Thousands jam streets at several ports as soldiers, Marines land after uneventful voyage
By Francis McCarthy, United Press staff writer
The disclosure by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that U.S. Army troops have been stationed in New Zealand since June makes it possible to release the following dispatch, written by a United Press staff writer when the troops arrived June 15. The writer is now with American forces in the Solomon Islands.
…
U.S. coordinator, disliked at first, wins new friends by backing demands of petroleum men
…
Well well, the McCains flying capability will be proven later…
US at war with Finland? Complicated situation those days.
U.S. Navy Department (October 17, 1942)
North Pacific.
On October 15:
Army “Marauder” bomber (Martin B-26s) attacked and damaged an enemy cargo ship in Gertrude Cove on the south coast of Kiska Island. At least one direct hit set fire to the ship, which was seen still burning several hours later. One U.S. plane was shot down by antiaircraft fire.
Army “Marauders” also attacked two Japanese destroyers to the northeastward of Kiska. Both destroyers were damaged, one by three hits and the other by one hit, resulting in probable sinking of the former.
South Pacific.
Although large numbers of Japanese troops are known to be on Guadalcanal Island, there has been, as yet, no full-scale land fighting.
Our land, sea, and air forces of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps are engaged in meeting a serious enemy assault, the outcome of which is still undecided. Our losses in the current fighting, to date, have been minor, but in a battle of this nature losses must be expected.
The following additional details of the action in recent days have been received:
During the air attack on Guadalcanal, shortly after noon on October 15 (reported in Navy Department Communiqué No. 154), three enemy bombers and five fighters were shot down.
During the night of October 15-16, enemy surface vessels bombarded our positions on Guadalcanal for about an hour. Naval aircraft made a night torpedo attack on a group of enemy vessels to the eastward of the Solomons. One torpedo hit on an enemy cruiser was reported.
During the morning of October 16, our aircraft from Guadalcanal attacked enemy troop positions along the northwest coast of the island. During the late afternoon Navy and Marine Corps dive bombers attacked two enemy transports and accompanying destroyers in the area west of New Georgia Island. Direct hits damaged and set fire to one transport and the second is believed to have been damaged by near misses.
All information on the fighting in the Solomons which is not of value to the enemy is being announced as soon as possible after being received.
Southern states count 15 dead, put property damage at millions
…
All salary classes covered – director asks farm wage data
…
Camden, New Jersey (UP) –
The aircraft carrier USS Princeton will be launched tomorrow at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation yard, the second carrier to slide down the ways here in the last two and a half months.
The carrier Independence was launched Aug. 8.
The Princeton, named after the New Jersey college city where a major battle of the Revolutionary War was fought in 1777, will be sponsored by Mrs. Harold Dodds, wife of the president of Princeton University.
It is the fourth naval vessel and first of its type to bear the name Princeton.
Cairo, Egypt (UP) –
A communiqué of the United States Army Air Force said today that heavy Army bombers had penetrated severe storms yesterday to attack shipping in the harbor of Benghazi, most important enemy base in Libya, and Army fighter planes had been active in the Egyptian battle area.
HQ, United States Marines, Guadalcanal Island (UP) – (Oct. 4, delayed)
1st Lt. Dan L. Gaede of Columbus, Ohio, navigator of an Army Flying Fortress, heard an air-raid siren tonight and dived into a foxhole.
Bumping into a Navy officer, he offered his hand and said:
Sorry, my name’s Dan Gaede.
The Navy man, a lieutenant of Coronado, California, replied:
My name is Dan C. Gaede.
They were cousins but had never seen each other.
102 survivors landed after passenger vessel is torpedoed off Canada
…
Corinth, New York (UP) –
The Rev. Walter A. Miller, former pastor of the First Baptist Church, enlisted today as a private, waiving claims for dependency as well as exemption rights because of his vocation. His grandfather, the late Rev. Asher Cook, served as a private in the Civil War.
Attack enemy-occupied villages in New Guinea as Aussies forge on
…
Hollywood, California (UP) –
Errol Flynn returned to the heroics of the soundstages today under $1,000 bail, charged with criminal assault upon Betty Hansen, 17-year-old movie-struck waitress, who quit her job for the chance to meet him.
She accused him of taking her upstairs after a dinner party in the Bel Air mansion of wealthy sportsman Fred McEvoy and there engaging in what District Attorney John F. Dockweiler called statutory rape. Three other studio workers, held with Flynn for arraignment on the same charges next Friday, admitted having had illicit relations with her.
Flynn said Miss Hansen’s story left him dumbfounded.
He said:
I hardly knew her. We exchanged only a few words when we were introduced at dinner. I was with Mr. McEvoy all evening and I left before any of the other guests.
Miss Hansen told her story first to the grand jurymen, who wouldn’t believe her, and then to the district attorney, who did – the sordid tale of a high school girl willing to go to any lengths to become a movie actress.
Miss Hansen said she gladly submitted to the men she accused, because she believed that might help her become a picture star.
Reports leaking through the Japanese censorship from the territories now occupied by the Nipponese, and from Japan itself, indicate that an intensive campaign is underway to increase the number of English-speaking subjects of the Mikado. The courses in the Japanese language opened in the schools of their newly conquered lands, especially in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies, and in special columns of newspapers, are said to have fizzled out quickly and miserably.
The Japanese language is said to be the only one in which even a highly educated man may be able to pronounce more words than he can write. This is due to the fact that the letter signs used by the Japanese, which are adaptations of the Chinese root signs adopted by the Japanese centuries ago, are so complicated and difficult as to make anything like exact meanings almost impossible.
The Chinese letter signs, so Orientalists inform us, have three meanings at most, while the same signs in Japanese oblige the unfortunate reader to guess as best he may between 16 to 20 possible interpretations. Therefore, say recently-returned American experts in Far Eastern life and affairs, in order to carry on their task of ruling their conquered populations, the Japanese are driven to employ the English language, the common vehicle of intercommunication in the Orient, at least in the popular version called “pidgin English.”
Some of the Japanese propagandists supply an explanation of the dilemma that is more gratifying to Japanese pride and self-confidence. According to them, as it will be necessary not only to conquer and acquire their “Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” but also to invade the United States, and dictate peace terms in the White House in Washington, DC, as Premier Tōjō has proclaimed, why, naturally, they must be forehanded in building up a corps of interpreters between the divine sons of the Sun Goddess and the democratic barbarians of the United States.
Perhaps they had better tell that story to our Marines! What the Marines will say, or rather do, is already being made plain – what they say, could hardly be repeated in a family newspaper. In Japanese Sign Language, we might escape the censor, but not in English.
Völkischer Beobachter (October 18, 1942)
Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung
Stockholm, 17. Oktober –
Alle Anzeichen deuten darauf hin, daß die Japaner elne neue große Offensive im Stillen Ozean eingeleitet haben, die – wie englische und amerikanische Beobachter schreiben – von entscheidendster Bedeutung für die weitere Kampfentwicklung in diesem Gebiet ist.
Nachdem das amerikanische Marineministerium die letzten Tage hindurch nur sehr spärliche Nachrichten über die Lage auf der Insel Guadalcanar und im Umkreis der Salomoninseln herausgegeben hat‚ veröffentlichte es am Freitag einen ersten ausführlicheren Bericht, aus dem hervorgeht, daß:
…große Mengen feindlichen Truppenmaterials auf der Insel Guadalcanar gelandet wurden, und daß die amerikanischen Stellungen unter dem Feuer der auf der Insel befindlichen japanischen Artillerie liegen.
Weitere starke japanischer Flottenstreitkräfte seien auf dem Weg zu den Salomoninseln und noch etwa 600 Kilometer von Guadalcanar entfernt.
Aus einer amerikanischen Meldung aus Washington geht klar hervor, mit Welcher Unruhe man nicht nur in der amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit, sondern auch in Militärkreisen die Entwicklung der Kämpfe verfolgt. Man sei sich durchaus im klaren darüber, so heißt es darin, daß die USA. hier ihren bisher größten und wichtigsten Einsatz zu Lande zu leisten hätten und daß die amerikanischen Streitkräfte einem gewaltigen Druck starker und zahlreicher japanischer Truppen ausgesetzt seien. Washington sei, so wie die Dinge lägen, nicht bereit‚ irgend welche Versprechungen über den Ausgang der Kämpfe abzugeben und vermeide verfrühten Optimismus. Immerhin aber ist es der amerikanischen Offentlichkeit ein kleiner Trost, daß sich der BefehIshaber für die amerikanischen Flottenstreitkräfte im Stillen Ozean‚ Admiral Nimitz, und der Befehlshaber für die Luftstreitkräfte‚ Admiral MacCain, zu rosigen Voraussagen bereitgefunden und voller Bestimmtheit erklärt haben. daß die amerikanischen Marinetruppen auf jeden Fall ihre Stellungen auf den Salomoninseln halten werden. Admiral Nimitz wurde durch die Ereignisse aber schon mehrfach Lügen gestraft.
Auch in London findet die Einleitung der neuen japanischen Offensive große Beachtung. Nachdem man wochenlang nur zu gern den prahlerischen Erklärungen MacArthurs und seiner Sprecher geglaubt hatte, daß die Initiative des Stillen Ozeans in den Händen der Alliierten läge, stellt man nun aufgeschreckt fest, daß die Japaner gar nicht daran denken. sich die Initiative nehmen zu lassen und daß sie mit ungebrochener Kraft, zahlreichen neuen Streitkräften und glänzend ausgerüsteten Truppen den Kampf um die Beherrschung der Salomoninseln aufgenommen haben.
Nach der Meinung vieler Londoner Sachverständigen so schreibt der Londoner Berichterstatter der Dagens Nyheter, wird der Ausgang der Schlacht darüber entscheiden, ob die Japaner so zur Defensive gezwungen werden können, daß die Amerikaner in der Lage sind, eine Offensive von dem australischen Hauptstützpunkt aus in die Wege zu leiten. Eine endgültige amerikanische Kontrolle über den wichtigen Flugstützpunkt Guadalcanar würde bedeuten, daß alle japanischen Angriffe westlich der Linie Salomoninseln-Neukaledonien-Neuseeland aufgehalten werden könnten. Damit wäre die wichtige alliierte Transportlinie Amerika-Australien gesichert und:
…eine Offensive gegen die Stellungen der Japaner nur noch eine Zeitfrage.
Noch aber ist der Kampf um Guadalcanar in einem vorbereitendet. Stadium‚ und im Gegensatz zu den eben zitierten Wunschträumen mancher Kreise beschäftigt man sich, wie Dagens Nyheter ebenfalls aus London berichtet, vor allem mit der Frage‚ ob es den Amerikanern möglich sein werde, den Flugplatz der Insel‚ der zugleich der wichtigste Luftstützpunkt der Salomoninseln ist, zu halten, und ob es ihnen gelingen werde‚ weitere Streitkräfte an Land zu bringen. Zunächst gehe der Kampf darum, wer von den beiden Gegnern als erster größere Verstärkungen heranholen könnte.