America at war! (1941– ) (Part 1)

Publisher will stop anti-Catholic books

‘Keep girl from me,’ sailor asks court

Los Angeles, California (UP) – (Sept. 12)
The sailor told the girl:

Stop chasing me.

She wouldn’t, so Seaman John J. Broderick today obtained a court order for the girl, Lucilla C. K. Vicari, to show cause why she shouldn’t leave him alone.

Broderick said:

Ever since I met her in San Jose four years ago, she’s been hounding me with letters, telegrams and phone calls. She’s even been calling herself Mrs. Broderick.

Broderick told the court he hadn’t seen Lucille during the four years except when:

…I couldn’t dodge quick enough.

Judge Benjamin J. Scheinman set Sept. 23 for Lucilla to explain her intense interest in the sailor.

Feminine cycle hits screen – women take over in the studios

War theme not neglected as moviemakers seek themes playing up ‘the distaff side’
By Paul Harrison

American tanks and crew prove they are good and hard

Men know they’re good and hard, too, and have shown it
By Robert J. Casey

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Editorial: The 18s and 19s

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Editorial: ‘Zoot’ gets the boot

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Jap soldiers in New Guinea at standstill

Allied aerial assaults play major role in island fighting

Climate harder on Aussies in New Guinea than foe is

Altitude tears at lungs, hearts and stomachs of Allies while special Jap troops fear bullets only
By George Weller

Somewhere in Australia – (Sept. 12)
In lonely forest of perpetual rain, 6,000 feet above the seas that flank New Guinea’s eastern peninsula, Australian and Jap troops are carrying on a deadly struggle for tactical positions upon several gully-rippled, parallel dorsal fins of the Owen Stanley Mountains.

For the first time in this war, the great equatorial rainforest which girdles the entire world’s circumference, crossing Africa, South America as well as Borneo and Sumatra, is a sustained battleground. It is a strange region anywhere but here it is lonely, wet and terrifying.

Great tree ferns, their leaves forever bright with mist thrust out their from the black walls of precipitous rock and the disordered pell-mell of enormous slate boulders. Animals are few because the sun is little seen. The atmosphere is clammy-cold and hands upon a rifle grow damp with wet chill.

Try to pick off sentries

Sudden, isolated rifle cracks speak across misty gullies as scouts try to pick off sentries. Through the gloomy clouds that hang overhead or scud across the intervening ramparts of black rock, comes only an occasional shaft of sunlight and it is one before men, crouching behind rock, can emerge to dry out their muggy clothing.

Even at 14,000 feet, the height levels of the uttermost peaks, there is rarely sunlight, and never snow. The trickle of water whispering among the rocks is the only constant sound.

Altitude itself is a bitter antagonist. Australian fighters now meeting Japs are, like their enemies, undergoing a struggle for breath. The air is thin as well as wet. Yet the necessity to leap and climb swiftly among boulders as big as a house, without exposing a single movement to a well-camouflaged Jap scouts, is at such an altitude a test endurance.

Never done before

No human beings, either natives or Australians, ever have attempted tropical fighting before this war at such an altitude or under these rigorous circumstances.

Native Papuans have always have shunned the mountains because of their unsupportable climate. Lowland, carriers taken to the mountains suffered sometimes more from the altitude than white men, and frequently they die.

The Australians considering themselves able to fight anywhere they have to, like Americans, never developed a specialist corps resembling Germany’s “japperruppen” or her ally’s Alpinists.

Japs especially trained

The Jap troops feeling their way through the mountain mists some 40 miles by air from Port Moresby were trained for high altitude fighting as part of the thorough Jap plan for Far Eastern conquest. The Japs hardened themselves in Formosa for a battle that would one be fought in the Owen Stanley range.

What a difference it would have made in General Douglas MacArthur’s plans if a few battalions of small, hardy Philippine Scouts were still available for this specialized fighting.

In New Guinea, it is not only battle of lungs and hearts, but of bellies. The bigger, looser frames of the Australians require more food poundage per man that the rice-and-jam-eating Japs. More food poundage brought up from Allied advance bases, means less ammunition.

Creates labor problem

Along the several days’ journey upward, the carrier must also carry food for himself. Thus, in one of the most scarcely populated tropical regions of the world, a labor problem is created.

One white man cannot serve as a carrier for another. By the time he reached the “roof,” his energies would have obliged him to consume for food the whole poundage upon his back. The Japs dependence is considerably less upon food carriers and most of the native bearers are used for war material. The Japanese Institute of Tropical Warfare has a made a study of edible wild plants throughout their intended empire with the systematic intention of making every soldier as little dependent upon lines of supply as possible.

Live off the country

The Jap’s little bad of rice and meat is intended as savories rather than staples and instructions are to start living off the country as quickly as possible.

Whenever the Rising Sun flag is planted, a vegetable garden follows soon afterward as part of the Jap soldier’s regular 16-hour fighting day.

Meanwhile, the difficulties of air supply in mountains forever hooded in clouds must be seen to be appreciated. It requires more than exception courage for a pilot to be able to fly to miles a minute through narrow misty valleys walled with black slate while seeking a tiny ground signal. It also requires a considerable supply transport aircraft in reserve, for losses are sure to be suffered under such a system.

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Willkie now in Iraq, on way to Russia

Baghdad, Iraq (UP) – (Sept. 12)
Wendell L. Willkie arrived here by plane from Jerusalem today en route to the Far East and Russia on his presidential-approved mission to present the facts of the American war effort to neutral and Allied nations.


Cairo, Egypt – (Sept. 12)
When Wendell Willkie visited a U.S. Air Force airdrome in the Egyptian desert recently, several fellow-Hoosiers were prevented from greeting him.

Mr. Willkie, after reviewing an honor guard, inquired whether any men in the outfit came from his home state, Indiana.

Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton replied:

Sure, but they’re all in the guardhouse.

Meteorology course offered to women

Soldier hunted in sex deaths

Deserter identified through Army serial number

Gen. MacArthur’s HQ, Australia (September 14, 1942)

Communiqué No. 155

Northwestern Sector.
Tenimbar Islands: Allied medium bombers attacked two enemy cargo vessels off Seloe Island, scoring a direct hit on one vessel. The stern was blown off the ship and it was left in a sinking condition. The other vessel was raked with machine-gun fire.

Kai Islands: An Allied reconnaissance unit bombed an enemy cargo ship with unknown results.

Northeastern Sector.
New Britain: Allied heavy bombers attacked an enemy cruiser with unknown results. Intensive anti-aircraft fire was encountered, but all our planes returned.

Lae: Allied medium bombers twice attacked an enemy airdrome, destroying two heavy bombers on the ground and starting fires. Seventeen tons of bombs were dropped on installations and dispersal areas. There was no interception, but heavy anti-aircraft fire was encountered. All our aircraft returned.

Salamaua: Allied air units bombed enemy base.

Owen Stanley area: The situation remains unchanged. Patrols have been active on both sides.

The Pittsburgh Press (September 14, 1942)

Married men with children face ’43 call

Hershey sees possibility of draft to get 13-million-man Army

12 explosions rock speeding Zephyr train

187 passengers uninjured; electric wires set off dynamite charges

Price measure given Senate

Bill establishes Aug. 15 as cost-of-living level

Can Kaiser’s cargo planes be built? Yes, here’s how

By John F. Cramer, Scripps-Howard staff writer

125-mph planes face Japs in Alaska, Senator claims

When in doubt, walk, drivers warned by OPA

Billion tire-miles a day wasted, Henderson says, citing peril

I DARE SAY —
The alert

By Florence Fisher Parry

Soldier admits killing women, stealing auto

Slayer took 2 teenage girls from Iowa to West Coast