he went to work that people would be working a little faster or a little more grimly or something. But he says he could see no change at all in anybody’s attitude.
People seem same as ever
Despite sub-shellings and “air raids” and much defense work, I can’t sense that the war has changed the people themselves in this area. Los Angeles seems just the same as ever.
People talk about their own apathy, and don’t know what to ascribe it to, other than asking, “Well, what can I do to help?” In other words, there won’t be full-fledged war feeling until everybody has something pretty vital taken away from him, or is given something pretty vital to do.
Of course, that takes time. And also, government action may lag behind the people’s willingness. That was true in England. The people were way ahead of the British government in their desire, even eagerness, to cut down on food more sharply, to be assigned things to do, to get in there and pitch. The government was always afraid to go too far for fear people wouldn’t stand for it, when what the people wanted was for the government to move boldly.
How did I get off on this subject, anyway? I don’t know anything about running a war.
The other night I happened to stumble upon a lecture by Capt. Harold Sweet, who is just back from China on a vacation. Capt. Sweet is one of the Panair pilots who helped evacuate Hong Kong. He has been flying in China for five years, and is soon going back.
Japs attain big league status
Sweet is gravely worried about America’s inability to grasp the lightness of the spot we’re in. It’s supposed to be unpatriotic even to imagine that we could possibly lose this war, but Sweet intimates we’d be better off if more of us realized it IS possible.
He has had five years of experience with the Japanese, and his opinion of their character isn’t high. Somebody in the audience asked him how he thought the Japs were treating American prisoners. The details of his answer were interesting. He said:
“So far, I think they’re treating them exceptionally well. There are several reasons.
“First, Japan is proud and flattered to be at war with us. It puts her in the big leagues. Second, she’s as startled over her successes as we are. And third, she’s trying to act like a first-class nation, and part of that imitation is to treat prisoners decently.
“But, just let her get a few lickings, and the Japs will revert to type and start their torture, and then our prisoners will suffer.”
And then he went on to tell of the butchery he saw in Nanking, when the conquering Japs simply killed and tortured and maimed until they were exhausted, and left three-quarters of a million needlessly dead Chinese stacked up in the streets.
I wish everybody could hear Capt. Sweet talk. He’s a great flier, but I believe he could do more good in America with his tongue than in China with his airplane.
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