A life of shame –
Stowe: He can never go home
Because he failed commit harikari, captured Jap pilot says he would disgrace family by returning
By Leland Stowe
Rangoon, Burma –
All the way down in my parachute, I was thinking, as soon as I land, I must kill myself. I must commit seppuku [harikari]. I was ready to do it. Then I hit the ground so hard I was knocked out–
The Japanese prisoner, the pilot of an Army-97 fighter which was shot down in the Christmas Day battle near here, was speaking to us with great earnestness. Now he turned to our interpreter, Maj. Frank D. Merrill, former U.S. military attaché in Japan, and asked anxiously:
Tell me, is it a disgrace in the American Army if you become a prisoner before you commit seppuku?
When the major assured the captive flight sergeant that, of course, officers in the U.S. Army could honorably become prisoners, the Japanese pilot’s face broke into a broad grin for the first time.
Like the two Nipponese gunners, survivors of the eight-crew bomber crash who are sharing the same steel-barred hospital room with him, the pilot’s head is close-cropped, his features plain.
He looks as if he would have made a good chauffeur or mechanic in peacetime but was certainly much below the level of intelligence averaged by British and American aviators. But he was happy at last to meet someone with whom he could converse in Japanese, so he talked on quite freely.
It’s very depressing being prisoners like we are because we can never be exchanged. Japan has no exchange prisoners – no Japanese is supposed to become a prisoner. This is the most shameful thing that could have happened to us. Now we can never go home. Even after the war ends, we cannot go back to Japan. If we did, our families would be disgraced.
While the pilot talked, the two Japanese gunners sat on their cots, mostly listening. Sometimes the young forward gunner with a patch over his right eye uttered a few words animatedly, momentarily losing his dull deadpan expression.
The rear gunner, a burly Japanese peasant who said he used to be a wrestler, looked even more like a second-rate ex-pug than his companion. He just looked dim and you couldn’t tell whether he was thinking or maybe just trying to.
Not overeducated
All three greatly resembled most of the Japanese soldiers I had seen in southern Indochina last September – tough, obedient and patriotic, but not suffering from overeducation.
The pilot was saying:
We thought the United States Army was not prepared and so was weaker than us but we knew American equipment was much, much better than ours. What’s happened at Singapore?.. Well, we thought Singapore would be hard to take but the Philippines were lots simpler. In the air, it is not so easy. Your American and British planes are much faster than ours. We think Russian pilots are not too good. They handle their planes clumsily. But the American and British come right at you – very hard.
The Japanese pilot, only 25, had wrenched his back in the ‘chute landing, temporarily paralyzing his legs. Now, however, he sat hunched up on his bed puffing a cigarette.
First time in action
He said:
I don’t know whether an American or British plane shot me down. I never saw the plane. It came up under me suddenly. Then my ship was in flames and a wing fell off. Yes, this was the first time I had been in action and my two friends from the bomber had never been in an air fight before.
When asked about the rumor that Japanese pilots had come down in parachutes firing Tommy guns, all three registered unfeigned surprise.
The pilot said:
When you’re coming down in a parachute, you’ve got too much else to worry about without shooting a gun.
The pilot revealed that he did not like Japan’s much-touted Zero fighter. But he admitted that it would stand rougher handling and that there was less danger of its wings falling off.
We remained with the three Japanese prisoners for almost an hour and they seemed greatly relieved by this break in the monotony of having no one to speak with but themselves. They confirmed the fact that all Japanese aviators carry cameras and fishing equipment, which have been found in all fallen Japanese planes in Burma.
In leaving, I still had the impression that we had been talking with two ex-prizefighters and their trainer and wondered what Greater Asia’s “co-prosperity sphere” would be like if policed and directed by a legion of men like these.
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – Newspapers on the Coast are no longer allowed to give weather forecasts, because it might help the enemy.
So The San Francisco News pays $1 a day for the best silly forecast submitted. For example: “Possibly rain, conceivably snow, it may clear up, we really don’t know.”
During the first week of the war, after San Francisco had had two nights of blackout, people were still calling up police stations on the third night to ask, “What are the lights out for?”
Several cities, after getting their new air-raid sirens installed, have had test blackouts and discovered that nobody could hear the sirens.
San Francisco has eight new and powerful sirens, but hasn’t had a chance to hear them yet. The City intended to test them, after duly notifying the public. But the Army said no, that any time San Franciscans heard those sirens, from now till the end of the war, it would mean real danger overhead, and not just a test or practice blackout.
At this writing, San Francisco has been without a blackout for more than two weeks. Several times during that period, however, the Army has sent out “alerts” to the police, which means unidentified planes in the air. The sirens are not blown on an “alert” and in all recent cases the planes were soon identified as friendly and the “all clear” given. The public never knew anything about it until next day when it read the papers.
They didn’t turn out so well
The first foreign shore I ever saw was that of Japan, 20 years ago. And although I, like the rest of America, detest the very thought of the Japanese now, that youthful view still remains one of the greatest thrills of my life.
And I remember one day in Tokyo when, being completely lost, I went into what turned out to be a bank, and inquired the way to the Siyoken Hotel (I’ve even forgotten how to spell it now). The cashiers couldn’t speak English, and they kept sending upstairs for higher and higher officials of the bank, until finally one came down who could understand a little. He was in a gray silk kimono, and for all I know was the president of the bank.
He didn’t just tell me how to get there. He went out into the street and led me four blocks to the hotel. And to think that’s people like that could turn out to be people like this.
Christmas this year in San Francisco was my first Christmas in the United States in five years. Last year I spent all of Christmas in the underground bomb shelters of London. Four years ago it was on the sunny beach at Honolulu. Wonder what’ll be left to spend next Christmas in?
Red Cross shows it’s stuff
The Red Cross has always been one of my favorite organizations, and after seeing it perform in San Francisco it is even more so. If you want any lip from me I’d say go ahead and shell out a few bucks to them. That’s what I did, and it made my conscience feel wonderful.
I went nosing around their volunteer headquarters the other day, and from Mrs. Diehl, their chairman. I got this remark: “We have a sign up saying ‘No Dogs’ and I’ve been tempted to add to it ‘No Mink Coats Either’.” By which she means that the Red Cross is serious and doesn’t need any faddists who come whisking down long enough to get their pictures on the society pages, and then never show up again.
I got to checking the other day, and discovered that when I arrived in San Francisco this trip it was the twenty-fifth time I had crossed the continent. And as my own hollow remark echoes in my ears, the only rejoinder I can think of at the moment is, “Well, what of it?”
My witty friend, Cavanaugh, down in Los Angeles writes me as follows:
“I just got this from a friend who is no fool and has exercised the proper restraint from the start. He says that the lost continent of Atlantis has suddenly appeared off Catalina Island and declared war on the whole damn works.”
Welcome to our messy midst, Atlantis.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK – Capt. Joe Patterson, the publisher of The New York News, led off his Sunday editorial with a reminder that in the Old West the horse thief was regarded as the social equal of the murderer and, in many cases, was lynched.
“There was good reason for this harsh attitude,” said he. “To steal a man’s only means of transportation in those vast and almost empty spaces was to condemn him to death by starvation and thirst. We are reminded of this old philosophy by the rubber crisis which has suddenly cracked down on the United States.”
I thought the captain was going to say something about the modern equivalent of the horse thief but instead he slewed off into a general discussion of rubber and our great necessity and a recommendation that we start producing ersatz rubber right now and damn the expense, which is a good idea, too.
But, thanking him for the analogy, I suggest that the tire thief will now become a very serious nuisance and that his crime no longer be measured by the petty larceny value of his loot. The auto tire has ceased to be a familiar article of commerce easily available to all that have the price and has become with us almost as important as the plainsmen’s plug.
Not only will the value rise but once the tires are gone or one tire is gone from a set of four, the present-day jalopy is useless and George Spelvin, American, is set down where he is without transportation to his job or on the errands of the business by which he hustles a living for his family.
The auto is man’s best friend today. Our communities were arranged with the idea in mind that the dwellers naturally would drive to work and the distance to be covered simply cannot be traveled on foot.
Individual owner can do little
Many of the suburbs which have arisen since the First World War were spotted so as to offer far detachment from the centers of industry and trade and to relieve urban congestion. And the competition of the private auto was so great that thousands of miles of old street car lines were ripped up, the rails and the scrap metal of the cars themselves being sold to the Japanese who are now shooting them back at us.
They even abandoned the picturesque old Toonerville Trolley of Pelham although there were some who would have kept her rolling for old-time’s sake, so, without new tires to our autos we are going to be in quite a bit of a fix and anyone who steals a tire or set from a car parked in a street or public garage or on a lot is guilty of something much more serious than the mere theft and should be punished accordingly.
The individual owner, of course, will have to be careful but there seems to be little that can be done. In Washington, for example, almost everyone parks all night outside his door and the people there can’t find garage room now and certainly can’t be expected to stand watches behind the curtains all night to drive off thieves.
Crooked garagemen switch tires
And even in cities where the police, the unions and the garage owners combined to drive business into the garages by issuing tickets and jabbing tires with ice picks in the dead of night, the crooked garage owner and crooked employees will be more alert than ever to the opportunity to switch tires on cars entrusted to their care, substituting ragged old casings and porous tubes for better rubber.
My friend Ernie Pyle during his gypsy days once wrote a piece about garage racketeers who switched tires on transients passing through, revealing that almost all drivers simply jump in and roll off without ever inspecting their tires to make sure.
It would be hard to win an argument in such cases but as a precaution the driver should not hesitate to call attention to the name and condition of his tires when putting up the car and to check them over in the presence of the garage man on leaving. I just don’t know how a man could check up on his tubes but I think the police could help by watching dealers in second-hand tires and checking their sources of supply.
Hanging seems a little severe punishment for a tire thief up to now but after all this is wartime and there should be much less patience with all the ordinary forms of criminality because we can’t spare the energy to police them.
The tire thief and especially the adult crook im the garage business who takes advantage of this crisis to unhorse his fellow citizens is no mere thief nor yet exactly a saboteur in the direct sense but he is much more evil than the charge implies and Capt. Patterson’s reminiscence of the Old West might encourage the courts to give all the law allows for each separate offense and with no discount for any reason.
Clapper: More bombers
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – The Office of Emergency Management says greater emphasis is to be placed on the production of bombers, the long-range offensive striking force of the Army and Navy.
No news could be more welcome. When I was in England last summer everyone with whom I talked, whether American or British, was convinced that the most important thing the United States could do would be to make heavy bombers. They were what England needed then to carry the offensive to Germany and Italy. They are what the United States needs now.
Fighter planes are more quickly produced. Even England, with her limited facilities, was able to make all of the fighters she needed. The heavy bomber is more difficult to build. But it is the weapon most needed.
We were delayed some months ago by material shortages and model changes. But Boeing, the mother plant of the Flying Fortress, reports that it has far exceeded the earlier delivery schedule for December, and is working seven days a week.
Another heavy-bomber plant, Consolidated, has just brought in a mass-production expert to try to increase the output.
Auto conversion will help
Much of the effort that has gone into making pleasure cars will now be turned to making parts for planes. The drive now is for pooling of facilities within the aircraft industry and between it and the auto industry. From now on the tendency will be to disperse the manufacture of parts for final assembly at central plants.
That will permit wider use of converted factories, which offers the largest immediate opportunity to increase production. Also it is a form of dispersal against bomb damage. Much of our airplane production is centered on the West Coast. Future facilities will be constructed behind the mountains. Existing coast facilities will tend to be centered on assembly.
The Office for Emergency Management says that because of the pressing need for the heavy bomber it is necessary to assign the efforts of a large section of the aircraft industry to this work. A four-engine bomber weighs nearly seven times as much as some single-engine fighters and uses up considerably more labor, raw materials, engines and plant space.
Opposition to huge army grows
In the Flying Fortress and the Consolidated we have superior bombers. But we have not been able to achieve the large production that will be required before we can turn the balance in the Pacific.
A growing school in the Army is opposed to an over-sized Army now, preferring to concentrate on air and armored forces rather than to create an enormous Army of several million men. The arguments are first, that the air and armored forces are the most effective and compact units we can send to the distant strategic points. Second, to maintain an over-sized Army would monopolize labor, materials and factory capacity which could be more usefully applied to planes and armored equipment.
Every soldier in camp at home is not only a man lost to industry but he must be supported by the industrial plant. Our supply of labor and of materials is limited. The argument is that we cannot afford to immobilize them on a gigantic Army camped in the United States when they are needed to produce the planes and armored equipment that may be sent abroad where the decisive engagements are fought.
There appears to be an increasing disposition to think in such terms here. The most difficult thing is to keep a balance. While planes are vital, there must be ships to carry the fighter planes to the distant fronts. Churchill said here the other day that transportation was going to be one of the hardest problems. It has been our difficulty in the Pacific thus far. So when one aspect such as planes is emphasized, it does not mean there are not other urgent difficulties to be overcome at the same time.
Maj. Williams: War and weather
By Maj. Al Williams
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
The weather forecasters are setting the zero hours for launching major campaigns in this war on land, sea and, above all else, in the air.
Military and naval commanders, despite all their gaudy uniforms and pomp, can issue the execution orders all right but not until the scholarly, thick-rimmed spectacled lads tell them when. The factors, military and naval, which indicate the strategic good sense of attacking certain objectives are things that do not crop up overnight nor within weeks or months. The military strategists of each belligerent nation have long since known the ends and purposes that must be sought and fought for. For years they have known these things.
But the major hour for each major effort is balanced on warm and cold “fronts” – the movements of cold and warm masses of upper and lower air. These are the causes of what you and I call weather. Their movements and collision determine whether it rains, snows or is dry and fair.
Man’s history always will be determined by weather and climate. Weather determines the type of food he eats, the clothes he wears, his mental and physical habits. It determines whether he is congenitally industrious or lazy. It determines his temperamental attributes, his spirit, and his warlike or unwarlike inclinations. And all this because of the simple formula that hot air ascends and cold air descends.
Air moves constantly
The air in the room about you is moving, though you may not be aware of it. The hot air is ascending and the cold air descending. This principle applied to the vast blanket of atmosphere over the entire planet creates weather changes. It is the ventilating system of the earth. It is easy to appreciate the high premium placed upon scientists who can chart the air mass movements and therefrom predict and forecast weather conditions to be expected within the next vital period of time.
Of course, everyone understands the vital part played by weather in the operations of surface warfare on the land and on the sea. Naturally, Army strategists refuse to move great masses of men and materials upon the approach of a rainy season. In spite of man’s most clever compensating devices, mountainous waves at sea do affect and at times practically nullify the most expert gunnery technique and marksmanship.
Every student of military history knows the importance of the general staff’s being acquainted with impending weather conditions in advance. In bygone days, military commanders sought to encourage scientists to become expert in forecasting the behavior of the atmosphere and its consequent effects in the form of weather. But it was not until man began to fly systematically and on schedule that the absolute necessity for truly understanding the business of weather forecasting became obvious and only then was science developed to anything like its uncannily accurate present stage.
Italy started early
As far back as 1936, I listened to Italian air strategists talking of the necessity for predicting weather conditions on an intercontinental scale. And the Italian effort was paralleled by that of the Germans. Both these nations were thinking in terms of airpower.
If one knows what the other fellow is thinking about and planning for, he has half and more of the competitive cards in his own hand. You will note of late that our airways radio weather broadcasting before and after the hour programs has been discontinued. Such information covering any sector or coastal area of this country is of paramount military importance to the enemy. Hence, it had to be discontinued. Likewise, at certain times our airways radio direction beams have been silenced. And why not? Those beams could sound the same guidance signals in the earphones of an approaching enemy bomber as they do in the earphones of an airline pilot. But what I cannot understand is why the commercial radio broadcasting stations are not silenced at the same time and for the same periods.
Entertainment radio waves will permit an enemy bomber pilot to establish his own position in the aerial ocean as well as indicate the source of those radio waves; just as truly and surely as the airways radio beams. Why not silence both or neither?