China may base U.S. planes for attacks against Japan
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Enemy fleet pounded by Flying Fortresses in East Indies onslaught
U.S. pilots attack eight warships, transports at base near Java
Burma peril grows
Allies wage desperate fight against threats of new conquests
Batavia, Java, Feb. 20 (UP) – (telephone to New York, 11:20 p.m. JBBT)
Japan closed two giant claws on the United Nations’ only remaining East Indies base of Java tonight with the conquest of the islands of Sumatra and Bali.
Fighting is still in progress on Bali, where Japanese invasion forces landed after American airplanes bombed or sank eight of their warships and transports, and resistance is presumably continuing on Sumatra.
But for all practical purposes, the two islands flanking the Allied main base of Java on both east and west are gone under the tide of the enemy’s offensive. Tonight, Java is braced for the decisive battle.
As yet, there have been no reports of enemy landings on Java.
Allies fight hard
Batavia, NEI, Feb. 20 (UP) –
Armed forces of the United States, including American air squadrons, battle desperately today against the mounting threat of a Japanese conquest of Java and the Burma Road.
Stinging blows were struck by the Allied forces against the enemy offensives, including the bombing of eight Japanese warships and transports by American Flying Fortresses, Liberators and dive bombers in a vain attempt to prevent a landing on the picturesque little island of Bali, only a mile east of Java. American and Dutch warships were also in action.
But the Japanese thrusts pushed forward, closing giant claws on Java and hammering at defenses of the Burma Road supply line north of Rangoon despite repeated British counterattacks.
Situation desperate
Dispatches from the blazing war fronts left little doubt that the situation in the Far East was desperate for the Allied defenses.
The fighting fronts showed:
Batavia
Japanese forces invading Bali, a mile east of the Allied main base at Java, but meet fierce resistance from Dutch forces, which destroyed all useful installations. American planes sink or damage three enemy cruisers, three transports and two destroyers, but enemy pincers are now closed on three sides of Java.
Timor
Japanese invade Dutch-Portuguese island. Tokyo broadcast claims that Australian defenders…
Henderson to fix price of stockings
Rayon hose affected in latest order
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Sales tax seen issue
Proposal may result in friction among fiscal experts
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Ray gun would revolutionize war
Army official pictures changes it would bring
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Love rivalry blamed for soldier’s suicide
New York, Feb. 20 (UP) –
Police believed today that Technical Sgt. William Wilson, 41, killed himself because other soldiers at Fort Hamilton were giving him too much competition for the affections of Mrs. Helen McCarthy, 28.
Pvt. Maurice Fennelli summoned police at 2 a.m. to the hallway of an apartment building. There they found Wilson dying on the floor, with a bullet wound in his head. Attractive Mrs. McCarthy was kneeling at his side, mopping blood from his forehead and moaning:
Why did you do it? Why did you do it, Bill?
Great plane future seen
Airline official visions 11-passenger craft and long flights
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Rationing of lingerie not for men, she says
Newark, NJ, Feb. 20 (INS) –
The little lady, God bless her, is all for letting men ration sugar, tires and what have you – but when it comes to rationing of lingerie – well…
Mrs. Don Ruotolo, president of the Midtown League of Women Voters, at a general discussion of the consumer interest committee, today recorded her objection to the present setup of the 16-man Newark Rationing Board.
Said Mrs. Ruotolo:
So far the board has functioned only in relation to sugar and tires. When it comes to rationing underwear and such things, I want a woman to decide it.
’Green mechanics’ blamed for industrial breakdown
By Paul Gesner and John Beckley
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Last U.S. scribe to leave Singapore reaches Indies
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Army plane insignia
39th Pursuit Squadron: The newest U.S. Army pursuit planes account for the motto of this squadron. It is one of the newest units of the expanding air force, and was equipped with Airacobras, speedy and deadly craft. A striking cobra in the clouds symbolizes the deadly mission of the planes.
Jap warships in bay
London, Feb. 20 (INS) –
A Calcutta dispatch to the London Daily Mail today said powerful Japanese warships were reported operating in the Bay of Bengal, possibly in preparation for a sea attack on Rangoon, capital of Burma and southern terminus of the Burma Road supply route to China.
Lag studied in war work
Patterson to report on expenditures for military purposes
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Japanese ‘arsenal’ seized in Mexico
Many weapons taken at former legation
Mexico City, Feb. 20 (INS) –
Mexican Secret Servicemen today confiscated 38 machine guns, ten cases of rifles and scores of pistols found in a search of the former Japanese legation, and intended, according to police, for use in a Mexican authorities.
Yoshiaki Miura, the former Japanese Minister now en route to the United States for internment at Hot Springs, had planned to use the weapons to resist deportation, police said.
Miura abandoned his plan when he was ordered by radio from Tokyo to obey the Mexican authorities, it was said. The Portuguese Minister and Chargé d’Affaires, José S. S. Taverra, reported Miura’s defiant attitude.
The entire staff of the Japanese legation has been sent with Miura to the U.S. internment site, and will cross the border at Nuevo Laredo, Mex., into Laredo, Tex., today.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 20, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – The other day a shipyard worker wrote and asked if I’d come out and have dinner at his house, so he could tell me a few things about the business from the workers’ standpoint.
So I went, stayed four hours, and had a very nice time (along with an excellent meal prepared by the man himself – I hate to admit it, but he’s a better cook than I am).
He had invited another shipyard worker, to round out the chat. Neither of them had anything very bad to say, but just the same I’m not using their names, for you know how it is these days.
Both these men had been white-collar men all their lives, but they also had had some experience with tools, so they dropped into the new work easily. They have now been in the shipyards long enough to know their way about extremely well.
The two things out of our whole conversation that struck me most were:
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These two men feel that ships could be built a lot faster than they are. They say you can’t put your finger on it, but things just don’t seem to move as fast as they ought to.
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Shipyard workers are popularly supposed to be in the big money and the minute word gets around that you work in the shipyards, apartment rent goes up $10 a month and the butcher starts weighing his hand along with the meat.
Actually, both my friends make less than $50 a week when they work full time, and there is seldom a week they aren’t laid off some by rain. In fact, they say 75 per cent of the men in San Francisco shipyards make less than $50.
Escaping the draft
Another thing that struck me was their assertion that hundreds of young men are running to the shipyards to get “essential” jobs in order to escape the draft.
Both these men are middle-aged, and they say there is practically none of the work on a ship that can’t be done by older men. They don’t think shipyard work should be classed as “essential.” They said they didn’t know of anyone who had quit a better job to go into the shipyards except those who had an eye on the draft.
These men work an eight-hour day, yet they have to devote at least 12 and sometimes more to it. They have to be there early an hour ahead of time, and because of transportation bottlenecks they have to start from home far ahead of time.
On the whole, building ships isn’t the pleasantest work in the world if it rains hard enough the work stops, but you can get wet and chilled with just a little rain. One of my friends is getting a little deaf from the din of riveting. There are many minor accidents, and they say the workmen are careless.
The other day one of my friends was grazed by a 200-pound toolbox that came hurtling down from above. He was showered and bruised by wrenches and other tools. What made him so mad was that the worker responsible wasn’t a bit concerned over whether my friend had been hurt or not; he was just worried for fear he’d lost some of his tools.
Tough in blackout
At this writing there haven’t been any blackouts in San Francisco since the first week of the war, but the workers said it was tough then. They really expected bombing of the yards to start any minute, and they were worried about their families at home. One night they had to walk four miles home in the dark.
One of their strongest complaints is about the “No Smoking” rule. Scores of men at a time leave the job and congregate around the toilets for a “drag.” They say there’s no reason, as far as danger is concerned, for not smoking on the ship. The rule slows up work.
Both my friends are strong union men, and had only praise for the union. They had some little faults to find with the company, mostly based on their feeling that work could and should go faster. But they were no more critical of the company than of many their fellow-workmen, who they felt weren’t stretching themselves to get ships out in a hurry.
Neither of these men was the roughneck type you sometimes picture as the typical shipyard worker. Both have families, and a pleasant home life. They are what you would call good, conscientious Americans, simple in their honesty, willing to work hard, but still interested in their homes and their pay and their families. And more aware of their country’s peril than a lot of people are.
U.S. Navy Department (February 21, 1942)
Communiqué No. 42
Far East.
Six U.S. destroyers in company with Dutch warships attacked the Japanese landing force on the island of Bali and sank two enemy destroyers. Our destroyers suffered only slight damage and minor loss of personnel.
In addition to the naval battalion composed of bluejackets and marines fighting with Gen. MacArthur’s command, considerable equipment salvaged from Cavite and other sources of naval supply has been used to good advantage in the defense of the Bataan Peninsula.
Rear Adm. Francis W. Rockwell, USN, Commandant of the 16th Naval District, the senior naval officer fighting with Gen. MacArthur, reports that this equipment consists of 3-inch and 4-inch artillery as well as boat guns and machine guns of several types, with grenades, aircraft bombs and ammunition. A large number of hand depth charges have been available.
Stores of gasoline, diesel oil and lubricating oil were saved and are being used in field operations. Motor launches, tugs and facilities for repair of artillery, tanks, and trucks have been provided in addition to electrical and ordnance supplies.
Personnel of the naval air base organization who were previously employed on government contracts have constructed and repaired airfields and roads in the fighting area. Such heavy equipment as steam shovels tractors, cranes, trucks and graders have been operated by this organization to useful advantage on Bataan and Corregidor.
There is nothing to report from other areas.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (February 21, 1942)
Miss Ingalls gets prison
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The Pittsburgh Press (February 21, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – Quentin Reynolds, the great war correspondent of Collier’s Magazine, was in San Francisco recently on a lecture tour.
Since we had been in London together for a short while, I phoned and asked him to have dinner with me the evening of his lecture. When he came, there were two other guests in my room, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence P. Brown, close friends of mine.
Quent arrived in a rush, and announced he had to change his socks. Seems he was in a tuxedo for the first time in a year, and forgot to buy black socks until on the way over.
Newspapermen as a class are probably the most natural people in the world. They are little burdened by prissy fastidiousness. I’m not a bad example myself. Only two nights before this I had received in my hotel room a couple I’d never met before. Since I was only partly dressed when they came, I finished putting on my shirt, and then my socks and shoes, right in front of them. It didn’t occur to me until the next day that I could as easily have gone in the bathroom to do it.
And so with Quent. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to change his socks in the midst of strange company, all the while telling us about the British in Libya.
But as I say, that seems normal to me, so that isn’t why I’m telling the story. This message is really to the San Franciscans who heard Quent’s lecture that night. It’s to let them in on the secret that all the time they were sitting there listening, Correspondent Reynolds’ other socks were snugly reposing in the left-hand pocket of his tuxedo.
Girls take over elevators
Reynolds made a remark that night which I think is interesting.
As we ate dinner in a small restaurant he’d never heard of, he said, “You know, it’s almost impossible to get a bad meal in San Francisco, and almost impossible to get a good one in Los Angeles.”
Now, I’m merely quoting, mind you. As long as food isn’t spoiled, it all tastes the same to me. But Reynolds weighs 220 pounds and eats with a tremendous joy, so he ought to know.
The Hotel Californian where I stay has a new wartime set of elevator operators. They are all Chinese girls, and pretty ones, too.
The draft was getting the elevator boys fast, so the Californian decided to make the elevator situation both stable and enticing by hiring Chinese girls in their cute little Oriental pants and jackets.
It has worked fine. The manager says the service is not only more attractive than it was, but actually more efficient. And nobody has yet taken them for Japanese, either.
Normandie rumor untrue
I think Art Caylor, of The San Francisco News, writes the most readable, and most editorially important, daily piece of any local columnist I know of in any city. (And I don’t owe him a dime, either.)
The other night I was having dinner with Dr. Alanson Weeks and some of his doctor friends. Dr. Weeks is one of San Francisco’s most prominent (and also most profane) physicians. He was a front-line doctor throughout the last war.
Recently he applied for Army service in this war, but was turned down because of his age. “How old are you?” I asked, for he doesn’t seem old to me.
But before he could answer, another guest who is quite a wit – Larry Harris – solved it by saying:
“Why, he’s so old he was driving a stage coach between San Francisco and Oakland before they put the Bay in!”
War item-- It seems that expectant mothers had the highest priority for passage home among the early ships and planes bringing evacuees in from Hawaii.
One ship had so many pregnant women aboard that they called it the “Stork Ship.” And a Clipper captain reported that on one trip he had 17 about-to-be-mothers on his plane. They were all sick all the way across, and he says it’s the worst trip he ever had.
Here is a perfect example of how rumors turn out not to be true.
The day I returned to San Francisco, a friend told me that the liner Normandie had arrived here a couple of days previously, loaded 10,000 troops in just a few hours, and put right out to sea again.
I believed it, because my friend is a trustworthy fellow. I didn’t repeat it, not because I’m any tighter-mouthed than anybody else, but simply because I forgot it.
And then two days later came word that the Normandie had burned and turned over in New York. So she never could have been here at all.
FBI clears Navy Yard District of enemy aliens in night raids
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Jap bombers blast Allied air bases on Java
Enemy attacks seen as preliminary move for invasion of isle
Batavia, Feb. 21 (UP) –
A Dutch communiqué said today that Japanese air squadrons blasted Allied airfields on both east and west Java, possibly as a preliminary invasion attack.
A normal preliminary to invasion is an attempt to knock out the defense air bases.
The main Dutch city on western Java is the capital, Batavia. On the eastern end of the island is the big naval base of Soerabaja, which has been repeatedly attacked in recent days.
The Japanese invasion of Bali, starting Thursday morning, put the enemy within easy striking distance of Soerabaja despite strong Allied air and naval counterblows in adjacent waters. Tokyo radio reported that five Allied warships had been sunk in the fighting, including two Dutch destroyers torpedoed off Bali Thursday night.
A London broadcast said United States and Dutch warships on Thursday damaged two Japanese cruisers and two destroyers in this action.