America at war! (1941– ) (Part 1)

NormanStewart · January 6, 2021, 7:22pm

Record Corner
Reviews of latest recorded music and song

Standing in the doorway of a new year, especially the sort of new year that lies ahead, and making predictions about such things as the record business is a job for a prophet – not a reviewer.

Far be it from us to foresee where the record making companies will wind up these days of priorities and such – but at least the recording companies are not down-hearted. Far from it.

They have just finished one of the best years of business since recorded words and music were first offered the public 43 years ago. They are looking forward to a successful year in spite of war and its privations.

“In these trying days ahead music will mean more than it ever has,” writes Margaret Hartigan of the RCA Victor press staff. "Whatever our particular duties may be, we are all in our country’s service now. We who know the power of music can do a real and patriotic service by telling people about music which can lift, inspire, soothe and comfort.

“As a company, we look back on a year of real progress in the quality and quantity of music recorded. In the coming year we look forward to many things you had hoped would be recorded and some genuine surprise packages, in addition to the expected output of standard and popular works.”

Columbia, Decca, Keynote and the other companies whose offerings have been reviewed in this column during the year just closed are likewise looking forward – hopefully – H. H. W.

That man Andre Kostelanetz is back again with a Columbia album of Strauss waltzes, and while it is not exactly new to collectors, it is one we liked very much since it includes such popular numbers as “The Blue Danube,” “Tales from the Vienna Woods” and others of the Strauss masterpieces. It is set M-481 and well worth a place on your shelf.

Columbia also is featuring Nelson Eddy in a single (17292-D) which features “The Blind Ploughman.” Eddy gives an excellent dramatic interpretation … And all collectors of good music should not overlook the Columbia set of Robert and Gaby Casadesus, the piano duo in “Espana Rapsodie” (71250-D). Appearing for the first time as a team on Columbia masterworks, Bob and Gaby, his wife, give a flawless reading of Chabrier’s music.

Alvino Rey, “Deep in the Heart of Texas” (Bluebird 11391). The boys have a lot of fun lampooning the sage brush here and so will the listener. “I Said No,” on the reverse, spoils a cute Bonny Bakerish voicing of unimaginative words by Yvonne King. However, the tune is a pretty and appealing one that will set you wondering until you remember you heard something similar in the old days titled “Memories of France.”

Gene Krupa, “Coppin a Plea” (Okeh 6048) spotlights Anita O’Day, who can take any old chorus and make it sound like a good thing. “Violets for Your Furs” is the medium-pleasing coupling.

Fats Waller, “Oh Baby, Sweet Baby” (Decca 11383). Here “the harmful little armful, accompanied by himself and rhythm section, waxes mischievous.” Platter-mate “Pan Pan” is a hilarious panning of “moose pan” by Fats, with pretty backing from entire ensemble.

Boyce’s Harlem Serenaders, “Long About Three in the Morning” and “Getting in the Groove” (Decca 8585) are good jazz entertainment spoiled somewhat by Headman Boyce’s overlong vocals.

Cab Calloway, “The Mermaid Song” (Okeh 6501). A jive narrative of marine life finds Cab in excellent voice. On the obverse, Mr. Calloway and the Palmers give the western ballad “Who Calls” a heavy beat.

Eddy Duchin, “Tis Autumn” (Columbia 36454). Duchin’s development of this pretty theme is entirely too pretentious. “Madelaine,” however, is given a defter touch, although Larry Taylor’s vocals suffer from exaggerated diction.

Jan Savitt, “Not a Care in the World” and “A Nickel to My Name” (Victor 2720). Two amusing hard-time tales in shuffle rhythm.

Jimmy Dorsey, “Charleston Alley” (Decca 4075). Here’s Mr. J. D. in a jump mood that will make you ask why he doesn’t do this more often. “The Spirits Got Me” provides Bob Eberle with a clowning role on the flipover. – By G. M.

Diplomat friendly to Russia

Joseph E. Davies thinks Stalin brilliant
By Harry Hansen

That certainly was a rotogravure sensation in 1936 when the newly appointed Ambassador to Russia and his wife, Marjorie Post Hutton Davies, started for Moscow laden with jewels and enough frozen foods to outlast a siege. The incongruity of one of the richest women in America going to a capital where private wealth was considered stolen goods and people still stood in line for shoes hit the imagination of editors. Mrs. Davies departed amid the white light of photo flashbulbs and all America awaited the Russian reaction.

Also present was a genial, modest but self-possessed Wisconsin-born man of 60, who had held numerous government posts but asserted he was a lawyer with economic training and a businessman rather than a diplomat. Joseph E. Davies was at that hour the less publicized of the two and seemed quite willing to remain so. He spoke later of his wife, gallantly but erroneously, as “the Ambassadress of the United States to the Soviet Union.” He was to see quite a lot of Russia in his short year and a half in Moscow, and to become the author of a book, “Mission to Moscow,” which will take its place beside the works of William E. Dodd, Joseph B. Kennedy and John Cudahy as a record of American diplomacy in the days preceding the second world war.

In walked Josef Stalin

Joseph E. Davies went to Moscow a capitalist, but ready to believe that you cannot hate a man if you know him. He came out impressed with the honesty and forthright character of Stalin, Litvinov, Kalinin and Molotov. They in turn praised him as “an honest man,” and smiled at his capitalist bias. Bowled over by their simplicity and common sense, Davies writes the most, pro-Russian book of the year. No wonder the State Department permitted him to use his dispatches. They should help increase friendly feelings of financiers and industrialists toward the Soviet Union.

The big event of Davies’ mission was his coming face to face with Stalin during his final visit to the Kremlin. This American capitalist was completely bowled over by the incident. Davies was visiting Molotov when he was “perfectly amazed and struck dumb with surprise to see the far-end door of the room open and Stalin come in alone.” He turned on all his geniality and so did Stalin. He saw that Stalin has “a very great mentality” and that a child would like to sit on his lap and a dog would sidle up to him. We may well wonder what Stalin thought when Davies told him that his reputation would be greater than that of Peter the Great or Catherine. Stalin waved such honors aside. He had done nothing extraordinary, said he. The plan was Lenin’s.

Stalin wanted to know why the United States had refused to build a battleship for the Soviets; on that Davies was not informed. He agreed that a debt settlement might be reached if the Kerensky obligations could be treated as an isolated case, so as not to involve paying other countries, thus reversing the Russian position. He made Stalin’s eyes pop when he explained that 80 percent of Mrs. Davies’ wealth and 50 percent of his own would go to the state in inheritance taxes. Stalin looked at Molotov, with a smile. It was an unusual meeting, for which Davies was greatly envied by the other diplomats. Davies concluded: “It was really an intellectual feast which we all seemed to enjoy.”

Reports on Russian affairs

It did not take Davies long to conclude that the Soviet leaders were trying to help the common man. But he had no faith in their short cut to Socialism. Walking with Marjorie in Moscow, he observed perfume shops and flower stores appealing to the youth, who paid high prices for beautiful gifts. You can’t change human nature, concluded Davies, but he deprecated the absence of democratic safeguards and hated to see a man testify against himself.

He saw that Russian factories still were suffering from the removal of key executives in the purge. He learned that the Russians were both ruthless and gentle and he relates how the liaison officer between the diplomatic corps and the Kremlin, attending a social affair, was tapped on the shoulder by two men and never seen thereafter, and how diplomatic and consular officers of foreign nations were expelled in an overbearing manner.

He takes the word of the Russians that they do not mean to interfere in our internal politics and he thinks the Comintern has shriveled. He thinks Russia was moving more to the right when the war began, but he warns that when this war ends we may face a strong movement to the left. For the war he urges the fullest co-operation with Russia; there is nothing we want of Russia, nor anything it can take of us. Davies recognizes the value of friendliness but knows that all international relations are governed by expediency.

Evidently the mission made an impression on Mrs. Davies, too. Elizabeth Hampel, writing her story, “Yankee Bride in Moscow,” called her the most stunning woman outside of Harper’s Bazaar. When the Davieses were leaving Litvinov gave them a lavish dinner. But the manners were simple. Litvinov did not rise in proposing the health of the President of the United States. And “Marjorie wore no jewels.” (Simon & Schuster)

NormanStewart · January 6, 2021, 7:27pm

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The Japanese apparently are attempting to ring Singapore with bases and seized territory before trying a direct attack on that British naval base in Malaya.

To the north they have occupied Thailand (Siam) and are striking down in Malaya. To the east they have captured Manila. To the south they have won bases on Borneo. To the west Sumatra has been attacked from the air.

Japs may strike at rich Sumatra resources

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This map shows the strategic position and valuable resources of Sumatra, at which the Japanese may strike next in their moves to encircle Singapore and nullify its naval importance.

Honolulu digs in, collects grim Jap raid souvenirs

Phosphorus gives ‘fido’ real tail light as Hawaii gets used to blackouts and residents build shelters
By Betty MacDonald
Special to The Pittsburgh Press

HONOLULU, Jan. 3 – Grim souvenirs from Japanese planes and submarines that were lost in the attack on Hawaii December 7 are being carefully hoarded by Honolulans to show their grandchildren.

One employee at the Pan-American Airways salvaged a 900 by 200 plane tire and innertube in perfect condition. Stamped on the tube, taken from the plane that fell in eight feet of water, is 14-9-1, or September 1, 1939 (14 means the 14th year of the Showa reign; 1942 is the 17th year).

One photographer boasts a grimy tennis shoe with a raised heel, taken from a submarine officer in command of a 40-foot suicide sub.

Bright side in blackout

Other items of clothing from a Japanese pilot, who went down at Pearl Harbor, were bifurcated socks, a fundoshi, or Jap breechclout, a leather jacket, a helmet with earphones, a scarf, gabardine uniform and bandana head covering.

One lucky young man from Wahiawa, near Schofield, owns a plane wing, American made, with the original blue paint showing through the red. At the tip is the sign of the Rising Sun.

Even a blackout has its bright side.

Honolulu has been completely blacked out every might since December 1, and residents have worked up several ingenious devices.

One family solved the problem of stumbling over Fido in the dark by tying a bell around his neck. When he “wanted out” during blackout, they dipped his tail in phosphorous to warn block wardens of his approach. A real “tail light.”

Men are wearing blackout belts made of transparent material that glows in the dark.

People who don’t make the blackout deadline and are caught out after hours on darkened streets are urged to wear squeaky shoes and whistle as they approach sentries. “It saves a shot in the dark,” explain officials.

Dig in for long war

A half million people on this beleaguered tropic island have been playing Robinson Crusoe in earnest since that sunny Sunday. December 7, when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Honolulu, at the dawn of the new year is digging in for a long war.

It’s a wartime town now and forgotten are the miles of sunny breaches (covered with barbed wire), waving cocoa palms (whose glistening leaves in moonlight catch enemy eyes), and hula dancers (they’re in civilian defense work now).

Use burial cave

Army regulations require each male citizen to construct a shelter to protect his family, and the U.S. district engineers have issued a series of drawings to be followed in "digging in.”

“The shelter should not be too close to the dwelling,” warn Army officials.

The basic design is a trench six feet deep and two feet wide dug as long as the builder wishes. The excavated earth is piled up on each side to guard against shrapnel, or piled over a rooting of logs or galvanized iron.

In one neighborhood district in the mountains in back of Honolulu, several families have rehabilitated an ancient Hawaiian burial cave that burrows a mile into the side of the cliff. At the very end of the cave, early residents of the district found 12 coffins in a dry, raised area guarded by a deep subterranean pool.

They have now equipped it with mattresses, lights canned goods and have run a garden hose in from a neighbor’s yard. The entrance is seven by twelve feet, and in an emergency 30 people could safely be quartered there.

Army private warship hero

Soldier mans gun on Pearl Harbor craft

HONOLULU, Jan. 3 (UP) – There aren’t many Army privates who get their first taste of action aboard a battleship but that’s Harry Polto’s story and he has a commendation for valor under fire to prove it.

Pvt. Polto is 18 and he comes from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Rock Springs, Wyoming. He’s had less than three months experience in the Army.

His baptism of fire came December 7 when he volunteered to man a Lewis machine gun aboard a battleship at Pearl Harbor.

“I was at Schofield Barracks where I’d been sent after enlisting in the Army and applying for foreign service,” he said. “I enlisted last year. Before that I was in the Marines for 41 days until they discharged me when they found out I was only 17.

“On this morning, I decided to get up early and have Sunday breakfast with a chum from my home town, Coy Tyson, a private first class, U.S. Marines, stationed on a battleship in Pearl Harbor.

“We were ironing out our uniforms in the pressroom of the battleship when a voice sounded off over the loudspeaker: ‘All men man their stations.’

“We hit the deck and I ran along with Tyson for his battle station. I thought it would be fun to watch them work. Just about then everything started to happen at once. I still didn’t know what was going on but as I looked out over the harbor I saw a big explosion. I darned near jumped out of my skin.

“I looked up at the sky and saw a flock of planes diving down, smoke pouring from their machine guns. I looked down at my feet and saw splinters fiving along the deck.

“One bomb struck the turret of our ship and did a little damage. About that time the captain called for machine gun volunteers. I told Tyson I thought I could operate one from my training days as a Marine. He said, ‘Let’s go.’

“I felt awfully shaky at first Tyson fed the ammunition and I did the firing with a 30-caliber Lewis gun.

“I am pretty sure we got one plane. It came down low to drop a bomb on a destroyer. The bomb missed. As the plane pulled up it was very low and I got the pilot square on my sights and blazed away. The plane went out of control right away and was falling in a crash when I last saw it.”

Tokyo claims big U.S. loss

17 destroyers, 22 subs trapped, Japs say

TOKYO, Jan. 3 (Broadcast Recorded in U.S. by The United Press) – Japanese army and naval forces were reported tonight to be violently attacking Corregidor, the Manila Bay fortress, and a sharp increase in pressure against Singapore was expected to result from occupation of Manila.

However, the Japan Times and Advertiser admitted that “more or less persistent” guerrilla warfare must be expected for some time to come in the Philippines, although the newspaper expressed confidence in the final and “complete subjugation” of the islands.

The Domei official news agency claimed that 17 U.S. destroyers, 22 submarines and an aircraft carrier were “trapped” in the Cavite naval base but did not indicate their fate.

Another Japanese report said U.S. transports which sought to leave the Manila waters, were heavily attacked by Japanese, aircraft and “many were seriously damaged.”

A Japanese bomber, according to reports from Saigon, sank a U.S. cargo ship in the South Seas and Japanese submarines 80 miles off the California coast sank a Dutch tanker.

Japanese troops were said to have begun their march into Manila yesterday afternoon through thick clouds of smoke from conflagrations said to have been started by American forces.

“Japanese army and naval forces are now violently attacking Corregidor,” a Domei report said. “Air reconnaissance reports the enemy is attempting to evacuate forces with the aid of transports concentrated near Manila Bay.”

Domei said that only a small garrison was expected to remain in Manila and that “calm and order” will be maintained “in cooperation with Philippine police.”

Domei also claimed that “two-thirds” of the British forces in Malaya have been destroyed in the fighting in Kuantan.

NormanStewart · January 7, 2021, 7:08am

Louis’ fighting urge stays strong

Joe’s eager to battle Baer, Conn and Franklin, and is itching for crack at those Japs
By Harry Grayson, NEA Service sports editor

GREENWOOD LAKE, New York, Jan. 3 (NEA) – Joe Louis Barrow turns into his 11th year of fighting with only a slight scar on his right eyelid to show for 110 battles – 56 as a professional.

Joe Louis will be 28 years old May 13.

He has earned $1,750,000 with his fists.

What are the world champion’s plans?

“Buddy Baer, January 9. Billy Conn in June, and I hope dat boy, Lem Franklin, keeps coming,” replies Louis, in his simple, straight-forward way. “Anyone Mike Jacobs picks.”

Would he box Franklin, the Cleveland Negro who has moved along like a prairie fire?

“With the greatest of pleasure,” says Louis. “Roxy (Manager John Roxborough) and Chappie (Trainer Jack Blackburn) don’t think much of him, but I know he has improved. I keep track of all them fellas.

“I’m going to see Franklin fight Bob Pastor in Cleveland in February. I’ve seen him two or three times.

“Saw him lose a six-round decision to Freddie Fiducia in the Garden. He hasn’t hit Fiducia yet, but that was four years ago, and Fiducia knew too much for him. He’s a right-hand puncher who depends on punching and has a bristle right hand.

“I hope that right hand stays in good repair and that he keeps knocking them fellas out until September. I’ll be lookin’ for an appointment about that time.”

Louis urge strong as ever

How long would Louis remain in the thick of things?

“Until next September, anyway,” he explains.

“Right now I have the urge as strong as I’ve ever had it – to such an extent that I’ve spent the holidays in a training camp.”

Louis did this in order to give his entire purse for the encore with the 245-pound Baby Baer to the Naval Relief Society, which will net something like $120,000 as the result.

“But I’d like to retire undefeated,” continues Louis, “after giving everybody around a crack.

“I’ll hang ‘em up at the first sign that I’m slipping. I’d like to retire undefeated while in the Army.”

Louis expects to be inducted into the Army at any time.

“Army life will do him good,” asserts Handler Blackburn. “And he’d like to be tossed right in among them Japs in the Philippines. For one thing, he won’t do as much intensive boxing training as he has done in order to keep his fighting dates as a civilian.”

The Louis camp is confident that unless Louis is included in an expeditionary force, he will be given furloughs to fight with his fists. No service fund will have to ask twice for his championship services. He expresses his willingness to continue fighting for nothing, if it will help his country.

Louis is vastly more concerned about the war and golf than he is about the Buddy Baers, Conns and Franklins.

Joe owns farm, apartments

What will Louis do when he quits the ring?

He owns 477 acres, 22 miles out of Detroit. More than 200 acres are under cultivation. On the remaining land are cattle and hogs, a riding academy, clubhouse and dancing pavilion.

He owns two apartment buildings in Chicago.

“I’ll manage to keep busy,” declares Louis.

Where will he make his home?

“My wife likes Chicago,” smiles Louis. “Chicago is all right with me, too, except Detroit has been my home since I was a kid. My people and most of my friends are there, and I’d like to stay close at hand.

“I guess it will depend on who’s boss, the missus or me.”

Meanwhile, Joe Louis turns into 1942 – read for anyone and any kind of fighting.

Battery loss is big worry to Boudreau

Young Cleveland pilot expects Hegan to join Feller
By Willard R. Smith, United Press writer

MADISON, Wisconsin, Jan. 3 (UP) – Probable loss of an entire battery to the armed forces of the United States tonight wrinkled the brow of baseball’s youngest big league manager, 24-year-old Lou Boudreau of the Cleveland Indians.

With Bob Feller, the Indians’ pitching marvel, already in the Navy, Boudreau wondered whether revised draft regulations would not also take Jim Hegan, promising young catcher who came to Cleveland from the Eastern League last year.

But organized baseball always has, and always will, contribute all it can to the welfare as well as the entertainment of the nation, said the young shortstop, who a month ago skyrocketed into the position of youngest big league manager in all baseball history after only two and one-half years of big league experience.

Feller biggest loss

“You don’t pick 20 or 22-game winners out of a hat,” Boudreau said, lamenting the absence of Feller from the 1942 Indian roster.

Finding someone to replace Feller even partially is his major problem, Boudreau conceded. Maintaining club discipline, keeping the Indians on the reservation and out of tribal warfare, fades into insignificance in comparison, he indicated. In fact, Boudreau said, he anticipates no disciplinary difficulties with the Tribe which arose in revolt against Manager Oscar Vitt in 1940.

Boudreau, former University of Illinois basketball and baseball player, was in Madison for the Wisconsin-Illinois opening of the Big Ten basketball season. He revealed that he will continue as assistant to Coach Doug Mills of Illinois until the start of spring baseball practice at Clearwater, Florida, where he expects to report around February 23.

Sees ‘baseball as usual’

Baseball, despite an uncertain future, may play an important part in the relaxation and recreation advisable during war time, and is going ahead under the slogan “business as usual,” Boudreau said. His losses to the armed forces also include Outfielders Clarence Campbell and Bob Frierson.

Louis v. Baer…
Indoor gate record seen

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UP) – The young but bellicose year blossoms out with a world’s heavyweight championship fight Friday night as big Buddy Baer tries again to wrest from Joe Louis the golden crown once worn by Brother Maxie.

Brothers have been champions in other divisions, but never in the heavyweight class, and the wagering men here were offering 6-1 today that Buddy wouldn’t change the situation.

Despite the odds, fans are purchasing tickets with such enthusiasm that Promoter Mike Jacobs hopes for a sell-out at The Garden and a record indoor fight gate of about $225,000.

Navy fund gets profits

The customers are going for this brawl for two major reasons: (1) it promises plenty of fireworks, and (2) the entire profits, probably about $100,000, go to the Navy Relief Society.

Fireworks are in prospect because this 15-round bout brings together two terrific punchers, men who provided plenty of thrills in their first stormy meeting at Washington, D.C., May 23, when the Sacramento giant knocked Louis through the ropes in the first round, only to be floored three times and disqualified later.

Buddy’s not cowed a bit

Buddy showed no fear of Louis at Washington, and he is expected to have even more confidence this time.

He discovered that he punches hard enough to knock the champion off his feet, and he believes that Louis won at Washington only because Joe stunned him with a blow after the bell ending the sixth round. Moreover, Buddy, now 26, realizes that this unquestionably will be his last chance at the heavy crown, so he’ll go all out.

Experts and betting men naturally favor Louis overwhelmingly because he is the most destructive heavyweight in ring history. Louis will scale about 205 pounds, heaviest in his career. Baer will weigh 245. Moreover, it is generally known that Louis, making his 20th title defense, is determined to go into the Army still wearing the crown. Jolting Joe is in Class 1-A, and is expected to be called soon after this bout.

Stock market rise carries over into ‘42

Rails advance on heavy buying; AT&T jumps 11 points
By Elmer C. Walzer, United Press financial editor

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UP) – The year 1941 ended on a traditional year-end rally that carried over into 1942.

Volume contracted in the new year as tax selling of 1941 relaxed. Sales for the short week nevertheless averaged 1,705,000 shares daily, against 1,415,000 shares in the preceding week. On Monday the volume reached 2,930,000 shares, the largest since May 21, 1940.

Sales for the year 1941 totaling 170,603,671 shares were the smallest for any year since 1918. They compared with 207560000 shares in 1940. The December 1941 total, swelled by many days of 1,000,000 shares and over, was the best for the particular month since 1936.

Commodities at new high

Commodities were strong with the United Press index of 30 basic commodities at a new high since April 24, 1937, at 151.54 percent of the 1930-1932 average.

Course of the war was ignored in the market. The news while adverse at times, notably the fall of Manila, appeared to have been discounted. Market men believe many adverses will come before eventual victory.

The trend toward an all-out economy was accelerated during the week. The outlook was for eventual elimination of all production of autos for other than the defense program.

Wall Street tried to select the stocks of industries that would be least affected by allocations and priorities. Traders concluded that curtailment of auto production would throw more business to the railroads. They bought railroad shares heavily late in the week.

Selling hits oils

On the theory that fewer passenger cars will be run, the market, men anticipated smaller use of gasoline and there was considerable selling in the oil shares which closed the week with losses.

For a time in the Friday session, the aircrafts were depressed by President Roosevelt’s statement that the government was studying a plan to move the plants on the East and West Coasts to the interior. These issues met support later, however, when the whole market, except oils, turned up.

Pressure relaxed on utilities in the first session of the new year. Before that there had been probably the heaviest tax selling in history concentrated in this group. There had been tax selling as well in motor shares, and such issues as American Telephone. This also relaxed and prices moved higher late in the week.

Rails score good gains

Railroad issues closed the week at substantial gains. Best performers were Umon Pacific issues, Southern Pacific, Southern Railway issues, Louisville & Nashville, Santa Fe, Atlantic Coast Line, and Chesapeake & Ohio.

Utilities scored good recoveries late in the week and many of them finished on gams ranging to more than 2 points.

American Telephone recovered more than 11 points. American Can, recently hammered down on outlook for reduced tin supplies, came back 5 points. Steels were in demand Friday and motors improved on belief war work would offset loss of civilian business.

Steels close strong

Rubber shares were slower than other groups to rally but they managed to gain small amounts. Steels were strong late in the week. Some of the foods came back substantially with Corn Products making a new high for more than a year.

Chemicals and other high-priced issues had wide recoveries on short covering. Coppers improved and the mercantile stocks had a good recovery when tax sales were completed. Tobaccos eased when Leon Henderson frowned on cigarette price advances.

Currency in circulation holds near record high

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 (UP) – Monetary circulation in the United States remained at a near-record level at the close of 1941, according to the weekly condition statement issued by the Federal Reserve System today which disclosed that less than 121 percent of the $507,000,000 added to national circulation in the three pre-Christmas weeks was withdrawn in the period ended December 31.

Reflecting both wartime hoarding and the continued heavy demand for currency incidental to booming employment and payrolls, total circulation on December 31 was reported at $11,161,000,000, only $63,000,000 under the all-time high set in the final week before Christmas.

The normal currency retirement after Christmas, on the basis of the amount put into circulation in the pre-holiday weeks, would be in the neighborhood of $150,000,000.

The system’s condition statement also revealed a small rise in both actual and excess reserves of all member banks and disclosed that the New York banks sold U.S. government securities in considerable volume during the December 31 week.

Bank reserves rise

Actual reserves of all member banks were reported at $12,450,000,000 as of December 31, an increase of $3,000,000 for the week, while excess balances were up $30,000,000 at $3,690,000,000.

Additions to member bank reserves were traced principally to the drop in monetary circulation, coupled with decreases of $41,000,000 in Treasury deposits with the Federal Reserve banks and $68,000,000 in non-member deposits and other Federal Reserve accounts. An increase of $4,000,000 in Treasury currency also contributed to the reserve rise.

Offsetting these factors were a $20,000,000 increase in Treasury cash and decreases of $138,000,000 in reserve bank credit and $14,000,000 in monetary gold stocks, the latter to $22,736,000,000.

Reversing the trend of the New York member banks, the statement showed that the 12 regional banks of the reserve system added $11,338,000 to their holdings of U.S. government bonds, increasing their total holdings of federal securities to $2,254,475.000.

Loans decline

Outstanding loans and investments of the New York member banks were reported at $12,159,000,000 on December 31, a drop of $116,000,000 for the week. Member bank loans were down $47,000,000 while their investment holdings showed a decrease of $69,000,000.

Commercial, industrial and agricultural loans of the New York members were down $32,000,000 at $2,573,000,000 while their loans to brokers and dealers fell $9,000,000 to $364,000,000.

The banks’ holdings of Treasury bills were reduced $26,000,000 in the latest week, and their holdings of Treasury notes were down $3,000,000, while investments in government bonds dropped $45,000,000. Holdings of government-guaranteed obligations declined $3,000,000 and investments in other securities showed an increase of $8,000,000.

Bond market joins upturn in stock list

Prices recover most of losses recorded in December break

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UP) – A brisk year-end rally in stocks spread into the domestic corporate bond market this week, enabling the list to regain most of the ground lost on the early December break and start the new year about midway between the highs and lows of 1941.

U.S. government obligations, however, continued to fluctuate erratically in a relatively slow trade reflecting the usual end-of-the-year withdrawal of big institutional investors from the market.

Meanwhile, Philippine dollar bonds were hard hit in over-the-counter dealings by the fall of Manila, losing as much as 7 points on the week and extending their losses since the start of the war on December 7 to around 28 points.

Australian bonds slump

The issues, outstanding in the amount of about $35,000,000, all were selling above 80 percent of par, however, and there appeared little doubt in investment quarters that the backing of the United States government assured continuance of full service on these bonds.

Foreign dollar loans for the most part were firm, except for a break in Australian municipal issues to the lowest levels in more than a year. Norwegian funds moved up 6 to more than 12 points to around the best levels in a year to feature the upside.

Fairly heavy buying came into the domestic corporate section through the three pre-holiday sessions, mostly based on the strong action of stocks On Friday the list rallied on a late buying flurry prompted by reports the Allies had pledged themselves to a finish fight with the Axis.

Medium-priced rails, which had borne the brunt of the war-scare and tax-loss selling early in December, led the rally this week.

Rails jump 5 points

Prominent in this group were Illinois Central, Delaware & Hudson, New York Central, Southern Pacific and Southern Railway where gas ranged from about 4 to more than 5 points. Higher-priced and speculative issues had gains running to more than 4 points.

Oils and rubber company loans weakened in an otherwise firm industrial section, reflecting the new government order banning sales of new cars as well as on the disturbing war reports from the Far East. Firestone 3s plunged 7 points to a new low before meeting support.

In the utility division, communications were particularly strong on gains extending to nearly 6 points in the International Telephone issues and to about 3 points in the Western Union group. Power and light bonds generally had smaller gains.

Record food sales forecast for 1942

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UP) – President Paul S. Willis of the Associated Grocery Manufacturers of America predicted today that food sales will reach an all-time high of 15 billion dollars during 1942, topping the previous record set in 1941 by $2,225,000,000.

In a letter issued to all members of the manufacturers’ organization, Mr. Willis pointed out that his forecast would mean that 15 percent of the anticipated 1942 national income of $100,000,000,000 will be spent on food.

“The purchase of food offers one constructive safety valve,” he said. “Families should be encouraged to use a substantial proportion of their income to build better health through better food.

“The government is in full accord with this idea. Price Administrator Leon Henderson has recently urged consumers to buy more and better food with their extra dollars. A great national nutrition campaign is under way with government and industry working closely together to encourage the more extensive use of food.”

War has ‘limited effort’ on U.S. money markets

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UP) – The United States’ overnight shift from a nation at peace to a nation at war early last month had “only a limited effect” on domestic money markets and interest rates, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said today in its monthly review of credit and business conditions.

“The shock felt by the government security market, for example, could not be compared with its reaction at the outbreak of the European war in September 1939,” the bank said.

“Of all the domestic financial markets,” it added, “the stock market alone showed more than a moderate reaction and prices of stocks, already depressed by year-end ‘tax sales’ and the prospect of still higher taxes, reached new lows since 1935.”

Although blind, man volunteers to help in war

Civil Defense Office tells of personal sacrifices

Little tales of personal heroism and sacrifice show up every day at the Civilian Defense Volunteer Office to swell the rising flood tide of American unity for war.

Some of them come from America’s adopted sons and daughters, volunteering to help the war against their native lands.

Others come from native Americans like James Jones, of 1029 Excelsior St., a blind man who has offered help the morale corps as an entertainer able to sing classic and popular music.

Foreign-born aid

The foreign-born are particularly common at the Civilian Defense Volunteer office. Unless they have final citizenship papers they can’t volunteer for the armed forces.

One man eager to help is Stephen Zelinikajtis, a native Pole who came to America for the first time in 1906. Two weeks after this war broke out his Polish-born wife and American-born daughter were killed in Warsaw.

His only other daughter is somewhere in Italy, in a concentration camp, he fears. She survived the bombing of Warsaw, got to Genoa, Italy, and was to have sailed for America on June 9, 1940. But Mussolini stabbed France on June 6, closed the Italian borders, and young Marie has not been heard from since.

Fought Bolsheviks

Because he is a student familiar with several European languages and served with the Polish Army against the Bolsheviks in 1920, Mr. Zelinikajtis thinks he could help in detecting spies and fifth columnists but is willing to do other work, too.

An ex-German soldier, who is afraid that publication of his name will bring reprisal against relatives still in Germany, wants to “do anything at all.” “I got out of Germany in 1938 because I didn’t like Hitler and he didn’t like me,” he explained. Part of his ancestral blood is Jewish.

The ex-soldier fought with the Germans against Russia and at Verdun, serving through four years of war. He’d like to do something against Hitler – anything at all because, as he explained, “there are a lot of Germans who hate Hitler more than you Americans do.”

Mrs. Ruth Morrissey, of 204 Colonial Apartments, Wilkinsburg, served with the Turkish Red Cross at Constantinople in the last war and is willing to help wherever possible in this war. One of her sons is a volunteer in the U.S. Army.

Frank Chriodo, 55, of 1026 Ivanhoe St., an ex-Italian Army officer, was so disappointed when told that he was too old to serve with the U.S. Marines that he broke into tears. He has a twin brother in Italy.

Ex-service man joins

Among the native-born volunteers are an amateur radio station operator, an ex-Army man who served with the Signal Corps in 1918, and an ex-Navy man who can speak three Philippine dialects.

A pigeon fancier, Clarence Ecroyd, 26, of 7724½ Alsace St., Brushton, wants to help the U.S. government register and classify all homing pigeons for use in detecting spies and as messengers for an emergency.

Would-be aviator almost goes to jail

BERKELEY, California, Jan. 3 (UP) – Donald V. Dobbie, a University of California accountant, nibbled at a crust of dry toast today, said he planned to scorn potatoes from here out, and announced pleasantly that he had reduced his weight from 203 pounds to 202 pounds.

The Dobbie diet stems from his determination to get into the Army Air Corps. He must take off 14 pounds, and he is confident he can do it. Last night it almost got him into trouble.

“There is a great pile of clothing moving up and down the street,” an excited woman phoned police.

Police arrived, grappled with the moving pile and peeled away coats and sweaters. Dobbie came into view. He explained his purpose. The police wished him well, helped him back under the covers.

U.S. State Department (January 4, 1942)

Arnold conversations with Hopkins, Roosevelt, and Churchill

Meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill with their military advisers, 5:30 p.m.

NormanStewart · January 7, 2021, 12:28pm

Völkischer Beobachter (January 5, 1942)

Die Lage nach der Besetzung Manilas
Reste des USA-Geschwaders eingeschlossen

dnb. Tokio, 4. Januar
Die letzten in Tokio eingetroffenen Berichte über die militärische Lage auf den Philippinen lassen erkennen, daß die Hauptmasse der aus Manila und Umgebung geflüchteten feindlichen Truppen sich im Festungsgürtel innerhalb der Manilabucht und um den Kriegshafen Olongapo in der Subigbucht (unmittelbar nördlich der Manilabucht) versammelt haben.

Beide Buchten sind stark vermint und in weitem Umkreis von starken Verbänden der japanischen Flotte eingeschlossen. Die japanischen Landungstruppen riegeln die einzelnen feindlichen Positionen ein: Den Hafen Olongapo, wo 18 Stellungen schwerer feindlicher Artillerie festgestellt worden sind, dann die Südspitze der Balanga-Halbinsel am Westausgang der Manilabucht und schließlich die gegenüberliegende Halbinsel am Südausgang der Manilabucht gegenüber der Inselfestung Corregidor, die die Manilabucht nach der offenen See hin abschließt.

Wie aus Manila gemeldet wird, marschieren immer neue japanische Truppen in die Stadt ein, die sich bereits auf dem Weitermarsch im Küstengebiet der Manila-Bucht befinden, wo die Einkreisung der geschlagenen feindlichen Truppen fortschreitet. Die USA-Truppen haben vor ihrer Flucht die Öltanks und Kasernen im Zentrum Manilas in Brand gesteckt. Die Bevölkerung der Stadt verhält sich vollkommen ruhig. Die Geschäfte wurden bereits wieder geöffnet. Alle japanischen Bewohner Manilas sind wohlbehalten.

Auf Corregidor, das moderne Verteidigungsanlagen besitzt, befinden sich heute alle geflüchteten USA-Kommandobehörden, während in Cavite die Reste des USA- Asiengeschwaders stationiert sind. Die japanische Luftwaffe hat den Angriff auf diese Befestigungsanlagen eröffnet.

Fünf Stunden lang bombardiert

Die Inselfestung Corregidor, in die General McArthur die Reste der Manila-Verteidiger zurückgezogen hat, wurde am Samstag von 60 japanischen Flugzeugen fünf Stunden lang schwer bombardiert. Gleichzeitig griff die japanische Luftwaffe landeinwärts zurückgehende USA-Truppen an. Andere Einheiten griffen die Westküste der Bataan-Halbinsel, die nördlich von Corregidor liegt, an. Hierbei wurden 140 Lastwagen zerstört, mit denen USA-Truppen zu flüchten versuchten.

Die Marineabteilung des Kaiserlichen Hauptquartiers gibt eine zusammenfassende Übersicht über die Ergebnisse der Operationen gegen die Philippinen. Danach wurden bisher versenkt: vier feindliche Zerstörer, sieben U-Boote, fünf Handelsschiffe. Schwer beschädigt wurden zwei Spezialschiffe und dreißig größere oder kleinere Handelsfahrzeuge; teilweise beschädigt ein Zerstörer, zwei kleine Patrouillenboote und vier Handelsfahrzeuge; erbeutet ein Handelsschiff.

An Feindflugzeugen wurden 103 abgeschossen und 360 am Boden zerstört.

Die „Vasallen“ müssen Erklärungen abgeben
Enttäuschung um das Roosevelt-Affentheater

Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“

dr. th. b. Stockholm, 4. Januar
Das Ergebnis der Besprechungen in Washington liegt jetzt vor. Wie „Dagens Nyheter“ aus London ausdrücklich berichtet wird, ist es außer der Bestellung des früher im Nahen Osten abgesetzten Generals Wavell zum Oberbefehlshaber in Ostasien, dem ein amerikanischer Berater beigegeben ist, während Tschiangkaischek weiter die Tschungking-Truppen führt, das einzige sichtbare Ergebnis von Verhandlungen, für die ein bisher nie dagewesener Aufwand an Reklame getrieben wurde. Um so größer muß bei allen beteiligten Kreisen die Enttäuschung sein. Denn was schließlich herausgekommen ist, ist nichts weiter als eine Erklärung der englischen und nordamerikanischen Vasallen, die sich verpflichten, alle ihre militärischen und wirtschaftlichen Kräfte gegen die Staaten des Dreimächtepaktes und ihre Verbündeten einzusetzen und keinen Sonderwaffenstillstand oder Sonderfrieden zu schließen.

Weit wichtiger als diese papierene Erklärung, mit der Churchill und Roosevelt keinen Hund hinter dem Ofen hervorlocken können, ist das, was in Washington nicht erreicht wurde, nämlich ein Bündnis zwischen den USA und England. Wie „Stockholms Tidningen“ aus Washington meldet, hatte sich Churchill mit allen Kräften bemüht, ein solches Bündnis zustande zu bringen, ist aber an dem Widerstand Roosevelts gescheitert, der sich in keiner Richtung festlegen wollte. Ein Bündnis mit England wäre einer weiteren Ausbreitung des nordamerikanischen Einflusses auf Kosten Englands nur hinderlich gewesen.

Natürlich betont man auf englischer und nordamerikanischer Seite die besondere Wichtigkeit der strategischen und wirtschaftlichen Ergebnisse, um von der Wahrheit abzulenken, daß nämlich die strategischen und wirtschaftlichen Abmachungen mit der militärischen Entwicklung in Ostasien nicht Schritt halten konnten.

Churchill muß sich umstellen

Bei Beginn der Besprechungen hatte Churchill im amerikanischen Kongreß erklärt, daß er Nordafrika und den Atlantik als die Hauptkriegsschauplätze betrachte und daß deshalb Rückschlage in Ostasien und im Stillen Ozean in Kauf genommen werden müßten. Er hat diese Auffassung unter dem Druck der Ereignisse und in Rücksicht auf die scharfe Opposition Australiens und Neuseelands revidieren müssen. Nun kann nach der Eroberung Manilas und des Flottenstützpunktes Cavite, die die Voraussetzung zu der endgültigen Vertreibung der Amerikaner aus den Philippinen geschaffen haben, von einem Nebenkriegsschauplatz in Ostasien erst recht nicht mehr die Rede sein.

Der australische Ministerpräsident hat schon einen weiteren Hilferuf nach Washington gerichtet, die USA sollten Schiffe und Waffen schicken, und im gleichen Sinn hat sich der Oberbefehlshaber in Niederländisch-Indien geäußert. Curtin teilte dabei mit, daß die USA-Schiffe „von einem australischen Stützpunkt aus operieren werden“, also durchaus an der äußersten Peripherie des Kampfraumes.

Der Name Singapur fehlt in einem pessimistischen Aufsatz der „Times“ nicht. In Wirklichkeit aber beherrscht er die gesamten strategischen Erwägungen in Washington, um so mehr, nachdem es den japanischen Truppen gelungen ist, die britischen Stellungen auf der Malaiischen Halbinsel zu durchbrechen, zwei Drittel der britischen Streitkräfte bei Kuantan aufzureiben und unter Landung neuer Truppen in konzentrischen Stößen gegen Kuala Lampur vorzugehen. So tapfer die Japaner in ihrem Vorgehen sind, so vorsichtig sind sie in ihren Äußerungen. Der Marineminister Schimada hat das japanische Volk sogar ermahnt, den großen Erfolgen gegenüber Mäßigung zu bewahren und die Macht Englands und Nordamerikas nicht zu unterschätzen. Wenn also Ministerpräsident Tojo erklären konnte, daß es nur eine Frage der Zeit sei, bis Manila und Singapur das gleiche Schicksal erleiden wie Hongkong, so wird man das in London und Washington besonders nach dem Fall von Manila mit gebührendem Ernst zur Kenntnis nehmen, auch wenn man nach außen hin immer noch eine leichte Miene zur Schau trägt.

Japan jetzt auf der „inneren Linie“

Mit der Eroberung der Philippinen, die nur mehr eine Frage der Zeit ist, hat sich Japan für seine Kriegführung den gleichen Vorteil gesichert, über den die Achsenmächte in Europa verfügen, den der inneren Linie. Die Abschneidung Englands und Nordamerikas von dem Zugang zu wichtigen Rohstoffquellen, zu den Ölquellen von Borneo, zu den Gummipflanzungen und Zinngruben auf der Malaiischen Halbinsel ist gleichsam das wirtschaftliche Nebenprodukt dieses entscheidenden operativen Gewinnes.

Von japanischen Erfolgen her, die wiederum im engsten Zusammenhang mit dem vollen Einsatz der Verbündeten Japans auf anderen Fronten stehen, fällt auf die kümmerliche Demonstration des „Antiachsenblocks“ von Washington erst das rechte Licht. Erneut erweist es sich, daß in der Kriegführung des Dreimächteblocks eine sinnvolle Verteilung der operativen Aufgaben vorwaltet. Wonach die Kriegshetzer in London, Washington und Moskau erst suchen, das ist auf deutscher, italienischer und japanischer Seite in weitschauender Planung Wirklichkeit geworden. Diese Planung vermag Wechselfälle und Überraschungen, die nun einmal zum Wesen des Krieges gehören, nicht auszuschließen, wohl aber aufzufangen und zum Ausgangspunkt neuer Entschlüsse zu machen.

Die neuen Plutokratengenerale

Wavell ist auf Roosevelts Vorschlag zum Oberkommandierenden aller alliierten Streitkräfte zu Lande, zu Wasser und in der Luft „im Raume des südwestlichen Stillen Ozeans“ ernannt worden. Sein Stellvertreter ist der Chef der amerikanischen Armeeluftwaffe, Generalmajor Georges Brett.

Den Befehl über die alliierten Seestreitkräfte übernimmt unter Wavells Oberbefehl der amerikanische Admiral Thomas Hart, General Sir Henry Pownall, der Nachfolger General Sir Robert Brooke-Pophams, wird Wavells Stabschef.

Führer-Hauptquartier (January 5, 1942)

Wehrmachtbericht

Im mittleren Abschnitt der Ostfront wurden wiederum zahlreiche Angriffe und Vorstöße erfolgreich abgewehrt. In den übrigen Frontabschnitten nur örtliche Kampftätigkeit. Angriffe starker Kampf- und Jagdfliegerverbände richteten sich gegen feindliche Stellungen und Schiffe im Raum von Feodosia. Fünf große Schiffe gerieten nach Bombentreffern in Brand. Zwei Zerstörer und ein großes Handelsschiff wurden durch Volltreffer schwer beschädigt.

Im Zuge bewaffneter Aufklärung gegen Großbritannien griffen Kampfflugzeuge bei Tage Hafen- und Funkanlagen auf den Färöern und Shetlands sowie Industrieanlagen an der englischen Ostküste erfolgreich an.

Unterseeboote versenkten im Atlantik, im Eismeer und im Mittelmeer vier Schiffe, darunter einen großen Tanker, mit zusammen 20.000 BRT. Zwei weitere Schiffe wurden durch Torpedotreffer beschädigt.

In Nordafrika fanden keine größeren Kampfhandlungen statt. Verbände der deutschen Luftwaffe griffen britische Flugplätze, Molen und Flakstellungen bei Bengasi an und belegten die Küstenstraße wirksam mit Bomben. In Luftkämpfen wurden fünf Flugzeuge abgeschossen.

Auf der Insel Malta wurden die Luftangriffe gegen britische Flugplätze erfolgreich fortgesetzt.

Versuche einzelner britischer Bomber, das norddeutsche Küstengebiet anzugreifen, blieben erfolglos. Die Zivilbevölkerung hatte einige Verletzte.

Comando Supremo (January 5, 1942)

Bollettino n. 582

Il Quartier Generale delle Forze Armate comunica in data 5 gennaio 1942:

Nulla di importante da segnalare nel settore di Agedabia. Intense azioni d’artiglieria e d’aviazione contro i nostri capisaldi di Sollum. In scontri aerei cacciatori dell’Asse hanno abbattuto 2 velivoli avversari.

Attacchi di ingenti forze dell’aviazione italiana e tedesca su Malta hanno conseguito nuovi visibili effetti: vasti incendi sono divampati, numerosi apparecchi nemici risultano distrutti o danneggiati a terra. In combattimenti con la caccia germanica di scorta, 2 Hurricane sono precipitati.

Aeroplani inglesi hanno lanciato, senza conseguenze, alcune bombe sull’isola di Salamina.

Nella notte scorsa l’avversario ha compiuto un’incursione su Castelvetrano causando danni di scarsa entità: otto morti e 15 feriti; un bombardiere nemico, colpito dal tiro della difesa contraerea, si é infranto al suolo.

U.S. War Department (January 5, 1942)

Communique No. 45

PHILIPPINE THEATER – A strong Japanese attack on American and Philippine troops northwest of Manila on Sunday was repulsed with heavy enemy losses, it is estimated that at least 700 of the enemy were killed in this attack. Our losses were relatively small. This was one of the most serious reverses suffered by the Japanese invaders since the war began.

The tactics pursued by the Japanese in the invasion of Luzon contemplated crushing the greatly outnumbered defenders between two invading forces operating as pincers from the north and south. The Japanese trap was closed, but American and Philippine troops were not in the jaws. To this extent the Japanese strategy failed, necessitating yesterday’s frontal attack, which likewise failed.

Enemy air attacks on the fortified island of Corregidor were renewed yesterday for the third successive day. Fifty-two Japanese bombers participated in the attack, which continued for three hours. Material damage and casualties were slight. Our anti-aircraft batteries shot down four Japanese bombers. Four more were hit but reports of their destruction were not confirmed.

There is nothing to report from other areas.

U.S. Navy Department (January 5, 1942)

Communique No. 24

FAR EAST – The USS HERON (AM-10), a small seaplane tender, while engaged in action with enemy planes over a period of seven hours, sustained one direct bomb hit and three very near misses. The HERON was attacked by a total of 10 four-engined flying boats and five twin-engined landplane bombers. Forty-six 100-pound bombs were dropped by the enemy planes and three torpedoes were launched at her sides. Due to very skillful handling, the ship most courageously fought against overwhelming odds, and destroyed one four-engined flying boat, badly damaged at least one other and probably more. The ship though receiving damage from one bomb that found its mark managed to reach port safely. The Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic Fleet, Thomas S. Hart, in accordance with an order of the Secretary of the Navy has awarded the Navy Cross to the Commanding Officer, Lt. William Leverette Kabler, and recommended that he be advanced immediately to the rank of lieutenant commander. Further recommendations regarding other personnel will be made at a later date.

It has been ascertained from late information that the patients and staff at the Naval Hospital Canacao, near Cavite, were evacuated to Manila prior to the occupation of that city by the enemy.

ATLANTIC THEATER – The merchant ship MARCONI flying the Panamanian flag but reported to be of Italian ownership was captured and brought into Cristobal Canal Zone, and turned over to the courts for adjudication.

The submarine situation in the Atlantic Area and off the West Coast of the United States remains unchanged.

The Hawaiian Area was quiet.

Annual Budget Message
January 5, 1942

To the Congress:

I am submitting herewith the Budget of the United States for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1943. It is the budget of a Nation at war in a world at war.

In practical terms the Budget meets the challenge of the Axis powers. We must provide the funds to man and equip our fighting forces. We must provide the funds for the organization of our resources. We must provide the funds to continue our role as the Arsenal of Democracy.

Powerful enemies must be outfought and outproduced. Victory depends on the courage, skill, and devotion of the men in the American, British, Russian, Chinese, and Dutch forces, and of the others who join hands with us in the fight for freedom. But victory also depends upon efforts behind the lines – in the mines, in the shops, on the farms.

We cannot outfight our enemies unless, at the same time, we outproduce our enemies. It is not enough to turn out just a few more planes, a few more tanks, a few more guns, a few more ships, than can be turned out by our enemies. We must outproduce them overwhelmingly, so that there can be no question of our ability to provide a crushing superiority of equipment in any theater of the world war.

And we shall succeed. A system of free enterprise is more effective than an “order” of concentration camps. The struggle for liberty first made us a Nation. The vitality, strength, and adaptability of a social order built on freedom and individual responsibility will again triumph.

THE WAR PROGRAM

Our present war program was preceded by a defense effort which began as we emerged from the long depression. During the past eighteen months we laid the foundation for a huge armament program. At the same time industry provided ample consumers’ goods for a rapidly growing number of workers. Hundreds of thousands of new homes were constructed; the production of consumers’ durable goods broke all records. The industrial plant and equipment of the country were overhauled and expanded.

Adjustment to a war program can now be made with greater speed and less hardship. The country is better stocked with durable goods. Our factories are better equipped to carry the new production load. The larger national income facilitates financing the war effort.

There are still unused resources for agricultural and industrial production. These must be drawn into the national effort. Shortages, however, have developed in skilled labor, raw materials, machines, and shipping. Under the expanding war program, more and more productive capacity must be shifted from peacetime to wartime work.

Last year fiscal policy was used to shift the economy into high gear. Today it is an instrument for transforming our peace economy into a war economy. This transformation must be completed with minimum friction and maximum speed. The fiscal measures which I outline in this message are essential elements in the Nation’s war program.

WAR APPROPRIATIONS. This is a war budget. The details of a war program are, of course, in constant flux. Its magnitude and composition depend on events at the battlefronts of the world, on naval engagements at sea, and on new developments in mechanized warfare. Moreover, war plans are military secrets.

Under these circumstances I cannot hereafter present details of future war appropriations. However, total appropriations and expenditures will be published so that the public may know the fiscal situation and the progress of the Nation’s effort.

The defense program, including appropriations, contract authorizations, recommendations, and commitments of Government corporations, was 29 billion dollars on January 3, 1941. During the last twelve months 46 billion dollars have been added to the program. Of this total of 75 billion dollars there remains 24 billion dollars for future obligation.

In this Budget I make an initial request for a war appropriation of 13.6 billion dollars for the fiscal year 1943. Large supplemental requests will be made as we move toward the maximum use of productive capacity. Nothing short of a maximum will suffice. I cannot predict ultimate costs because I cannot predict the changing fortunes of war. I can only say that we are determined to pay whatever price we must to preserve our way of life.

WAR EXPENDITURES. Total war expenditures are now running at a rate of 2 billion dollars a month and may surpass 5 billion dollars a month during the fiscal year 1943. As against probable budgetary war expenditures of 24 billion dollars for the current fiscal year, our present objective calls for war expenditures of nearly 53 billion dollars for the fiscal year 1943. And in addition, net outlays of Government corporations for war purposes are estimated at about 2 and 3 billion dollars for the current and the next fiscal year, respectively.

These huge expenditures for ships, planes, and other war equipment will require prompt conversion of a large portion of our industrial establishment to war production. These estimates reflect our determination to devote at least one-half of our national production to the war effort.

The agencies responsible for the administration of this vast program must make certain that every dollar is speedily converted into a maximum of war effort. We are determined to hold waste to a minimum.

THE CIVIL FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT

In a true sense, there are no longer non-defense expenditures. It is a part of our war effort to maintain civilian services which are essential to the basic needs of human life. In the same way it is necessary in wartime to conserve our natural resources and keep in repair our national plant. We cannot afford waste or destruction, for we must continue to think of the good of future generations of Americans. For example, we must maintain fire protection in our forests; and we must maintain control over destructive floods. In the preparation of the present Budget, expenditures not directly related to the war have been reduced to a minimum or reoriented to the war program.

We all know that the war will bring hardships and require adjustment. Assisting those who suffer in the process of transformation and taxing those who benefit from the war are integral parts of our national program.

It is estimated that expenditures for the major Federal assistance programs – farm aid, work relief, youth aid – can be reduced by 600 million dollars from the previous to the current fiscal year, and again by 860 million dollars from the current to the next fiscal year. These programs will require 1.4 billion dollars during the fiscal year 1943, about one-half of the expenditures for these purposes during the fiscal year 1941.

Improved economic conditions during the current year have made possible the execution of economic and social programs with smaller funds than were originally estimated. By using methods of administrative budget control, 415 million dollars of appropriations for civil purposes have been placed in reserves.

Excluding debt charges and grants under the Social Security law, total expenditures for other than direct war purposes have been reduced by slightly more than 1 billion dollars in the next fiscal year.

Agricultural aid. I propose to include contract authorizations in the Budget to assure the farmer a parity return on his 1942 crop, largely payable in the fiscal year 1944. I do not suggest a definite appropriation at this time because developments of farm income and farm prices are too uncertain. Agricultural incomes and prices have increased and we hope to limit the price rise of the products actually bought by the farmer. But if price developments should turn against the farmer, an appropriation will be needed to carry out the parity objective of the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

The remaining expenditures for the agricultural program are being brought into accord with the war effort. Food is an essential war material. I propose to continue the soil conservation and use program on a moderately reduced scale. Acreage control by cooperative efforts of farmer and Government was inaugurated in a period of overproduction in almost all lines of farming. Then its major objective was the curtailment of production to halt a catastrophic decline in farm prices. At present, although there is still excess production in some types of farming, serious shortages prevail in other types. The present program is designed to facilitate a balanced increase in production and to aid in controlling prices.

Work projects. The average number of WPA workers was two million in the fiscal year 1940, the year before the defense program started; the average has been cut to one million this year. With increasing employment a further considerable reduction will be possible. I believe it will be necessary to make some provision for work relief during the next year. I estimate tentatively that 465 million dollars will be needed for WPA, but I shall submit a specific request later in the year. Workers of certain types and in certain regions of the country probably will not all be absorbed by war industries. It is better to provide useful work for the unemployed on public projects than to lose their productive power through idleness. Wherever feasible they will be employed on war projects.

Material shortages are creating the problem of “priority unemployment.” I hope the workers affected will be reemployed by expanding war industries before their unemployment compensation ceases. Some of the workers affected will not, however, be eligible for such compensation and may be in need of assistance.

Rather than rely on relief a determined effort should be made to speed up reemployment in defense plants. I have, therefore, instructed the. Office of Production Management to join the procurement agencies in an effort to place contracts with those industries forced to cut their peacetime production. The ingenuity of American management has already adapted some industries to war production. Standardization and substitution are doing their part in maintaining production. Ever-increasing use of subcontracts, pooling of industrial resources, and wider distribution of contracts are of paramount importance for making the fullest use of our resources. The newly nationalized Employment Service will greatly help unemployed workers in obtaining employment.

Aids to youth. Under war conditions there is need and opportunity for youth to serve in many ways. It is therefore possible to make a considerable reduction in the programs of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration. The youth, too, will be aided by the United States Employment Service in finding employment opportunities.

Although I am estimating 100 million dollars for these two agencies, excluding 50 million dollars for defense training, it is probable that the total amount will not be needed. I am postponing until next spring presentation to the Congress of specific recommendations as to youth aid.

Public works program. The public works program is being fully adjusted to the war effort. The general program of 578 million dollars includes those projects necessary for increasing production of hydroelectric power, for flood control, and for river and harbor work related to military needs. Federal aid for highways will be expended only for construction essential for strategic purposes. Other highway projects will be deferred until the postwar period. For all other Federal construction I am restricting expenditures to those active projects which cannot be discontinued without endangering the structural work now in progress.

Civil departments and agencies. The work of the civil departments and agencies is undergoing thorough reorientation. Established agencies will be used to the greatest possible extent for defense services. Many agencies have already made such readjustment. All civil activities of the Government are being focused on the war program.

Federal grants and debt service. A few categories of civil expenditures show an increase. Under existing legislation Federal grants to match the appropriations for public assistance made by the individual States will increase by 73 million dollars. I favor an amendment to the Social Security Act which would modify matching grants to accord with the needs of the various States. Such legislation would probably not affect expenditures substantially during the next fiscal year.

Because of heavy Federal borrowing, interest charges are expected to increase by 139 million dollars in the current fiscal year, and by another 500 million dollars in the fiscal year 1943. Debt service is, of course, affected by war spending.

COORDINATION OF FISCAL POLICIES. The fiscal policy of the Federal Government, especially with respect to public works, is being reinforced by that of State and local governments. Executive committees of the Council of State Governments and the Governors’ Conference have issued excellent suggestions for harmonizing various aspects of State and local fiscal policy with national objectives. These governments are readjusting many of their services so as to expedite the war program. Many are making flexible plans for the postwar readjustment and some are accumulating financial reserves for that purpose. The larger the scale of our war effort, the more important it becomes to provide a reservoir of postwar work by business and by Federal, State, and local governments.

FINANCING THE WAR

Determination, skill, and materiel are three great necessities for victory. Methods of financing may impair or strengthen these essentials. Sound fiscal policies are those which will help win the war. A fair distribution of the war burden is necessary for national unity. A balanced financial program will stimulate the productivity of the Nation and assure maximum output of war equipment.

With total war expenditures, including net outlays of Government corporations, estimated at 26 billion dollars for the current fiscal year and almost 56 billion dollars for the fiscal year 1943, war finance is a task of tremendous magnitude requiring a concerted program of action.

RECEIPTS UNDER PRESENT LEGISLATION. Total receipts from existing tax legislation will triple under the defense and war programs. They are expected to increase from 6 billion dollars in the fiscal year 1940 to 18 billion dollars in the fiscal year 1943. This increase is due partly to the expansion of economic activities and partly to tax legislation enacted during the last two years. As we approach full use of our resources, further increases in revenue next year must come predominantly from new tax measures rather than from a greater tempo of economic activity. Taxes on incomes, estates, and corporate profits are showing the greatest increase. Yields from employment taxes are increasing half as fast; and the yields from excise taxes are increasing more slowly; customs are falling off. On the whole, our tax system has become more progressive since the defense effort started.

DEFICITS UNDER PRESENT LAWS. The estimate of deficits must be tentative and subject to later revision. The probable net outlay of the Budget and Government corporations, excluding revenues from any new taxes, will be 20.9 billion dollars for the current fiscal year, and 45.4 billion dollars for the fiscal year 1943. Borrowing from trust funds will reduce the amounts which must be raised by taxation and borrowing from the public by about 2 billion dollars in the fiscal year 1942 and 2.8 billion dollars in the fiscal year 1943.

In estimating expenditures and receipts, only a moderate rise in prices has been assumed. Since expenditures are affected by rising prices more rapidly than are revenues, a greater price increase would further increase the deficit.

THE NEED FOR ADDITIONAL TAXES. In view of the tremendous deficits, I reemphasize my request of last year that war expenditures be financed as far as possible by taxation. When so many Americans are contributing all their energies and even their lives to the Nation’s great task, I am confident that all Americans will be proud to contribute their utmost in taxes. Until this job is done, until this war is won, we will not talk of burdens.

I believe that 7 billion dollars in additional taxes should be collected during the fiscal year 1943. Under new legislation proposed later in this Message, social security trust funds will increase by 2 billion dollars. Thus new means of financing would provide a total of 9 billion dollars in the fiscal year 1943.

Specific proposals to accomplish this end will be transmitted in the near future. In this Message I shall limit my recommendations on war finance to the broad outline of a program.

Tax programs too often follow the line of least resistance. The present task definitely requires enactment of a well-balanced program which takes account of revenue requirements, equity, and economic necessities.

There are those who suggest that the policy of progressive taxation should be abandoned for the duration of the war because these taxes do not curtail consumers’ demand. The emergency does require measures of a restrictive nature which impose sacrifices on all of us. But such sacrifices are themselves the most compelling argument for making progressive taxes more effective. The anti-inflationary aspect of taxation should supplement, not supplant, its revenue and equity aspects.

NormanStewart · January 7, 2021, 1:43pm

PROGRESSIVE TAXES. Progressive taxes are the backbone of the Federal tax system. In recent years much progress has been made in perfecting income, estate, gift, and profit taxation but numerous loopholes still exist. Because some taxpayers use them to avoid taxes, other taxpayers must pay more. The higher the tax rates the more urgent it becomes to close the loopholes. Exemptions in estate and gift taxation should be lowered. The privileged treatment given certain types of business in corporate income taxation should be reexamined.

It seems right and just that no further tax-exempt bonds should be issued. We no longer issue United States tax-exempt bonds and it is my personal belief that the income from State, municipal, and authority bonds is taxable under the income-tax amendment to the Constitution. As a matter of equity I recommend legislation to tax all future issues of this character.

Excessive profits undermine unity and should be recaptured. The fact that a corporation had large profits before the defense program started is no reason to exempt them now. Unreasonable profits are not necessary to obtain maximum production and economical management. Under war conditions the country cannot tolerate undue profits.

Our tax laws contain various technical inequities and discriminations. With taxes at wartime levels, it is more urgent than ever to eliminate these defects in our tax system.

ANTI-INFLATIONARY TAXES. I stated last year in the Budget Message that extraordinary tax measures may be needed to “aid in avoiding inflationary price rises which may occur when full capacity is approached.” The time for such measures has come. A well-balanced tax program must include measures which combat inflation. Such measures should absorb some of the additional purchasing power of consumers and some of the additional funds which accrue to business from increased consumer spending.

A number of tax measures have been suggested for that purpose, such as income taxes collected at the source, pay-roll taxes, and excise taxes. I urge the Congress to give all these proposals careful consideration. Any tax is better than an uncontrolled price rise.

Taxes of an anti-inflationary character at excessive rates spell hardship in individual cases and may have undesirable economic repercussions. These can be mitigated by timely adoption of a variety of measures, each involving a moderate rate of taxation.

Any such tax should be considered an emergency measure. It may help combat inflation; its repeal in a postwar period may help restore an increased flow of consumers’ purchasing power.

Excise taxes. All through the years of the depression I opposed general excise and sales taxes and I am as convinced as ever that they have no permanent place in the Federal tax system. In the face of the present financial and economic situation, however, we may later be compelled to reconsider the temporary necessity of such measures.

Selective excise taxes are frequently useful for curtailing the demand for consumers’ goods, especially luxuries and semiluxuries. They should be utilized when manufacture of the products competes with the war effort.

Payroll-taxes and the social security program. I oppose the use of pay-roll taxes as a measure of war finance unless the worker is given his full money’s worth in increased social security. From the inception of the social security program in 1935 it has been planned to increase the number of persons covered and to provide protection against hazards not initially included. By expanding the program now, we advance the organic development of our social security system and at the same time contribute to the anti-inflationary program.

I recommend an increase in the coverage of old-age and survivors’ insurance, addition of permanent and temporary disability payments and hospitalization payments beyond the present benefit programs, and liberalization and expansion of unemployment compensation in a uniform national system. I suggest that collection of additional contributions be started as soon as possible, to be followed one year later by the operation of the new benefit plans.

Additional employer and employee contributions will cover increased disbursements over a long period of time. Increased contributions would result in reserves of several billion dollars for postwar contingencies. The present accumulation of these contributions would absorb excess purchasing power. Investment of the additional reserves in bonds of the United States Government would assist in financing the war.

The existing administrative machinery for collecting pay-roll taxes can function immediately. For this reason Congressional consideration might be given to immediate enactment of this proposal, while other necessary measures are being perfected.

I estimate that the social security trust funds would be increased through the proposed legislation by 2 billion dollars during the fiscal year 1943.

FLEXIBILITY IN THE TAX SYSTEM. Our fiscal situation makes imperative the greatest possible flexibility in our tax system. The Congress should consider the desirability of tax legislation which makes possible quick adjustment in the timing of tax rates and collections during an emergency period.

BORROWING AND THE MENACE OF INFLATION. The war program requires not only substantially increased taxes but also greatly increased borrowing. After adjusting for additional tax collections and additional accumulation in social security trust funds, borrowing from the public in the current and the next fiscal year would be nearly 19 billion dollars and 34 billion dollars, respectively.

Much smaller deficits during the fiscal year 1941 were associated with a considerable increase in prices. Part of this increase was a recovery from depression lows. A moderate price rise, accompanied by an adjustment of wage rates, probably facilitated the increase in production and the defense effort. Another part of the price rise, however, was undesirable and must be attributed to the delays in enacting adequate measures of price control.

With expenditures and deficits multiplied, the threat of inflation will apparently be much greater. There is, however, a significant difference between conditions as they were in the fiscal year 1941 and those prevailing under a full war program. Last year, defense expenditures so stimulated private capital outlays that intensified use of private funds and private credit added to the inflationary pressure created by public spending.

Under a full war program, however, most of the increase in expenditures will replace private capital outlays rather than add to them. Allocations and priorities, necessitated by shortages of material, are now in operation; they curtail private outlays for consumers’ durable goods, private and public construction, expansion and even replacements in non-defense plants and equipment. These drastic curtailments of non-defense expenditures add, therefore, to the private funds available for non-inflationary financing of the Government deficit.

This factor will contribute substantially to financing the tremendous war effort without disruptive price rises and without necessitating a departure from our low-interest-rate policy. The remaining inflationary pressure will be large but manageable. It will be within our power to control it if we adopt a comprehensive program of additional anti-inflationary measures.

A COMPREHENSIVE ANTI-INFLATIONARY PROGRAM. t great variety of measures is necessary in order to shift labor, materials, and facilities from the production of civilian articles to the production of weapons and other war supplies. Taxes can aid in speeding these shifts by cutting non-essential civilian spending. Our resources are such that even with the projected huge war expenditures we can maintain a standard of living more than adequate to support the health and productivity of our people. But we must forgo many conveniences and luxuries.

The system of allocations—rationing on the business level should be extended and made fully effective, especially with relation to inventory control.

I do not at present propose general consumer ration cards. There are not as yet scarcities in the necessities of life which make such a step imperative. Consumers’ rationing has been introduced, however, in specific commodities for which scarcities have developed. We shall profit by this experience if a more general system of rationing ever becomes necessary.

I appeal for the voluntary cooperation of the consumer in our national effort. Restraint in consumption, especially of scarce products, may make necessary fewer compulsory measures. Hoarding should be encouraged in only one field, that of defense savings bonds. Economies in consumption and the purchase of defense savings bonds will facilitate financing war costs and the shift from a peace to a war economy.

An integrated program, including direct price controls, a flexible tax policy, allocations, rationing, and credit controls, together with producers’ and consumers’ cooperation will enable us to finance the war effort without danger of inflation. This is a difficult task. But it must be done and it can be done.

THE INCREASE IN THE FEDERAL DEBT

On the basis of tentative Budget estimates, including new taxes, the Federal debt will increase from 43 billion dollars in June, 1940, when the defense program began, to 110 billion dollars three years later. This increase in Federal indebtedness covers also the future capital demands of Government corporations. About 2 billion dollars of this increase will result from the redemption of notes of Government corporations guaranteed by the Federal Government.

These debt levels require an increase in the annual interest from i billion dollars in 1940 to above 2.5 billion dollars at the end of fiscal year 1943. Such an increase in interest requirements will prevent us for some time after the war from lowering taxes to the extent otherwise possible. The import of this fact will depend greatly on economic conditions in the postwar period.

Paying 2.5 billion dollars out of an extremely low national income would impose an excessive burden on taxpayers while the same payment out of a 100-billion-dollar national income, after reduction of armament expenditures, may still permit substantial tax reductions in the postwar period.

If we contract a heavy debt at relatively high prices and must pay service charges in a period of deflated prices, we shall be forced to impose excessive taxes. Our capacity to carry a large debt in a postwar period without undue hardship depends mainly on our ability to maintain a high level of employment and income.

I am confident that by prompt action we shall control the price development now and that we shall prevent the recurrence of a deep depression in the postwar period. There need be no fiscal barriers to our war effort and to victory.

PROCLAMATION 2535
Third Registration Day

By the President of the United States of America

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 5, 1942

WHEREAS the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, approved September 16, 1940 (54 Stat. 885), declares that it is imperative to increase and train the personnel of the armed forces of the United States and that in a free society the obligation and privileges of military training and service should be shared generally in accordance with a fair and just system of selective compulsory military training and service;

WHEREAS the Act amending the said Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, approved December 20, 1941 (Public Law 360, 77th Cong.), provides for the extension of liability for military service and for the registration of the man power of the Nation;

WHEREAS the said Act, as amended, contains, in part, the following provisions:

“Sec. 2. Except as otherwise provided in this Act, it shall be the duty of every male citizen of the United States, and of every other male person residing in the United States, who, on the day or days fixed for the first or any subsequent registration, is between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five, to present himself for and submit to registration at such time or times and place or places, and in such manner and in such age group or groups, as shall be determined by rules and regulations prescribed hereunder.”

…

“Sec. 5. (a) Commissioned officers, warrant officers, pay clerks, and enlisted men of the Regular Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Public Health Service, the federally recognized active National Guard, the Officers’ Reserve Corps, the Regular Army Reserve, the Enlisted Reserve Corps, the Naval Reserve, and the Marine Corps Reserve; cadets, United States Military Academy; midshipmen, United States Naval Academy; cadets, United States Coast Guard Academy; men who have been accepted for admittance (commencing with the academic year next succeeding such acceptance) to the United States Military Academy as cadets, to the United States Naval Academy as midshipmen, or to the United States Coast Guard Academy as cadets, but only during the continuance of such acceptance; cadets of the advanced course, senior division, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps or Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps; and diplomatic representatives, technical attaches of foreign embassies and legations, consuls general, consuls, vice consuls, and consular agents of foreign countries, and persons in other categories to be specified by the President, residing in the United States, who are not citizens of the United States, and who have not declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, shall not be required to be registered under section 2 and shall be relieved from liability for training and service under section 3(b).”

…

“Sec. 10. (a) The President is authorized – (1) to prescribe the necessary rules and regulations to carry out the provisions of this Act;”

…

(4) to utilize the services of any or all departments and any and all officers or agents of the United States and to accept the services of all officers and agents of the several States, Territories, and the District of Columbia and subdivisions thereof in the execution of this Act;”

…

“Sec. 14 (a) Every person shall be deemed to have notice of the requirements of this Act upon publication by the President of a proclamation or other public notice fixing a time for any registration under section 2.”

WHEREAS section 208 of the Coast Guard Auxiliary and Reserve Act of 1941, approved February 19, 1941 (Public Law 8, 77th Cong.), provides, in part, as follows:

“Members of the Coast Guard Reserve, other than temporary members as provided for in section 207 hereof, shall receive the same exemption from registration and liability for training and service as members of the Naval Reserve…”;

WHEREAS the first registration under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 took place in the continental United States October 16, 1940, in the Territory of Hawaii on October 26, 1940, in Puerto Rico on November 20, 1940, and in the Territory of Alaska on January 22, 1941, pursuant to proclamations issued by me on September 16, 1940, October 1, 1940, October 8, 1940, and November 12, 1940, respectively;

WHEREAS the second registration under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 took place in the United States, the Territories of Alaska and Hawaii, and in Puerto Rico on July 1, 1941, pursuant to proclamation issued by me on May 26, 1941;

WHEREAS a state of war now exists between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan, Germany, and Italy; and

WHEREAS this, and other registrations under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 and the amendments thereto will be required to insure victory, final and complete, over the enemies of the United States:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, President of the United States of America, acting under and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as amended, do proclaim the following:

Pursuant to the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as amended, the registration of male citizens of the United States and other male persons who were born on or after February 17, 1897, and on or before December 31, 1921, shall take place in the United States and the Territories of Alaska and Hawaii, and in Puerto Rico on Monday, the 16th day of February, 1942, between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m.
(a) Every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the continental United States or in the Territory of Alaska or in the Territory of Hawaii or in Puerto Rico, other than persons excepted by Section 5 (a) of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as amended, and by Section 208 of the Coast Guard Auxiliary and Reserve Act of 1941, is required to and shall on February 16, 1942, present himself for and submit to registration before a duly designated registration official or selective service local board having jurisdiction in the area in which he has his permanent home or in which he may happen to be on that day if such male citizen or other male person on December 31, 1941, has attained the twentieth anniversary of the day of his birth and on February 16, 1942, has not attained the forty-fifth anniversary of the day of his birth, and has not heretofore been registered under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 and the regulations thereunder: Provided, That the duty of any person to present himself for and submit to registration in accordance with any previous proclamation Issued under said Act shall not be affected by this proclamation.

(b) A person subject to registration may be registered before the day set herein for his registration if arrangements therefor are made by the local board under rules and regulations prescribed by the Director of Selective Service. Whenever such arrangements are made, public notice thereof will be given by the local board.

(c) A person subject to registration may be registered after the day fixed for his registration in case he is prevented from registering on that day by circumstances beyond his control or because he is not present in continental United States or the Territory of Alaska or the Territory of Hawaii, or Puerto Rico on that day. If he is not in the continental United States or the Territory of Alaska or the Territory of Hawaii, or Puerto Rico on the day fixed for his registration but subsequently enters any of such places, he shall as soon as possible after such entrance present himself for and submit to registration before a duly designated registration official or selective service local board. If he is in the continental United States or in the Territory of Alaska or the Territory of Hawaii, or Puerto Rico on the day fixed for his registration but because of circumstances beyond his control is unable to present himself for and submit to registration on that day, he shall do so as soon as possible after the cause for such inability ceases to exist.

The registration under this proclamation shall be in accordance with the Selective Service Regulations governing registration. Every person subject to registration is required to familiarize himself with such regulations and to comply therewith.
I call upon the Governor of each of the several States and the Territories of Alaska and Hawaii, and of Puerto Rico, and the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia, and all officers and agents of the United States and all officers and agents of the several States, Territories, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, and political subdivisions thereof, and all local boards and agents thereof appointed under the provisions of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as amended, or the Selective Service Regulations prescribed thereunder, to do and perform all acts and services necessary to accomplish effective and complete registration.
In order that there may be full cooperation in carrying into effect the purposes of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as amended, I urge all employers and Government agencies of all kinds – Federal, State, territorial, and local – to give those under their charge sufficient time in which to fulfill the obligations of registration Incumbent upon them under the said Act and this proclamation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this fifth day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-two and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and sixty-sixth.

FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT

By the President:
CORDELL HULL
Secretary of State.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 9012
Possession Relinquished of Plant of Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 5, 1942

WHEREAS by Executive Order No. 8868, dated the 23rd day of August, 1941, the Secretary of the Navy was directed by the President to take possession of and operate the plant of The Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company, to produce the vessels, facilities, material and equipment called for by the company’s contracts with the United States or otherwise and do all things necessary or incidental to that end; and

WHEREAS on the 25th day of August, 1941, the Secretary of the Navy, acting pursuant to said direction, took possession of and is now in possession of the said plant of The Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company; and

WHEREAS said Executive order provides that possession and operation thereunder shall be terminated by the President as soon as he determines that the plant will be privately operated in a manner consistent with the needs of national defense; and

WHEREAS it now appears, and I so determine, that the plant will be privately operated In a manner consistent with the needs of national defense;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, as President of the United States and as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, hereby direct the Secretary of the Navy immediately to relinquish possession of the said plant of The Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company, and to issue the necessary orders for carrying out the aforesaid direction.

FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 5, 1942.

The Pittsburgh Press (January 5, 1942)

Luzon forces smash Jap attack

Philippine defenders kill 700 invaders; foe’s air losses heavy
By Joe Alex Morris, United Press war editor

American, Chinese and Russian armies hammered home telling blows against the Axis today.

Fighting doggedly in the hills of Luzon Island in the Philippines, the American defense forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur killed at least 700 Japanese, frustrated a big-scale enemy pincer attack and inflicted on the invaders one of the most serious reverses of the war.

The operations apparently were in the Bataan-Pampanga sector, northwest of Manila, where action continued, according to an American war communique.

Continue blasting fort

Japanese airplanes continued bombing attacks on the American island fortress of Corregidor, at the entrance to Manila Bay, where 15 enemy planes have been shot down so far. Fifty-two Japanese craft attacked the fortress Sunday for more than three hours but four of them were brought down and four others were damaged.

The action in the Philippines was particularly important because it was aiding a sturdy Allied fight to prevent encirclement of the great British naval base at Singapore. Axis sources reported that American warships, cooperating in the defense operations in the East Indies, had been bombed by Japanese planes off Java, but that was not otherwise confirmed.

Japs claim Malaya gain

On the Malaya Front, about 200 to 250 miles north of Singapore, the Japanese claimed to have taken Kuala Selauger in Selauger Province, according to Axis reports, but this was not confirmed by British dispatches.

In China, the armies of Gen. Chiang Kai-Shek reported a great victory over the Japanese in fighting at Changsha, where the enemy was estimated to have lost 50,000 dead as a result of a Chinese counterattack that crushed their drive into Changsha.

Air reinforcements apparently had arrived to aid in blocking the Japanese efforts to consolidate positions for envelopment of Singapore.

Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell, entrusted with supreme command of the crucial Southwest Pacific, admitted that the situation probably would grow worse before it grows better but expressed full confidence in Japan’s eventual defeat.

Air victories bright spot

One bright spot in the complex picture was the heavy losses being inflicted upon Japanese planes in a series of vital air combats over Burma.

A half dozen times in the last eight days the Japanese have sent planes over Burma in force in an obvious attempt to knock out Allied air power to protect their rear and probably as a preliminary to all-out bombing of Rangoon and other bases.

In each encounter British and American pilots of the special Burma Road volunteer detachment have heavily defeated the Japanese. For the time being Allied air power was supreme on this front and it was assumed that Gen. Wavell will make every effort to reinforce the Burma squadrons rapidly enough to hold the advantage against Japanese attempts to wear down the Allied fighter detachments.

In the two latest Burma air battles the Japanese suffered a loss of possibly 13 planes downed and another 13 probables. One battle occurred in a Japanese attack on an RAF airdrome at Montmein and the other in an Allied attack on a Japanese base at Rahengtak in Thailand.

Burma’s importance was emphasized by the dispatch there of unknown numbers of Chinese troops by Gen. Chiang Kai-Shek. The forces will fight under British command. Their function was expected to be the protection of the Burma route against Japanese attacks from Thailand and possibly offensive action to relieve pressure on Malaya.

Withdrawing in Malaya

On the Malayan Front, the British still were fighting a delayed withdrawal action. Their northwest lines now appear to be in the vicinity of the Bernam River, about 250 miles north of Singapore. A Tokyo claim that Japanese troops are 50 miles farther south, approaching Kuala Lumpur, was not confirmed. To the northeast the battle lines still were around Kuantan. The Japanese are trying to drive to the Pahang River, 170 miles northeast of Singapore.

Another night air attack on Singapore failed, British reports said, when anti-aircraft guns and night fighter planes drove off the attacking bombers with small damage.

However, the Japanese made one gain in their encirclement drive. The British admitted they have occupied Weston in North Borneo. That gives the Japanese another in a series of important positions on the north and northwest coasts of the important island. The Japanese air force also struck south to attack an Australian air base at Rabaul in the Bismarck Islands just north of Australia.

In Europe there was a budget of bad news for the Axis.

Bitter cold enveloped not only the Russian Front but most of Europe, increasing the hardships of the Axis-occupied countries and the difficulties of German land movements.

Reports from the Russian Front indicated that Soviet operations for the recapture of Mozhaisk and an advance toward Vyazma and Smolensk were progressing smoothly. Russian pressure against Rzhev was increasing.

Only 5 U.S. planes remain in Philippines, Japs say

TOKYO (Broadcast Recorded in U.S. by The United Press) – Japanese Army units, pursuing retreating American troops down the Bataan Peninsula, have attained complete mastery of the northern part of the peninsula and are continuing their advance, the Japanese Domei News Agency said today.

The Japanese Army, which claimed that only five planes of the American air forces remained in the Philippines, sent its aircraft against motorized American columns pushing toward Mariveles, at the tip of the peninsula and opposite the Manila Bay fortress of Corregidor, it said.

Jap planes caused heavy damage at Balanga in continuous attacks since yesterday morning. Barracks and other military establishments were said to have been damaged in raids on the Olongapo Naval Base and adjacent territory.

Says 360 planes destroyed

An Imperial Headquarters communique claimed that 360 American planes had been destroyed in the Philippines.

Jap planes raided the only remaining American air base in the Philippines yesterday morning, military dispatches said, charging that American aircraft are “evading the Japanese by moving their base from place to place to remote localities.”

The naval section of Imperial Headquarters said that of the 360 planes destroyed in the Philippines, 103, including 15 large planes and four flying boats, were shot down and 257, including 73 large and medium aircraft and 22 flying boats, were destroyed on the ground.

It said four destroyers, seven submarines and five other vessels had been sunk since December 8; two auxiliaries, 30 other naval craft, one destroyer, two small patrol vessels and four other ships damaged, and one ship captured.

Tokyo hails Manila’s fall

Tokyo celebrated the fall of Manila with a gigantic parade.

Reports from Malaya said “the second largest city” there was now exposed to the Jap drive after the “vanguard of the Japanese forces wiped out enemy troops in Northern Selangor and reached a point within sight of this key position.”

It was believed the Japanese referred to Kuala Lumpur, capital of Selangor, about 200 miles north of Singapore.

U.S. volunteers ‘get’ 7 Japs over Burma

SINGAPORE (UP) – Pilots of the American volunteer corps operating in Burma have destroyed at least seven and possibly 13 Japanese planes in smashing a Japanese attack on the Moulmein area of Burma and in attacking a Japanese air base in Thailand, dispatches indicated today.

It was announced that American and British planes had shot down six Japanese fighter planes in an attack on the Rahengtak Airdrome, on the Thailand side of the Burma frontier.

A dispatch from Chungking said that American volunteer corps pilots in Burma and Southwestern China had done brilliant work and had quickly shown that there was no basis for alarmist reports that American fighter planes were no match for the mysterious Japanese “zero-type” fighters.

NormanStewart · January 7, 2021, 2:03pm

Chinese troops surround crack Nipponese armies

Enemy loses 50,000 men, 30,000 more trapped, Chungking says as picked soldiers of Chiang Kai-Shek go to aid Allies in Burma, Malaya
By George Wang, United Press staff writer

CHUNGKING, China (UP) – Remnants of a crack Japanese army sought desperately today to fight out of a Chinese trap after a crushing and humiliating defeat in which they lost upwards of 50,000 men.

On New Year’s morning, the Japanese drove to the suburbs of Changsha, a key city on the Hankow-Canton railroad 400 miles east of Chungking. For four days Chinese and Jap troops fought hand-to-hand in fields and streets.

Late yesterday the Japanese army collapsed. It had lost about one-third of its men. Parts of four Jap divisions were driven back in disorder from Changsha itself and nearly two more divisions were hopelessly trapped by Chinese artillery and infantry to the north.

Now, it appeared, the best the Japanese could hope for was to break through in full retreat with less than 100,000 of the 150,000 men who started their great Changsha offensive early last week.

It was the first Chinese contribution to the new gigantic inter-Allied defensive-offensive set up in the Far East, and it came while, 1000 miles to the west, a picked Chinese army was marching to the aid of the Allies in the Burma-Malaya front.

In their fury of frustration, the defeated Japanese set fire to the American Yale-in-China University and hospital at Changsha. The hospital was one of the finest in China.

Nothing was known of the fate of Dr. James W. Pettigrew, in charge of the hospital and university, or his young wife, nor had any word been received of the fate of between 30 and 40 Americans and Britons, most of them missionaries, who had remained at the Presbyterian and other missions. It was hoped that they had escaped to the south before the Japanese reached the city.

Chungking was jubilant as detailed war communiques gave the blow-by-blow story of a major Jap defeat.

Last Friday, spearheads of the Jap army reached the edge of Changsha, driving in four massed columns.

Chinese troops marched to the rescue along an 80-mile line from the east, but admittedly the situation was critical. Japan already claimed the capture of the city.

Today, the Japanese were saying that Chinese had “filtered” into the city and were being liquidated.

The Japanese had driven down over the plain between the Laotao and Liuyang Rivers to reach the city. But they found stubborn Chinese troops who, after absorbing the impact of their final drive, began encircling them, repeating tactics they had used with success before, and cutting off river crossings.

At dawn Friday, the Chinese under a barrage of their artillery counterattacked and inflicted 15,000 casualties on the Japanese closest to the city.

Foe disguised as Chinese

The first Japanese wiped out were contingents which had reached the east gate of Changsha disguised as Chinese. Machine-gunners attended to them.

On Saturday, desperate, the Japanese charged with the bayonet 10 separate times within a few hours while their planes bombed the city. They lost an estimated 6000 men and failed to gain a foot.

The Japanese were running short of food and munitions, and their airplanes started to drop them supplies. All the time Chinese forces were closing in, cutting off ground communications and lines of retreat.

They waited too long

By yesterday morning, the bulk of the Japanese were encircled in separate groups, some actually inside the northern gates of the city, and it was evident that to save themselves, they would have to try a general retreat.

They waited too long. The big Chinese force from the east ripped in. Twenty thousand Japanese were encircled in the northern city gates area, another 10,000 were trapped in a suburb on another side.

Yesterday the Changsha command sent word that the entire Japanese drive had collapsed and that the Chinese had cut off and were attacking mercilessly parts of the three Jap divisions which sought to flee back to the north.

Japs caught in pocket

Six Jap divisions of about 21,000 men each and two brigades approximating a seventh division had reached Changsha.

Early today the Chinese High Command received reports which said that the Japanese had suffered 30,000 casualties in the latest phase of the fighting. Chinese troops had enveloped the remnants of four divisions, which were trying to retreat. Chinese troops cut off the Jap retreat across the Liuyang and Laotao Rivers, directly north of Changsha.

What men were left of two Jap divisions were caught in a pocket. Massed Chinese artillery, which had been posted to cover the entire pocket, began smashing shells into the Japanese and, a war communique said, both Jap divisions were almost annihilated.

WAR BULLETINS!

Luzon forces intact

VICHY – The official French news agency today quoted Italian sources in Rome saying that American forces in the Philippines still are “virtually intact except for evacuated wounded and some dead,” and that “it seems that very few” have fallen into the hands of the Japanese.

Finns say, ‘Aims accomplished’

STOCKHOLM – The Finnish newspaper Suomen Sosiali-Demokraatti, organ of the Social Democratic Party, said today that it appears Finland’s strategic aims against Russia may now have been accomplished. The newspaper said that because of the capture of additional important positions since November the Finns have undertaken no new offensive.

Typhus rages in Rumania

ANKARA – Travelers arriving from Bucharest today reported that typhus fever had broken out in Rumania and was threatening to become a severe epidemic. Deaths were said to be heavy, particularly among soldiers and peasants.

Dead Germans ‘litter town’

LONDON – Radio Moscow broadcast today that Russians fought in the streets and “for every house” before Germans were thrown out of Borovsk and that the town finally was “littered with dead.” Bitter battles occurred in the city, 50 miles southwest of Moscow on the Central Front, the broadcast reported, as the Germans fortified themselves in stone buildings and cellars which they turned into strongholds.

U.S. unaware of major’s capture

WASHINGTON – Maj. Michael Buckley Jr., U.S. Army officer reported by the British War Office to have been taken prisoner by the Italians, probably was captured several weeks ago in the Mediterranean area, it was believed here today. The War and State Departments both said they knew nothing about Maj. Buckley’s reported capture.

Soldiers put with lepers, Japs say

BERLIN (Official Broadcast Recorded in London by United Press) – Japanese military dispatches accused Britain today of interning Japanese nationals in leper hospitals at Ipoh, Malaya. Others have been interned near oil wells and other military targets which have been under heavy Japanese bombardment, they charged.

Japs claim they sunk U.S. sub

BERLIN (Official Broadcast Recorded in London by United Press) – A dispatch from Tokyo today said that a Japanese submarine had sunk an American submarine with shell fire off the coast of Northern Borneo.

U.S. warship reported attacked

ROME (Official Broadcast Recorded in London by United Press) – The official news agency today quoted Japanese reports that Japanese airplanes had attacked American warships off the north coast of Java.

Hawaiian port attacked, Berlin says

BERLIN (Broadcast Recorded in U.S. by United Press) – A Tokyo dispatch to the official news agency asserted today that Japanese warships had attacked a port in Hawaii and heavily damaged a U.S. warship. No details were given.

Paris reports U.S.-Jap naval battle

LONDON – The Daily Mail remade its main news page today to smash the headline, “Naval Battle in Pacific Riddle,” over the following brief dispatch: “The German-controlled Paris radio made this announcement tonight: ‘News has just come in that the United States fleet has joined battle with the Japanese fleet in the Pacific’.”

New U.S. planes win in Near East

CAIRO – The Royal Air Force announced today that American-made Kittyhawk planes went into action in the Near East for the first time New Year’s Day with Australian pilots. In their first day they destroyed five enemy aircraft and damaged six others, it was announced. The Kittyhawks are Curtiss planes, known to the U.S. Army as Curtiss P-40A and P-46.

NormanStewart · January 7, 2021, 2:25pm

Ten million to register for war duty

Men 45 or older will be ordered later to sign up

WASHINGTON (UP) – President Roosevelt today ordered registration on February 16 for men between the ages of 20 and 44, inclusive, for selective military service “to insure victory, final and complete, over the enemies of the United States.”

The 17,500,000 men who registered under the previous 21-35 law will not be required to enroll again.

The new age groups – the 20-year-olds and the 36-44 group – will provide a reservoir of about 10 million more men made eligible for active service under the amended act.

Others to register later

Those ordered to register include all who have not reached their 45th birthday February 16, 1942. Men whose 45th birthday falls on the registration day are excluded.

However, in the 20-year bracket, the birthday date is December 31, 1941. Those who had their 20th birthday after December 31 are not required to register under today’s proclamation.

The amended Selective Service Act also provides that men of 18 and 19, and 45 to 64, inclusive, are subject to registration for non-military service. A later date will be set for registering these age groups.

Every male citizen residing in the United States, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico who falls in the brackets for new registration must present himself between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. ET on February 16.

The new registration will follow the same procedure used in the two previous ones when men between the ages of 21 and 34 were enrolled on October 16, 1940, and those who reached 21 in the interim were registered on July 1, 1941.

Selective Service boards already set up will register all eligibles on February 16. The president called upon these boards and governors of states and territories to carry out provisions of the executive order.

May register early

The president’s proclamation provided that registration before the fixed day may be permissible if arrangements are made under local board rules.

If a person is prevented from registering February 16 “by circumstances beyond his control or because he is not present in the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii or Puerto Rico,” he may present himself at a later date.

Delayed registration, however, “shall be as soon as possible after the cause for such inability ceases to exist.”

NormanStewart · January 7, 2021, 2:56pm

As deadline nears…
Aliens give up radios

Hundreds jam City-County Building in rush to comply with order to yield camera, guns also

Hundreds of Axis aliens jammed the City-County Building today as the deadline neared for them to surrender possession of all firearms and shortwave radio and camera equipment.

The U.S. Attorney’s office announced that the “central depository” for the seized goods, located in the City Police Superintendent’s office in Room 202 of the City-County Building, will be open until 11 p.m. to accommodate all enemy aliens.

Police stations in communities throughout the county will also remain open late to receive any goods that may be turned in.

Besides the Germans, Italians and Japanese, Morris D. Canter, who is in charge of the Alien Enemy Control Unit here, said the order also affects Austrians and Croatians.

Citizens of Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland are not affected, he said.

The bulk of the goods surrendered thus far has consisted of ordinary box cameras and regular portable radios with shortwave bands, according to Detective Sergeant John O’Connor, who is handling the City-County Building headquarters.

Officials said they had no reports of any firearms being surrendered as yet and explained that this was probably due to the fact that under Pennsylvania law, alien residents are prohibited from owning any guns.

No regular shortwave radio transmitters or receiving sets have been turned in, either.

Officials said any enemy alien owning a shortwave set should call either the City-County Building or the U.S. Attorney’s office. If it is too large to carry, a truck will be sent for it.

Meanwhile, Mr. Canter announced that regulations will be relaxed sufficiently to permit Axis nationals to retain their regular radios if they have their shortwave radios removed.

Expresses ‘pleasure’

Mr. Canter expressed “pleasure and satisfaction” to the voluntary response of enemy aliens in general in cooperating with the government’s order.

In relation to the restriction on travel by aliens, he said 50 non-citizens had already applied for permission to travel in connection with their work and that these will be disposed of as soon as possible.

Many of the aliens reporting to surrender their banned goods had to wait in line for hours with armfuls of equipment.

Yields four cameras

One German alien turned in four cameras, including a movie camera worth $300 and another valued at $200. Another German surrendered three cameras.

Among those who marched up to the City-County Building was Eugene Hwangbo, 36, a wholesaler of 4610 Liberty Ave., who insisted on turning in his radio despite the fact he’s Chinese.

“I don’t want it,” he told police. “You take it.”

He walked out of the building, however, with the radio – and a big smile.

NormanStewart · January 7, 2021, 3:06pm

Car industry asked to hike arms output

U.S. calls for delivery of $5 billion worth in 1942

WASHINGTON (UP) – The government has asked the auto industry to deliver between five and six billion dollars’ worth of finished weapons to the Army, Navy and Allied forces this year, OPM Co-Director William S. Knudsen disclosed today.

Mr. Knudsen said that the industry – which had previously been scheduled to deliver only $2,500,000 worth of weapons – now is expected to more than double its war output.

Appearing with Associate OPM Director Sidney Hillman in a joint press conference, Mr. Knudsen said the new, stepped-up delivery schedules will require new plants – to be cooperated by the industry – and conversion of most existing facilities which have been producing passenger autos and light trucks.

Both the auto industry and labor were informed of the new demands at a meeting here this morning. An Army-Navy plan to place immediately approximately $5 billion worth of new contracts was also outlined to the conferees by the government.

Mr. Hillman told reporters that it was “hard to say” what percentage of the industry’s tools could be used for war work, but that it is “easy to say that they will have all they can do.”

“We are asking them to convert as soon as possible,” Mr. Hillman said, “in order that we can do everything today instead of tomorrow.”

He said the morning conference was “most encouraging and everyone expressed the desire to go ahead and see if our system of production can compare to that used by Hitler.”

Mr. Knudsen said many of the industry’s present facilities may have to be pooled as some companies have been doing heavier or lighter work than others.

To work out some of the many problems, the OPM codirectors said, an overall industry-labor committee of 10 men will be appointed to function on a permanent basis, with all final decision being left to the OPM.

The Auto Defense Industry Advisory Committee will meet with Mr. Knudsen to select its representatives on the committee. At the same time, the labor committee will choose its representatives in a conference with Mr. Hillman.

To discuss conversion

The industry’s passenger car subcommittee plans to discuss conversion of existing facilities to war work. Mr. Knudsen said conversion will undoubtedly mean “an awful lot of new tools” which must be produced by all tool shops.

Today’s meeting was attended by more than 200 representatives of the industry, labor and the government. Price Administrator Leon Henderson opened it with an explanation of the auto and light truck rationing program.

The industry already has been ordered to cease all civilian production by February 1, making acceptance of the Army-Navy offer a virtual certainty. The plan will boost the industry’s stake in the war production drive to nine billion dollars.

The Auto Manufacturers Association have an advance pledge to wholehearted cooperation “in letter and spirit” with whatever demands are made by the government.

Announce orders

The announcement of the new orders for the industry was made by Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson and Under Secretary of the Navy James E. Forrestal a few hours before the conference.

The joint Army-Navy announcement said the military items involved in the projected five-billion-dollar orders, representing the “combined immediate requirements of the two services,” were such that they could be accepted not only by the big motor companies but by “many varied smaller parts and accessories companies.” Machine tools were cited as one of the principal unfilled requirements on which rapid production is needed for the Armed Forces.

The nine billion dollars of war orders that the industry will have when it accepts the new offer will be nearly three times the total value of all the cars it manufactured in 1940.

“Automobile Facts and Figures,” published by the Auto Manufacturers Association, said the auto industry in 1940 manufactured 4,469,354 passenger cars and trucks with a total value of $3,016,223,064.

Argue in ads

The war production program and today’s conference come in the midst of a labor-management controversy through full-page newspaper advertisements.

President R. J. Thomas of the United Auto Workers of America (CIO) has attacked bitterly the industry and the OPM for failure to convert the industry to war production earlier. He accused the OPM of following a “business-as-usual” attitude and, because of it, claimed that virtually all auto plants would be closed and 400,000 workers idle by the end of the month.

The Auto Manufacturers Association answered the charges in full-page advertisements today charging that labor leaders are hiding “ulterior motives behind a cloak of patriotism.” It defended its role in the war program, contending that the industry “had to cope with delay after delay in the war production preparation as a result of changing conditions.”

“The men who led the original sit-down strikes, who tolerated and encouraged not scores but hundreds of sit-downs, slowdowns and other forms of production sabotage, now propose that they are the capable ones to guide the greatest single, behind-the-lines responsibility – production for war,” the AMA advertisement said.

“The attacks on this industry’s war work constitute a gross attempt to deceive the American people – raising false hopes and expectations. Above all, they are designed to create division so that certain groups may obtain control of the productive machinery of the United States.”

NormanStewart · January 7, 2021, 3:11pm

President to present message tomorrow

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt will deliver his annual message to Congress in person at 12:30 p.m. ET tomorrow.

This was announced by Senate Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) after a White House conference shortly before the second session of the 77th Congress convened with perfunctory meetings of the House and Senate.

The President will deliver his message to a joint session in the House Chamber tomorrow. It is expected to be a fighting message, revealing the highlights of the strategy and supply arrangements worked out in his conferences with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

All radio networks will broadcast the President’s address at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow.

NormanStewart · January 8, 2021, 9:14am

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 show, 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.

editorialclapper.up

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?

NormanStewart · January 8, 2021, 11:20am

Völkischer Beobachter (January 6, 1942)

London bekennt zynisch:
Kanonenfutter ist vorhanden, doch die Waffen fehlen

Chinesen und Inder sollen auf Malakka bluten
Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“

vb. Wien, 5. Januar
Mit großem Aufwand an Druckerschwärze und Stimmgewalt bemühen sich Roosevelts und Churchills Propagandamanager, den 'Eindruck hervorzuzaubern, als bedeute die Plutokratenkonferenz von Washington einen Wendepunkt des Krieges. Die auf neu lackierte Atlantikerklärung wird nunmehr, nachdem auch ein gutes Dutzend von sogenannten Regierungen ohne Macht und Volk und die lächerlichen Zwergrepubliken Mittelamerikas ihre Namen unter das Papier setzten, noch einmal als ein revolutionäres Manifest ausgeboten, und die Herstellung eines gemeinsamen Oberbefehls in Ostasien wird von den englischen Zeitungen als ein „großer Sieg“ gefeiert. Die entscheidende Frage dagegen, woher der aus der Versenkung hervorgeholte Wavell die Truppen für seine neuen Aufgaben bekommen soll, übergehen Engländer und Amerikaner mit Stillschweigen.

Nur der „Daily Express“ wagt sich bis zu einem solchen Punkte wirklichkeitsnaher Betrachtung vor und findet darauf eine klassische englische Antwort: „China und Indien“, so bemerkt das Blatt, „können genug Menschenmaterial liefern, um die Japaner vernichtend zu schlagen; das Problem, das die Alliierten zu lösen haben, ist nicht ein Problem des Potentials an Menschen, sondern ein Problem der Quantität und Qualität ihrer Waffen.“

Der Washingtoner Kriegsplan

Das umschreibt in aller Deutlichkeit, die man nur wünschen kann, was in Washington als Kriegsplan zwischen Roosevelt und Churchill ausgeklügelt wurde. Wavell soll versuchen, dem Siegeszug der Japaner auf Malakka und in Niederländisch-Indien Einhalt zu gebieten. Briten und Yankees wollen auch alles für diese Aufgabe irgendwie verfügbares Kriegsmaterial einsetzen. Bluten aber sollen nach gutem britischem Brauch Kolonialvölker und Fremde dagegen.

Lautes Lob wird in der englischen Presse vor allem Tschiangkaischek zuteil, der, britischen Meldungen zufolge, bereits einige seiner Divisionen nach Burma in Marsch gesetzt haben soll, wo sie den Briten zu einer Offensive gegen die Japaner zur Verfügung stehen. Offenbar in allerhöchster demokratischer Anerkennung für diese Bereitschaft, das chinesische Volk auf den Kriegsschauplätzen Englands bluten zu lassen, ist Tschiangkaischek die fragwürdige Auszeichnung einer Ernennung zum Befehlshaber der alliierten Streitkräfte im chinesischen Raum zuteil geworden. Daß die Inder noch rücksichtsloser als bisher eingesetzt und das indische. Menschenreservoir zu umfangreichen Rekrutierungen benutzt werden sollen, ging aus einer Ansprache hervor, mit der Wavell sich in Neu-Delhi von seinem bisherigen Posten verabschiedete.

Australien soll helfen

Allerdings dürften die Briten nach den bisherigen Erfahrungen kaum annehmen, daß sich der Krieg ausschließlich mit Kolonialtruppen und Hilfsvölkern führen läßt. Deswegen sollen auch die Australier, vor deren eigener Tür der Krieg jetzt brennt, weitere Verstärkungen nach Malakka schicken. Nach japanischen Meldungen stehen australische Truppen auf der Halbinsel weiterhin in erster Kampflinie. Auch Mr. Smuts, der Diktator von Südafrika, erklärte in einem Zwiegespräch mit einem amerikanischen Reporter, er sei entschlossen, der Alliiertensache neue Streitkräfte zur Verfügung zu stellen. Das bedeutet, daß auch die südafrikanischen Buren, die bereits in Libyen schwer geblutet haben, zu dem Krieg im Fernen Osten herangezogen werden sollen.

Die einzig offene Frage bleibt dann, ob sich auch Verstärkungen aus den USA in Ostindien einfinden werden. Der australische Ministerpräsident Curtin, der in der letzten Zeit mehrfach seine Stimme erhob und eine energischere Kriegführung verlangte, erklärte öffentlich, nach dem Fall von Manila und dem Verlust des Flottenstützpunktes Cavite würden Kriegsschiffe der USA von australischen und neuseeländischen Stützpunkten aus in den Gewässern der Südsee operieren. Man wird abwarten müssen, in welchem Umfang Roosevelt diese Hoffnungen erfüllt. Die Erwartung, daß auch die Engländer auf Australiens Hilferufe hin sich zu einem besonderen Beitrag aufschwingen werden, hat Herr Curtin nicht ausgesprochen. Dazu kennt er offenbar seine Leute in London zu gut.

Der Vormarsch auf der Malakkahalbinsel
Japaner an der Grenze von Selangor

Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“

vb. Wien, 5. Jänner
Wie der letzte britische Heeresbericht aus Singapur zugibt, geht der Vormarsch der Japaner an der Westküste von Malakka im Gebiet der Provinz Perak weiter. Die britischen Truppen hätten den Versuch gemacht, sich vom Gegner zu lösen, doch seien die Japaner an mehreren Punkten sofort mit motorisierten Einheiten nachgestoßen und hätten die Verbindung aufrechterhalten. Wie weit die britischen Truppen zurückgenommen worden sind, gibt der amtliche britische Bericht nicht an, doch berichten japanische Blätter, daß die Kampfhandlungen sich bereits im Grenzgebiet des sich südlich anschließenden Sultanats Selangor abspielen.

Die Briten warfen hier als Verstärkung die 8. Division ins Gefecht, die sich hauptsächlich aus Australiern zusammensetzt. Ihr Widerstand wurde jedoch gebrochen, womit bereits drei britische Divisionen in den Kämpfen auf Malakka zerschlagen worden sind.

Inzwischen greift die japanische Luftwaffe weiterhin die Straße des britischen Rückzuges und die britischen Versorgungs- und Nachschubmittelpunkte in Burma an. Am Montagmorgen wurde, wie der Sender Rangun meldet, die Hauptstadt von Britisch-Burma abermals mit Bomben belegt. Hauptziel des Angriffs war der Flugplatz. Meldungen aus Singapur geben Schäden und Opfer zu. Bei dem Angriff auf Rangun am Sonntag stellten sich sechs amerikanische Jäger den Japanern entgegen. Drei von ihnen wurden brennend abgeschossen. Auch der Flugstützpunkt Moulmein in Südburma mußte einen schweren Luftangriff über sich ergehen lassen. Hier wurden vier britische Flugzeuge am Boden zerstört. Schließlich erschienen japanische Bomber abermals über Singapur, wo sie militärische Ziele mit Bomben belegten. Zahlreiche militärische Einrichtungen einschließlich der Flugplätze Tengah und Sembawang seien getroffen und in Brand gesetzt worden.

Reuter muß sich jetzt zu dem Eingeständnis bequemen, daß die britischen Truppen, die südlich von Ipoh standen, „zurückgezogen“ wurden. Sie hätten neue Stellungen ungefähr 120 Kilometer nördlich von Kuala Lumpur bezogen. Die japanischen Truppen folgten dem britischen Rückzug auf dem Fuße, wobei sie die volle Unterstützung ihrer Luftstreitkräfte hätten. Sie unternahmen entschlossene Versuche, das Tempo des Rückzuges zu erhöhen. Die britischen Truppen, meint Reuter, leisten jedoch in einer ganzen Reihe von Nachhutgefechten hartnäckigen Widerstand.

London in großer Beunruhigung

Die kritische Lage der Engländer in Ostasien wird, wie der Londoner Korrespondent von „Dagens Nyheter“ meldet, durch das Kommuniqué aus Singapur klar, wonach die britische Front bei Perak weiter zurückgenommen werden mußte und die Japaner weitere Landungen auf Britisch-Borneo vornahmen. Deshalb herrsche in London weiterhin große Beunruhigung über den schließlichen Ausgang.

Verherrlichung der Bolschewisierung Europas
Eden spielt mit Hammer und Sichel

Eigener Bericht des „Völkischen Beobachters“

vb. Stockholm, 5. Januar
„Intimste politische Zusammenarbeit“ zwischen England und der Sowjetunion ist nach der Überzeugung Edens, die er in einer Rundfunkrede am Sonntagabend nach seiner Rückkehr aus Moskau zum Ausdruck brachte, sichergestellt. „Ich glaube, daß kein wirklicher Interessenkonflikt zwischen der Sowjetunion und Großbritannien besteht“, führte er unter anderem aus und bezeugte damit aufs neue, daß England bereit ist, den beabsichtigten Bolschewisierungsplänen der Sowjets freien Raum zu gewähren.

Zu Beginn seiner Rede erfuhren wir, daß er seekrank war und daß ihm die Bolschewisten allerlei plumpes Theater vorgespielt haben, das Schön-Anthony freilich für bare Münze nahm. Schon bei seinem ersten Besuch in Moskau 1935 ließ sich dieser Hohlkopf ja durch einige einwandfreie Hemdbrüste und Perlenschnüre auf Allerweltsempfängen zu dem Urteil bestimmen, die Sowjetunion sei ein ehrenwerter Partner.

Jetzt hat er dieser alten Weise den Kehrreim angefügt, daß Moskau und London der gemeinsame Haß gegen Deutschland eine, dessen Vernichtung des Kriegsziel beider sei und daß die Sowjets Europa unter ihren Stiefel treten sollten. Auch das ist nicht einmal neu, aber doch immer wieder als britisches Bekenntnis zur Zerstörung der Alten Welt zu beherzigen.

Wo bleiben die Ideale?

Ginge es nach Eden und Genossen, so wäre Europa schnell ein Trümmerfeld und eine Schlachtbank ohnegleichen, und das Unheilszeichen Hammer und Sichel, das Eden mit solchem Behagen neben dem Union Jack flattern sah, würde auf den Klippen von Calais den Briten nur das Ende ihres eigenen Daseins ankündigen. Eden geht über diese Dinge mit einer Handbewegung hinweg, vielleicht in der typisch britischen Erwägung, daß auch Freunden Englands kräftige Aderlässe gesund seien.

Nicht die Verschiedenheit der Herrschaftsform brauche die Völker zu trennen, meinte er weiter und fügte mit Rücksicht auf solche Hörer, die nicht begreifen können, warum dann England den Nationalsozialisten und Faschisten Kampf bis aufs Messer ansage, hinzu, mit Hitler führe Britannien nur Krieg, weil er die Weltherrschaft anstrebe. Hier wird also eine bequeme Notlüge stumpfsinnig wiederholt, als ob nicht gerade Mister Eden stets dem nationalsozialistischen Deutschland begeistert als Kriegsziel die „Vernichtung des deutschen Volkes“ verkündet hätte!

Nationalsozialismus ist unbritisch — damit lehnte die englische Presse ehedem jede sachliche Auseinandersetzung mit deutschen Fragen ab und malte alles grau in grau. Heute macht sich dafür die „Times“ erneut zum Schrittmacher der bolschewistischen Werbung. Sie schwärmt von einer künftigen Weltherrschaft des Empire, der USA, der Sowjetunion und Chinas und meint dann: „Bevor die Herrschaft dieser vier Großmachte Wirklichkeit werden kann, muß man noch weltanschauliche Schwierigkeiten beheben, die unter ihnen bestehen“, aber das sei leicht, da sie alle eines gemeinsam hätten: sie liebten die Menschenrechte, und das sei eben für den „Patriotismus der freien Völker“ bezeichnend.

„Ehrendemokrat“ Stalin

Es wird also auch hier versucht, den zum willenlosen Werkzeug herabgewürdigten Sowjetmenschen, die Millionen und aber Millionen von Sklaven, die in den Zwangsarbeitslägern des Rätestaates hinsiechen, zu freien Geschöpfen zu erklären und die Massenmörder im Kreml als gutherzig besorgte Landesväter hinzustellen, die sich um die Menschheit hochverdient gemacht hätten. Wer diesen kindischen Beweis führen will, hat selbst schon geistig jeden festen Boden unter den Füßen verloren und ist zum Opfer der eigenen Propaganda geworden, die sich seit Jahr und Tag nur noch darum bemüht, allen Sinn zum Unsinn zu verschwatzen.

Natürlich fehlt auch wieder der Erzbischof von Canterbury nicht, der die Sowjets einen „Leuchtturm in der Finsternis“ nennt. Die britische Fregatte hat mit vollen Segeln Kurs auf dieses Irrlicht hingenommen und wird dabei unzweifelhaft scheitern, weil ihr Kompaß verlorengegangen ist. Ein England, das sich vor Moskau in den Staub wirft, in Washington als fauler Schnorrer auftritt, südamerikanische Staaten demütig um ein paar Schiffe anbettelt und bei Tschiangkaischek eindringlich um Tschungking-Divisionen winselt. hat alle Würde beiseite gesetzt und seine sittliche Schwäche offenbart.

Der King umarmt die Zarenmörder

Zwischen König Georg von England und Kalinin fand ein herzlicher Telegrammwechsel statt, in dem die beiden Staatsoberhäupter ihre Hoffnung auf eine fortgesetzte gute Zusammenarbeit zwischen den beiden Nationen zum Ausdruck bringen.

Wie die dänische Presse erfährt, ist dieser Telegrammaustausch angeblich während des Moskauer Besuches von Außenminister Eden vorbereitet und abgesprochen werden.

Lord Alexander phantasiert
„Nach Deutschland faellt Japan“

Die wuchtigen Schläge, die die britische Flotte in den ostasiatischen Gewässern durch die japanische Wehrmacht erlitten hat, haben in London offensichtlich die größte Beunruhigung ausgelöst. Diese Sorge kommt auch in einer Äußerung des Ersten Lords der britischen Admiralität, Alexander zum Ausdruck.

Lord Alexander erklärte nämlich im Londoner Nachrichtendienst, daß ein „erstaunlicher Wechsel im Krieg zur See“ zu verzeichnen sei, wenn man ihn mit der Lage von vor 18 Monaten vergleiche. Er fügte jedoch hinzu, obschon man sich infolge des Eintritts Japans in den Krieg einer neuen Lage gegenübersähe, dürfe man Deutschland nicht aus den Augen lassen. Es werde nach seiner Niederringung nicht schwer sein, mit Japan fertig zu werden.

Wie sich Alexander ausgerechnet angesichts der eingestandenen „neuen Lage“ allerdings die Niederringung Deutschlands und die anschließende „Erledigung“ Japans verstellt, bleibt das Geheimnis des Ersten Lords der Admiralität. Die schweren Verluste, die die seiner Obhut anvertraute britische Flotte gerade in den letzten Monaten hinnehmen mußte, geben doch wirklich keinerlei Grund zu einem derartigen Optimismus.

USA-Kriegsschiff schwer beschädigt
Angriff japanischer Seestreitkräfte auf Hawai

(Weltbild-Gliese)

dnb. Tokio, 5. Januar
Japanische Kriegsschiffe griffen einen Hafen Hawais an und beschädigten ein USA-Kriegsschiff schwer. Zu dem Angriff auf Hawai gibt die Marineabteilung des Kaiserlichen Hauptquartiers bekannt, daß japanische Kriegsschiffe am 31. Dezember militärische Ziele in den Hawaihäfen Kabului auf Maui, Nawiliwili auf Kauai und Hilo auf Hawai angegriffen hatben. Dabei wurden wichtige militärische Einrichtungen zerstört und außerdem im Hafen von Hilo ein USA-Kriegsschiff schwer beschädigt.

Nach den starken Verlusten, die die britische Marine durch Einwirkung deutscher Luft- und Seestreitkräfte im Dezember erlitt, sind auch die Sorgen der amerikanischen Marine über die Niederlagen ihrer Pazifikflotte sehr gestiegen.

Von den neue Schlachtschiffen, die den Vereinigten Staaten im Atlantik verbleiben, ist das veraltete Schlachtschiff „Arkansas“, das mit seinen 27.000 Tonnen zur „Texas“-Klasse gehört, bereits im Jahr 1911 vom Stapel gelaufen. Die „Arkansas“ sollte längst ersetzt werden. Das Schwesterschiff der „Arkansas“, die „Wyoming“, ist seit mehreren Jahren bereits zum Schulschiff der amerikanischen Marine umgebaut worden. Zwei weitere Schiff der „Texas“-Klasse sind nicht weniger veraltet und büßten bei ihrem Umbau auch noch an Geschwindigkeit ein, so daß sie nicht mehr als 19 Knoten laufen.

Diese veralteten amerikanischen Schiffe können den neueren japanischen Schlachtschiffen weder an Feuerkraft noch an Geschwindigkeit standhalten. So verbleiben den Vereinigten Staaten nur noch sechs Schlachtschiffe, während Japan zu Beginn des chinesischen Konflikts wahrscheinlich neun besaß.

Der Endkampf auf Luzon

Die Marineabteilung des Kaiserlichen Hauptquartiers gab am Montag bekannt, daß die japanische Marineluftwaffe sich bemüht, die restlichen feindlichen Truppen auf den Philippinen zu vernichten, indem sie seit dem 1. Januar heftige Angriffe auf die Insel Corregidor, den Militärhafen Olongapo und den Luftstützpunkt Malolos wiederholt.

Die japanischen Truppen, die den zurückgehenden Feind verfolgen, brachen den feindlichen Widerstand an verschiedenen Stellen und haben am Vormittag des 5. Januar die Stellungen an einem gewissen Punkt erreicht. Nach Besetzung der ganzen nördlichen Hälfte der Halbinsel Bataan setzen sie ihren Marsch nach Süden fort. Anderseits versuchen Filipinos, die das Vorrücken der japanischen Truppen auf Balanga verhindern und anderseits aus der Festung Corregidor entkommen wollen, einen letzten Gegenangriff, aber die japanische Luftwaffe bombardiere seit dem 4. Januar morgens immer wieder militärische Anlagen in der westlichen Hälfte Balangas. Gleichzeitig hat sie die Kasernen in der Umgebung von Olongapo schwer beschädigt. Weiter berichtet Domei, daß die japanische Luftwaffe, die mit den Bodentruppen zusammenwirkt, einen Lastwagenzug überraschte, der auf der Fahrt von Mariveles nach Balanga begriffen war, und mit Sicherheit 20 LKW. vernichtete.

Die japanische Luftwaffe auf den Philippinen bombardierte USA-Fahrzeuge und Transporter in der Manilabucht, die mit flüchtenden versprengten USA-Truppen an Bord versuchten, die vor der Bucht liegende Inselfestung Corregidor zu erreichen. Das Bombardement richtete, wie ein japanisches Aufklärungsflugzeug beobachtete, schweren Schaden unter der Transportflotte an.

Der erwähnte Luftstützpunkt Malolos liegt in der Provinz Bula Kern, 35 Kilometer von Manila und etwa 10 Kilometer von der Küste der Bucht von Manila entfernt.

Flucht nach Niederländisch-Indien?

Mit großem Interesse verzeichnet man hieraus Batavia eingetroffene Berichte, wonach sich nordamerikanische Marinestreitkräfte in den Gewässern Niederländisch-Indiens aufhalten und wonach bereits ein Angriff der japanischen Luftwaffe auf die Einheiten der USA-Schiffe erfolgt ist. Danach scheint sich das sogenannte Asiengeschwader, soweit es nicht in der Manilabucht eingeschlossen oder versenkt wurde, in den Gewässern Niederländisch-Indiens zurückgezogen zu haben. Darunter dürfte sich auch das Flaggschiff „Houston“ mit Admiral Hart an Bord befinden sowie der kleine Flugzeugträger „Heron“.

Man nimmt an, daß sich jetzt die in den niederländisch-indischen Gewässern operierenden USA-Marinekräfte schon mehrere Tage vor dem Fall Manilas von den Philippinen zurückgezogen haben.

In einem Reuter-Bericht wird davon gesprochen, daß General Wavell möglicherweise sein neues Hauptquartier nach dem Marineflugplatz Soerabaja auf Java verlegen werde.

Brunei und Lauban besetzt

Wie die Armeeabteilung des Kaiserlichen Hauptquartiers am Montag bekanntgibt, besetzten die auf Britisch-Nordborneo gelandeten japanischen Truppen am 31. Dezember die Stadt Brunei und am 1. Januar die Insel Labuan am Eingang der Bruneibucht.

Brunei, die Hauptstadt des, gleichnamigen Sultanats, hat rund 12.000 Einwohner. In der Stadt gibt es eine bedeutsame Webwarenindustrie und auch der Handel mit Edelmetallen ist beträchtlich.

Roosevelts „Narrenzirkus“

dnb. Tokio, 5. Januar
Der Regierung nahestehende Kreise bezeichnen, wie Domei berichtet, die Teilnahme der 26 „Nationen“ an dem Atlantikabkommen als „Narrenzirkus“ und nennen diese Aktion eine tolle Unternehmung, die von den Vereinigten Staaten und Großbritannien schon seit einiger Zeit vorbereitet worden sei, um die Aufmerksamkeit des Volkes von dem unersetzlichen Verlust Manilas abzulenken. Die Bekanntgabe über die Unterzeichnung des Dokumentes kam unmittelbar nach dem Fall von Manila.

Es wird darauf hingewiesen, daß nahezu alle Regierungen, die das Washingtoner Dokument unterzeichneten, entweder kleinere zentralamerikanische Nationen sind, die sich in keiner Weise gegen den großen Nachbarn im Norden auflehnen können, oder aber „Regierungen“, die nur dem Namen nach existieren und die weder über ein Gebiet noch über ein Volk herrschen, wie etwa Luxemburg, Jugoslawien, die Tschecho-Slowakei, Belgien, die Niederlande, Griechenland, Norwegen und Polen.

In einer vom Staatsdepartement der Vereinigten Staaten herausgegebenen Erklärung werden „geeignete Persönlichkeiten“ aufgefordert, ihre Zustimmung zu der gemeinsamen Erklärung der Nationen zu geben.

Diese Erklärung lautet: „Um den freiheitsliebenden Völkern, die durch Waffengewalt zum Stillschweigen verurteilt sind, die Gelegenheit zu geben, der Erklärung der verbündeten Nationen zuzustimmen, nimmt die Regierung der Vereinigten Staaten als Verwahrer dieser Erklärung Zustimmungskundgebungen zu den Leitgedanken obiger Erklärung von geeigneten Persönlichkeiten, die keine Regierung darstellen, an.

Dieser von Roosevelt, Stalin und Churchill in Ermangelung militärischer Erfolge und als Ersatz für diese gestartete diplomatische Bluff wirkt geradezu wie eine Kollekte, bei der „geeignete Persönlichkeiten“ gesammelt werden, die man dann als „Garanten des Sieges“ zu plakatieren versuchen möchte.

W. C. will die Araber evakuieren

dnb. Rom, 5. Januar
Nach seiner Rückkehr aus Kanada nach Washington hatte Churchill, wie Stefani aus Neuyork erfährt, eine Unterredung mit „einer bekannten jüdischen Persönlichkeit“. Auch Lord Halifax habe dieser Unterredung beigewohnt, in der die Frage eines jüdischen Palästinas erörtert wurde.

Churchill hatte dabei augenscheinlich eine Art Verhör über Londons Pläne in bezug auf Palästina zu überstehen. Er zog sich aus der Affäre, indem er erklärte, die Palästinafrage sei ein gordischer Knoten, „mit dem Schwert zugunsten der Juden“ gelöst werden müsse. Die Araber hätten in Vorderasien genug Raum anderwärts zur Verfügung.

Erst nach dieser offiziellen Erklärung habe die amerikanische Zionistenpresse angefangen, für Churchill Propaganda zu machen. Im Nahen Osten hebt man das Zusammenfallen der Verhandlungen Bullitts im Orient mit dem bindenden Versprechen Churchills an die amerikanischen Juden hervor. Churchills Anspielungen auf das „Schwert“, das die Palästinafrage lösen müsse, hat bei den Arabern besondere Erregung ausgelöst.

Japan droht mit Repressalien. Wie eine hohe Persönlichkeit der Marine bekanntgibt, haben die japanischen Truppen, als sie die Stadt Ipoh in Malaya besetzten, festgestellt, daß die japanischen Staatsangehörigen dort unter Bedingungen interniert waren, die er als „nicht human“ beschrieb. Er äußerte die Warnung, daß Japan sofort zu Gegenmaßnahmen schreiten wird, wenn die britischen Behörden ein derartiges Verfahren fortsetzten.

Führer-Hauptquartier (January 6, 1942)

Wehrmachtbericht

Die Kämpfe im mittleren Abschnitt der Ostfront dauern an. Unsere Truppen fügen dem Feinde durch Abwehrfeuer und Gegenstöße schwere Verluste zu. Im Rahmen der Kampfführung aus der Luft hat sich ein kroatischer Fliegerverband durch kühn geführte Tiefangriffe besonders zeichnet.

Die bei Feodosia gelandeten sowjetischen Kräfte sowie Schiffsziele vor Jewpatoria wurden von Kampf- und Jagdfliegerverbänden erfolgreich angegriffen. Ein Schnellboot wurde versenkt, drei Transporter beschädigt.

Bei den Färöern und an der englischen Westküste wurden zwei feindliche Handelsschiffe durch Bombenwurf beschädigt.

In Nordafrika lebhafte Auklärungs- und Artillerietätigkeit im Raum von Sollum und bei Agedabia. Wirksame Luftangriffe richteten sich gegen britische Stellungen und Nachschubwege.

Auf der Insel Malta wurden britische Flugplätze bombardiert.

Comando Supremo (January 6, 1942)

Bollettino n. 583

Il Quartier Generale delle Forze Armate comunica in data 6 gennaio 1942:

Vivace attività delle opposte artiglierie sui fronti di Agedabia e di Sollum.

In Cirenaica formazioni aeree italiane e tedesche, prodigandosi in molteplici azioni sulle retrovie nemiche, hanno martellato importanti nodi di comunicazioni, concentramenti di mezzi motorizzati, unità in movimento; numerose autoblindo sono state incendiate.

Sulle basi aeree ed i porti di Malta l’aviazione dell’Asse ha continuato l’offensiva con evidenti risultati; in combattimenti nel cielo dell’isola la caccia germanica ha abbattuto 3 Hurricane e un Blenheim.

U.S. War Department (January 6, 1942)

Communique No. 46

PHILIPPINE THEATER – A formation of heavy bombers attacked enemy naval vessels off Davao on the island of Mindanao, scoring three direct hits on a Japanese battleship and sinking an enemy destroyer.

Other hits were made on other enemy vessels with undetermined damage. All of our planes returned to their base uninjured.

There is nothing to report from other areas.

Communique No. 47

PHILIPPINE THEATER – The fortifications of Manila Bay, including Corregidor Island and Mariveles, were again heavily bombed by enemy planes yesterday. The bombardment continued for four hours with 50 planes participating. Material damages and casualties were light. At least seven enemy planes were hit by our anti-aircraft fire.

While ground activity was considerably less than on the previous day, enemy pressure is continuing on all American and Philippine outposts.

There is nothing to report from other areas.

NormanStewart · January 8, 2021, 2:17pm

President Roosevelt on the State of the Union
January 6, 1942, 12:30 p.m. EST

Broadcast audio:

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States:

In fulfilling my duty to report upon the State of the Union, I am proud to say to you that the spirit of the American people was never higher than it is today. The Union was never more closely knit together and this country was never more deeply determined to face the solemn tasks before it.

The response of the American people has been instantaneous, and it will be sustained until our security is assured.

Exactly one year ago today I said to this Congress:

When the dictators are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war on our part. They, not we, will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack.

We now know their choice of the time: a peaceful Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.

We know their choice of the place: an outpost – an American outpost – in the Pacific.

We know their choice of the method: the method of Hitler himself.

Japan’s scheme of conquest goes back half a century. It was not merely a policy of seeking living room, it was a plan which included the subjugation of all the peoples in the Far East and in the islands of the Pacific, and the domination of that ocean by Japanese military and naval control of the western coasts of North, Central, and South America.

The development of this ambitious conspiracy was marked by the war against China in 1894, the subsequent occupation of Korea, the war against Russia in 1904, the illegal fortification of the mandated Pacific islands following 1920, the seizure of Manchuria in 1931, and the invasion of China in 1937.

A similar policy of criminal conquest was adopted by Italy. The Fascists first revealed their imperial designs in Libya and Tripoli. In 1935, they seized Abyssinia. Their goal was the domination of all North Africa, Egypt, parts of France and the entire Mediterranean world.

But the dreams of empire of the Japanese and Fascist leaders were modest in comparison with the gargantuan aspirations of Hitler and his Nazis. Even before they came to power in 1933, their plans for that conquest had been drawn. They provided for ultimate domination, not of any one section of the world, but of the whole earth and all the oceans on it.

When Hitler organized his Berlin-Rome-Tokyo alliance, all these plans of conquest became a single plan. Under this, in addition to her own schemes of conquest, Japan’s role was obviously to cut off our supply of weapons of war to Britain and Russia and China, weapons which increasingly were speeding the day of Hitler’s doom. The act of Japan at Pearl Harbor was intended to stun us, to terrify us to such an extent that we would divert our industrial and military strength to the Pacific area, or even to our own continental defense.

The plan has failed in its purpose.

We have not been stunned. We have not been terrified or confused. This very reassembling of the 77th Congress today is proof of that. For the mood of quiet, grim resolution which here prevails bodes ill for those who conspired and collaborated to murder world peace.

And that mood is stronger than any mere desire for revenge. It expresses the will of the American people to make very certain that the world will never so suffer again.

Admittedly, we have been faced with hard choices. It was bitter, for example, not to be able to relieve the heroic and historic defenders of Wake Island. It was bitter for us not to be able to land a million men in a thousand ships in the Philippine Islands.

But this adds only to our determination to see to it that the Stars and Stripes will fly again over Wake and Guam. Yes, see to it that the brave people of the Philippines will be rid of Japanese imperialism, and will live in freedom and security and independence.

Powerful and offensive actions must and will be taken in proper time. The consolidation of the United Nations’ total war effort against our common enemies is being achieved.

That was and is the purpose of conferences which have been held during the past two weeks in Washington and Moscow and Chungking. That is the primary objective of the declaration of solidarity signed in Washington on January 1, 1942, by 26 nations united against the Axis powers.

Difficult choices may have to be made in the months to come. We do not shrink from such decisions. We and those united with us will make those decisions with courage and determination.

Plans have been laid here and in the other capitals for coordinated and cooperative action by all the United Nations – military action and economic action. Already we have established, as you know, unified command of land, sea, and air forces in the southwestern Pacific theater of war. There will be a continuation of conferences and consultations among military staffs, so that the plans and operations of each will fit into the general strategy designed to crush the enemy. We shall not fight isolated wars, each nation going its own way. These 26 nations are united, not in spirit and determination alone, but in the broad conduct of the war in all its phases.

For the first time since the Japanese and the Fascists and the Nazis started along their blood-stained course of conquest, they now face the fact that superior forces are assembling against them. Gone forever are the days when the aggressors could attack and destroy their victims one by one – destroy them without unity of resistance. We of the United Nations will so dispose our forces that we can strike at the common enemy wherever the greatest damage can be done him.

The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war. But the massed, angered forces of common humanity will finish it.

Destruction – destruction of the material and spiritual centers of civilization – this has been and still is the purpose of Hitler and his Italian and Japanese chessmen. They would wreck the power of the British Commonwealth and of Russia and of China and of the Netherlands, and then combine all their forces to achieve their ultimate goal, the conquest of the United States.

They know that victory for us means victory for freedom.

They know that victory for us means victory for the institution of democracy, the ideal of the family, the simple principles of common decency and humanity.

They know that victory for us means victory for religion. And they could not tolerate that. The world is too small to provide adequate living room for both Hitler and God.

In proof of that, the Nazis have now announced their plan for enforcing their new German pagan religion all over the world, a plan by which the Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy would be displaced by Mein Kampf and the swastika and the naked sword.

Our own objectives are clear – the objective of smashing the militarism imposed by warlords upon their enslaved peoples, the objective of liberating the subjugated nations, the objective of establishing and securing freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear everywhere in the world.

We shall not stop short of these objectives, nor shall we be satisfied merely to gain them and then call it a day. I know that I speak for the American people, and I have good reason to believe that I speak also for all the other peoples who fight with us, when I say that this time we are determined not only to win the war, but also to maintain the security of the peace that will follow.

But we know that modern methods of warfare make it a task, not only of shooting and fighting, but an even more urgent one of working and producing.

Victory requires the actual weapons of war and the means of transporting them to a dozen points of combat.

It will not be sufficient for us and the other United Nations to produce a slightly superior supply of munitions to that of Germany and Japan and Italy, and the stolen industries in the countries which they have overrun.

The superiority of the United Nations in munitions and ships must be overwhelming – so overwhelming that the Axis Nations can never hope to catch up with it. And so, in order to attain this overwhelming superiority, the United States must build planes and tanks and guns and ships to the utmost limit of our national capacity. We have the ability and capacity to produce arms not only for our own forces, but also for the armies, navies, and air forces fighting on our side.

And our overwhelming superiority of armament must be adequate to put weapons of war at the proper time into the hands of those men in the conquered nations who stand ready to seize the first opportunity to revolt against their German and Japanese oppressors, and against the traitors in their own ranks, known by the already-infamous name of Quislings. And I think that it is a fair prophecy to say that, as we get guns to the patriots in those lands, they too will fire shots heard ‘round the world.

This production of ours in the United States must be raised far above present levels, even though it will mean the dislocation of the lives and occupations of millions of our own people. We must raise our sights all along the production line. Let no man say it cannot be done. It must be done and we have undertaken to do it.

I have just sent a letter of directive to the appropriate departments and agencies of our government, ordering that immediate steps be taken:

First, to increase our production rate of airplanes so rapidly that in this year, 1942, we shall produce 60,000 planes, 10,000, by the way, more than the goal that we set a year and a half ago. This includes 45,000 combat planes, bombers, dive bombers, pursuit planes. The rate of increase will be maintained and continued so that next year, 1943, we shall produce 125,000 airplanes, including 100,000 combat planes.

Second, to increase our production rate of tanks so rapidly that in this year, 1942, we shall produce 45,000 tanks, and to continue that increase so that next year, 1943, we shall produce 75,000 tanks.

Third, to increase our production rate of anti-aircraft guns so rapidly that in this year, 1942, we shall produce 20,000 of them, and to continue that increase so that next year, 1943, we shall produce 35,000 anti-aircraft guns.

And fourth, to increase our production rate of merchant ships so rapidly that in this year, 1942, we shall build eight million deadweight tons as compared with a 1941 completed production of 1,100,000. And finally, we shall continue that increase so that next year, 1943, we shall build 10,000,000 tons of shipping.

These figures and similar figures for a multitude of other implements of war will give the Japanese and the Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished in the attack at Pearl Harbor.

And I rather hope that all these figures which I have given will become common knowledge in Germany and Japan.

Our task is hard, our task is unprecedented, and the time is short. We must strain every existing armament-producing facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to war production. That goes all the way from the greatest plants to the smallest, from the huge automobile industry to the village machine shop.

Production for war is based on men and women, the human hands and brains which collectively we call labor. Our workers stand ready to work long hours, to turn out more in a day’s work, to keep the wheels turning and the fires burning 24 hours a day and seven days a week. They realize well that on the speed and efficiency of their work depend the lives of their sons and their brothers on the fighting fronts.

Production for war is based on metals and raw materials: steel, copper, rubber, aluminum, zinc, tin. Greater and greater quantities of them will have to be diverted to war purposes. Civilian use of them will have to be cut further and still further and, in many cases, completely eliminated.

War costs money. So far, we have hardly even begun to pay for it. We have devoted only 15 percent of our national income to national defense. As will appear in my budget message tomorrow, our war program for the coming fiscal year will cost $56 billion or, in other words, more than half of the estimated annual national income. That means taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes. It means cutting luxuries and other non-essentials. In a word, it means an all-out war by individual effort and family effort in a united country.

Only this all-out scale of production will hasten the ultimate all-out victory. Speed will count. Lost ground can always be regained, lost time never. Speed will save lives, speed will save this nation which is in peril, speed will save our freedom and our civilization, and slowness, well, it has never been an American characteristic.

As the United States goes into its full stride, we must always be on guard – on guard against misconceptions which will arise, some of them naturally, or which will be planted among us by our enemies.

We must guard against complacency. We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging war. For many years, he has prepared for this very conflict – planning and plotting and training, arming and fighting. We have already tasted defeat. We may suffer further setbacks. We must face the fact of a hard war, a long war, a bloody war, a costly war.

We must, on the other hand, guard against defeatism. That has been one of the chief weapons of Hitler’s propaganda machine, used time and again with deadly results. It will not be used successfully on the American people.

We must guard against divisions among ourselves and among all the other United Nations. We must be particularly vigilant against racial discrimination in any of its ugly forms. Hitler will try again to breed mistrust and suspicion between one individual and another, one group and another, one race and another, one government and another. He will try to use the same technique of falsehood and rumormongering with which he divided France from Britain. He is trying to do this with us even now. But he will find a unity – a unity of will and purpose against him, which will persevere until the destruction of all his black designs upon the freedom and people of the world are ended.

We cannot wage this war in a defensive spirit. As our power and our resources are fully mobilized, we shall carry the attack against the enemy. We shall hit him and hit him again wherever and whenever we can reach him.

We must keep him far from our shores, for we intend to bring this battle to him on his own home grounds.

American Armed Forces must be used at any place in all the world where it seems advisable to engage the forces of the enemy. In some cases, these operations will be defensive in order to protect key positions. In other cases, these operations will be offensive in order to strike at the common enemy with a view to his complete encirclement and eventual total defeat.

American Armed Forces will operate at many points in the Far East.

American Armed Forces will be on all the oceans, helping to guard the essential communications which are vital to the United Nations.

American land and air and sea forces will take stations in the British Isles, which constitute an essential fortress in this great world struggle.

American Armed Forces will help to protect this hemisphere, and also help to protect bases outside this hemisphere which could be used for an attack on the Americas.

If any of our enemies, from Europe or from Asia, attempt long-range raids by suicide squadrons of bombing planes, they will do so only in the hope of terrorizing our people and disrupting our morale. Our people are not afraid of that. We know that we may have to pay a heavy price for freedom. We will pay this price with a will. Whatever the price, it is a thousand times worth it. No matter what our enemies, in their desperation, may attempt to do to us, we will say, as the people of London have said, “We can take it.”

And what’s more we can give it back and we will give it back, with compound interest.

When our enemies challenged our country to stand up and fight, they challenged each and every one of us. And each and every one of us has accepted the challenge, for himself and for his nation.

There were only some 400 United States Marines who in the heroic and historic defense of Wake Island inflicted such great losses on the enemy. Some of those men were killed in action; and others are now prisoners of war. When the survivors of that great fight are liberated and restored to their homes, they will learn that a hundred and thirty million of their fellow citizens have been inspired to render their own full share of service and sacrifice.

We can well say that our men on the fighting fronts have already proved that Americans today are just as rugged and just as tough as any of the heroes whose exploits we celebrate on the Fourth of July.

Many people ask, when will this war end?

There’s only one answer to that. It will end just as soon as we make it end, by our combined efforts, our combined strength, our combined determination to fight through and work through until the end – the end of militarism in Germany and Italy and Japan. Most certainly, we shall not settle for less.

That is the spirit in which discussions have been conducted during the visit of the British Prime Minister to Washington. Mr. Churchill and I understand each other, our motives and our purposes. Together, during the past two weeks, we have faced squarely the major military and economic problems of this greatest world war.

All in our nation have been cheered by Mr. Churchill’s visit. We have been deeply stirred by his great message to us. He is welcome in our midst, now and in days to come. And we unite in wishing him a safe return to his home.

For we are fighting on the same side with the British people, who fought alone for long, terrible months and withstood the enemy with fortitude and tenacity and skill.

We are fighting on the same side with the Russian people who have seen the Nazi hordes swarm up to the very gates of Moscow and who with almost superhuman will and courage have forced the invaders back into retreat.

We are fighting on the same side as the brave people of China – those millions who for four and a half long years have withstood bombs and starvation and have whipped the invaders time and again in spite of the superior Japanese equipment and arms. Yes, we are fighting on the same side as the indomitable Dutch. We are fighting on the same side as all the other governments-in-exile whom Hitler and all his armies and all his Gestapo have not been able to conquer.

But we of the United Nations are not making all this sacrifice of human effort and human lives to return to the kind of world we had after the last world war.

We are fighting today for security, for progress, and for peace – not only for ourselves but for all men, not only for one generation but for all generations. We are fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils, ancient ills.

Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the human race. We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, “God created man in His own image.”

We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. Those on the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image, a world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom.

That is the conflict that, day and night, now pervades our lives.

No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been – there never can be – successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance and decency and freedom and faith.

NormanStewart · January 8, 2021, 4:12pm

The Pittsburgh Press (January 6, 1942)

ROOSEVELT PLEDGES TOTAL WAR
Huge output of planes and tanks ordered; AEF to fight on all fronts

185,000 aircraft will be built in 1942-43; cost $56 billion
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington –
President Roosevelt told Congress today in a promise of victory to come that he would order U.S. Armed Forces to worldwide war fronts to find the enemy and “hit him and hit him again whenever and wherever we can reach him.”

He warned of a “heavy price for freedom” in money, work and blood and fixed the war budget for the next fiscal year at $56 billion.

Most of these billions will go into a tremendous production effort far exceeding anything the world has seen – 185,000 planes alone will be produced in 1942 and 1943 combined, the President promised, along with huge quantities of other weapons.

Far from trying to clothe the projected production in military secrecy, Mr. Roosevelt departed from his prepared text to tell Congress that:

I rather hope that all these figures which I have given will become common knowledge in Germany and Japan.

Our forces – land, sea or air – will take up defensive or offensive positions as circumstances warrant in the British Isles, many points in the Far East, on all the oceans and on bases within and without the New World to protect the Western Hemisphere.

Mr. Roosevelt’s personally-delivered annual message to Congress on the State of the Union at war outlined a staggering production program of planes, tanks, guns and shipping – a program calculated to stagger the Axis.

He said:

Let no man say it cannot be done. It must be done and we have undertaken to do it.

The airplane program is calculated to outbuild the Axis by three-to-one in 1943. Mr. Roosevelt said he had sent a new production directive to departments and agencies calling for a new production directive to departments and agencies calling for a schedule of munitions as follows:

Build 60,000 airplanes (including 45,000 combat planes) in 1942, and 125,000 (including 100,000 combat planes) in 1943. Production in 1941 was around 18,000.
Build 45,000 tanks this year and 75,000 in 1943.
Build 20,000 anti-aircraft guns in 1942; 35,000 in 1943.
Launch 8,000,000 deadweight tons of merchant shipping in 1942, 10,000,000 tons in 1943. We produced 1,100,000 deadweight tons in 1941.

Mr. Roosevelt said:

These figures and similar figures for a multitude of other implements of war will give the Japanese and the Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished in the attack at Pearl Harbor…

Only this all-out scale of production will hasten the ultimate all-out victory. Speed will count.

And Mr. Roosevelt warned that it could be accomplished only by a jarring dislocation of our normal civilian life and a bruising burden of taxes, “taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes.”

Guard against complacency, the President warned. Do not underrate the cruel and ruthless enemy. He has been planning, plotting, training, arming, fighting to kill and to destroy.

And the President reminded that we already have suffered defeats, that we may suffer further reverses and must “face the fact of a hard war, a long war, a bloody war, a costly war.”

He said that the militarists in Berlin and Tokyo started this war but that the massed, angered forces of common humanity will finish it. Our victory means freedom and triumph of the institutions of democracy, the ideals of the family and the simple principles of decency and humanity, he continued.

Mr. Roosevelt said:

They know that victory for us means victory for religion. And they could not tolerate that. The world is too small to provide adequate living room for both Hitler and God.

Our own objectives are clear – the objective of smashing the militarism imposed by warlords upon their enslaved peoples, the objective of liberating the subjugated nations, the objective of establishing and securing freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear everywhere in the world.

We shall not stop short of these objectives, nor shall we be satisfied merely to gain them and then call it a day. I know that I speak for the American people, and I have good reason to believe that I speak also for all the other peoples who fight with us, when I say that this time we are determined not only to win the war, but also to maintain the security of the peace that will follow.

Mr. Roosevelt said he was proud to report to Congress that the spirit of the American people was never higher, the union never more closely knit, the country never more deeply determined to face the tasks before it. He recalled his warning of one year ago that when the dictators were ready to make war upon us, they would not wait for an act of war on our part.

We now know their choice of the time: a peaceful Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941.

We know their choice of the place: an outpost – an American outpost – in the Pacific.

We know their choice of the method: the method of Hitler himself.

He said that Japan’s scheme of conquest went back half a century in a continuing movement to subjugate all the peoples of the Far East and the Pacific Islands – war against China in 1894, subsequent occupation of Korea, war against Russia in 1904, illegal fortification after 1920 of Pacific mandated islands, seizure of Manchuria in 1931 and the invasion of China in 1937.

He said that Italy’s policy of “criminal conquest” was similar, but that the empire dreams of Rome and Tokyo were modest compared with “the gargantuan aspirations of Hitler and his Nazis.”

The President continued:

When Hitler organized his Berlin-Rome-Tokyo alliance, all these plans of conquest became a single plan. Under this, in addition to her own schemes of conquest, Japan’s role was obviously to cut off our supply of weapons of war to Britain and Russia and China, weapons which increasingly were speeding the day of Hitler’s doom. The act of Japan at Pearl Harbor was intended to stun us, to terrify us to such an extent that we would divert our industrial and military strength to the Pacific area, or even to our own continental defense.

The plan has failed in its purpose.

We have not been stunned. We have not been terrified or confused. This very reassembling of the 77th Congress today is proof of that. For the mood of quiet, grim resolution which here prevails bodes ill for those who conspired and collaborated to murder world peace.

There had been hard choices, the President admitted, and he said it “was bitter” not to be able to relieve the Marines at Wake Island – 400 heroic men. But he promised that all of this merely adds up to our determination to restore the flag to Wake and Guam and to see that the Filipinos are not only rid of Japanese imperialism but are able to live in freedom, security and independence.

He spoke briefly of his conversations with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain. Their objective was “the consolidation of the United Nations’ total war effort against our common enemy,” which is being achieved.

He warned that such consolidation involved “difficult choices” in the months to come, but promised that there would be no shrinking from those hard decision. Citing the establishment of a unified land, sea and air command in the Southwest Pacific, Mr. Roosevelt said conference and consultations among the military staffs would continue “so that the plans and operations of each will fit into the general strategy designed to crush the enemy.”

Must produce

And Mr. Roosevelt warned again that this is a war of working and producing as much as shooting and fighting. He said we could not rest content by producing only “a slightly superior supply of munitions” as compared with the Axis and its stolen industries. Our superiority “must be overwhelming.”

He explained that we are to produce not only for nations now in the fight but to arm:

…those men in the conquered nations who stand ready to seize the first opportunity to revolt against their German and Japanese oppressors, and against the traitors in their own ranks, known by the already-infamous name of Quislings.

He said we would get guns “to the patriots in those lands.”

Task is hard

The President continued:

Our task is hard, our task is unprecedented, and the time is short. We must strain every existing armament-producing facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to war production.

Production for war is based on metals and raw materials: steel, copper, rubber, aluminum, zinc, tin. Civilian use of them will have to be cut further and still further and, in many cases, completely eliminated.

War costs money. So far, we have hardly even begun to pay for it. As will appear in my budget message tomorrow, our war program for the coming fiscal year will cost $56 billion or, in other words, more than half of the estimated annual national income. That means taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes. It means cutting luxuries and other non-essentials.

Warns of division

Mr. Roosevelt warned, “We must guard against divisions among ourselves,” and be vigilant against racial discrimination. Hitler, he said, would attempt to use here the same technique of falsehood and rumor-mongering “with which he divided France from Britain.”

He said:

American Armed Forces must be used at any place in all the world where it seems advisable to engage the forces of the enemy. In some cases, these operations will be defensive in order to protect key positions. In other cases, these operations will be offensive in order to strike at the common enemy with a view to his complete encirclement and eventual total defeat.

American Armed Forces will be on all the oceans, helping to guard the essential communications which are vital to the United Nations.

American land and air and sea forces will take stations in the British Isles, which constitute an essential fortress in this great world struggle.

American Armed Forces will help to protect this hemisphere, and also help to protect bases outside this hemisphere which could be used for an attack on the Americas.

If any of our enemies, from Europe or from Asia, attempt long-range raids by suicide squadrons of bombing planes, they will do so only in the hope of terrorizing our people and disrupting our morale. Our people are not afraid of that. We know that we may have to pay a heavy price for freedom.

When our enemies challenged our country to stand up and fight, they challenged each and every one of us. And each and every one of us has accepted the challenge, for himself and for his nation.

NormanStewart · January 8, 2021, 4:19pm

WAR BULLETINS!

Egypt cuts diplomatic ties

Cairo, Egypt –
The Egyptian government decided today to sever diplomatic relations with the Vichy government, Bulgaria and Finland. Egypt now parallels Great Britain in the states with which it does not maintain diplomatic relations.

Japs: Philippine end near

Berlin, Germany (UP) – (official broadcast recorded in New York)
Dispatches from Shanghai, quoting Japanese military information from the Philippines, said today that the “final annihilation” of U.S. troops in the Bataan Peninsula is at hand.

Jap bombers driven from Singapore

Singapore –
Japanese bombers attacked Singapore just before dusk tonight but were driven off by British fighters. The Japanese dropped a few bombs but damage was insignificant.

Rommel reported sick

New York –
Private advices from a usually-reliable source in continental Europe reported today that Gen. Erwin Rommel, the German commander-in-chief of Axis forces in Libya, had been in Germany for several weeks, suffering from blackwater or tropical fever. Gen. Rommel was reported to be under treatment at Tubingen, the famous medical center in southwestern Germany.

RAF blast Brest base

London, England –
British planes heavily attacked Brest, naval base on the French-occupied coast where two German battleships and a heavy cruiser are docked, and docks at Cherbourg on the invasion coast, the Air Ministry said in a communiqué today. The attack on Brest was the 100th since the start of the war.

Berlin admits Red advance

Berlin, Germany (UP) – (broadcast recorded in London)
Radio Berlin admitted today that Russian troops penetrated German advance lines in one sector of the Moscow Front Sunday, but claimed counterattacks halted the assault. The Russian penetration was attributed to “a greater number of troops supported by heavy tanks.”

Corregidor ‘collapse’ claimed by Japs

Tokyo, Japan (UP) – (official broadcast recorded in San Francisco)
Japan claimed today that the fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay, whose guns are covering the “last resistance” of U.S. troops in the Bataan Peninsula, has virtually collapsed.

NormanStewart · January 8, 2021, 4:25pm

Forts in Luzon repulse Japs

U.S. flier hit battleship, sunk destroyer
By Harrison Salisbury, United Press staff writer

Washington –
Japan hurled a heavy air attack against Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s last-ditch fighters in the Philippines, the War Department reported today, but suffered severe losses in new bombardments of Fortress Corregidor and U.S. strongholds in Bataan Province.

U.S. and Philippine ground defenses damaged at least seven of 50 Jap air attackers – a 14% casualty toll for the enemy – and it seemed likely that most of these seven planes had been put permanently or temporarily out of the war.

This brought the score of Corregidor’s powerful anti-aircraft defenses to 15 Jap planes known downed and at least seven damaged in recent air bombardments.

The Army reported that the latest Jap attack extended over four hours yesterday, but that casualties to U.S. forces and damage to their positions were light.

The Jap attack did not appear to compare in effectiveness with the assault by long-range heavy U.S. bombers upon enemy naval concentrations off Davao, the southern port on Mindanao Island.

In this demonstration of offensive U.S. air punch, one Jap battleship suffered three direct bomb hits, one Jap destroyer was sunk and an uncertain additional number of Jap naval craft were believed damaged.

Jap attacks slacken

On land, the War Department, reporting on the military situation as of 9:30 a.m. ET today, said that Jap attacks have slackened temporarily but that pressure continues constant against Gen. MacArthur’s lines.

The War Department gave no detailed picture of land operations. However, Gen. MacArthur is known to be holding shortened lines in Bataan Province and part of Pampanga Province with his rear protected by the Bataan Mountains and Corregidor, which guards the entrance to Manila Bay.

Today’s communiqué reported that Japan’s air bombardment was centered against Corregidor and the port of Mariveles, on the south coast of the Bataan Province, four and a half miles across the north channel of Manila Bay from Corregidor.

Try to cut off Corregidor

The Japanese, it would appear, were seeking to disrupt communications between Gen. MacArthur’s Bataan positions and the strong garrison established on Corregidor.

The Jap attack on the Manila Bay fortifications was general, the War Department said, and presumably included bombardment of small Fort Drum which lies just southeast of Corregidor.

The War Department had no report on operations in theaters other than the Philippines.

Reports from the Far Eastern war theater indicated that the Allied stand against Japan is stiffening, paced by U.S. planes and promises of more planes to come.

Battle Japs over Rangoon

In Burma, U.S. aircraft, fighting side-by-side with British fighter planes, fought off savage and repeated Jap attempts to establish air supremacy over the vital Rangoon terminus of China’s Burma Road lifeline.

From both the Dutch East Indies and Australia came heartening reports that U.S. air and naval reinforcements are expected shortly.

U.S. military experts, cheered by Gen. MacArthur’s skillful tactics in inflicting a heavy land defeat upon the Japanese noted that the longer he can keep fighting, the longer he will tie up an estimated 12 Jap divisions (possibly 175,000 men) in the Philippines, preventing Japan from throwing these forces against Singapore.

U.S. air attack surprises

They warned, however, that caution must be observed in assessing Gen. MacArthur’s long-term prospects. Skill and tactics, they noted, cannot indefinitely win over Japan superior in men and material.

The U.S. air offensive struck against Japanese sea forces off Davao, the main port of the southerly Philippine island of Mindanao, 500 miles south of Manila.

The U.S. air attack came as a surprise. Except for small-scale fighter action, there had been no report of U.S. air forces in the Philippine Theater since the first days of the war in which Capt. Colin Kelly sank the 29,000-ton Jap battleship Haruna and a 29,000-ton battleship of the Kongo class was set afire.

Base 400 to 600 miles away

The U.S. Army communiqué gave no hint of the new base of U.S. heavy bomber operations. Presumably, however, the nearest friendly bases are in Borneo and the northern Dutch East Indies, 400 to 600 miles away. This is within easy flying range of the big four-motored U.S. Boeing and Consolidated bombers which can fly twice that distance roundtrip and carry a massive load of high explosives.

The Army reported that the U.S. fliers spotted a concentration of Jap naval craft off Davao where the Japs secured a landing about 10 days ago. In the attack, three square hits were scored on a Jap battleship of unspecified class and a destroyer was sunk. Other Jap warships were also hit, but the exact damage was not ascertained.

All the U.S. planes returned safely to their base.

Use secret bombsight?

The Army did not indicate the extent of damage to the Jap dreadnaught, but three distinct hits with high explosive bombs would be certain to cause extensive injury even if the battleship were not crippled or sunk.

The lack of specified details by the War Department hinted that the attack may have been a high-altitude attack in which the U.S. planes utilized to advantage the vaunted secret U.S. bombsight.

On land, Gen. MacArthur was demonstrating the mastery of tactics and strategy which won him the supreme U.S. command in the Far East.

Kill 700 Jap soldiers

Meeting a strong Jap attack on his short sturdy defense lines which are anchored in northern Bataan Province, Gen. MacArthur’s forces killed at least 700 Japanese while suffering only light losses themselves.

Gen. MacArthur’s exact fighting lines have not been revealed by U.S. war communiqués.

However, it appeared likely that the battle in which the Japanese suffered their most heavy losses of the campaign may have been fought in Pampanga Province, northeast of Bataan, where Gen. MacArthur may have stationed rearguard and scouting forces to hinder Jap attempts to move down upon his Bataan stronghold.

This possibility was strengthened by the War Department’s statement that a Japanese north-south pincer movement had closed but that:

U.S. and Philippine troops were not in the jaws.

MacArthur in good position

Failing to trap Gen. MacArthur, said the communiqué, the Japanese were forced to attempt their costly but futile frontal attack.

Gen. MacArthur is now presumed to be in a strong defensive position. He has a short defensive line which probably runs west to the China Sea just north of the secondary U.S. naval base at Olongapo. Behind him lie the Bataan Mountains to protect against Jap landings and attempted attacks from the rear and on his right wing is swampy, roadless jungle land.

Thus, the only Jap approach is on a short front and as Jap pressure grows. Gen. MacArthur can fall back southwest toward Manila Bay and the fortress island of Corregidor.

NormanStewart · January 8, 2021, 7:05pm

Red Cross ad

NormanStewart · January 8, 2021, 8:10pm

Navy returns yard at Kearny

Owners get back plant seized during strike

Washington –
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox today announced that the plant of the Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Company, in Kearny, New Jersey, is being returned to its owners after 134 days of Navy operation.

The return of the plant is being made in accordance with an executive order signed by President Roosevelt yesterday. Actual transfer of the shipyard to the original management will take place at midnight tonight.

The Navy took the plant over on Aug. 25, 1941, in order to terminate a strike of CIO shipbuilding workers and resume construction of naval vessels, held up by the work stoppage. At the time of this action, the company had $493 million in ship contracts.

In announcing restoration of the shipyard to its owners, Mr. Knox said:

This is not the time for the Navy to be operating an industrial plant unless it is absolutely necessary. I am advised that the management and the employees and everyone concerned are anxious to relieve the Navy of this burden and are confident that restoration of the plant to its owners will insure maximum production, As a result of the recent industry-labor conference, there will be no war work stoppages anywhere and all disputes will be resolved by peaceful means.

During the period of Navy operation, keels for 12 vessels were laid. Ten ships were launched, including four destroyers and cruisers Atlanta and Juneau; and seven vessels were commissioned – the Atlanta, three destroyers, two Maritime Commission freighters and a tanker.

President loses aide

Washington –
RAdm. John Reginald Beardall, naval aide to President Roosevelt, has been ordered to duty as Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy and commandant of the Severn River Naval Command.

NormanStewart · January 9, 2021, 4:34am

I DARE SAY —
Women in uniform

By Florence Fisher Parry

New York –
I wish I had saved a lovely “ad” I read the other day – if indeed one can call these magnificent testimonials of patriotism, which are filling the newspapers and magazines these days, by such a commercial name. This one was a full-page picture of a man in uniform, guarding a lonely outpost. A misty vision of a woman’s yearning face filled the sky, blending with the stars and brooding over his night like the wing of an angel.

And below, the words reminded us that men fight because of their beloved ones, their families and children – but most of all, for the women they love. And that in their dreams and prayers, these women are lovely women, feminine and desirable.

And the “ad” reminded us, too, how in England, during the bitter days of bombing, the women cast aside their beauty and their femininity and became as men, efficient, uniformed and plain; until they realized that they were depriving their men of the very thing for which they fought. And they changed. They took care to groom themselves again, and take off their uniforms from time to time, and be the women, beloved and defenseless, whom their men were fighting for…

Why is this?

I have had occasion to think often of this dressmakers’ “ad” … Already the war organization of women is threatening their femininity. I see in Civilian Defense centers here, in the Red Cross and air-raid centers, a kind of brisk imitation of that British efficiency which, while so commendable in action, does, in inactive times, have the unhappy effect of desexing our estimable ladies in charge of the local units, and rendering them unto a kind of blown-up pouter pigeon brigade.

Why, I ask, do women show up so charmingly as women and so badly as organization heads, especially whom their rank requires uniforms and titles? Here is an estimable woman who, I am sure, is in peacetime and under the roof of her own home, a splendid helpmate, an asset to the community and to the flag to which she pledges allegiance at every neighborhood club meeting.

But look what the rank of sergeant major (or whatever) does to her! It has changed her into an officious busybody, sharply jealous of that pretty young aide whom the news photographer has just snapped, indignant over the assumption of authority of some well-meaning assistant, and altogether a female whom no man-in-uniform, on guard at whatever remote outpost, could conceivably yearn to defend.

Why do military-sounding ranks so illy become us? WHY (with the possible exception of that most beautiful of all uniforms, the Red Cross nurse) does a crisp uniform make us feel so doggone officious? What does organization DO to US?

Women are a queer breed. We just can’t stand militarization. We’re ministering angels in time of war. God knows; we’re Patience on a Monument, we’re Penelopes, we’re even Lysistratas. But when we aspire to be men in uniform, something goes out of us. Call it – loveliness. Call it – grace. Our curves turn into angels – (or at best, bulges) – and our Cordelia voices become shrill as the Valkyries.

Call to arms

There are so many beautiful, wonderful, needed ways that we can serve, and still preserve our menfolks’ dream of us. There is a call for 50,000 trained nurses. Here is a challenge to our deepest womanliness! Always a glorious profession, nursing has been allowed to languish and cheapen and go abegging for the very kind of ministering angels it so sorely needs.

No noble profession has ever been so poorly rated; and we ourselves are responsible for that. We have encouraged our daughters to pass by this one wholly natural and suitable career, in order to enter the competitive ranks of white-collar business. We have looked upon “nursing” as but one step removed from menial service.

Oh, there’ll be maids in uniform, now! The world is massing women for a militarized stand against the forces that would take away their hard-won liberties. But there is only one uniform which has remained purely, entirely feminine, completely womanly: the uniform of the nurse.

Nurses who have had training – the war calls you with a sterner and more urgent voice than it employs to all its less able women. Girls who are groping and uncertain, feeling the urge to make some contribution – there is a duty calling you which thousands, thousands of you must heed – if the wounds are to be bound up, if the fever is to subside, if the great recuperation is to be!

Consider nursing. Consider it now. It has a chance to become, at least, the glorified service it was meant to be. It can free itself of the light and condescending regard in which it has been held all too long; it can stand supreme among the contributions women have made in this war and in the peace which will follow after.

It is the greatest preparation ever vouchsafed woman – for peace, for war, for love, for marriage, for children, for home.

And above all, it is womanly. It keeps inviolate the purely feminine uses to which womanhood can employ its virtues.

Above the shrill female clamor for “a way to serve,” its voice rings clear and quiet.

NormanStewart · January 9, 2021, 5:25am

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – My friends in San Francisco assured me that they now had themselves in hand and could spare my guidance and counsel for a few days.

So we’ll drop back to Albuquerque for a little while, to sit and reminisce hungrily over that now-departed three months of idleness in which I recently indulged.

All through the fall, you know, I disappeared into the great void and wallowed in the luxurious experience of not making a living.

That three months was my longest stretch of “non-work” in nearly 19 years. It was a nice experiment. For all my life I had heard it said that an active man couldn’t sit around and do nothing. That he would go nuts pretty soon, and have to get busy.

But I am a living, walking refutation of that ridiculous theory, I reveled in laziness. And the longer I was lazy, the lazier I got. Another month and I would have been static.

So I am now an experienced craftsman in the art of loafing. I know whereof I speak. And I can assure you that loafing is wonderful. and that working is a very poor way to spend a day.

Of course the sudden excitement of America at war sent me back to work eagerly and in a hurry, but that doesn’t spoil mv new philosophy. In normal times, I shall stand upon a creed of “give me idleness or give me death.”

As soon as the war is over, I’m going to sigh a deep good-for-nothing sigh, write “phooey” at the end of my last column, and never do another lick of honest work as long as I live.

Pyle the croquet wizard

In those three idle months I didn’t do a single constructive thing, unless you call laying croquet constructive. I did become a shark at croquet. And, incidentally, I turned my croquet wizardry to a nice profit.

For it happens that one of our friends out here is a contractor named Earl Mount, and he suffers from a hallucination that he can play croquet. This hallucination is so stubborn that he is willing to bet money on it, and he just keeps on betting (praise Allah).

So throughout the fall I managed to make, not exactly a lavish living, but a very comfortable one, just taking a quarter away from Mr. Mount five or six times every afternoon.

I never expected to find such a gold mine when we stopped in this part of the country. I don’t need a burro and a pan to do my gold prospecting. I can do it just five blocks up the street, on a nice green lawn, with somebody handing me sandwiches between masterful strokes of the mallet.

But what you want to know most, I expect, is about “That Girl.”

Well, she is beginning to perk again. Her escape from death was much slimmer than most of you ever suspected. She spent seven weeks in the hospital, and will be under a nurse’s care all winter. Her complete recovery is still a long time off.

She is home now, but sees only intimate friends. She is up most of the day. and once in a while even takes a ride. Her diet is strict, and she has to drink so much milk we are thinking of buying a herd of milk cows. She hates milk, too.

Thoughtfulness is appreciated

There is considerable question whether my presence here is legitimate or not. One school of thought holds that there was some justice in my dropping the columns until she was out of the woods. The other school avows that I really am lazy, and merely used her illness as an excuse for a long rest. Personally I know the answer, but I ain’t telling.

That Girl and I both were deeply touched by the cards, letters and flowers that came from unknown friends all over the country. If any of you haven’t been thanked, consider yourselves thanked now. For we appreciated everything.

It was hard for both of us when I set out again on my travels. But I had to go, and she wanted me to go. She will lack for nothing while I am away. She has friends and interests here, and the best of care.

To some of you, I expect, it must seem that out here on the desert a person isn’t in the best professional hands when he falls desperately ill. Get that out of your head. There are doctors here as fine as anywhere in America. When I finally begin to rattle and fall to pieces (it won’t be long, either), I hope it can be right here.

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

NEW YORK – The CIO and the Auto Manufacturers’ Association are wasting time, breath, ink and good white paper arguing a proposition that is no more soluble than how-high-is-up and equally bootless.

What the hell difference does it make now whether maladministration in Washington, industrial inefficiency, economic caution or honest fear of a socialistic coup in the motor industry or what combination of all these factors caused the enormous and irretrievable waste of materials and loss of time in the conversion of the motor factories to war production?

The grim fact is that the stuff and time did slip through our fingers and the lowdown, dirty truth is that we were caught just as Hitler figured we would be caught, divided on the issue of war and hardly even half willing to make a war effort until Japan made war official.

During much of that time, we were almost wholly occupied with one of the weird quadrennial political frenzies which enliven the life of this interesting republic and were scrapping over such questions as “is Willkie a phony hoosier?” and “how did Harold Ickes strike it rich?”

Industrialists called war-mongers

Naturally, the motor companies were slow to abandon their regular trade and go into the war business, because war is a business without a future and they were thinking of a time when the war would be over, perhaps without our ever having entered the fight, and they would be left with a lot of expensive plant which would be useless for any other trade.

Moreover, it can’t be forgotten, surely, that as recently as the first year of the New Deal, the industrialists who had turned out the tools and soldier suits and canned goods for the last war were being denounced as bloody-handed monsters who had practically kicked up the whole ghastly business in cold premeditation so that they could get rich on the war orders.

And we have to remember that within the very same CIO, which is now making politics of this tragic bundle, and high in its councils, too, there were a number of men of Moscow who fought, by subtle means and open, to snarl our war program, then called the defense program, because Hitler and Stalin were partners and the war was then an imperialistic war, and no proper business of ours.

No question about it, we were just caught in a jam, mostly of our own making, and Hitler, who always was the No. 1 enemy, had studied our habits and our condition and calculated the advantage which this gave him.

I was in Washington when the CIO presented the “practical, simple plan for utilizing and adapting the available machinery in the auto industry for plane production” which is mentioned in the current political advertisement of this suddenly patriotic organization. Possibly the magnates made a mistake in rejecting it as a socialistic scheme intended to wrest the industry out of the hands of the owners who, incidentally, are legion, and of the builders and executives, and deliver it to the unioneers forever.

Pathetic that might isn’t fighting

The industry is sure to be socialized now and God only knows who will get it when the war is over, but the odds are that it will never be turned back to the stockholders as private property, so maybe they might better have just relaxed then, and saved a year’s time. But, as capitalists and believers in private property, their reaction was the only one that could have been expected of them.

They had no reason to trust the men who had fought them so short a time before or to accept the CIO’s profession of patriotic motives, and, anyway, we weren’t at war, millions of Americans thought we could escape war and the big operators quietly scanned the plan and brushed it off for reasons which they will defend as long as they live.

The situation now is that this enormous wad of American industrial muscle must be put to fighting purposes and, granted good will and good faith on both sides, will be. It is simply pathetic that such might, which Hitler and the Japs admire, envy and fear, isn’t fighting today, but that great loss of effort and what-it-takes can’t be retrieved and the CIO contributes nothing to unity and the great effort by wrangling now.

The most practical and courageous stroke in the whole sad mess was the sudden, brutal abolition of the passenger car trade and the sale of tires. That hurt, but in our geographical position, so far from the suffering and noise of war, the lash will be needed again and again before we quit making politics and wasting time in who-dunnit debates and realizes that this is a fight for life.

editorialclapper.up

Clapper: Capital riddle

By Raymond Clapper

WASHINGTON – One glaring, almost unforgivable fact tells the whole story of our trouble with war production.

That unfortunate fact is that we have no opposite number who can do business with Lord Beaverbrook, the British minster of supply.

Beaverbrook came here with Churchill to sit down and try to dovetail British production with ours. But nobody in the American Government can talk with Beaverbrook on a footing of equal authority except President Roosevelt.

Mr. Roosevelt is trying to be our Churchill and Beaverbrook combined. We have no boss of war production corresponding to Beaverbrook except the heavily-burdened President of the United States. Mr. Roosevelt should not have to take time out to settle production details that Churchill delegates to one of his cabinet ministers. Yet that is the situation in Washington.

No official has authority to act

When Beaverbrook tries to deal with anybody except Mr. Roosevelt, he has to clutch in a fog for shadowy figures. When he gets hold of one of them, they can’t reach a decision because no American official, whoever he may be, has the authority to act.

Donald Nelson, executive director of SPAB, is regarded by many as the top man in war production. That is not correct. In fact, Nelson was in Cuba, taking a few days’ rest when the auto industry assembled here to discuss with OPM the gigantic task of converting this enormous industry over to war work. I was under the impression that Nelson would have something to do with that. But I understand not. That is OPM’s baby – Knudsen and Hillman.

You go dizzy trying to understand this complicated setup, and when you follow it through you seem to have nothing left to get hold of.

SPAB is an advisory board. Four of its seven members are also members of OPM. Nelson is executive officer of SPAB but is not on the board. But Nelson is also a subordinate of Knudsen, being priorities officer under OPM. Leon Henderson is a member of SPAB. But he is also under OPM. If you are becoming confused don’t mind. Everyone else is.

Recently Nelson thought copper production should be increased. He persuaded SPAB, of which Knudsen is a member, to adopt a resolution directing him to expand copper production. Nelson started out to get a copper expediter. But Knudsen stepped in and said he was supposed to expedite copper, and technically he was within his authority. The more you look, the less you see.

There probably isn’t a responsible official in the Government who isn’t alarmed at the confusion. Mr. Roosevelt is wrestling with it. What will be done, or when, I don’t know. Everyone here is hoping it will be soon and that it will be something more than a makeshift like SPAB.

Tire rationing was clean-cut job

Under Secretary of War Patterson is acting on his own to improve production under the Army’s control. He is appointing ordnance expediters, to be located around the country as trouble-shooters. These are mostly civilian business men who know their local industry and who can move in and untangle production jams and get orders moving. The Navy hasn’t responded as yet to the need of similar action.

Knudsen doesn’t have authority, although he is being held responsible for production. He can’t let a single contract. The Army, Navy and Maritime Commission do their own contracting. That is why, when OPM prepared today to put the auto industry to work on war orders, the Army and Navy had to clear the way by announcing they stood ready to grant the auto industry five billion dollars’ worth of new contracts.

There is the same confusion in the Office of Civilian Defense. The only clean-cut job that I can cite offhand is the quick organization of the tire-rationing machinery. Leon Henderson gave the job to Frank Bane, of the Council of State Governments. Bane moved to decentralize it by laying responsibility on each state governor plus the mayors of New York and Chicago. That is not the pattern for war production, except that in the tire-rationing job everybody’s authority was clearly defined and was complete within the prescribed limits.

Maj. Williams: War and weather

By Maj. Al Williams

“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”

Let’s just play for a few minutes with the idea of American submersible aircraft carriers. The job of building a submersible aircraft carrier can be done. And when it is done, our naval commanders will have a bag of tricks unequalled anywhere else in the world.

The machinery of sea warfare in this struggle must either hit and run, or if it is unable to hit, it must run. And “run” in the modern sense does not mean that a surface vessel can be built or should try to “outspeed” the bomber overhead. The word “run” when used pertaining to surface war vessels, does mean “running virtically” – diving, submerging, and thus hiding under the surface of the sea. The old stand-and-slug idea is obsolete.

Why have almost all the gigantic animals disappeared from this earth? I believe that the dinosaur and his gargantuan brothers lost out because they were so designed that they had to stand-and-slug – fight it out toe to toe, lacking maneuverability, just like the modern battleship with its tons and tons of steel hide, heavy hitting power, but mighty little maneuverability. It succumbs to attacks by fast-moving, death-dealing, faster enemies which can’t be nailed to a spot long enough.

Slowness brings death

Take the hypothetical death struggle of the ancient saber-toothed tiger, or the long-toothed, fast-moving progenitor of modern tigers, against a giant dinosaur. One swoosh, one blow from the giant would have squashed a dozen of his smaller, but faster stepping, enemies. But they kept moving and by the time a giant paw was lifted, the fast-stepping enemy had skipped around and had bitten the big, heavy fellow’s spinal cord or whatever kept them going. The result was the slow but sure death of the big animal tribe, struck down by smaller but far faster and more maneuverable animals.

Isn’t there a definite parallel between this hypothetical picture of combat and what’s been happening during the past 20 odd years in the struggle between battleships and the sub and bombing plane? The sub can’t run, so it submerges – hides beneath the surface – to pounce unexpectedly. One shell from a battleship’s smallest gun can sink any sub. But the battleship can’t seem to “land” its pay on the subsea enemy. The battleship destroys a few of the subs. The dinosaur killed a few of his enemies, too. But the percentage in neither case is high enough. We have seen definitely that the slab-sided warship – steel hide, 14-18 inches thick – present angles to all kinds of sub and air projectiles. We know now to our sorrow that this just won’t do.

Carriers are big targets

The only thing that will win this war will be two-fisted leaders of our armed forces. If we must build more battleships, let’s build one so it will run upside down. At least, in that position air bombs will bounce off its hide and not stick and blister and bust everything.

Now just think what could be done with a giant, submersible aircraft carrier. (England has lost at least four of her original eight aircraft carriers, so apparently the orthodox carrier can’t be kept afloat anymore successfully than the battleship). Comparatively safe lurking in the ocean depths, the giant sub roost for aircraft comes to the surface in the wee small hours of the morning before sunrise, launches her ten or twenty flying boat bombers (even from nearby unsuspected and protected water) with enough darkness for her planes to reach and bomb an objective, returning to either the point of original take-off or some distant rendezvous just when there is enough daylight to permit safe landing.

What a fearful and effective weapon of surprise and power such a submersible aircraft carrier could be!

Stowe: Here’s how U.S. ‘tourists’ got into Chinese air force

High-paid volunteers from U.S. forces went to the Far East as ‘acrobats, artists,’ Stowe reveals
By Leland Stowe

RANGOON, Burma – Flying and fighting alongside their comrades of the Royal Air Force here, pilots of the American volunteer group in the Chinese air force played a very considerable, perhaps historically important, role on Christmas Day in dealing the Japanese air force its first great defeat, knocking out at least one of every four Nipponese planes.

Since this is an established fact and since they still are holding the first joint Anglo-American aerial front formed in World War No. 2, the folks at home may wonder just how the flying Yanks happened to be here and in China at the moment the Jap blitz was launched.

Burma was the one place where British and American aviation together first met Jap aerial attacks. The American pilots who shared this accomplishment virtually were smuggled across the Pacific and into the Chinese air force months ago.

Came as mercenaries

The word “volunteer” is a misnomer in a sense since the Americans came to the Far East as mercenary pilots assured of incomes of approximately $600 a month and promised a bonus of $500 for every Jap plane they shot down. This arrangement still holds despite the United States’ involvement in the war because they are under contract to the Chinese government.

These volunteers had resigned their commissions as pilots or enlistments as mechanics and other ground personnel in the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps late last spring when offered privately an opportunity to earn big money by joining the Chinese air force.

The original idea of the volunteers was hatched by two Americans who had long co-operated in supplying the Chinese with fighting planes. They were William Pawley, of Miami, Fla., president of the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Co., and its Chinese subsidiary, the Intercontinental Corp., and his associate, Cmdr. B. G. Leighton.

Has plant in China

Intercontinental already had an airplane plant in China so Pawley, in answer to Chinese requests, worked out a plan to obtain experienced American pilots from our defense forces and bring them to China.

This probably never could have been worked out had not the American government committed itself to the greatest possible aid to China.

Accordingly, Mr. Pawley’s Central Aircraft Manufacturing Co. assumed private responsibility for recruiting aviators and transporting them to China.

For its professional military direction, Col. C. L. Chennault, retired U.S. Army Air Force officer, already was available since he had trained and directed the Chinese air force for the past four years. Officers who have long served with Col. Chennault – now a Chinese general – call him the “Old Fox” because Chinese pilots following his directions often have punished the Japanese surprisingly against heavy odds.

Traveled as ‘tourists’

How long these fliers may continue to serve as a unit of the Chinese air force is not yet clear, but it may be taken for granted – despite the fact that these fliers are now grossly overpaid compared with any other airmen involved in the war against the Axis – that the Chinese government will do its utmost to hold onto them as long as possible.

These volunteers traveled as “tourists” en route to the Far East. When they reached Singapore one registered at a hotel as a retired acrobat, another as an artist. Noticing the bold signature “MacGarrow–artist,” a British correspondent accosted one of the Yankees and asked for MacGarrow saying he wanted him to do some sketches of Singapore. The youngster acted very surprised and said, “Sorry, brother, afraid he can’t do it.”

“Why?” asked the British correspondent. The smuggled American “tourist” leaned forward and replied, “Confidentially, he can’t draw a line.”

Pearl Harbor probers ask civilian testimony

HONOLULU (UP) – Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts and his committee investigating responsibility for the Pearl Harbor attack held sessions today in a heavily-guarded room of the swank Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

All citizens with “personal knowledge of the facts” were ordered to appear tomorrow.

The commission already has conferred with high Army and Navy officials, and now is seeking testimony from civilians on possible dereliction of duty or errors of judgment.

War cost will total $427 per person

WASHINGTON (UP) – War cost estimates by President Roosevelt for the fiscal year 1943 will amount to $427.48 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

Mr. Roosevelt projected expenditures of $56 billion for the fiscal year which starts this July 1, as against U.S. gold reserves of $22,700,000,000.

The per capital cost of the program is based on 1940 population figures of 131,000,000.

U.S. State Department (January 6, 1942)

Hopkins-Litvinov luncheon meeting

America at war! (1941– ) (Part 1)

Record Corner Reviews of latest recorded music and song

Diplomat friendly to Russia

Japs may strike at rich Sumatra resources

Honolulu digs in, collects grim Jap raid souvenirs

Army private warship hero

Tokyo claims big U.S. loss

Louis’ fighting urge stays strong

Battery loss is big worry to Boudreau

Louis v. Baer… Indoor gate record seen

Stock market rise carries over into ‘42

Currency in circulation holds near record high

Bond market joins upturn in stock list

Record food sales forecast for 1942

War has ‘limited effort’ on U.S. money markets

Although blind, man volunteers to help in war

Would-be aviator almost goes to jail

Arnold conversations with Hopkins, Roosevelt, and Churchill

Meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill with their military advisers, 5:30 p.m.

Die Lage nach der Besetzung Manilas Reste des USA-Geschwaders eingeschlossen

Die „Vasallen“ müssen Erklärungen abgeben Enttäuschung um das Roosevelt-Affentheater

Wehrmachtbericht

Bollettino n. 582

Communique No. 45

Communique No. 24

Annual Budget Message January 5, 1942

PROCLAMATION 2535 Third Registration Day

EXECUTIVE ORDER 9012 Possession Relinquished of Plant of Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company

Luzon forces smash Jap attack

Only 5 U.S. planes remain in Philippines, Japs say

U.S. volunteers ‘get’ 7 Japs over Burma

Chinese troops surround crack Nipponese armies

WAR BULLETINS!

Luzon forces intact

Finns say, ‘Aims accomplished’

Typhus rages in Rumania

Dead Germans ‘litter town’

U.S. unaware of major’s capture

Soldiers put with lepers, Japs say

Japs claim they sunk U.S. sub

U.S. warship reported attacked

Hawaiian port attacked, Berlin says

Paris reports U.S.-Jap naval battle

New U.S. planes win in Near East

Ten million to register for war duty

As deadline nears… Aliens give up radios

Car industry asked to hike arms output

President to present message tomorrow

A life of shame – Stowe: He can never go home

Rambling Reporter

Fair Enough

Clapper: More bombers

Maj. Williams: War and weather

London bekennt zynisch: Kanonenfutter ist vorhanden, doch die Waffen fehlen

Der Vormarsch auf der Malakkahalbinsel Japaner an der Grenze von Selangor

Verherrlichung der Bolschewisierung Europas Eden spielt mit Hammer und Sichel

Lord Alexander phantasiert „Nach Deutschland faellt Japan“

USA-Kriegsschiff schwer beschädigt Angriff japanischer Seestreitkräfte auf Hawai

Roosevelts „Narrenzirkus“

W. C. will die Araber evakuieren

Wehrmachtbericht

Bollettino n. 583

Communique No. 46

Communique No. 47

President Roosevelt on the State of the Union January 6, 1942, 12:30 p.m. EST

Broadcast audio:

ROOSEVELT PLEDGES TOTAL WAR Huge output of planes and tanks ordered; AEF to fight on all fronts

WAR BULLETINS!

Egypt cuts diplomatic ties

Japs: Philippine end near

Jap bombers driven from Singapore

Rommel reported sick

RAF blast Brest base

Berlin admits Red advance

Corregidor ‘collapse’ claimed by Japs

Forts in Luzon repulse Japs

Navy returns yard at Kearny

President loses aide

I DARE SAY — Women in uniform

Rambling Reporter

Record Corner
Reviews of latest recorded music and song

Louis v. Baer…
Indoor gate record seen

Die Lage nach der Besetzung Manilas
Reste des USA-Geschwaders eingeschlossen

Die „Vasallen“ müssen Erklärungen abgeben
Enttäuschung um das Roosevelt-Affentheater

Annual Budget Message
January 5, 1942

PROCLAMATION 2535
Third Registration Day

EXECUTIVE ORDER 9012
Possession Relinquished of Plant of Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company

As deadline nears…
Aliens give up radios

A life of shame –
Stowe: He can never go home

London bekennt zynisch:
Kanonenfutter ist vorhanden, doch die Waffen fehlen

Der Vormarsch auf der Malakkahalbinsel
Japaner an der Grenze von Selangor

Verherrlichung der Bolschewisierung Europas
Eden spielt mit Hammer und Sichel

Lord Alexander phantasiert
„Nach Deutschland faellt Japan“

USA-Kriegsschiff schwer beschädigt
Angriff japanischer Seestreitkräfte auf Hawai

President Roosevelt on the State of the Union
January 6, 1942, 12:30 p.m. EST

ROOSEVELT PLEDGES TOTAL WAR
Huge output of planes and tanks ordered; AEF to fight on all fronts

I DARE SAY —
Women in uniform