Enemy broadcasts…
Tojo warns Japanese Diet: ‘It might take a long time’
Dispatches from enemy countries are based on broadcasts over controlled radio stations, as they frequently contain false statements for propaganda purposes. Bear this in mind.
TOKYO – Premier Hideki Tojo warned the 79th session of the Diet today that Japan “must be prepared for the difficulties of various tasks that may arise in the future so that the present war will become a successful one.”
Speaking at the opening session of the Diet called to vote more war funds, Tojo said that although the United States and Britain suffered early setbacks, “It is not difficult to imagine that they will stubbornly resist and try to turn the tide.”
He said Japan, working on close cooperation with Germany and Italy, was prepared to fight until the United States and the British Empire “are brought to their knees.”
Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo urged the Japanese people to “surmount every obstacle in your path and bring this glorious enterprise to a successful conclusion,” and said American and British “bases of aggression in East Asia are crumbling one after another.”
He said Japan had gone to war to “emancipate East Asia from Anglo-American domination… and we are marching forward toward realization of this great task.”
Of Japan’s relations with other nations, the Diet was told:
Australia: “Japan will show no mercy if they continue resisting.”
Netherlands East Indies: “Japan harbors no enmity toward the people of the Netherlands East Indies. Now, however, that America, Britain, the Netherlands and Chungking in collusion have turned their countries into a military base, and the NEI itself has embarked on a course of flagrant hostilities, we have been compelled to commence armed hostilities against that country.”
The Philippines: “Japan will gladly enable the Philippines to enjoy the honor of independence and to further cooperate with us as one of the partners toward the establishment of Greater East Asia.”
A similar promise was extended to British Burma. Togo said Japan intends to convert the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya and the Dutch East Indies into “bulwarks for the defense of Greater East Asia.”
China: “There still exist elements in Chungking that rely on America and Britain, but I believe the day is not far distant when they too, reflecting on the entire mission of Greater East Asia, cooperate in the construction of the new order.”
Russia: “The relations between Japan and the Soviet Union… are fully regulated by the neutrality pact. Rumors emanating from various places should not have any effect on the relations of Japan and the Soviet Union.”
Thailand: “On December 23, Thailand concluded a treaty and alliance with Japan. The Japanese government extends congratulations to the Thai government for their far-sighted policy.”
South America: “We are prepared to respect fully the position of the South American countries so long as they are not misled by American and British machinations, and do not adopt a hostile or unfriendly attitude toward Japan. The Japanese government, however, is paying close attention to the conference which now is in session. It is nothing but the Anglo-American design to dominate the whole world that Japan regards with hostility.”
Germany and Italy: “However frantically America and Britain may endeavor to alienate Japan, Germany and Italy and their allies, there is no room for such imaginings. The iron will of the Axis powers is not to be compared with that of the so-called Allies.”
British-Siamese war declaration due
LONDON (UP) – Great Britain is expected to declare war on Thailand (Siam) soon and well-informed sources forecast that the United States would do so also, because Thailand troops are taking part in a Jap attack on Burma.
It was said that British and American officials were now discussing Thailand’s position.
So far Thailand has been classed by Britain as enemy-occupied. Informants said the problem of arranging the removal of the British diplomatic staff at Bangkok was one reason why Britain had delayed action toward changing the status.
Thai troops which invaded Burma to a depth of 20 miles before being opposed are meeting British resistance in heavy fighting north of Myawadi, 70 miles northwest of Moulmein, a Madras dispatch to The Daily Mail said.
If Thai troops reach Moulmein, they and their Jap allies will be able to menace Rangoon, 100 miles by sea to the northwest.
Hearts still brave in Singapore
By George Weller
SINGAPORE, Jan. 20 (Delayed) – The Japanese are using bombs of large caliber in the raids on Singapore I saw them strike full in the middle of non-military objectives and the tremors were heavier than had yet been experienced in this particular area.
Brown dust arose mingling with an overlying streamer of blue smoke.
The Japs continue to hammer this seagirt island in what is an apparent attempt to fulfill at the last minute their fortnight-old intent to “demolish Singapore within two weeks.”
Again the thump of bombs shook buildings. Through sketchy wisps of drifting cloud, I made out 17 red-circled planes flying in two Vs. British fighters arose like hunting hawks stealing from cloud to cloud.
The Japs, preserving a tight formation, wheeled after loosing their bombs and moved seaward.
Red Cross and rescue units function smoothly.
Singapore’s front may be overhead but spirits are still good and hearts brave.
Chinese standing or lying in the sandbagged arcades of downtown buildings are having their hatred of Japan a thousand times intensified though their faces remain impassive.
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
PORT ORFORD, Oregon – A new industry has sprung up on the Pacific Coast, and maybe you’d be interested in it. The industry is shark fishing.
Throughout eons of deep-sea fishing, sharks have been no good. All they did was eat bait and get on the hook you wanted other fish on, or ram around and tear up your nets. Fishermen cussed and despised the shark.
But within the last two years that situation has reversed itself. Now hundreds of fishermen all up and down this coast face high seas and miserable weather to gather in the newly elevated and respectable shark. Today, fishermen cuss the other fish that pet on the hooks they want sharks to get on.
The reason for all this is two-fold – the craze for vitamins and the war.
When this World War started it shut off a great portion of our vitamin-making ingredients from abroad. So we had to look around for our own source.
Scientists reported that the liver of a shark is just reeking with Vitamins A and D. And furthermore, to make it all the nicer for the fishermen, a shark just reeks with liver. The inside of a shark is practically all liver. So here was your new industry.
This little town of Port Orford is a good example of what has happened all up and down the coast. Two years ago there weren’t half a dozen fishermen here, and those few just sort of pecked at it. But today around 40 boats are working out of here.
Many make $1000 a week
Many’s the man who never had $50 in his pocket in his life and who now hauls off and makes $1000 in less than a week. One man paid for a $3500 boat in three days. During the peak of the season more than $1000 in shark livers comes into this little town every evening.
They catch two kinds of shark – soupfin and dog shark. Neither is the man-eating kind. Soupfin is what they want most, for the price of soupfin livers is $5 a pound, and the livers run from 6 to 12 pounds apiece.
The other kind is the dog shark, which is much smaller, and its liver brings only 25 cents a pound. But even that isn’t bad, when you consider that on a good day a fisherman might bring in two soupfins and 100 dogs – which would net him around $125.
One of these shark fishermen is one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met. Unfortunately I can’t write in detail about him, because he asked me not to.
His name is Jimmie Combs. He is a Harvard man. He keeps his past to himself. I know what is behind him, for he told me – both the highlights and the lowlights – but he wants old glories forgotten and old hurts left sealed.
He fishes for a living. He has been around Port Orford about eight years. He is 37. His shack on top of the hill is filled with classics, and he throws Latin into his conversation as though it were slang. And he cusses with a Harvard accent.
Rescues 24 men in storm
He somewhat resembles Bob Hope, of the movies. He is medium-sized, but powerful. They say he is the greatest fighter in southwest Oregon, although he is not pugnacious.
One night about six weeks ago a terrific storm was swirling over the Pacific. The Coast Guard had rescued 24 men from a lumber schooner that had broken up at sea. Many of them were in desperate shape. And then they discovered, on returning to Port Orford, that the waves were so bad the Coast Guard boat couldn’t get up to the dock.
And then Jimmie Combs came down the hill out of the night, got into an old leaking rowboat, and made 12 trips out across the raging black waters, bringing back two men on each trip. It took him hours. The whole town gathered on shore to see hum die. There is a movement now to get him a Carnegie Medal. But he wouldn’t care, one way or the other.
Combs is friendly and likeable. He says he didn’t have a dime for years, but now sharks have bought him a boat, an old car, a shack he built himself, and $3000 worth of fun.
He loves the ruggedness of the life at sea, and the solitude of the forests. When he feels the urge he dresses up and goes to Portland or San Francisco for music or the theater.
Jimmie Combs is one of those strange boiling souls, a combination of intellect and rebelliousness, who could not make himself fit into the regular pattern, and who finally took cloister in a little cabin on a bitterly beautiful shore far removed from the things he used to know.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK – Not even Tom Girdler, himself, could have clouted John L. Lewis as hard as Philip Murray slugged the Wrong One in his comment on Mr. Lewis’ attempt to muscle back into a position of official power in a consolidated union movement and to cure his reputation of the sickness that set in when he yanked out the coal miners for a week, just before Pearl Harbor.
Mr. Murray just said that he would present Wrong John’s suggestion to the executive board of the CIO, invited him to express his viewpoint and advised him that he, Mr. Murray, was boss of the CIO, with sole authority to initiate a reconciliation. That puts Lewis mm his place, which is comparable to that of Theodore Roosevelt when he thought he had retained the power of the Presidency after Wiliam Howard Taft took over.
Lewis staked the Presidency of the CIO on an election bet and lost, but his successor, who seemed so mild and biddable until his authority was challenged publicly in an obvious bid for personal power and benefits for the busy and ambitious Lewis family, announced with equal publicity and with surprising force that he is his own man.
Lewises are professional unioneers
Any thought that the interests of the American worker motivated the Lewis proposal may be forgotten at once. The Lewis family, John and his two brothers and his daughter, are professional unioneers and politicians and you may search Wrong John’s record as far back as it goes and discover no effort on his part to delouse the union movement of criminals preying on the rank and file. In fact, his only recorded expression on that subject was a mere wise-crack uttered a year or so ago for the sole purpose of embarrassing old Will Green, the erstwhile apologist for Scalise and Browne.
One brother has worked up a big business in the field of construction labor under a CIO charter and is so hungry for members, power and funds that he took in a group of Trotsky Communists in the Twin Cities who had become too notorious even for the teamsters of the AFL, who certainly aren’t exclusive. The other brother has been building a state political machine in West Virginia, where not long ago the chief of the state police, who frisked union gunmen and disarmed them to prevent murder in the coal strike, was removed from office, following a protest from the bosses of the mine workers.
As head of the family ambitions, Wrong John cost them all no little prestige with his coal strike on the issue of the closed shop and even though he won his point by a flagrant betrayal of the free American citizen, his timing was disastrous. The Wrong One’s information on the intentions of the Japanese apparently was no better than that of certain political and military officers of the nation, for he pulled his strike right under the guns of the enemy and the people are not forgetting, as they might if he had shut off all that production three months earlier.
They are a tenacious family group, the Lewises, and nothing abashes them, but their family unity and the growth of the power in the hands of this family have not escaped the notice of either the workmen or the rival unioneers.
Democracy a word – not a practice
The union movement, from the standpoint of the worker who wants to be a free man, would be much better off for the retirement of Wrong John, which would automatically reduce the power of the rest of the family. His administration of the affairs of the miners has fooled few of them in the rank and file in recent years and most of the men now realize that they paid for material benefits with a sacrifice of their human rights. Democracy is only a word – not a practice – in the mine workers and there was an expression of the growing distrust in a brief but violent strike in Pennsylvania in which union men went out protesting that their union boss or dictator was unfair to labor.
Lewis would seem to have more political sense than he showed in challenging Murray’s authority and affronting the prestige of his office, but he has been in a bad position ever since his Willkie speech and has been in wrong with the general public since the strike in the captive mines which spread to other pits and cost the war industries some great measure of production even while the Japs were planning their sneak attack.
This loss of face not only with his professional colleagues in the practical and utterly unsentimental union business, which uses ideals only in speeches and writings, but with the country, may have affected his judgment. He has to do something to rebuild himself. The family ambitions are involved to regard him as a man who can be licked and has been licked. He may never boot his way to the top again, but he will keep on trying. This latest mistake suggests, however, that he has lost his old cunning.
Clapper: A new problem
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – Some will wonder why President Roosevelt is asking 300 million dollars for special unemployment relief when war industry is short of workers.
That question goes to the heart of a new problem. It is one of many which have broken upon us out of the sudden upheaval now taking place in the daily life of this nation at war.
Workers and jobs are going through a violent shift as we change from peace industry to war industry. Detroit, the metropolis of war industry, has some 200,000 idle because of the changeover in the auto industry. Throughout the country tire and auto salesmen are losing their jobs. Others will be thrown out of work as the shutdown of unessential peace work grows. They must be given special relief until they can find war work, or be trained for war work.
But to give them money for food and rent while they are wang for war jobs is only one part of what must be done.
U.S. entering acute labor shortage
Our whole handling of labor and manpower must be overhauled. Here is one of the biggest internal jobs of the war – mobilizing manpower. We have become so used to thinking we have a labor surplus that we can scarcely realize we are already going into a most acute labor shortage. At least 10 million new war workers will be needed for the big production program demanded by President Roosevelt.
We will have to do what England did – plan to make every man count, not only in the armed forces but on the equally important industrial front at home. It happens that a report has just been made to the American Public Welfare Association by Eric Biddle, who spent months studying how the British met the same problem in its most acute form.
The British found they could not depend on haphazard supply and demand, and chance for industrial workers, any more than they could for military manpower. Jobs were going begging while men in other localities were begging for lack of jobs. The British found that manpower – both military and industrial – must be treated as one. Both came out of the same limited pool. Sometimes men had to be transferred back from the army to munitions factories. England recognized that the keystone of the war effort was the mobilization of manpower and material resources.
It is easier said than done. Just the matter of bringing the man and the job together was a big one, they found.
Consolidation of manpower needed
To use a simple illustration, a British worker, Henry, was thrown out of his job at Leeds because his plant was closed down as non-essential. He registered with the Leeds labor exchange. Birmingham had a call out for workmen. Henry agreed to take one of these jobs. The Leeds labor exchange paid his expenses to Birmingham. He reported to the Birmingham labor exchange and was billeted and sent to the job. His family stayed at Leeds and received an extra allowance.
Another worker was ready to take a job but was unskilled. The government put him into a training center – England operates 35 of them – and paid him a nominal wage and subsistence until he was ready to take a skilled job.
Those simple illustrations suggest how complex the task is. We shall have to bring women and youths into industrial work. Salesmen who have never touched a machine will be needed in factories. The Selective Service will need to work in even closer co-operation with industry to avoid taking out essential skilled workers.
We need to consolidate and enlarge our handling of manpower, possibly by grouping together the Selective Service, Sidney Hillman’s OPM labor division, and Paul McNutt’s employment exchanges and social security activities. The draft, the placement of men through the employment exchanges, the training of them for industrial jobs, and financial support for them and their families, are all parts of the one central task of mobilizing and distributing our limited manpower where most needed in the armed forces and on the industrial front.
Maj. Williams: ‘The high road!’
By Maj. Al Williams
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
Thinking in fresh, modern terms of warfare and war purposes, let’s do a little inexpert, everyday cogitating on the Far Eastern situation. I am going to give an airman’s slant on that end of the world.
There has been much confusion and misunderstanding about the purpose of the Japanese High Command. It would seem incredible that the Japs could be so dumb as to plan the conquest of the whole of China. In addition to the records of history clearly indicating the futility of such a plan, there is positive proof that China has absorbed all her invaders. It is clear, and it must have been clear to the Japs, that China is “indigestible.” Nevertheless, the purpose of the Japs during the past four years of war against China has been interpreted by the old rule-book scheme of complete subjugation and territorial conquest. As an airman sees it, and has seen it for years, that is all nonsense.
China, in toto, is largely worthless to Japan. The Japs used the Chinese War as a training ground to season and train their armies for the struggle for the real objective – when it came. Likewise the Philippines are not the real goal of Japan. That goal and war objective is the fabulously rich Dutch East Indies and Malayasia. In those areas are the raw materials which Japan needs and must have for her expansion and effort to dominate the Far East – and maybe more.
Talk to any realist who has actually been on the Sino-Japanese front and he will tell you that seldom if ever did the Japs have more than a hundred thousand fighting men in action, But he will tell you also that the hundred thousand men were changed every so often.
Airmen were alarmed
We airmen viewed with alarm the steady acquisition of the Chinese coastline by the Japs – the coastline leading down toward Malayasia and the East Indies. It was the coastline of China that Japan wanted, and it was the coastline she fought for and acquired. Of course it was militarily expedient for Japanese armies to work certain distances inland to protect that coastline, and that is just what was done.
As a result, what do we find today? The answer is simple and plain. The Japs, appreciating full well that airpower would prove to be the decisive factor in this war, built air bases all along the coastline of China, so they could maintain a steady flow of flight weapons to the scene of combat in the Malay States and the East Indies. It is about 3600 miles from Japan proper to Malaya and the East Indies. It’s about 1500 miles from the manufacturing centers of the North Atlantic seaboard to Florida. And by reason of having provided short-spaced air bases along the China Coast, it is just as easy for Jap airmen to take off from Japan and proceed in easy stages to the present combat zones as it is for American airmen to take delivery of fighting planes from the Grumman, Brewster, and Pratt & Whitney plants in New England and fly them to Florida.
Why am I rehashing this now? Well, that answer is simple. Except for a few wide-awake editors, few people seemed to understand what Japan has been shooting at all these years, and fewer still seemed to realize that Japan was pinning her conquest on the successful use of airpower instead of the straight-out employment of orthodox army and navy forces.
It’s a 10-year job
Westbrook Pegler came out the other day with a strong plea for hard-headed realism, and I add to his plea and call for the end of Pollyanna thinking. You can’t do any job until you understand the job and the purpose of the job.
We’ve got to lick Japan – lick her so thoroughly that we will be relieved of all anxiety in the Pacific. It looks like a 10-year Job (as Sen. Pepper already has estimated) to lick Japan, if we insist upon doing it the hard way. And by the hard way I mean by blasting her out of one island fortress after another across the broad belly of the Pacific. It’s a 10-year job – if we can do it in that time – if our Pacific strategy is a compromise between airpower and old-fashioned seapower.
We’ll need seapower and landpower to complete the job. But it will be airpower launched against Japan from Alaska which will break the back of Japan. We’ve got to wack away at the heart of Japan and that’s Japan proper, where the engines and planes and tanks and guns for Japanese armies and forces are manufactured.
It looks as if a few two-fisted airmen belong on our boards of strategy – profane “results men,” as distinguished from the old experts – who will advocate and plan the way to smash Japan via Alaska, the high road to Japan.
