Reading Eagle (December 27, 1941)
U.S. exports endangered by Pacific War
Japs boast wide blows
Claim complete control of sea and air, but ‘forget’ Haruna
TOKYO (By Official Japanese Wireless) (INS) – A spokesman for the navy section of Imperial Headquarters declared today that Japanese submarines now are active off California and Hawaii and “in the whole Pacific.”
This assertion followed a statement to the Jap Diet by Navy Minister Shigetaro Shimada, who claimed the Imperial Navy has gained “complete air and naval control over four oceans” and is expanding the war program on all fronts “after shattering enemy resistance.”
In an extraordinary statement, Shimada boasted that nine British destroyers were sunk and four heavily damaged at Hong Kong – “thus wiping out British naval power in the Hong Kong area.”
Claims big losses
The navy minister claimed the British and American naval losses since the outbreak of the Pacific conflict are as follows:
BATTLESHIPS: Seven sunk, three heavily damaged and one less seriously damaged.
CRUISERS: Two sunk, two heavily damaged and four partly damaged.
DESTROYERS: One sunk and four heavily damaged.
Editor’s note: Evidently, the Jap minister’s claims regarding British losses at Hong Kong were not included in this roundup of alleged enemy losses.
SUBMARINES: Nine sunk and “many others presumably destroyed.”
SMALLER NAVAL CRAFT: Six gunboats and minesweepers destroyed, more than seven torpedo boats sunk and two gunboats and one auxiliary vessel damaged.
Shimada also claimed 16 merchant ships have been sunk, and three damaged, and that 50 ships totaling 130,000 tons, and more than 400 smaller craft have been captured. He also asserted 803 British and American planes have been shot down, and that “many more” have been destroyed on the ground.
Exceeds Allies’ reports
This Japanese view of alleged U.S. and British naval losses far exceeds the losses announced by Washington and London. Shimada’s statement appears to be about as exaggerated as the Japanese claims of American losses suffered in the Nipponese sneak attack on Honolulu December 7.
Shimada declared Japanese naval losses were confined to 52 planes, three destroyers, and one minesweeper, with one minesweeper heavily damaged, and one cruiser slightly damaged. He added that five Jap submarines are missing.
Shimada clearly “forgot” the sinking of the Jap battleship Haruna by Capt. Colin Kelly of the U.S. Army Air Force off the Philippine coast. Capt. Kelly sacrificed his life in his heroic and successful attack on this Japanese battleship.
In the eastern Pacific, Shimada claimed, air and other military facilities at Johnston, Palmyra, Wake and Baker Islands were virtually destroyed by Japanese warships and aircraft, and that 1,600 American prisoners were taken by the Japanese forces which occupied Wake Island.
During aerial fighting over the Philippines, he asserted, Japanese naval aircraft destroyed 338 American planes.
Army asserts gains
Premier Hideki Tojo, reporting on Japanese Army operations, claimed the Japanese had destroyed or captured large numbers of automobiles, tanks, light armored cars and guns, and that 427 enemy planes had been destroyed on the ground or shot down.
Tojo also asserted that the British had destroyed 150 oil wells in North Borneo. He said the Japanese troops which occupied Penang, off the western Malayan coast, seized 1,000 motor cars, 1,300 tons of tin, 2,000 tons of rubber, 1,000 tons of copper ore and 500 barrels of gasoline.
He declared all industrial establishments in Penang were intact and that the radio station there, in perfect order, resumed operations under Japanese supervision December 22.
During operations over Malaya and Burma, Tojo alleged, Jap army planes destroyed 222 British aircraft up to December 23.
Tojo said Japanese forces which landed on Mindanao Island in the Philippines “succeeded in rescuing” about 18,000 Japanese nationals in Davao and asserted they had been “imprisoned prior to outbreak of the Pacific conflict.”
Jap marine toll heavy
More than one vessel a day sunk by U.S., Dutch forces
WASHINGTON (AP) – Japan is losing troop and supply ships at the rate of more than one a day, fast enough to reduce her great merchant marine to insignificance in two years, if losses go unchecked in a Pacific naval war of attrition.
U.S. and Dutch Army, Navy and air reports, for the first three weeks of the war, list 26 Japanese merchant vessels as sunk or damaged by submarines or air attacks in Philippine, Borneo and Malayan waters despite heavy naval and air escort.
Although Japan has 23 shipyards with 69 berths for construction of large craft, her steel resources are limited and building facilities are believed to be far below what would be necessary to make up for even half of such a rate of loss.
At the start of the war, Japan’s merchant fleet was the third largest in the world, trailing those of Britain and the United States. In sea-going vessels of 2,000 tons or more, it consisted of 898 ships of 4,754,699 gross tons. Of these, 717 were freighters, 132 were combination passenger-cargo ships, 49 were tankers and two were primarily refrigerated cargo vessels.
U.S., British totals
Britain had 2,644 ships of 16,806,3789 tons and the United States had 1,150 ships of 7,078,909 tons.
More important than the actual tonnage figures, however, was the American and British shipbuilding capacity. During World War I, American yards reached a rate of construction equivalent to 6,000,000 tons a year and the British building came to about half that rate. Present programs call for a similar effort, with completion in America of 1,200 new ships of about 13,200,000 gross tons by 1943.
Japan’s biggest year in merchant ship building since World War I was 1937, when she turned out 180 vessels of 100 tons or more, a total gross tonnage of 451,121.
The Japanese appear at first glance to have taken great risks and thus to have subjected themselves to heavier than usual losses in the initial days of the Malayan and Philippine expeditions, but growing Allied air and naval power is expected to make the long Japanese maritime communications lines even more hazardous in the months to come.
Radio Day by Day
NEW YORK (World Wide) – Instead of leaving the CBS air Sunday night as has been announced, the Helen Hayes dramas are to continue indefinitely.
Under the original plan the sponsor was to have invoked the war clause in his contract due to the expected effect on his product.
On Sunday night at 8, Miss Hayes will present “The Lady Eve.” The program is repeated at 10:30 for the West.
WOR, New York key station of MBS, which, under the title of “Moonlight Saving Time”, broadcasts all-night recordings, has discontinued all request numbers. The reason given was to avoid the possible code use of the requests by enemy agents.
In place of the regular Chicago Theatre of the Air, a special dramatization of the “Battle of Gettysburg” is to be presented on MBS at 9 tonight. Col. R. R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and an authority on military history, is the speaker.
On Saturday night list: The War, subject to change – 7, NBC-Red, MBS; 7:30, MBS; 7:45, NBC-Red; 8:55, CBS; 10, MBS; 10:45, CBS; 11, NBC-Red; 11:15, MBS; 12, NBC, CBS; 12:55, NBC, CBS.
Talks – CBS, 7, People’s Platform, “The U.S. at War;” NBC-Red, 10:15, Dr. Morris Fishbein, on “Medicine in the Emergency;” CBS, 10:15, C. E. Warne, on “Consumer Looks at Advertising.”
NBC-Red – 8, Knickerbocker Playhouse; 8:30, Truth or Consequences; 9, Barn Dance; 10, Bill Stern.
CBS – 8, Guy Lombardo; 8:30, Hobby Lobby; 9, Hit Parade; 9:45, Jessica Dragonette.
NBC-Blue – 7, Message of Israel; 8, Boy Meets Band; 9, Headlines of 1941, News Review; 10:30, Sammy Kaye Band.
MBS – 8, Green Hornet; 11, Basketball at Buffalo.
Labor board issue aired
Willkie, Farley, Steelman mentioned for new organization
WASHINGTON (UP) – Administration labor experts are prepared to recommend to President Roosevelt that he create a three-man war labor board to administer the industry-labor agreement for uninterrupted production, it was learned today.
The board, it was understood, would be policy-making rather than an arbitration or mediation board. In personnel and procedure it would differ sharply from the war labor board set up during the first World War.
While a majority of the administration labor advisers were agreed on a three-man board, some favored a larger one, perhaps of nine members. Mr. Roosevelt was said not to have decided yet on the type to be set up. The industry-labor conference recommended, and the president agreed to, establishment of a board having the general purposes of the first World War labor board.
Three names mentioned in connection with the proposed board are Wendell L. Willkie, 1940 Republican presidential candidate; James A. Farley, former postmaster general, and Dr. John R. Steelman, director of the U.S. Conciliation Service.
It is not believed, however, that Mr. Roosevelt will bring Willkie into federal service as a member or chairman of the war labor board.
Termed satisfactory
The names were submitted informally to several labor and industry officials and were said to have been satisfactory.
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and Isador Lubin, assistant to President Roosevelt, are among those working out details of the plan for Mr. Roosevelt’s consideration.
Labor officials emphasized that Mr. Roosevelt has made no decision. They said he had been too busy with conferences with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and others to give the proposal thorough study. They expect a decision next week.
One important difference between the proposed board and that created in 1918 would be that it would seldom, if ever, hold hearings and decide disputes itself but would delegate that function to a staff of specialists in various fields.
Its members would not be picked, as was the 1918 board, to represent equally labor and industry, but, as one official put it, “as Americans to represent a united nation at war.” The 1918 board had six industry and six labor representatives, each headed by a co-chairman.
The proposed three-man board would decide the general policies to be followed in adjusting labor disputes. One labor official familiar with the proposal said it would work something like this:
Operation of board
When a dispute arises between an employer and his workers the board would assign conciliators familiar with the problems of that particular industry to attempt an agreement through direct negotiation.
“If that failed, the board then would assign a mediation panel, perhaps composed of local men also familiar with the industry, to attempt an adjustment. If that failed the board would name an arbiter or arbiters.
“Under that procedure, few if any cases might come before the board for an actual decision. The main thing would be to establish a uniform policy and see that all agencies follow it.”
The National Defense Mediation Board set up last spring to supervise voluntary mediation of disputes probably would be disbanded.
The U.S. Conciliation Service probably would be retained and enlarged to work in cooperation with the war labor board. Emphasis would be put upon speedy and local consideration of disputes rather than having both parties come to Washington to appear before a hearing board.
U.S. casualties reported in China
Brooklyn man believed killed in Hong Kong
WASHINGTON (UP) – State Department announcement that William Kailey of Brooklyn, N.Y., was believed to have been killed during the Hong Kong fighting apparently brought to two the known American casualties in the battered crown colony.
Addison E. Southard, American consul general at Hong Kong, reported that Kailey, an American citizen, had been missing for several days and was believed dead, the department said. The death of another American, Miss Florence Webb, 33, was reported previously.
Many in Burma
Other telegraphic reports to the department indicated there were about 1,300 Americans and 500 Filipinos in Burma, British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies. In Burma, there were 492 Americans, including 30 recently evacuated from Thailand, while Kenneth Patton, consul general at Singapore, reported 318 in British Malaya, Brunei, British North Borneo and Sarawak.
As of Christmas Eve, according to Consul General Walter A. Foote, at Batavia, there were 473 Americans in the Netherlands Indies, exclusive of about 100 transients.
The Pittsburgh Press (December 27, 1941)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – This city is grave about the war, but like London it still must have its little war jokes, which is as it should be.
For example, I have a friend here who has registered for civil defense, and when people ask her what branch she applied for, she says she signed up to be a “victim.” She says that with everybody else in town signed up to be rescuers, there won’t be anybody left for the bombs to hit, so she has decided, like Barbara Fritchie, to stick out her neck in the name of patriotism.
Another thing – the Government in wartime is always giving you dire warnings not to repeat rumors. Of course the theory is good, but as far as I’ve been able to see the Government is wasting its breath.
It’s simply human nature to gossip. People have to talk in a tense period or they go crazy. I sort of doubt that people can be preached out of rumor-mongering. The best way, it seems to me, is to handle rumors as one hero here handled the submarine story.
On that first night’s bad scare there was a wild rumor abroad that a Jap submarine was lying right under the Golden Gate Bridge, just lying there like a porpoise, looking around.
Well, an awful lot of people really believe it. And to one of these believers our man the next morning spoke as follows:
“Well, they’ve caught the submarine.”
“Oh, wonderful,” was the answer. “I’m so relieved. How did they catch it?”
“Why they caught it in a fish net. In fact, Joe DiMaggio’s father caught it, and they’ve got the sub on exhibition down at DiMaggio’s restaurant now.”
That ended the submarine story.
And I know another funny war story although it’s actually pre-war. It seems that a few months ago the Army issued a strict prohibition against any soldier in uniform going into a house of prostitution.
So what happened? So an enterprising business man adjourned to one of the small cities down the coast, where the big Army camps are situated, bought up all the mechanics’ coveralls he could find, and proceeded to rent them to soldiers at two bits an hour to cover their uniforms. They say he is rolling in jack now.
Here’s ready-to-use victim
The editorial rooms of The San Francisco News have been equipped with blackout curtains, just as are all editorial rooms in London. The other night one of my friends on the staff of The News was caught at a party by a blackout, and it was fairly late when the “all clear” went. My friend lived clear across town, and he was due at work on an early shift, so he decided to go right to the office and sleep there the rest of the night.
He stretched out on a couch in the office of one of the editors, right beneath a window, and went to sleep with his clothes on. After daylight he was awakened by the startled shouts of a copy boy. My friend roused up, looked around, and found he was covered with broken glass.
It seems that during the night somebody had thrown a gas tank cap through the window and showered my sleeping friend with splintered window glass. And he never even woke up. He’s what I would call the ideal, housebroken, ready-to-use bomb victim.
Axis supporter loses money
But the funniest story yet, to me, was the one my little Japanese girl was telling. She’s completely on our side, no question about that. But she also knows a bargain when she smells it.
One day just before Christmas she was downtown buying some small Christmas trees. She stopped at a stand, and found the price for two little trees was $3.50. She thought that was too high, so she started haggling with the stand man. Now the stand man happened to be Italian. So suddenly he stopped gabbling at his new customer, looked at her closely, and said, “Are you Chinese or Japanese?”
“Japanese,” she said.
The Italian smiled and beamed his comradeship. “Ah, in that case,” he said, “you can have 75 cents off, we will deliver them, and I will pay the sales tax myself.”
“But 75 cents isn’t enough off for those little ones,” our girl said. “If you’ll give me two bigger ones at that price, I’ll take them.”
So that’s the way it wound up. Two big trees, 75 cents off, no sales tax, and free delivery, just because an Italian had an attack of the old Axis fellowship but forgot that most Japanese out here are really American. And nothing else. My Japanese girl laughs and laughs when she tells about it.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK – A few days ago these dispatches presented a one-sided account of some shooting in the lumber country around Richwood, W. Va., where the CIO has been trying to organize the workers and obtain recognition as the bargaining agent.
This publication has drawn a reply from the CIO which I reproduce in full as follows:
“Your column of December 22 on Richwood, W. Va., situation convinces me that you need no facts to produce a column. Here are some facts you should know:
“1. Messrs. Thompson and Wilson (Informants quoted in the earlier piece) are propagandists of the Cherry River Boom and Lumber Company.
“2. The Richwood loggers and lumbermen’s union is company dominated and represents a small minority of the employees.
“3. The mill is running with less than 20 percent of the crew.
“4. Hundreds of these employees never draw any money on pay day.
“5. Five attempts have been made in the last six weeks by Gov. Neely, United States Department of Labor and labor hoard to settle the dispute.
“6. CIO has offered to arbitrate but company refused.
“7. CIO welcomes an investigation by any state or federal agency.
“8. Richwood has been a Fascist town under a dictator for more than 12 years.
“9. No real American should question the integrity of Gov. Neely after 20 years of faithful public service.
“GEORGE J. TITLER.
“International representative,
“United Mine Workers of America,
“Charlestown, W. Va.”
Thus we have had both sides, and I will now offer some analysis and comment.
Truth is powerful propaganda
I note that Mr. Titler does not mention, much less deny, the principal statement in the earlier story that more than 100 rounds had been fired from 30-30 rifles into the offices of the company, into a public school and into the home of a company official and at the log trains.
I take it, therefore that he is willing to let that report stand as a confirmed fact.
As to whether the Messrs. Thompson, the local editor, and Wilson, a company employee, are propagandists for the company, I cannot accept at face value the word of a man who has the effrontery to lay it down that “no real American should question the integrity of Gov. Neely.”
They may be propagandists, but the CIO and the mine workers have many propagandists on their side.
I don’t know whether the loggers’ and lumbermen’s union is company-dominated but, on the basis of personal experience in the Newspaper Guild of the CIO, I can’t give much weight to the statement of a CIO official. Moreover, as between a company union and a CIO union run by Communists or by one dictatorial union boss such as John Lewis, I might prefer the company union.
I have heard and read so many outrages and demonstrable lies in my Guild experience and observation that I am able to maintain an open mind on the question whether this is a company union. Nor do I believe that less than 20 percent of the people are working.
West Virginia is becoming Fascist
I am a little more generous toward the statement that hundreds of the men never draw any money on pay day. That has happened elsewhere and could happen in Richwood. But I know that thousands of men and women who are unionized against their will wind up with less money, net, on pay day than they drew before.
The unions take so much that many people show a net loss even when their pay is raised.
Mr. Titler doesn’t claim a majority for the CIO. He only says attempts have been made “to settle the dispute” and that the CIO has offered to “arbitrate.”
I think he would claim a majority if he had one and I am sure many CIO politicians would claim a majority anyway, but I point out that if the CIO had a majority it would submit to an election and wouldn’t try to muddle the situation with offers to “settle” and “arbitrate.”
The captive coal mine case shows what happens to employers who agree to “settle” or “arbitrate” with the CIO.
Richwood may be a Fascist town, but many unions are Fascist unions and West Virginia is becoming a Fascist state under Gov. Neely and the CIO, which has been organizing the public employees and wants to collect a legalized subsidy from the public treasury in the form of dues checkoff from citizens employed by the state.
Now you have both sides of the story, and I thank Mr. Titler for his generous help.
Clapper: War production
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – For want of planes and ships we may soon hear the same bad news from the Philippines that we have had from Wake Island.
The heroic resistance of the American forces is adding new chapters to the glory records. But the heroes are being lost and the battles are being lost because we are not able to get in enough planes and ships and supporting forces to overcome the enemy.
Again we are being told by tragic facts that we must produce before we can win the war. The point of decision is still the factories of America. Until we produce enough planes and ships and other weapons this war cannot be won even with all the great heroism of American fighting forces.
Prime Minister Churchill did not gloss over the stern outlook when he spoke to Congress. He said our side could hope to take the initiative in 1943. Not this coming year but the next year. The coming year must be devoted to American production while the others hold the lines. That, I take it, is what he really meant. The year 1942 must be a production year. The battle will be in the factories of America.
War production needs hard pushing
As soon as the high strategy conferences are over, President Roosevelt can well turn his attention to jazzing up our war production. It needs hard pushing now more than ever before. Every day’s delay now is not only hindering our friends the British, the Russians and the Chinese, but it is costing American lives and is causing us to be driven step by step out of the Pacific. The loss of lives is irreparable. The loss of territory and strategic points will prolong the war and its human cost. The place to shorten the war and to reduce the losses is on the production lines. We need to forget this obsession with high strategy and go to work getting out the weapons that the high strategy will require.
One hears internal complaint at the condition of the war production effort here after 18 months. William S. Knudsen of OPM told a congressional committee the other day that we had been at war only two weeks and that there must be patience. But the battle of production is a year and a half old. From the time of Dunkirk, when we began re-equipping the British, we have known that an indispensable key to victory would be the American arsenal. The British could have done a quicker job in Africa if we had been able to send them more equipment.
How much nearer to knocking out the German armies might the Russians have been now if we could have given them more planes and tanks? Now we find our own forces handicapped because we have not enough fighting weapons.
Appropriations outrun contracts
The big job now is to rush the conversion of factories to war production. That is the quickest way to speed up production. The job has been delayed too long already. Time and again attempts have been made to change over the automobile industry. But OPM officials resisted. They wanted to go on making automobiles and arms both. Some other concerns did not want war orders, and OPM kindly allowed some of them to get away with it.
Now the way to rapid conversion is opening up from another quarter. Shortages of materials are forcing the most drastic reduction of civilian output in many lines. This will spread rapidly. The enormous amount of material from steel to clothing needed for the war is compelling Leon Henderson to reduce civilian manufacture. These shutdowns leave much idle equipment and man power, and into this vacuum at last war orders will be shoved.
Appropriations are still far outrunning contracts placed. The job now is to speed up that work, to find out what the idle factories can make and to get them to making it. The time for building new plants of astronomical size is past. These things will be needed next fall, and there is no more time left in which to build facilities from scratch. The job is to supply fighting forces next summer and fall and to mass the reserve supplies that will be needed for the victory campaigns of the spring of 1943.
Maj. Williams: Mechanic needs
By Maj. Al Williams
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
We are all in this war, and its outcome will affect each of us. By the same token, all of us are bound by basic patriotism not only to do our bit but to offer our best thoughts for speeding an American victory.
I wrote a few days ago relative to the necessity for the Air Corps and the Naval Air Service making use of the civilian-operated aviation repair and maintenance shops. Our mechanical age is largely automatic in its physical operation, but automatic machinery cannot maintain itself or arrange for its own repair. This mechanical world will not and cannot run itself. Obviously, we must manage it. And management – efficient management – involves planning.
Right now there are thousands of planes and engines and carloads of all the complicated gadgets rolling off our production lines. It’s all new and will run all right for a period. But someday soon all this new machinery – engines, planes, propellers, instruments, radios and whatnot – will need servicing and repair. Right now a considerable quantity of it does. Well, airmen ask, what about this coming stupendous task of aviation repair and overhaul work? The Army and Navy cannot take care of it, so why not begin right now to sub-contract with the aviation repair and overhaul shops all over the country?
During the past 20 years a considerable overhaul and repair and service business has been built in commercial aviation. The shops have been checked carefully and their standards of workmanship are maintained at a remarkably high level by rigid Civil Aeronautics Authority regulations. These facilities are invaluable, and not one of them should be destroyed or put out of business.
Someone with vision should immediately set about instructing the Army and Navy to use these facilities. Repair and overhaul of air machinery is the next gigantic job for our air forces. At present we are only beginning to feel that such a job is in the offing. And the time to prepare for it is right now.
Good mechanics scarce
An aviation mechanic, a good one, means an experienced man. Graduation from the best mechanics school in the world means merely that a man is book taught. His real value to any phase of aviation is in his book knowledge plus experience. An aviation mechanic is very different from an automobile mechanic, and goodness knows a really good man even in the latter bracket is a rarity.
Subcontract the Army and Navy repair work. That’s the formula for “Keep ‘Em Flying.”
The next big bottleneck in American air power is the repair and overhaul of machinery. If anyone is shortsighted enough to destroy or waste those aviation repair and overhaul facilities, there will be crying and gnashing of teeth for the same facilities some months hence. It doesn’t cost anything to think, but it can cost everything if you don’t.
