Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – It happens, in this time of national peril, that I have one good friend in San Francisco who is Japanese.
Or rather I should say American-Japanese. For although this girl looks as Japanese as Hirohito, she was born in California, has never been to Japan, has never wanted to go, doesn’t know anybody there, and speaks very poor Japanese. She is 23.
She is as loyal to America as anybody, not because she is consciously and mechanically patriotic but because, hell, this is her country the same as mine, and always has been.
So I thought it would be interesting to chat with her, and see how the thousands of perfectly loyal American-Japanese like herself are faring these days.
Well, to tell the truth, they aren’t faring so badly. In fact, I’ve been sort of proud of the general attitude of Californians toward the local Japanese. I’ve seen very little display of dangerous fanaticism.
Goes about as she always did
But to get on with our girl friend. This is what she says:
She goes about the city just as she always did. She holds her head up and walks down the street and looks people in the face, because she is American. She was downtown every day in the Christmas rush, and nobody looked mean at her or said anything nasty to her.
Two days after war was declared, she called up two or three of the big downtown stores and asked if she could still use her charge accounts. They said, “Sure.”
My girl’s husband – they have been marred just two months – owns a store here. In the first two days of war, the Treasury Department closed every store in San Francisco that even employed an alien Japanese. But our couple had no alien employees, so they stayed open.
My girl’s store is being made a first-aid station in San Francisco’s defense scheme. And she herself has registered for civil defense. She doesn’t know what they’ll assign her to, but she can roll bandages and do lots of handy little things.
My girl has no accent at all. It sometimes seems incongruous to hear such wholly American speech coming from such a wholly Japanese face. She uses such phrases as “that hysterically hectic Sunday,” and “give the devil his due.”
She says she speaks Japanese only when she has to. She says the younger people hate to visit the older ones, because then they have to speak Japanese and they don’t speak it well.
She says the Government doesn’t have to work very hard to find out who are the disloyal Japanese in California, because they are turned in by the Japanese themselves.
My girl has considerable feeling against the Chinese. Not as between the two nations and their war, but just locally. She says the local Chinese have sure traded on America’s kind feeling toward China in the last few years.
Japs prepare ‘I am American’ pins
At one school here the Chinese children all showed up one morning with badges saying “I am Chinese.” So now the Japanese, in indignation, are preparing buttons for their children saying “I am an American.”
Financially, it is going to go hard with most of the American Japanese out here. Because many Americans who hire Japanese or patronize Japanese are going to quit. Not because they especially want to, but because they’re afraid they’ll be suspected if they keep on having Japanese in their homes or are seen taking clothes to a Japanese cleaner.
Thus poverty has already, in these few short weeks, begun to work itself upon the Japanese of California. And accentuating that poverty is the terrific Japanese pride.
The night I talked with my girl, she and her husband were making a tour distributing food and clothes to friends who were hard up. She said they had to be tactful about it, and under no circumstances could they offer money. She said some of the older people were so proud they’d had to send their gifts through the mail, anonymously.
At the end I asked my girl what conflict went on inside of people like her at this moment, for although they are Americans, pure Japanese blood does run in their veins.
And she said that most of them felt only a terrible shame. “We just feel that we must apologize to everybody for our ancestral people having done this awful thing,” she says.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK – So much has happened and so much has been said by the leaders of the Allies and Germany in the past week that I suspect that most of us missed one of the most encouraging developments of the war. This was the first faint and plaintive but unmistakable note of a whine in the communications of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels to the German people.
Here was a very significant change from the characteristic menace and arrogance of the Nazi regime, the first note of alibi from the leader to the people for two military failures too conspicuous and too ghastly in their cost to be disguised as shrewd moves.
The man who always before had scorned his enemies, who were sometimes mighty aggressors trying to encircle and throttle the German race, sometimes contemptible mongrels with no belly for a fight and no ideal but money, now come to his faceless following with the news that his soldiers were fighting “an enemy vastly superior both in numbers and in quantities of material.”
Hitler spoke only of conquest
Never before had Hitler assumed a position of inferiority to his enemies in anything. Mighty though they were at times when it suited his purpose to describe them so and magnify his victories they were never the equal of his own forces. Always before, his own long and generous patience had been the only authority for war or peace. When his patience was exhausted he struck and those whom he struck promptly fell not only because he struck without warning but because the servants of his invincible will were, in fact, vastly superior. There was no need to appeal to the […] and self-sympathy of the Germans and in those circumstances Hitler, like the Kaiser before him, spoke only of conquest and of what he was going to do to conquered people when the fight was won.
But only a short time ago, Goebbels warned the Germans that if Russia won they would live in an inferno wherein he certainly was right, considering the mood and the politics of the Russians and their indifference to suffering either by themselves or their beaten enemies and the popular conviction of the French, British, Poles, Americans and others that the German nation and the people of Germany share the guilt for this second World War of German origin in 25 years. The Germans have established some very bad precedents which surely will react horribly on them as a people when this war is done, in their great mass deportations of whole populations in their imposition of subhuman status on Jews and Poles and Czechs.
Goebbels foresaw, although he did not go into particulars, that the application of the Nazis’ own methods to the German people would subject them to the very horrors that they created for others and he did not exaggerate when he used the word “inferno.” He was thinking of the dehumanization of the Germans for a long time to come.
Realizes that defeat is possibility
A nation is not self-confident any more whose leaders in war begin by sneering at their enemies and ignoring the faintest thought of defeat and then, after great defeats begin to talk of the enemy’s superiority and the dreadful consequence of failure.
The Kaiser, it may be remembered, did not begin to appeal to the great self-love, self-pity and fears of the German people until he had met his equals in war but from that time on the German leaders cried only persecution, not conquest. His early arrogance and the brutality of the German utterances have been forgotten, thanks in large part to confused and sentimental historians who enjoyed the notoriety which they achieved by exculpating the German nation and thanks further to the years of whining by most of the German post-war leaders.
But, unmistakably, when a German god-man, whether Kaiser or Fuehrer, begins to cry about superior forces on the other side and to depict the consequences of defeat, he has realized that defeat is a possibility of serious importance. A review of Hitler’s addresses from his beginning as a shrieking nut in a greasy raincoat to the turn of the Russian campaign a few weeks ago will reveal no previous note f alarm and fear.
This marks the change. The war will be long and Hitler will struggle wildly up the point where the German people disown him in another attempt to impose on the forgiving mercy and humanity of the civilized world. He and Goebbels realize too well that the Russians, at least, will fulfill the prophecy of an inferno in the land where wars begin.
Clapper: Fortunate visit
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – We are doubly fortunate that Winston Churchill came to Washington at this time.
First, because his presence here and that of his military staff make it possible to move more quickly in the military decisions. Time is vital. With the Philippines in such danger as they are today, the threat to Singapore grows hourly. Everything that both powers can throw into the Pacific will be needed to insure success against the hard-hitting Japanese attack.
Second, the presence of Winston Churchill is fortunate because it brings back fresh to mind the courageous example of Britain during the days when the going was blackest.
We need now the same American fortitude to carry us through the gallant sacrifice of the Marines at Wake and the fight which Gen. MacArthur and his men are putting up against larger forces in the Philippines.
Confidence displayed by Churchill
The British went through Dunkirk and for a short time it was a question whether the British Isles would stand. When France quit, the Germans were certain the British also would fold up. But the British were of harder fiber. Under the unshakable confidence and determination of Churchill, they held against what seemed impossible odds.
Those of us who were at the White House press conference the other day, and had opportunity to question Churchill, felt his spirit of confidence. It breathed itself into every answer he made. We already know the hard and unrelenting fighting courage of President Roosevelt. With two such leaders, backed by such enormous resources, and assisted by the tough and aggressive Russian forces under iron man Stalin, we can be sure that our side is not going to lose heart, or be stampeded under hard blows into foolish and panicky moves, but that on the contrary it will push on with unswerving and ever-growing force.
As Prime Minister Churchill indicated in his White House press conference, the hardest job will be to get our war materials to the places where they are needed. There is abundant manpower. Within a few months our output of war materials will be staggering in volume. It has been so good lately that some officials, before we got into the war, thought it might be good propaganda to show our hand to the Axis and let them know what an enormous stream of war equipment was beginning to rise out of American factories. Now that we are in the war that might not be such a good idea. But Hitler knows he is now up against time and that it is a race to get what he can before the superiority of arms on the Allied side comes fully into play.
Axis powers can only prolong war
As we see how woefully inadequate the defenses of the Philippines were, we must have more respect than ever for the way in which Secretary Hull conducted the delaying negotiations in the hope of preventing a Pacific war before we were ready, and of course obtaining a peaceful adjustment if that were possible, although we know now it never was possible.
We needed more time. But we didn’t get it. Now we can only hope to hold Singapore at all costs and the Philippines if possible with delaying resistance until we can put into the area a superiority of planes and other fighting forces.
Hitler undoubtedly is trying to take what advantage he can of his situation and we must expect him to strike at some point.
These actions are the last chance of the Axis. The balance is turning steadily against the Axis. The most it can hope for is to make its final drives quickly before the full might of the Allies can be brought against it.
It can never win the war, because it can never knock out Russia, Britain and the United States. It can only prolong it – and the longer it goes on, the nearer the day when it will face irresistible superiority.
Maj. Williams: Air control
By Maj. Al Williams
The Civil Aeronautics Authority seems to be the only government aviation outfit that knows what should be done and how to do it. Aviation people see and sense this fact and are mighty proud of the CAA. The only potential danger, (and I said “potential” danger), we home Americans are exposed to is possible spasmodic air raids from Jap carriers loose in the Pacific and whatever suicidal long-range bombers the Nazis might turn loose against our Atlantic seaboard. operating from European airdromes.
To reach the West Coast, a Jap bomber would have to elude our entire Pacific Fleet. To reach us from Europe, the Nazis (without aircraft carriers) would have to make the long trans-Atlantic flight. In both cases the danger is “potential,” and therefore a contingency an alert nation should anticipate.
Cross-country flight
To adequately offset either contingency, we must organize and train an effective field information service to detect and report the movements of all planes in the air over both seaboards and a few hundred miles inland from the coasts. This information network is the equivalent of a gigantic switchboard of national field dimensions. There’s nothing secret about this sort of an air raid detection service. The British and the German systems are well known and will be imitated here. The country is marked off in sectors, and in each sector are stationed air raid watchers connected with the Fighter Command of the Army Air Corps.
The Fighter Command is more popularly known as the “Interceptor Command.” The chief function of the personnel, civilian and otherwise, is to report plane movements to the Interceptor Command. Cross-country flying today involves filing a flight plane for a certain destination at a certain time of departure – with an estimated time of arrival at the specified destination. This information, in turn, is supplied to the Airway Traffic Control Center at the airport involved. The local Civil Aeronautics Authority communicates this information to the Interceptor Command controlling the area or areas through which the flight is to be made.
Collaboration between these two agencies, CAA and the Army Air Corps Interceptor Command, usually results in permission to the pilot to make the flight.
The only way to get any organization working efficiently is to permit it to practice under conditions as nearly realistic as possibly. If the routine operations of the business, for which the organization was created, does not supply the means for such practice, drill operations must be provided. The CAA and airmen claim that our ordinary airline and business aviation operations do provide just the type of practice needed to whip this anti-aircraft detection service into shape. I can’t say this definitely, but from all indications, it appears to be the Air Corps’ belief that all commercial and private aviation operations should be discontinued.
Typical of American psychology, there’s been some strong language between those airmen who fly their own planes in furthering their business operations and those who, deprived of the permission to fly, would have to discontinue the use of this efficient method of covering great areas of the country to maintain national services of paramount importance to the Army and Navy Air Services – and the Army and Navy commanders.
Civilians agree
Civilian aviation says, “Sure, discontinue useless and purposeless flying. Control and report the movements of aircraft. But don’t cripple the civilian aviation which is effectively aiding and serving Army and Navy combat organizations.” Airmen claim that mass production is a vital factor in this modern war. But the formula, the basic formula for mass production of munitions, is the least dislocation of the nation’s essential business.
We are told by some that this war may last for 10 years. No matter how long it does continue, this nation must live and live as normally as possible in order to work effectively. I don’t advocate business as usual, but I do claim the necessity for minimizing purposeless dislocation. One outstanding example of panic instead of sanity in putting a nation on a war basis has been that for which the British have already paid a heavy toll, unhealthy long hours and Sunday work.
We know that, as a reaction to being caught napping in the Far East, the Army and Navy Air Services are advocating moves today for control of everything in sight. I know of one instance where the Army Air Corps served notice on an airport that it might take over the field and hangars on short notice. Within a mile from this commercial airport is a military field. The commercial airport is equipped with a score or more of certified aviation repair depots ready, able, and willing to take over any amount of the Army Air Corps’ engines, instruments, and props requiring repair service. Not one such job has been sublet or allocated to the commercial airport.
We’ll need facilities
In addition to dislocating the lives of scores of families of highly trained aviation expert workmen, any such senseless move as this would be shortsighted because it would be ignoring repair facilities soon to be needed as badly as the factory output of new planes and engines. All our planes and engines will not always be new. And when they are not, they will have to be repaired, and then we’ll be crying for these repair facilities.
Certainly the Army or Navy should take over any airport – the field – and commandeer the gasoline and oil servicing crews and equipment. But the dislocation of all too few aviation repair agencies is an outstanding example of what might be termed “useless and purposeless dislocation.” Furthermore, if the Air Corps cannot conduct field operations without hangars, then there’s something the matter with the Air Corps, because the British and the Germans seemed to get along pretty well without them.
There’s no substitute for brains, and until there is a brain cell ersatz, let’s think hard and coolly to win this war.
Richard Aldrich dies at Rhode Island home
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (UP) – Richard S. Aldrich, 57, vice president of the Providence Journal Co. and formerly for 11 years a U.S. representative, died unexpectedly at his home yesterday.
Aldrich, brother of Winthrop Aldrich, president of the Chase National Bank in New York, was born in Washington, the son of former U.S. Sen. Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island.
He served in both branches of Rhode Island’s general assembly and represented the Red Cross in France during the World War. He leaves a wife and son.
Monahan: Cash customers take part in frolic
By Kaspar Monahan
Last night I reviewed “Hellzapoppin’” by remote control. It is about the only show you can review from a distance of about 10 miles – but from my domicile nestling in the peaceful slopes and valleys of the South Hills I could hear sounds of confusion, gunfire and the thump of the resounding slapstick coming from the northward – and I knew that the Nixon had successfully launched its return engagement of the Olsen & Johnson lunatic carnival.
So at this late date a “re-review” of “Hellzapoppin’” would only be a wase of printer’s ink, for everybody knows by now that it’s the wildest, noisiest, looniest exhibition in captivity, with the possible exception of the sequel, “Sons o’ Fun,” now making a shambles of Broadway.
So be it. “Hellzapoppin’” is loud and funny and just what a huge proportion of show-goers want. So let’s discuss an important factor in the success of the crazy thing I talked to Billy House and other folks who have found the show a steady meal ticket for more than a year on the road.
Mountainous Billy and his sidekick Eddie Garr were full of anecdotes about the unexpected incidents happening while the show was on tour. They said you aren’t surprised at anything happening in the audience – and that audience participation often results in ad lib stuff that even O. & J. never dreamed about.
For with guns going off every few minutes and stooges cluttering up the aisles you can’t expect an audience to keep firm grip on its decorum. Sometimes the more exuberant members of the audience get up on the stage and join with the mummers in zany goings-on.
There was the drunk at Fort Worth, for instance, who stumbled up the steps, reeled across the stage and fell into a prop bed backstage, where he went quietly to sleep. At Birmingham a citizen arose from his seat and proceeded to do a rope act. In New Orleans a dear old lady, who was quite pie-eyed, insisted on shaking hands with Billy House during the opening scene. She wanted to tell him she was the mother of somebody whom Mr. House didn’t remember.
In another city a stranger, evidently a gent of culture, stalked onto the stage and stood next to Mr. House, listening with rapt attention to Billy’s “garden scene” dialogue with Bobby Jarvis. He didn’t say a word, just listened intently.
“The audience,” says Mr. House, “never catches on when these things happen. They think it’s part of the show, and it’s our job never to look surprised.”
As to the “country store” gag, when gifts are distributed among the cash customers, audiences, I’m told, react just about the same whether the town is Medicine Hat or Chicago or Pittsburgh. The ones who get the ladder and the child’s high chair usually want them autographed. And, invariably, they’ll tote the wash tub home with them.
As for the hunk of ice, it’s usually a stooge with a fortified lap who gets it. they’ve tried presenting it to personal friends, but it doesn’t work very well. For even personal friendship has its limitations. Not knowing what to do with the ice, patrons just drop it on the floor and the joke evaporates.
OPENING TODAY: “You’re in the Army Now,” with Jimmy Durante, Phil Silvers and Jane Wyman, is the Stanley screen feature. On stage, Ted Weems Orchestra.
‘Target for Tonight’ shows RAF in bombing forays
Authentic film of daring British pilots is top feature at the Warner, also offering a Henry Aldridge comedy
The first authentic motion pictures of a British bombing raid over Germany are being shown at the Warner where “Target for Tonight” is the holiday feature. Made with the full cooperation of the RAF, “Target” was filmed by a camera crew which flew with the British bombers five times over the Continent to picture the play-by-play story of a raid on an oil installation plant at Freihausen.
The members of the bomber crew shown in the picture are the only people, with the exception of Air Marshal Sir Richard Peirse, chief of the Bomber Command, whose names the RAF has permitted to be revealed. Every member of the cast is an RAF man. Squadron Leader Dickson, the commander of the twin-motored Wellington bomber with which the camera travels over Freihausen, is the former leader of the Czech squadron of the RAF.
The other members of the crew of the bomber are Flying Officer Willett, veteran of 40 raids on Germany, and Flight Sgt. Lee, holder of the Distinguished Flying Medal.
Hitherto secret details of organization and method of the Bomber Command are revealed for the first time in the new picture, with only the most important defense details masked from inquisitive eyes.
The film, which was flown from England, has been rushed into distribution by Warner Bros., while it is still being shown as a first-run attraction in London.
The companion film is “Henry Aldridge for President” and introduces young Jimmy Lydon as the successor to Jackie Cooper, the original Henry Aldridge of the screen. Jackie played in “What a Life” and “Life with Henry.”
In the third of the series the irrepressible Henry runs for president of the student body at Centerville High School with humorous results. He is induced to enter “politics” by the school’s vamp, played by June Preisser, who figures he’ll be a pushover for boyfriend, Kenneth Howell, the rival candidate.
Howell’s plans go awry when Henry astounds everyone with an impressive speech. But trouble is ahead for Henry, despite his initial success in the political arena. Out of it all, Henry discovers his true love is Mary Anderson.
Hollywood
By Hedda Hopper
Ran into Walter Pidgeon after he’d been treated for sinus trouble. which has kept him from working a week. When Director Willie Wyler’s name came up, I asked Pidge how he was getting along since Wyler’s directing “Mrs. Miniver.” Pidge said, “He’s great. And while he works with Richard Ney, who’s fresh from the stage and has much to learn about pictures, I’m sitting by getting a great acting lesson. You know, when I was in New York. I went back to see Paul Lukas, and mentioned that I was about to be directed by Willie. Paul said, ‘Well, you’re one of the lucky men.’ I’d been playing “Watch on the Rhine” almost a year when Willie came back to see me after a performance, and said, ‘You know, Paul, that scene where you do so and so – I’d change it a little bit.’ I changed it the following night. ‘How could I have been so dumb as not to have thought of it myself?’”
While Leon Errol and I were giggling over silly things done in pictures, he said, “Remember the play I did for Ziegfeld called ‘Louis the Thirteenth’?” Well, it was bought for Wally Beery and the price was $80,000. But when they got into it, they realized people would think, from that title, that Beery was playing Louis XIII – when, as a matter of fact, the story was about Alpine climbers who started to yodel, which caused a snowslide, and Louis was the thirteenth on the line. So they rewrote the whole thing and called it ‘The Big Sneeze’!”
Universal’s taking no chances with people’s nerves these days. Since Lon Chaney Jr. has to make up as a monster for “The Ghost of Frankenstein,” he takes his meals on the set, because they’re afraid it he went into the commissary he’d frighten women and children. A fan writes in that she’d like the “Christmas Carol” film and “Treasure Island” back on the screen during this holiday season, also “Snow White.” Well, Mrs. Jenkins, I’ve passed on your request.
From Richmond, Va., comes this letter: “We’re not very movie minded down here, so I depend upon your radio show for movie news. If my family knew how much, they’d ship me to Williamsburg – and not to the Colonial part but to the Asylum! My family’s taken part in every war fought in America since the first white man set foot on these shores and had his pants shot off him by a Redskin. In the First World War, my husband and my brothers took part. In this one, my sons and sons-in-law. One is in Iceland, another in the Pacific, and one graduates from military school next spring. … But I just had to take time out to tell you my favorite of all Hollywood stars is Barbara Stanwyck. She’s the tops.
“I want to thank you for having Lurene Tuttle dramatize her life story on your show. But please, Miss H., when you mention the Bob Taylors again, consult your weather man, and if he predicts storms in the east, don’t reach way down in your tummy for that low note, because I can hear you much better if you tune your vocal chords heavenward.”
You don’t hear a peep of a complaint out of our glamor girls, now that they get up at 5 a.m. to be made beautiful for their screen work. It’s a cinch Richard Ney will join the Navy long before his first picture, “Mrs. Miniver,” reaches the screen. … Hollywood is shining up its buttons to welcome Nelson Seabra, that wealthy young South American ambassador of good-will, back to town for the rest of the winter. Those four King sisters who provided the quartet in “Sing Your Worries Away,” are direct descendants of Perley Pratt, one of the founders of Mormonism. They’re active members of the church, too, and don’t use tobacco, alcohol, tea, or coffee. … In his impoverished youth, William Saroyan couldn’t afford to see many pictures. So now that he’s hooked up with Metro, he’s having the films he missed years ago run off for him in a private projection room.
That cute Arline Judge has the lead in “Law of the Jungle,” a story of war in South Africa. John King plays opposite her. … There’s a toss-up between Veronica Lake and Claire Trevor as to who’ll get the lead role in “Pop” Sherman’s super-duper “The Silver Queen.” It’s the role of a lady gambler…
Jack Benny will take his troupe on a country-wide tour for the Red Cross come first of the year. … Sabu goes to New York for a broadcast for the Treasure Department, to help sell bonds, and will return here to make a personal appearance tour with his “Jungle Book.” … Margery Cummings has designed a copper and iron locket for Penny Singleton which looks like a thick one-cent piece – and inside of it Penny wears the first penny she ever earned, as a child dancer.