America at war! (1941– ) (Part 1)

[NormanStewart]

Ace Negro stars aid U.S. hour

Bill Robinson and screen’s Hattie top guests
By Si Steinhauser

America’s great Negro stars will contribute to tonight’s Treasury Hour on KQV at 8 o’clock. Bill Robinson, Hattie McDaniel, one of the stars of “Gone with the Wind;” Fats Waller, ace pianist-maestro, and the Deep River Boys are included.

Quartermaster General Edmund Gregory of the Army will speak.

Other entertainers will include Franchot Tone as MC, Zorina, Victor Moore and Billy Gaxton of the musical show “Louisiana Purchase;” Marcel Hubert, cellist and Hildegarde, nightclub singer.

The Missing Heirs program celebrates its third year of continuous broadcasting tomorrow.

The Cavalcade of America will repeat its Christmas presentation of “Green Pastures” on December 22.

Rep. Oscar Youngdahl will occupy tonight’s Public Affairs period (WJAS, 10:15) with a talk on “National Unity.”

Henry C. Wolfe will tell what he saw in the Philippines when he was there as a reporter and screen star Bob Montgomery, now a naval aide in London, will report about England on tonight’s We, the People broadcast.

Some time ago this column said that NBC would split up its subsidiaries among its present brass hats. A group headed by Alfred H. Morton, television chief, has just taken over the NBC Artists Bureau and will set up headquarters at NBC’s old address, 711 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

NBC executives from all parts of the nation were called to New York to discuss separating the Red and Blue Networks. Then the Japs started things and the conference broke up, the big shots scattering to their respective stations.

Every office window in Radio City has a new opaque blackout curtain. Studios have no windows.

Amos ‘n’ Andy are starting movie shorts called “Unusual Occupations.” Three little words for those shorts: better be good.

In two and a half years, 110 characters have supported Elizabeth Reller and Alan Bunce, stars of “Young Dr. Malone.”

Edna May Oliver will be on hand to welcome John Barrymore back to the Rudy Vallee Program, Thursday night.

Sammy Kaye’s band has a booking record, engagement having been signed to keep the gang busy to January 1943.

Ilka Chase, head lady of radio’s Penthouse Party, smart-cracked “Without big weddings, you can’t have little ones.”

All-time radio stunt: Barbara Weeks announced her own death when she played the part of an elderly woman on her death bed, then doubled as the nurse who pronounced the woman dead.

Jack Benny has no greater admirer than this scribe but we do wish he would quit talking for the benefit of his intimate friends and leaving his listening audience puzzled. The Tom Harrington he talked about Sunday night is the radio chief of a big New York agency.

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Million-dollar cast heard on Bill of Rights program

Cpl. Stewart

NEW YORK (UP) – A lowly Army corporal n one-day leave from camp introduced the president of the United States last night in one of the most unusual radio programs ever heard in this country.

It was the Bill of Rights broadcast which was put on the air from Hollywood and then switched to Washington for an address by President Roosevelt.

One of the features of the broadcast was that acting talent which would cost a million dollars a year at a conservative estimate participated without pay and, in most cases, anonymously. The talent included Cpl. Jimmy Stewart of Moffet Field Air Station, who hurried away from the studio after the broadcast to catch a train so he wouldn’t overstay his leave.

Proposed by MacLeish

The Bill of Rights broadcast started in the mind of Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress and a well-known poet, who took the idea to President Roosevelt and obtained his approval. The Office of Civilian Defense was instructed to prepare a broadcast and Mr. Roosevelt agreed to participate with a brief address.

Radio time was arranged on all networks and Norman Corwin, a radio scriptwriter, prepared all the material except the president’s speech. Mr. Corwin went to the West Coast to supervise the broadcast.

W. B. Lewis, vice president of the Columbia Broadcasting System and now on loan to the Office of Facts and Figures in Washington, was placed in charge of obtaining talent. He lined up the following “million-dollar” cast: Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Bob Burns, Walter Huston, Edward G. Robinson, Rudy Vallee, Orson Welles, Marjorie Main and Cpl. Stewart.

The actors’ parts were not identified and the listening public could not be certain who was enacting which role until the end of the broadcast.

Studio audience banned

In an attempt to improve the quality of the performance, it also was agreed that there should be no studio audience. Even the executives of the radio networks were not present.

The only persons to witness the show were technicians in the control booths. Several of them were deeply affected and said they almost were in tears at some stages of the show, particularly when Cpl. Stewart gave his description of Washington.

Barrymore opened the broadcast and then turned it over to Cpl. Stewart as narrator. The narrator traced the development of the Bill of Rights and then Cpl. Stewart introduced President Roosevelt.

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Hero in Hawaii tells how he shot down 4 Jap bombers as ‘hell broke loose’

HONOLULU, Hawaii (UP) – Lt. George Welch, 22, of Wilmington, Delaware, was credited today with shooting down four Japanese planes December 7, although he was outnumbered 10 to 1.

“All hell broke loose, and before we knew it, the air was full of Japanese planes,” he said. “I picked up the nearest and went after him. I got a good bead, and the next thing I knew, he was going down in flames.

“I looked for another enemy plane, and discovered I was over a pineapple field and nearly out of ammunition, so I went back to the field. About that time, Lt. Kenneth Taylor [of Hominy, Oklahoma] came up. He shot down a bomber too, and was low on ammunition.

Shot through arm

“We loaded up all the rounds we could carry and took off again. Taylor bagged one more, but got shot through the arm and had to come down. I went over Barber’s Point and shot down three more bombers. When I came back to the field, I had three bullet holes in my own ship – one in the propeller, one in the motor and another just back of the pilot’s seat.

“It was a funny feeling. I was plenty excited and I know I was mad because they caught us on Sunday morning, so we went up and fixed them.”

An official recheck disclosed that Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short’s Army forces knocked down 29 raiders, despite the surprise of the first attack, and the Army announced that “the search for other planes believed to have been shot down is still in progress and the possibility exists that even more bombers bearing the emblem of the Rising Sun will be added to the toll.”

Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox said in Washington that a total of 41 Japanese planes had been shot down in Hawaii.

A week after Japanese bombs shattered the Sunday morning quiet, the territory was comparatively calm and quiet again. Evacuees return to their homes. Bathers returned to the beaches. Stoicism replaced tense excitement. Liquor sales were forbidden, and clubs were closed over the weekend.

Aliens must have permits to visit friends or relatives, to change their places of abode, to travel from the places of their businesses or occupation, to move from place to place on the island.

There are approximately 110,000 Japanese living on the Hawaiian Islands, many of them American citizens.

As Honolulu began to relax, some of the most amusing incidents which had been lost in the first tense of days of war began to emerge.

A civilian guard, for instance, who had been posted at the entrance to an engine room, held an officer and five men at bay until he was informed – and he wouldn’t take their word for it – that they had been assigned to run the engine.

A little later, he saw a Japanese go behind a lumber pile.

“Come out with your hands up!” he yelled.

Thirty Japanese came out. The civilian thought he was another Sgt. York until he learned that they were aliens who had already been rounded up and had taken refuge behind the lumber from an air raid. They were already under guard.

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Flyspecks on a monstrous ocean –
Mowrer: Marines on Wake, Midway still hold out – but how?

By Edgar Ansel Mowrer

WASHINGTON – “The Marines on Wake and Midway Islands are still holding out.”

This is not Guam. Guam was too big for its garrison. Wake and Midway are flyspecks in a monstrous ocean. You never quite understood how the Pan-American pilots could find them at all, especially after dark. But they did.

There on Wake, with a million birds overhead, with the little brown rats running among the scaevola vines that cover the bare sand, the Marines, their machine guns (and field pieces, if they have any) half-buried in the sand, on the shore are holding a section of the outer defense screen of Pearl Harbor.

Holdout boon to Hawaii

Every day they can hold is a boon to Hawaii and to Uncle Sam. For, if they have any airplanes, every Japanese ship or bomber that strikes at Midway or Oahu further east, takes a long chance on being attacked from the rear.

Wake might have been a strong position, had defense labor been started in time. Last September it had hardly begun. In November a dredge, towed all the way from Seattle, was churning up the lagoon; all sorts of concrete foundations had been laid, and workmen were busy.

These workmen were better paid than most newspaper correspondents. But at that, it was hard to find people to go to Wake Island. And being American, despite entertainment of various sorts, these workmen were always giving up and returning home to the USA. For Wake is the loneliest spot in the world, and few descendants of the Pioneers can stand loneliness.

No grass, lots of sand

Imagine a sand crescent like the thumb and first finger of a hand, a lagoon in the center and a coral reef all around. A few low trees of the rare varieties that will grow in pure sand in the tropics. Sand dunes hardly over 10 feet high at the most. No grass, but the sand half-covered by scaevola vines with big leaves.

High over the island, unless they have been frightened away by the bombs and the firing, tens of thousands of sooty terns, handsome black and white birds with voices like a bandsaw going through an oak knot, turn and wheel day and night; when some are tired, more rise from the ground and take their places.

Among the sooty terns are others, slightly smaller, pure white, with tiny black eyes, a black pointed beak and dainty black feet; fairy terns or love birds. They used to sit over the tennis court all day long in pairs and kiss, or drop onto the shoulder of the onlooker.

Countless little brown rats

Under the scaevola leaves, more timid than the birds but bold for all that, are the countless little brown rats, the myriad descendants of some that came ashore in a derelict ship long ago, and prospered. Presumably the birds live on fish and the rats live on the eggs and young birds, though the latter show no fear of them. There is nothing else to eat and the rats often used to come indoors in broad daylight and run under your feet.

In the center was the charming hotel of Pan American Airlines and behind it the workmen’s dormitories, the power plant, and all the rest. Presumably nothing is left of them now. I can see the Marines flat on their bellies on the beaches, tin hats discarded as too hot, machine guns firing until red hot, gasping for air and water. (Have the Japanese destroyed the fresh water supply and are they digging for brackish salty stuff sulphurous with the rotted eggs of the million birds?)

How are planes concealed?

Where are the American airplanes – if any? How are they concealed? For surely the Japanese have mastery of the air most of the time. How are the Japanese trying to land? From ships in small boats, from the air by parachute, on the American airfield itself? Our Navy has not told us. It has only said, “The Marines are holding out.” The workmen must be running the supply services, they, too, half hidden in vague caves in the dunes in the half-destroyed foundations of buildings under the low trees.

Can relief come by air or by ship? And if not, can they hold out long enough, there is the loneliness of Wake Island, well over 2,000 miles from Honolulu, but less than 600 miles from the nearest Japanese base?

The United Press pointed out that the question of reinforcing Wake and Midway was an obvious military secret, but said naval sources hinted privately that “you wouldn’t lose if you bet that no chances are being passed by for lifting the sieges.”

Chairman Tom Connally, D-Texas, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “I hope the garrisons at Wake and Midway can be reinforced. The defenders of those islands have shown high courage and lofty patriotism.”

And why, why was not the work of transforming Wake, Howland, Jarvis, Canton and other tiny islands of the outer defense screen of Pearl Harbor, begun in time?

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British face back-to-wall fight at Singapore base

London residents asking many questions regarding sudden successes of Jap attacks in Pacific
By William H. Stoneman

LONDON – Having lost naval superiority upon which they had depended for the defense of Malaya, the British forces around Singapore are now confronted by the prospect of a desperate back-to-the-wall defense of that all-important citadel.

The defense of Hong Kong, Britain’s more advanced but less important naval base, is now so difficult that it seems virtually impossible.

Desperate efforts will doubtlessly be made to defend Singapore since its loss would upset the whole strategic position of the Allies in the Western Pacific and would force them definitely to assume a defensive role in that area. It can be assumed that reinforcements will be rushed to that area by sea and air and that the base itself will be in a position to hold out for a long time.

The advance of Japanese troops in northern Malaya, their seizure of airdromes and destruction of Great Britain’s two great capital ships, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, will expose Singapore to violent attacks from land and air and will greatly limit its activity.

A great many questions are being asked by ordinary British citizens about the manner in which the Japanese were allowed to gain possession of so many strategically vital points with such rapidity.

They want to know why two great battleships put to sea without fighter protection and why the important air base of Kota Bharu was not defended by heavy forces protected by fighters and anti-aircraft guns. They are particularly puzzled because the commander-in-chief at Malaya is Air Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, a Royal Air Force officer, who could be expected to concern himself with air defense before anything else.

They are also concerned by the story of an American eyewitness of the sinking of the Repulse in which he stated that the British naval commander refused to break the radio silence by calling for air support, even after his ships had been sighted by Japanese reconnaissance aircraft.

All these matters may be expected to be aired in Parliament.

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Potential target of enemy saboteurs, warships or bombers is the Panama Canal, the strategic shortcut that saves U.S. warships a 10,000-mile trip around South America. The canal is now one of the most closely-guarded zones in the world.

[NormanStewart]

‘Suicide’ subs used by Japs, Navy reveals

Two-man vessel captured at Hawaii is described as human bomb

TELEPHOTO: First Pearl Harbor picture

This official U.S. Navy photo shows the two-man midget Japanese submarine captured during the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor December 7. Another submarine of the same type was sunk when it tried to attack one of the U.S. warships.

WASHINGTON (UP) – The Navy said today that the two-man Japanese submarine captured at Pearl Harbor December 7 is a “suicide” type of vessel – one of whose features is that the whole ship could be driven at an objective like a torpedo and with similar results.

The stern of the submersible, according to the Navy, carried a 300-pound charge of high explosives that could be exploded by the two operators in suicide attacks on ship or harbor objectives. In addition, the small craft carried two regular 18-inch torpedoes – compared with the standard 20-inchers on U.S. subs.

Launched 100 miles away

The Navy said there were indications the submarine was launched from a ship about 100 miles off the island of Oahu to participate in the surprise attack on Hawaii.

The submarine was one of three lost by the Japanese in the attack. The other two – one a midget submarine and the other a conventional type – were sunk.

Disclosing for the first time a detailed description and operating data on the two-man submarines, the Navy said that these craft were, in effect, suicide ships, with a cruising radius of approximately 200 miles at low speed.

Craft is 41 feet long

The captive midget sub is 41 feet long, has a beam of five feet and a conning tower 4.5 feet above the deck.

Craft of this type are of such size that they could be carried on the deck of larger vessels and launched over side by cranes.

Construction of one-quarter-inch plate, the hull is divided into five compartments, two of which are occupied by the electric batteries used for operating the motors. The ships are manned by one officer and one rated man.

The electric motors give the undersea craft a designed top speed of 24 knots.

Self-sacrifice seen

The Navy said “there are indications that the personnel operating the submarines will go to any extreme, however desperate, even to self-sacrifice, to carry out their objective.”

Other information concerning the midget submarine revealed by the Navy included:

• The submarines are equipped with a gyro-compass, a magnetic compass, radio equipment, underwater sound and listening devices.

• The periscope projects five feet above the top of the conning tower.

• The use of the midget subs in the attack on Pearl Harbor was the first time they had been known to be employed in modern warfare.

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Pegler: Labor disputes

By Westbrook Pegler

NEW YORK – The British seem to have preserved their freedom of debate and discussion under very dangerous conditions in the face of the enemy without impairing their unity. Their criminal courts still operate and their jailers continue to do business at their old stands.

I wonder if we will do the same, because we are more emotional than the British and some of the disputes which would carry over into the period of actual war as unfinished business have been conducted in a very angry spirit. We certainly were not united in our opinion of the Wagner Act and the closed shop a week ago when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the attack cannot be said to have settled the issues, which were fundamental questions of American freedom. If they are to be regarded as finally settled by this means, then that must mean that they have been settled in favor of a very few professional union politicians and the few true-believing but mistaken union members, a scant five million of them, who support these men.

Minority ‘worked on’ by organizer

In that case, these few politicians and this tiny following of actual toilers will have imposed the will of a small minority on a nation of 130 million people. This feat would be almost identical with that which often occurs in a store or plant which is in process of being “organized” by professional unioneers, many of whom are mere bounty-hunters, paid by the scalp, so to speak, so much for every member who is induced or compelled to join. In the store, or plant, a minority is “worked on” by the organizer and presently applies for recognition as a bargaining agency.

Just as the two big national organizations now claim membership of 10 million, which is a false figure, the store or shop minority may exaggerate its strength but, regardless of its inferiority in numbers, may strike the enterprise to compel the majority to join and, by conspiracy with other unions, prevent the execution of the company’s business. So, the non-joiners soon face the alternative of joining or losing their jobs and not only that but, having joined, they must continue in good standing in the union, as long as they live.

I have studied the Wagner Act, much other legislation and many court decisions and I am convinced that if the system which has been imposed by this movement is made permanent, we shall emerge from this war on Hitlerism with a labor system differing from Hitler’s own only in trivial details. Yet, from the other side of the argument, the answer is never one of intelligence or reason but invariably a cry of “anti-labor" or “labor baiter” and this from adherents of organizations who have, themselves, in their union fights, condemned their opponents as dictators, tricksters and unconscionable mercenaries.

Pending Smith Bill is no remedy at all

I note also that editorial writers, commentators and orators who intend to take an objective view of this dispute constantly refer to these two big organizations as “labor,” although they know the politics of the unions and admit informally that these groups embrace only a small fraction of all labor in the country and include millions of unwilling, captive members brought in chains with a price on their heads, duly collected by the manhunters.

The pending Smith Bill is not a remedy at all, for it evades the fundamental question of the citizen’s right to work and deals excitedly with strikes in the war industries. But this and similar proposals all dealing with war-industry strikes have been allowed to obscure the threat, indeed the establishment already, of dictatorial political controls over American workers which, after the war, would impose the first and most binding element of Hitlerism.

To the sincerity of genuine liberals and many union bosses, I address no challenge, but their power of analysis, their foresight and their intelligence I seriously doubt. They are often abusive in debate and always intolerant and they will now add to the old cry of “anti-labor” the new taunt of “disputer.” But if their program becomes the permanent way the American republic will become something else wherein the rights and dignity of human personality mentioned by Frances Perkins will be abolished in the name of freedom.

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Clapper: Tragic report

By Raymond Clapper

WASHINGTON – Secretary Knox’s personal report on Pearl Harbor is one of the most moving and tragic records in all military history.

It is tragic because it records the plain, dismaying fact that our armed services were not on the alert when the surprise attack came – a crime of negligence for which full investigation has been ordered. It is moving because it reports through many incidents the great heroism of the men and their officers as they fought to save the Navy from the most appalling disaster that could be imagined.

The epic of these men and what they did after the attack began will ring through time. Their individual heroism must shine forever above the sad facts. What they suffered is made doubly poignant because it was all to retrieve the disaster which descended through neglect somewhere higher up.

Pacific situation should improve

The loss in men was heavy. Ship losses were far less than congressional gossip had indicated, and our Pacific situation should improve steadily.

We may rest assured that everything will be done that can be done to prevent another sacrifice of men of such great fighting will as these at Pearl Harbor. Why were the battleships so close together that some officers escaped from one doomed ship by passing a line to an adjoining battleship? Why was there no dispersal of these ships? Secretary Knox reports that men swam through blazing oil from the capsized battleship Oklahoma and clambered aboard other ships and joined gun crews.

Incidents reported show that a large number of ships were all close together, making it almost impossible for the Japanese to miss. Enemy submarines got into the harbor, passing under some of our ships. Where were our listening devices or other means of detection? Why were most of our planes destroyed on the ground? These are questions which the investigation will consider. Secretary Knox, and of course, President Roosevelt by consenting to the frank report, show no disposition to conceal the bad news. We may assume they will have no hesitation as they follow through to determine the causes.

Secretary Knox flew to Hawaii at considerable personal risk. His report was as frank as any reasonable person could expect in revealing the details of the damage. Thoughtless and nagging critics like Sen. Tobey ought to be satisfied now – although they probably won’t be. But the rest of us can teel confidence in the way this humiliating affair has been handled, and in the refusal of the President or Secretary Knox to reach for the whitewash brush. And we can be proud of the zest of the story and of the kind of men who are standing behind our guns.

Entitled to public’s forbearance

After this we ought not to be impatient about delay in disclosing details. Do you know how the Japanese found out they had hit the Arizona? They learned it when the Navy Department announced that Adm. Kidd had been killed in battle. The day following that casualty announcement, the Japanese radio stated that the news of the death of Adm. Kidd was taken “as indication that the Arizona, of which Rear Adm. Kidd was captain, has been seriously damaged.”

Adm. Kidd was not captain of the Arizona, but that was a slight error. The Navy Directory, published in April 1941, listed Adm. Kidd as commanding Battleship Division No. 1 with the Arizona as his flagship. The directory is a public document. The inside cover carries the note that it can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents for 50 cents.

When we announced the death of Adm. Kidd, the Japanese had only to look him up in this public directory, take a chance that he was still on the same ship, and claim the hit. That is only a crude example of how casualty lists give clues to enemy intelligence officers. Secretary Knox and some of his advisers show they are determined to reveal as much as can be published without tipping off the enemy, and they are entitled to forbearance from the public.

P.S. Ships cost money. Buy defense bonds and stamps.

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Maj. Williams: New empires

By Maj. Al Williams

While territorial empires may be on the way out of the future picture, it is certain that new and greater commercial empires are in the making. And the greatest of all these new commercial empires will be the world-encircling, trans-ocean, transcontinental airlines. Engine and plane manufacturers, in short, an American aircraft industry, will lead the world in the air as our motor car industry leads the world on wheels.

What other wartime, expanded industry holds even a chance of greater and wider influence in the peace to comp? Railroads, shipping, steel, aluminum, synthetics – all modernized industries – have their chances in the future. Bright chances. But they all face definite limitations because each overlaps or is overlapped by a truly competitive industry. But where is the competition for aviation? What industry holds promise of competing with fight transportation in mail, freight, and passengers?

Just regard the financial and manufacturing potentialities of such companies as the Glenn L. Martin Co., Lockheed, Boeing, Consolidated, Vought-Sikorsky, North American Aviation, and General Motors. These are the identifications of the known leaders in plane building now. Already in the background we see looming The Aviation Corporation, a Tom Girdler-Victor Emmanuel dream for a controlling part in peace aviation. The combine will be able to build motors, planes, propellers, and all the sundry items that are needed for the planes of the future from the biggest present wartime bomber to the flivver planes of tomorrow.

Manufacturers plan for future

Other vertical aviation trusts, combines and huge manufacturing aviation engine and plane groups are gathering and planning for the flying age to come. Originally, we had two big manufacturers of high horsepower engines – Pratt & Whitney and Wright Aeronautical (an affiliate of Curtiss Wright). Now Packard is in the aircraft engine business (building Rolls-Royce engines). Then there’s the Allison Engineering Corporation.

In addition, there are more than a dozen of the little (comparatively low horsepower) engine builders venturing into the high horsepower field. Gigantic aircraft factories are springing up all over the country. Of course they won’t all be maintained at full wartime production capacity, because in peacetime they will have to work on the profit-and-loss system for a market that will have to be developed. So much for the manufacturers of the equipment for flying – airliners – far greater than is being built today and the hundreds of thousands of flivver planes for which the market is all set.

Now about the market for this equipment. First of all there are the airlines. Airline transportation, as we know it today, is but a promising shadow. Can you call airmail passenger service to any one state in the Union, schedules touching only one city in an entire state? Certainly not. That involves the question: what is the answer to fuller coverage for airline transportation? That answer is simple – feeder airlines. There are only a few hundred airline planes representing our commercial airline service in this country today. The traffic calls for great expansion of this arterial air service right now. The feeder airline service will demand thousands of planes and engines and special equipment build specifically for that type of work.

How air costs are determined

The current airline ticket just about equals railroad fare for the same distance plus Pullman charges. But such charges for air transportation are reckoned on using a type of reliable plane that is only the first improvement since the tri-motored Ford (our first American airliner). In other words, as can readily be appreciated, the air tariffs are reckoned on the cost of flying these big planes to the operators. This tariff will necessarily be reduced to attract more business just as soon as planes of superior performance (lower cost per flying mile) can be built.

The present war is, of course, interfering with the building of such planes even though they are fully engineered and the blueprints ready to be turned over to the shops. What is already known and has already been converted into blueprint form in the way of faster planes of grater capacity will be operated for about one-half the present airline ticket cost. And this without even touching the aeronautical improvements already incorporated in the current warplanes (which same improvement will again result in reduced airline ticket costs). And these things are all coming – their signs are there for all to read – no prophecy needed – irrespective of win, lose or draw in Europe’s war.

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CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
Gossipers bring grief to Mrs. Jones

By Maxine Garrison

Mrs. Jones’ son, John, is in the U.S. Army.

Mrs. Jones was not happy to see him go, but she knew that it was his duty, and she was proud of the way he went.

He gave up his job, just after he’d got a foothold in the field that interested him most. He went cheerfully, but without any delusions about being a hero. Not having any special training, John went as a plain rookie like most of the others.

Like all boys, Johnnie is careless about keeping in touch. He has good intentions, but letters only get written about a tenth as often as he intends. He did write, though, that he liked camp, was feeling better every day, and wished he had some of Mom’s chocolate cake.

Like all mothers, Mrs. Jones worries. She doesn’t bother anyone else with her worries if she can help it, but she does fret. At first, it was if Johnnie would get homesick, or if he would make friends. Was he getting the proper food? Would he have the proper kind of recreation? Why didn’t he write?

Then Johnnie volunteered for overseas duty. Mrs. Jones was proud of him, but it certainly gave her more to worry about. Where would he be sent, and how would he get along, and would it be dangerous?

Keeps them to herself

These were things Mrs. Jones didn’t want to foist onto other people. She kept them to herself, and always smiled about Johnny and the Army when anybody asked.

But after the real trouble started, and even before, there were certain people who weren’t as considerate of Mrs. Jones as she was of them.

“Do you mean to tell me that Johnny’s going out of the country?” they’d say, all neighborly solicitude. “My, that’s bad! Where to?”

“Patagonia,” Mrs. Jones told them (Let’s just say Patagonia. The real name doesn’t make any difference).

“Patagonia? Oh, Mrs. Jones, that’s just like sitting on top of a volcano! Yes, it is. That’s just where trouble is likely to break out any minute. Why, you poor thing!”

About the time Mrs. Jones rallied around from this little chat by telling herself that her charming visitor didn’t know anything about it, another one arrived.

“Mrs. Jones!” she cried. “I just heard that Johnny’s gone way off to Patagonia. Is that true? … It is? Isn’t that dreadful? I wouldn’t want to alarm you, Mrs. Jones, but you really should be prepared to hear anything. I know a woman whose second cousin’s oldest son was sent there. That was the last of him. Blown to bits, he was.

‘Do be brave!’

“Well, Mrs. Jones, I’ve got to run along now. Now, do try to be brave, you poor dear. Don’t let any of this awful news worry you, just don’t pay any attention to what you hear.”

And off she goes, with Mrs. Jones almost prostrated by the kindliness of it all.

People who talk that way at any time should have their tongues pinned down. People who talk like that to Mrs. Jones could give the Spanish Inquisition spades on methods of torture.

The least we can do for the Mrs. Joneses we know is not to burden them with our own nightmare fancies, our tawdry bits of second-hand gossip.

[NormanStewart]

Americans go fighting mad when they hear the Maine was sunk

Second article of a series.

This story – or one similar to it – Mr. Average American read in his newspaper on February 16, 1898:

“HAVANA, Feb. 15 – The noise of a terrible explosion startled Havana at 10 o’clock tonight. It was soon learned by the people who flocked to the waterfront, when the sound proceeded, that the explosion had occurred on the United States battleship Maine in the harbor. Definite particulars are not yet ascertainable, but it seems certain that many persons onboard the Maine were killed and wounded, and possibly the ship is so badly injured that she cannot be saved… No explanation of the explosion is obtainable at this time. Whether one of the ship’s magazines blew up, or bombs were placed beside her and set off by the Spaniards is not known.”

What was Mr. Average American’s reaction to the shocking news? Remember his provincialism. Remember he was what we would call today a “small-town guy.” If he lived in a city, the chances are he has spent his boyhood on a farm or in a tiny hamlet. International affairs were of no concern to him, because he didn’t know the people who lived across the ocean and didn’t want to. He spoke good old Mid-American English, wore galluses and button shoes and hadn’t the faintest idea where Japan started and finished because he had hidden “Deadwood Dick” in his geography at school and devoured every word.

Frightened by foreigners

Foreigners rather frightened him. He didn’t trust them because they didn’t talk his lingo.

So what did he do?

He pushed back his coffee cup, the one with the mustache guard which the children had given him the previous Christmas, he elbowed the ham and eggs out of reach, and he hammered on the breakfast table with his face.

And he bellowed: “Why those dirty ----!”

Mr. Average American was mad. Forty-three years later, with our radios blaring “Pearl Harbor–Jap planes–ships sunk” in our ears, another generation discovered exactly how mad he was.

Then he hurried downtown for more details.

Gets another dispatch

There had been another dispatch at 4 a.m.: “By a miracle, Capt. Sigsbee and most of the officers of the Maine were taken off in safety, but 100 of the crew, it is believed, were killed… It is apparent to the observers on shore that the vessel is sinking rapidly to the bottom of the bay… The entire city is panic-stricken.”

“It’s war,” Mr. Average American said to a stranger at the newsstand on the corner. The stranger agreed.

Later in the morning, Washington received its first report from the commander of the Maine, urging that judgment be reserved until the cause of the disaster could be determined. He had been the last man to go over the side of his ship. By late afternoon, the death toll was known to be 251. The final casualty list showed 266 men to have lost their lives.

And so it was war, although not immediately. In spite of tension that threatened to reach the breaking point any day, Mr. Average American waited while a board of inquiry sifted the evidence. It reported that an outside explosion had sunk the Maine.

Ultimatum sent

An ultimatum was sent to the Spanish government on April 20, demanding a satisfactory reply by the 23rd. Hostilities were declared to have begun on April 24. The Nashville, a cruiser, stopped a Spanish merchantman with a shot across the bow a day or so afterward. On the 27th, three warships under Adm. Sampson bombarded Matanzas, Cuba.

Now Mr. Average American was in it up to his glossy derby hat.

The adjustments he had to make quickly were enormous. Except for the Mexican War of 1846, which he could recall only if he was an old man, he had no conception of what it meant to come to grips with an alien power. The Civil War was not comparable, either in a psychological or tactical sense.

Here, for the first time, with a job the whole country could tackle, from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine – from Key West to Duluth. Frankly, Mr. Average American didn’t know whether to feel elated and exalted by his new responsibilities, or scared to death.

But he did know he was gosh-a-mighty sore at the Spaniards.

Falls prey to rumors

At first, he fell prey to the wildest of alarms and rumors. It must be borne in mind that he possessed none of the modern means of rapid and widespread communication and transport.

There were hundreds of miles of sparsely-inhabited coastline which offered ideal beachheads for an invader, who might land and be well established before a defense could be put up.

So it was logical that the “war jitters,” as we term them today, slapped Mr. Average American squarely in the face.

He spent his worst month of his life wondering what was going to happen to him.

Spain’s surprising lack of first-class sea-fighting machinery had not yet been exposed at Manila and Santiago. Mr. Average American’s friends at the office put on long faces and whispered excitedly that we had gone in over our heads. When he stopped in the tobacco shop, he heard that our Navy was led by jim-dandy officers who were cutups in a ballroom but not much at sea. A neighbor said he knew ammunition was scarce. There weren’t enough shells for the big guns.

Expected Spanish fleet

New York, Boston – all the great seaports – were positive the Spanish fleet was heading straight at them. Adm. Cervera’s squadron of four cruisers and three torpedo-boat destroyers had sailed from Saint Vincent, in the West Indies, on April 29 and had been lost sight of on the horizon. Today, a swift plane could have ferreted them out in a few hours, but in ‘98, all Mr. Average American could do was guess. Being human, he guessed the worst and it soon became fact to him.

It was not until a month later – May 29, to be exact – that Cervera was found by Adm. Schley. He was at anchor in the Bay of Santiago. He had made no attempt to leave a calling card on America’s shores.

It may have been the race of the battleship Oregon that kept Mr. Average American’s spirits up during the anxious days of late winter and spring. Certainly, this was one of the most memorable episodes of the country’s history, one that alternately chilled and thrilled the public as nothing had before.

When the Maine went down, the Oregon was in the Pacific at San Francisco. One of the Navy’s most powerful fighters, she was ordered to make haste to the Eastern Seaboard, and under forced draft, she headed south.

For all anyone knew, the Oregon might be the difference between victory and defeat in this war. Her course was long and arduous, for there was no Panama Canal; to reach her destination, she had to steam the full western length of South America, plough through the Straits of Magellan, head northeast to the outermost tip of Brazil and then cover a stretch that was believed dominated by the Spanish fleet.

The Oregon sailed on March 19, and for 71 days – until June 1 – Mr. Average American followed her with breathless anxiety. She became a symbol of America’s war effort. Her progress was recorded in newspaper headlines. She might have been Mars’ counterpart of the Kentucky Derby or the Rose Bowl game from the treatment she got.

As the Oregon neared the end of her run, the reporting grew lyrical. Every American was stirred. Dewey, meanwhile, had destroyed a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, but the Oregon “made it,” and Mr. Average American gloated over such verses as:

They held her south to Magellan’s mouth,
Then east they steered her, forth
Through the farther gate of the crafty strait,
And then they held her north.

Six thousand miles to the Indian isles!
And the Oregon rushed home,
Her wake a swirl of jade and pearl,
Her bow a bend of foam.

The Oregon reaching home – ‘Her wake a swirl of jade and pearl, her bow a bend of foam.’

One can picture how Mr. Average American and his cronies celebrated the Oregon’s arrival “home.”

The Oregon played its part well. Under its guns, the first Marines landed in Cuba; it helped blast Cervera out of the water at Santiago.

Only a skirmish

It turned out, however, that the Spanish-American War was little more than an international skirmish – hardly that, if measured in today’s terms. There was some fierce fighting in front of El Caney and at San Juan Hill where the Rough Riders under two young, impetuous gallants, Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt, distinguished themselves, but the naval battles proved to be hardly more than target practice for our gunners.

A youthful lieutenant, Richard Pearson Hobson, who was to become known all over America as a speaker on Chautauqua platforms, raised the blood pressure of the folks back home by taking a coaling ship, the Merrimac, under the forts at Santiago to try to sink her in the mouth of the harbor and thus bottle up the enemy fleet. He was not successful, but he and his six companions escaped harm and became national heroes, no less than Roosevelt and Wood.

Mr. Average American was feeling his oats and walking with his chest out. His country was winning its first foreign war since it had become of age. The world had learned that the Yankees were good fighters as well as shrewd tradesmen and funny people who slapped each other on the back and laughed at their own stories.

Peace came in August, before thousands of the volunteers who had responded to two calls were trained sufficiently to leave their camps.

To Mr. Average American, it was a good peace. Out of it, the United States acquired the Philippines and Puerto Rico.

“Now,” the head of the house proudly told Mrs. Average American, “we’re important people.”

He had to live until 1917 to learn just how important.

[NormanStewart]

EXECUTIVE ORDER 8980
Amendment of Executive Order of January 17, 1873, to Permit Persons Holding State, Territorial, and Municipal Offices to Be Appointed As Members of Alien Enemy Hearing Boards

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
December 16, 1941

By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 1753 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, and as President of the United States, the Executive Order of January 17, 1873, as amended, prohibiting, with certain exceptions, Federal officers and employees from holding State, Territorial, and municipal offices, is hereby further amended so as to permit any person holding a State, Territorial, or municipal office to accept appointment and serve as a member of an Alien Enemy Hearing Board.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 16, 1941

---

U.S. War Department (December 16, 1941)

Communiqué No. 13

PHILIPPINE THEATER – The Commanding General, Far East Command, reports that there was marked lessening of enemy activity. There were no Japanese air activities of any consequence and ground operations were of only a local character.

HAWAII – Reports that a disabled enemy airplane and a Japanese pilot were found on Niihau, a small island of the Hawaiian group, are being investigated.

There is nothing to report from other areas.

---

U.S. Navy Department (December 16, 1941)

Communiqué No. 9

Two islands in the Hawaiian Area have been shelled by Japanese war vessels within the last 24 hours. The naval outpost of Johnston Island figured for the first time in Pacific action. It was bombarded by ships of the enemy at dusk. On the northeastern coast of the island of Maui, the shipping center of Kahului was shelled by an enemy submarine at about the same time. Damage in both instances is believed to be slight. Naval operations are continuing against the enemy.

Wake Island has sustained two additional bombing attacks. The first occurred in the afternoon, the second in the evening. The first attack was light, the second heavy.

Wake and Midway are countering the blows of the enemy.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 17, 1941)

Careers may fall –
Pearl Harbor probers visit Knox, Stimson

Justice Roberts heads board; new attacks on Hawaii reported
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington –
The special presidential board investigating the reasons for Japanese successes at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 met for an hour and a half today with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.

The meeting was the first held by the board which is seeking to determine what, if any, Army or Navy officials were napping when the Japanese launched a surprise onslaught. The board is headed by Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts of the Supreme Court.

Justice Roberts asked his fellow members on the five-man board to refuse interviews for the time being.

One of the members, William H. Standley (ret.), former Chief of Naval Operations, will not arrive until tomorrow when further deliberations are scheduled.

It was presumed that the board informally canvassed the situation with Secretaries Knox and Stimson.

Col. Knox made a quick airplane trip to Hawaii for a first-hand investigation of the situation, and returned last Sunday, recommending that an inquiry be conducted.

In his report on damage to U.S. warships and aircraft as a result of the Japanese surprise attack, Col. Knox expressed the opinion that neither the Army nor the Navy was on the alert at the time.

The other members of the board are Maj. Gen. Frank R. McCoy (ret.), Brig. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney of the Army Air Forces, and RAdm. Joseph M. Reeves (ret.), former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet.

Predictions were freely made in unofficial headquarters that some military and naval careers may be blasted by the inquiry.

The initial meeting of the board, which was named only last night, coincided with official reports that the Hawaiian area had been under intermittent attack again, with enemy warships shelling two islands – one of them a naval air outpost.

The garrisons at Wake and Midway are still fighting off the Japanese, who claim, however, to have captured Guam. The Navy on Saturday declared that loss of that island, 1,550 miles from Tokyo, was “probable.”

Members of the extraordinary board set up to investigate the Pearl Harbor attack are expected to go to Hawaii in the near future.

They will seek to fix the responsibility for the fact that the armed services were not “on the alert” when Japanese planes bombarded the fleet and military establishments at America’s most important Pacific outpost. The board has the power to call any Army or Navy officer to its sessions for questioning.

Board wins approval

There was general satisfaction with the composition of the board not only in the War and Navy Departments, which helped select personnel, but in Congress where there had been a minor and quickly-squelched movement for an independent investigation. The purpose now is to delay any Congressional inquiry at least until after the executive branch investigation is completed.

Chairman Carl Vinson (D-KY) of the House Naval Affairs Committee said the President had named so outstanding a board that his committee would not investigate at all.

Chairman David I. Walsh (D-MA) of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee said he knew little about the Army officers appointed but considered the Navy selections to be “every way commendable.”

And the word that was passing around among military men today was, “A good board. It had a hard job to do.”

Japs attack islands

The Navy Department in its Communiqué No. 9 announced yesterday that “enemy vessels” had fired on Johnston Island and that an enemy submarine had shelled Maui, a major island in the Hawaiian group, just southeast of Honolulu. Johnston Island is a dot some hundreds of miles southwest of the Hawaiian group. It became a naval air station on Aug. 15 last.

Navy opinion was that the attacks on Johnston and Maui were casual affairs, “nuisance missions,” to divert American air and surface craft and to be annoying in general.

Naval experts believe the Japanese objective in such thrusts is to keep the Navy’s forces well scattered and away from the main battlefields in the Philippines and around Singapore.

Wake Island holds out

There is no evidence of expectation that Japan intends to make a real effort to take the Hawaiian group and Johnston would be hard for Japan to hold with Hawaii in American hands. The same probably goes for Midway at the northwestern extremity of the Hawaiian Islands. But the position of Wake Island is extremely hazardous. The Marines there continue to resist. The Navy Department reported:

Naval operations are continuing against the enemy.

Army Communiqué No. 13 reported lessening of enemy activity in the Philippines. There had been no air activity up to 5:00 p.m. yesterday and Japanese ground operations were merely of local character. The Hawaiian Command was investigating reports that a disabled enemy airplane and Japanese pilot had been found on Ni‘ihau, a small, privately-owned island in the western portion of the Hawaiian group.

[NormanStewart]

WAR BULLETINS!

Cable proves Midway still holds out

New York –
Midway, the U.S. Pacific island outpost, was still holding out yesterday and was in direct cable communication with the United States, a cablegram received by the United Press established today. A United Press message to the Midway Island supervisor of Commercial Pacific Cables, requesting news of the situation there, brought the reply, dated yesterday: “Regret censorship prohibits.”

New anti-Nazi outbreaks in Paris

Vichy, France –
Authoritative quarters said today that five anti-German outbreaks in Paris within 48 hours reflected French defiance of new Nazi reprisal threats. Six men, presumably Germans, were reported killed when a bomb exploded in a Nazi military police mess hall in a Paris suburb. It was the third anti-German attack yesterday.

$5,000 for slain men’s families urged

Washington –
The Senate Finance Committee today approved a bill to provide $5,000 for legatees of all servicemen killed in action since mid-October. The measure, sponsored by Senator Bennett C. Clark (D-MO) is an amendment to the National Service Life Insurance Act. The $5,000 would be paid to next of kin.

U.S. may seize other French ships

Washington –
The United States today was reported planning to seize several other French merchant ships under the same procedure used in taking over the luxury liner Normandie yesterday. The 1,029-foot Normandie was taken over under wartime law which provides that fair and adequate compensation must be paid. Thirteen French liners aside from the Normandie are tied up in American ports.

Nazi lieutenant general killed

Berlin, Germany – (official German news agency broadcast)
Lt. Gen. Ernst Bernecker, commander of a German Army corps, was killed by an exploding landmine after the German occupation of Kharkov, on the Russian front south of Moscow.

Jap destroyer bombed off Borneo

Batavia, NEI –
A Dutch Navy bomber scored a direct hit on a Japanese destroyer covering landing operations in Sarawak, northwestern Borneo, a Dutch communiqué said today.

Spanish liner seized by U.S. agents

New York –
Seized by federal agents for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Spanish liner Isla de Tenerife was the property of the U.S. government today. Agents boarded it last night after they discovered enough equipment to build 40 or 50 radio transmitters, oil and other cargo, none of which had been declared, in its holds.

Connally urges bombing of Japan

Washington –
Chairman Tom Connally (D-TX) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today urged officials to act promptly in attempting to arrange for U.S. air bases in Siberia and eastern Russia. Mr. Connally said that he hoped the United States would make immediate preparations for an “all-out” bombardment of Japan’s industrial centers.

Axis bombers raid Malta

London, England (UP) – (BBC broadcast recorded in New York)
One fatality and a few casualties resulted last night from enemy bombing of Malta, BBC reported today. It said six alerts were sounded last night and two this morning.

Cuba arrests 6 as ‘Gestapo agents’

Havana, Cuba –
Six men – two Cubans, two Swiss, a Pole and a Turk – were arrested today and charged with operating as “Gestapo agents.” The newspaper El Mundo said they brought Germans here illegally to await entry into the United States. All were connected with the Banco Popular, a private banking house included on the first U.S. blacklist of firms dealing with the Axis.

RAF raids German naval base

London, England –
British bombers swept over Germany and occupied enemy territory in a large-scale raid last night, starting large fires at the naval base in Wilhelmshaven, an Air Ministry communiqué said today. Docks and other objectives in Wilhelmshaven were left burning. Bremen and other towns in Northwest Germany were also bombed. British planes attacked docks at Ostend, Dunkirk and Brest and airdromes in occupied France. One plane was missing.

Americans reported held in Paris

Vichy, France –
The U.S. Embassy learned unofficially and without confirmation today that German authorities were rounding up American males in Paris and holding them in an Armenian student’s house at a university south of Paris.

20 U.S. subs reported near Japan

New York –
British radio broadcasts said that, according to a Japanese naval spokesman in Tokyo, there are “probably 20 American submarines at large in the waters around Japan.”

England drafts women for work

London, England –
The House of Lords completed action on the government’s new “all-in” conscription bill today. The bill provides for increased ranges of military service and for “drafting” of women to work in war industries.

Spaniards in Mexico withdraw funds

Mexico City, Mexico –
Thousands of Spanish nationals here were reported today to be withdrawing their funds from Mexican banks and political observers saw in the action indications that Spain may soon become an active participant in the war.

[NormanStewart]

LUZON INVASION THREAT DWINDLES
Enemy fuel, 26 aircraft fired in raid

Smashing attack by Army lessens Luzon invasion peril
By Frank Hewlett, United Press staff writer

Manila, Philippines –
U.S. submarines have won their first two victories in offensive operations in Far Eastern waters and Army airplanes, in a smashing attack on the Japanese in the Vigan invasion area of western Luzon, have destroyed at least 26 enemy planes, it was officially asserted today.

Adm. Thomas C. Hart, Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic Fleet, said three U.S. submarines had been “involved” in two successful attacks and in another which failed. He declined to give details or to say whether Japanese warships, troop transports, or auxiliaries had been engaged but a formal communiqué was expected.

Headquarters of the U.S. forces in the Far East announced that the Japanese suffered heavily in a U.S. Air Corps attack on the Vigan area yesterday.

One Japanese plane was shot down, the communiqué said, and at least 25 were destroyed on the ground.

In addition, the communiqué said, U.S. planes destroyed Japanese fuel supplies.

The general ground situation was reported unchanged.

It was announced that an inter-island steamship, the Corregidor, had hit a mine and sunk in Manila Bay during the night.

Adm. Hart confirmed that about 200 U.S. Marines had been compelled to surrender to the Japanese before they could be evacuated from Northern China.

An Army communiqué, announcing “no change in the ground situation” and “no air activity reported since Tuesday,” was taken to mean that U.S. and Philippine defense forces continue to fight Japanese invasion troops to a standstill at key points of Luzon, the main island. There had been no air-raid alarm in 48 hours in the Manila area.

Repel bus-riding Japs

A correspondent of the Manila newspaper Mabuhay, telephoning from a northern province, reported that all volunteers and air-raid wardens had been mobilized and armed to back up a Filipino division which had repelled a bus-riding Japanese force attempting a drive southward.

The Japanese, in buses – possibly landed from transports – attacked the Filipino division near the northern provincial border, the correspondent said.

The Filipinos met them with a rain of artillery fire and, after a short skirmish yesterday, the Japanese fled.

Expecting the Japanese to reorganize for a new and stronger attack, the correspondent said, the Filipinos mobilized all available men and armed them with rifles.

A witness who reached Manila told the Manila Bulletin that he saw a handful of brave Filipino infantrymen shoot down three low-flying Japanese planes with their rifles at a northern airfield.

The enemy planes, at roof-scrapping altitude, machine-gunned the infantrymen’s barracks, the witness said. The Filipinos replied with the only weapons they had, their rifles. One Japanese aviator bailed out at once, the witness said, and was shot to death as he parachuted.

An officer shouted an order for the Filipinos to lie flat on the ground. But when the remaining two planes came back, the witness said, the Filipinos knelt, poured a volley into the Jap planes and shot down both of them.

Rescuing one wing of a Japanese plane from raging flames, the witness said, the Filipinos paraded with it through the nearby town to the cheers of the townspeople.

[NormanStewart]

I DARE SAY —
Counting the cost

By Florence Fisher Parry

How valuable is a lesson learned? The lesson of 3,385 Navy men – officers and enlisted men – killed or wounded, should last a long time. Till the end of our U.S. history. And that, pray God, is a long way off.

Such a lesson should not be confined to the Navy and its everlasting tradition and legend. Never fear that it will not be pounded into the training of every Navy and Army man. Never fear that “Remember Pearl Harbor” will lose one iota of its double entendre. Forever in the memories of those who live now and will live later, will this phrase evoke a blush of shame as well as a flush of pride.

Perhaps only the dignity of the President’s office and his own magnificent rise to it could have given dignity to the words:

So far the news is all bad.

A lesson of the terrible magnitude of this is a lesson big enough to cover us all; every last American of us. We were caught off guard. We were caught napping. We were taken by surprise. We were not on the alert.

Forget those under investigation. They will be dealt with. They were brave men, schooled in a harder, grimmer school than we shall ever know. Many, even most of them, gave their lives for their negligence; and those who lived, performed acts of heroism to wipe out any recrimination. Let the Navy deal with its own.

The mote

And let us, on our part, deal with their own consciences. Let us take to ourselves the lesson we are so glib and ready to assign to the Navy.

How alert are we? Now? Even after all this past week of supposed awakening? How many of us are still off guard? Still napping? Open to surprise “attack”?

How have WE profited by this ghastly lesson?

It might be well for us, each one, to cast out the mote in our own eye for prying open the dead lids of the casualties at Pearl Harbor. It might be well for us, each one, to be very sure that we, in our own limited way, are not even now committing the same sin against America that was committed at Pearl Harbor.

The blackouts of our major cities, thus far, have been a farce. The organizations of civilian defense are still floundering. Here is a private report from a first-aid recruit in New York City, supposed to be the most progressive metropolis of all:

When I reported to my first class, everything was in a state of complete unorganization (I can’t say disorganization, for plainly it had never been organized). We were huddled in different corners and then lectured to for about an hour by an austere woman who kept referring to emergencies such as drowning, snake bite, poisoning, and never once hinting at our real problems as air wardens. She didn’t change her expression once, just turned a little pale each time anyone ventured a question. A nice, first-class woman bowled over at the idea of a real emergency.

We can surely do better than this in Pittsburgh! I know our women. They’re cut out for this work. There’s a downright, realistic quality about real Pittsburghers which ought to show up simply grand at a time like this. Dollars to doughnuts any recruit’s reaction in Pittsburgh, to a “first meeting,” would make a nice comparison to those of the Little Flower’s City.

Some clues

If you have any illusions of safety, please look again at your map of Pittsburgh. It makes the most perfect target of any city in America, outside New York. Its golden triangle could have been dreamed up by a master strategist of the air, offering as it does as neat a mark as geography ever provided. Just what blackout precautions could do to obliterate our two converging rivers, please some smart person tell me quick.

The Pearl Harbor attack was the result of a perfect fifth column job. That’s another lesson to take home, right here in our city. Remember it, there isn’t one of us who can’t be on the alert and watchful.

Don’t let loose your imagination; it can be counted upon to work overtime even in the most conservative. But if you have anything REAL to report, don’t gossip it or hysterically telephone it. Set it down in a comprehensive letter and send it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m speaking of clues, not suppositions.

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Allied Army eligibles outnumber Axis 2–1

Washington –
If the number of war-age males counts, the United States and its allies have a 2–1 chance to win the war.

This was revealed today by the Census Bureau, which presented an estimate of manpower of fighting age – 18 to 35 – in the principal belligerent countries. These countries have 85,203,000 men in the fighting-age groups, not including China, India and the Dutch Indies. Of this total, 56,643,000 would serve under Allied flags and 28,560,000 for the Axis.

If China and India were included, the number of fighting men for the Allied nations would total 163,887,000.

The bureau listed the United States and its possessions with 22,796,000 males between 18 and 35.

[NormanStewart]

11,303 join Navy since Jap attack

Washington (UP) –
The Navy disclosed today that 11,303 men enlisted in the Regular Navy in the eight days immediately following the Japanese smash at Pearl Harbor.

The rate of enlistments between Dec. 8 and Dec. 15 (inclusive) increased from an average of 361 per day to 2,930 per day.

These figures represented only first enlistments in the Regular Navy recruiting stations, the Navy said, and did not include immediate reenlistments during broken service enlistments, or a large number of men who were enlisted by the commandants of the various naval districts or men enlisted by cadet selection boards for flight training.

The Navy said the trend of enlistments was still upward on Dec. 15.

[NormanStewart]

Taylor: Hawaiian warrior Benny takes island from Japs

By Clarice B. Taylor, United Press special writer

Waimea, Kauai Island, Hawaii –
This is the story of how Benny Kanahele, a descendant of ancient Hawaiian warriors, recaptured his island from the Japanese, though he had been wounded three times.

He and his wife live on Niʻihau Island, which is 16 miles long and 3 miles wide, and is 210 miles northwest of Honolulu. Including the Kanahele’s, the island has a population of 180 Hawaiians and two Japanese. There is neither a telephone nor a radio on Niʻihau, and when a Japanese pilot was forced down on the beach Dec. 7, nobody knew he was an enemy.

The pilot was received as a guest, although he was first relieved of his machine gun and sidearms. He made friends with the two Japanese – Harada and Shintani – and Harada recovered his guns for him.

Sets out in storm

Then the pilot asked Shintani to help him take his papers away from a Hawaiian named Hauila. But Hauila, having become suspicious, had embarked in the midst of a storm with a group of cowboys for Waimea, 15 miles away, to look for help.

The pilot and his two new-found Japanese friends decided to take over the island. They set up their machine gun in the village and, Kanahele said:

Everybody took to the woods.

The pilot threatened to shoot everybody on the island unless his papers were immediately returned. Pretending friendship, Kanahele and his wife accompanied him on a search through the woods for Hauila.

Pilot becomes suspicious

Kanahele said:

However, the pilot became suspicious to me. I jumped him as he was handing a shotgun to Harada. The flier shot me with his pistol in the ribs, hip and groin. Then I got mad. I threw him against a stone wall and knocked him out. Then I went for Harada, who tried to shoot himself with the shotgun and succeeded in his second attempt.

When he looked around, his wife was pounding out the pilot’s brains with a rock.

Soldiers arrived from Kauai in a few hours and captured Shintani and Harada’s wife. They took the prisoners, and Kanahele back to Waimea, where Kanahele is recovering in a hospital.

[NormanStewart]

TELEPHOTO: Arizona burns; Jap dive bombers attack

Japanese bombers, encircled above, dive on objectives during the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor while the U.S. battleship Arizona burns at the left. The tower of the battleship can be seen through the smoke. The tiny clouds in the square are bursting anti-aircraft shells.

[NormanStewart]

Events of 17 years after century’s turn change American’s outlook

Third article of the series.

The average middle-aged American householder of New Year’s Day 1900 would have been utterly unable to shoulder the burdens and responsibilities of a war such as this country was destined to enter 17 years later.

Despite the Spanish-American War, which had made him more a citizen of the world, acquainted him with far-flung names and places that had been foreign to him prior to 1898 and imbued him with a new sense of power, his roots are still almost as deep in the soil of his country as were those of his pioneer forefathers. Even though he might be a city man, wise to his city ways, he was a ruralite at heart.

He likes to putter in his garden, talk about his uncle who had gone out in the Gold Rush of ‘49, and do the cakewalk at barn dances.

He would laugh out loud at the sight of a grown man wearing knickers and carrying golf clubs. He would roar at a picture of the King of England in silken knee breeches and say he was glad, by Joe, we had none of those fellers over here.

He was getting set

What he didn’t know was that the next 17 years were to gait him and the generation that was growing up to the mental tempo that would make the advent of World War I seem a perfectly logical sequence in the history of the country.

Since we are not too greatly concerned with actual military operations here, a brief summary of what the Army and Navy were doing in this period will suffice.

The Philippine Insurrection, an offshoot of the Spanish conflict, had begun in 1899, ran through 1900 and ended in the spring of the following year. Measured in terms of modern fighting, it was largely a series of bush and jungle skirmishes against ill-equipped natives, but it was significant in one respect: it demonstrated what it means to send an expeditionary force over thousands of miles of ocean and base it on a hostile shore.

During this time (1900), more than 2,000 Marines and sailors joined British, French, Russian and Japanese allies to put down the Boxer Insurrection in China.

Mexican war averted

Following peace in the Philippines and China, U.S. forces were not engaged in combat until 14 years later when Marines were landed at Veracruz, in Mexico, to demand an apology for the arrest and temporary detention of a naval shore party. Actual war with Mexico was averted only by arbitration.

Two years later, 1,500 Mexican soldiers under Pancho Villa invaded Columbus, New Mexico, killing nine civilians and eight troopers of the 13th U.S. Cavalry. They were pursued – but never caught – by 6,000 men, commanded by a tall, lean, square-jawed brigadier general who had a reputation for toughness. His name was John J. Pershing. He was nicknamed “Black Jack.”

Many factors contributed to the speedup of Mr. Average American’s mode of living during the first decade and a half of the century, not the least being a series of major disasters.

A tornado and tidal wave took 600 lives at Galveston, Texas, in 1900.

President McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo the following year.

A fire and stampede killed 602 persons in the Iroquois Theater, in Chicago, in 1903, resulting in the first stringent regulations for patrons in public places. The word “asbestos” remains to this day a subtle reminder of the tragedy.

Titanic goes down

Baltimore was leveled by a fire in 1904, and an earthquake and fire wrecked a great portion of San Francisco in 1906.

In 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and went down with 1,517 passengers, including famous Americans. Out of it came the International Ice Patrol in which the United States assumed a major role.

In addition, Mr. Average American’s pocketbook was flattened by a financial panic in 1908.

What brought these events home to him was the ever-increasing efficiency and scope of communication, brought about by steady improvement in the telegraph and the telephone. Had they occurred in the ‘80s or ‘90s, he would have had only fragmentary reports, but now his newspapers supplied him with every detail of their horror.

Without knowing it, he was being tied in with his fellow Americans in a way that would make it easier for them to unite in times of national emergency. Galveston, San Francisco, Baltimore became neighbors of his, no matter where he lived.

The Galveston tornado produced a new and better weather bureau service to warn of approaching storms. When 174 children and teachers were burned to death in a school fire at Collinwood, near Cleveland, Mr. Average American demanded that immediate steps be taken to insure his own youngsters against such a holocaust. Construction regulations emerged to prevent a repetition of the destruction in Baltimore and San Francisco.

Inventions do more

But if disaster was assisting at the acceleration of Mr. Average American’s pace, invention and enterprise were doing even more.

In December 1901, Marconi, an Italian, signaled the letter “S” across the Atlantic from England to Newfoundland. Radio was on its way.

Two years later, to the month, two bicycle-makers from Dayton, Ohio – Orville and Wilbur Wright – made an airplane take off and flew along the sand dunes near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Mr. Average American was both astounded and delighted. Pearl Harbor and the San Francisco blackouts were 38 years ahead. In 1909, he was to thrill again when Louis Blériot flew a rickety monoplane across the English Channel from Calais to Dover, making the 31 miles in 37 minutes.

The automobile arrived.

It is generally agreed that the motorcar did more to and for Mr. Average American than any other single creation. It turned him loose from his moorings; it made a Californian of a New Yorker by the mere act of putting his foot on the “exhilerator,” as he called it at first; it brought great chains of excellent highways; it opened an entirely new avenue of employment for millions; and it compelled other transports to meet the competition.

Process was slow

Of course, the process was slow. The early models were driven by steam or electricity, and it was not until the gasoline or internal combustion engine was perfected that cars began to approach the normal buying power of the people.

Meanwhile, Mr. Average American got many a chuckle out of the puffing monsters and the courageous pioneers who drove them. As late as 1904, he read such lines as:

Half a block, half a block,
Half a block onward,
All in their ‘motobiles
Rode the Four Hundred.
“Forward!” the owners shout,
“Racing-car!” “Runabout!”
Into Fifth Avenue
Rode the Four Hundred.

Two vaudeville comedians brought down the house with this one:

Yes, I enjoy my auto immensely.

But I never see you out in it.

Oh, I haven’t got that far yet. I am just learning to make my own repairs.

Thousands of grownups today remember the excitement that attended the arrival of the first horseless carriage in their community. And how it was the talk of the town when someone drove “clear to Pittsburgh and back – with only four punctures!”

Dividing by half the 14-year span between 1900 and 1914, here is the picture of the average American of 1907:

Thrilled by Merry Widow

He was reading The Lady of the Decoration, by Francis Little. It was the bestseller, but don’t ask for it today at your bookshop. Secretly, he had a copy of Elinor Glyn’s Three Weeks hidden away somewhere. When his children got around to it, they thought it pretty tame stuff.

The Merry Widow, which had just opened, enthralled him with its revival of the waltz, but he also liked Nora Bayes, who was making her first American appearance in the Follies.

Because of the depression, he didn’t have much money, but that did not stop him from complaining bitterly over women’s hats – huge affairs with lavish trimmings of birds and bird wings.

The first all-steel Pullman car was on the rails.

Without telling his Cabinet, President Theodore Roosevelt sent the American battle fleet of 16 ships under Adm. Robley D. Evans on a cruise around the world.

Mr. Average American exclaimed:

That’ll show ‘em what we got. We can lick ‘em all if we have to!

He and his countrymen were pulling on their international long pants and shaking the mud of the side roads off their boots.

[NormanStewart]

U.S. War Department (December 17, 1941)

Communiqué No. 14

Philippine Theater.
There was no discernable enemy activity during the past 24 hours.

Hawaii.
In the brief shelling of Kahului, on the island of Maui, by an enemy submarine, only slight damage was done to a concrete loading platform of a pineapple company. There were no casualties. About 10 shells were fired.

Nothing to report from other areas.

---

U.S. Navy Department (December 17, 1941)

Communiqué No. 10

It has been established that there were no injuries to personnel in the weak attack on Johnston Island reported yesterday. The naval situation in the Atlantic remains quiet.

---

EXECUTIVE ORDER 8981
Navy Hospital Area, Coco Solo, Canal Zone

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
December 17, 1941

By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5 of Title 2 of the Canal Zone Code, approved June 19, 1934, and as President of the United States, it is ordered as follows:

SECTION 1
Setting apart of reservation; boundaries. The following described area of land in the Canal Zone is hereby reserved and set apart as, and assigned to the uses and purposes of, a naval reservation, which shall be known as Navy Hospital Area, Coco Solo, and which shall be under the control and jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Navy, subject to the provisions of Section 2 of this order:

Beginning at monument marked NH-1 on Panama Canal drawing, M-6109-21, which monument is a 2½-inch galvanized iron pipe surrounded by a 12-inch concrete collar, the geographic position of which monument, referred to the Panama-Colon datum of the Canal Zone triangulation system, is in latitude 9°21’ N plus 1,100.4 feet and longitude 79°51’ W plus 3,934.5 feet from Greenwich. Monument NH-1 is 15 feet in a southerly direction from the centerline of the old Cativa Road.

Thence from said initial point, by metes and bounds.

S 17°40’30" E, 376.0 feet to monument NH-2 which is a 2½-inch galvanized iron pipe surrounded by a 12-inch concrete collar. Monument NH-2 is 100 feet from the centerline of the Trans-Isthmian Highway; and on the northerly boundary of the Colon-Cativa Corridor;

Thence along the northerly boundary of the Colon-Cativa Corridor in a generally southwesterly direction through monuments NH-3 and NH-4 to monument NH-5 located on the east bank of the Coco Solo River, (all monuments are similar to the above). From monument NH-2 to NH-3 the line bears S 63°09’45" W, 187.2 feet; from monument NH-3 to NH-4 the chord of the curve (radius of 5,829.6 feet) is S 59°34’45" W, 728.7 feet, and from monument NH-4 to monument NH-5 the line bears S 55°59’45" W, 626.1 feet.

Thence in a generally northerly direction along the East bank of the Coco Solo River to monument NH-6, similar to the above. From monument NH-5 to NH-6 the direct line bears N 22°02’30" W, 1,346.8 feet.

N 55°03’45" E, 929.2 feet, to monument NH-7, similar to the above, which is 15 feet in a southerly direction from the centerline of the old Cativa Road;

Thence in a generally southeasterly direction parallel to and 15 feet from the centerline of the old Cativa Road to the point of beginning. From NH-7 to NH-1 the direct line bears S 56°45’30" E, 1,128.7 feet.

The above-described tract contains an area of 39.4 acres.

The directions of the lines refer to the true meridian.

The survey was made in May 1941, by the Office Engineering Division, Section of Surveys, The Panama Canal, and is as shown on Panama Canal drawing No. M-6109-21 entitled ‘Boundary Map of Navy Hospital Area, Coco Solo, Canal Zone,’ on file in the Office of the Governor, The Panama Canal, and the Office of the Commandant, 15th Naval District.

SECTION 2
Conditions and limitations. The reservation made by Section 1 of this order shall be subject to the following conditions and limitations:

(a) The area comprising this reservation shall continue to be subject to the civil jurisdiction of the Canal Zone Government in conformity with the provisions of the Canal Zone Code as amended and supplemented.

(b) The naval authorities shall bear all the costs of the transfer of such area, including the cost of surveys and of cancelation of any agricultural licenses or other permits which may be in force in the area.

(c) Personnel and equipment of the Panama Canal shall be permitted access to such area to carry out necessary Panama Canal operations in connection with drainage, sanitation, surveys, etc., in the area or vicinity.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 17, 1941

[NormanStewart]

AN ACT
To expedite the prosecution of the war effort.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

TITLE I
Coordination of executive bureaus in the interest of the more efficient concentration of the government

SECTION 1
That for the national security and defense, for the successful prosecution of the war, for the support and maintenance of the Army and Navy, for the better utilization of resources and industries, and for the more effective exercise and more efficient administration by the President of his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, the President is hereby authorized to make such redistribution of functions among executive agencies as he may deem necessary, including any functions, duties, and powers hitherto by law conferred upon any executive department, commission, bureau, agency, governmental corporation, office, or officer, in such manner as in his judgment shall seem best fitted to carry out the purposes of this title, and to this end is authorized to make such regulations and to issue such orders as he may deem necessary, which regulations and orders shall be in writing and shall be published in accordance with the Federal Register Act of 1935: Provided, That the termination of this title shall not affect any act done or any right or obligation accruing or accrued pursuant to this title and during the time that this title is in force: Provided further, That the authority by this title granted shall be exercised only in matters relating to the conduct of the present war: Provided further, That no redistribution of functions shall provide for the transfer, consolidation, or abolition of the whole or any part of the General Accounting Office or of all or any part of its functions.

SECTION 2
That in carrying out the purposes of this title the President is authorized to utilize, coordinate, or consolidate any executive or administrative commissions, bureaus, agencies, governmental corporations, offices, or officers now existing by law, to transfer any duties or powers from one existing department, commission, bureau, agency, governmental corporation, office, or officer to another, to transfer the personnel thereof or any part of it either by detail or assignment, together with the whole or any part of the records and public property belonging thereto.

SECTION 3
That for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this title, any moneys heretofore and hereafter appropriated for the use of any executive department, commission, bureau, agency, governmental corporation, office, or officer shall be expended only for the purposes for which it was appropriated under the direction of such other agency as may be directed by the President hereunder to perform and execute said functions, except to the extent hereafter authorized by the Congress in appropriation Acts or otherwise

SECTION 4
That should the President, in redistributing the functions among the executive agencies as provided in this title, conclude that any bureau should be abolished and it or their duties and functions conferred upon some other department or bureau or eliminated entirely, he shall report his conclusions to Congress with such recommendations as he may deem proper.

SECTION 5
That all laws or parts of laws conflicting with the provisions of this title are to the extent of such conflict suspended while this title is in force.

Upon the termination of this title all executive or administrative agencies, governmental corporations, departments, commissions, bureaus, offices, or officers shall exercise the same functions, duties, and powers as heretofore or as hereafter by law may be provided, any authorization of the President under this title to the contrary notwithstanding.

TITLE II
Contracts

SECTION 201
The President may authorize any department or agency of the Government exercising functions in connection with the prosecution of the war effort, in accordance with regulations prescribed by the President for the protection of the interests of the Government, to enter into contracts and into amendments or modifications of contracts heretofore or hereafter made and to make advance, progress and other payments thereon, without regard to the provisions of law relating to the making, performance, amendment, or modification of contracts whenever he deems such action would facilitate the prosecution of the war: Provided, That nothing herein shall be construed to authorize the use of the cost-plus-a-percentage-of-cost system of contracting: Provided further, That nothing herein shall be construed to authorize any contracts in violation of existing law relating to limitation of profits: Provided further, That all acts under the authority of this section shall be made a matter of public record under regulations prescribed by the President and when deemed by him not to be incompatible with the public interest.

TITLE III
Trading with the enemy

SECTION 301
The first sentence of subdivision (b) of Section 5 of the Trading With the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917 (40 Stat. 411), as amended, is hereby amended to read as follows:

1. During the time of war or during any other period of national emergency declared by the President, the President may, through any agency that he may designate, or otherwise, and under such rules and regulations as he may prescribe, by means of instructions, licenses, or otherwise –
   A) investigate, regulate, or prohibit, any transactions in foreign exchange, transfers of credit or payments between, by, through, or to any banking institution, and the importing, exporting, hoarding, melting, or earmarking of gold or silver coin or bullion, currency or securities, and

B) investigate, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit any acquisition holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; and any property or interest of any foreign country or national thereof shall vest, when, as, and upon the terms, directed by the President, in such agency or person as may be designated from time to time by the President, and upon such terms and conditions as the President may prescribe such interest or property shall be held, used, administered, liquidated, sold, or otherwise dealt with in the interest of and for the benefit of the United States, and such designated agency or person may perform any and all acts incident to the accomplishment or furtherance of these purposes; and the President shall, in the manner hereinabove provided, require any person to keep a full record of, and to furnish under oath, in the form of reports or otherwise, complete information relative to any act or transaction referred to in this subdivision either before, during, or after the completion thereof, or relative to any interest in foreign property, or relative to any property in which any foreign country or any national thereof has or has had any interest, or as may be otherwise necessary to enforce the provisions of this subdivision, and in any case in which a report could be required, the President may, in the manner hereinabove provided, require the production, or if necessary to the national security or defense, the seizure, of any books of account, records, contracts letters, memoranda, or other papers, in the custody or control of such person; and the President may, in the manner hereinabove provided, take other and further measures not inconsistent herewith for the enforcement of this subdivision.

2. Any payment, conveyance, transfer, assignment, or delivery of property or interest therein, made to or for the account of the United States, or as otherwise directed, pursuant to this subdivision or any rule, regulation, instruction, or direction issued hereunder shall to the extent thereof be a full acquittance and discharge for all purposes of the obligation of the person making the same; and no person shall be held liable in any court for or in respect to anything done or omitted in good faith in connection with the administration of, or in pursuance of and in reliance on, this subdivision, or an rule, regulation, instruction, or direction issued hereunder.

3. As used in this subdivision the term “United States” means the United States and any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof, including the Philippine Islands, and the several courts of first instance of the Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands shall have jurisdiction in all cases, civil or criminal, arising under this subdivision in the Philippine Islands and concurrent jurisdiction with the district courts of the United States of all cases, civil or criminal, arising upon the high seas: Provided, however, That the foregoing shall not be construed as a limitation upon the power of the President, which is hereby conferred, to prescribe from time to time, definitions, not inconsistent with the purposes of this subdivision, for any or all of the terms used in this subdivision.

SECTION 302
All acts, actions, regulations, rules, orders, and proclamations heretofore taken, promulgated, made, or issued by, or pursuant to the direction of, the President or the Secretary of the Treasury under the Trading With the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917 (40 Stat. 411), as amended, which would have been authorized if the provisions of this Act and the amendments made by it had been in effect, are hereby approved, ratified, and confirmed.

SECTION 303.
Whenever, during the present war, the President shall deem that the public safety demands it, he may cause to be censored under such rules and regulations as he may from time to time establish, communications by mail, cable, radio, or other means of transmission passing between the United States and any foreign country he may from time to time specify, or which may be carried by any vessel or other means of transportation touching at any port, place, or Territory of the United States and bound to or from any foreign country. Any person who willfully evades or attempts to evade the submission of any such communication to such censorship or willfully uses or attempts to use any code or other device for the purpose of concealing from such censorship the intended meaning of such communication shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $10,000, or, if a natural person, imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both; and the officer, director, or agent of any corporation who knowingly participates in such violation shall be punished by a like fine, imprisonment, or both, and any property, funds, securities, papers, or other articles or documents, or any vessel, together with her tackle, apparel, furniture, and equipment, concerned in such violation shall be forfeited to the United States.

TITLE IV
Time limit and short title

SECTION 401
Titles I and II of this Act shall remain in force during the continuance of the present war and for six months after the termination of the war, or until such earlier time as the Congress by concurrent resolution or the President may designate.

SECTION 402
This Act may be cited as the “First War Powers Act, 1941.”

Approved, December 18, 1941.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 18, 1941)

Action ousts Pacific front war command

3 new strategists take over fleet and Hawaii land, air forces
By Everett R. Holles, United Press staff writer

Washington –
A major shift in American strategy in waging the war in the Pacific, with heavy stress upon aerial attack, was believed today what is a drastic wartime shakeup of army and naval forces.

The shakeup, apparently carried out under orders of President Roosevelt, placed a new triumvirate of strategists in command in the Hawaiian-Pacific battlefront on land, sea and in the air and answered Congressional and public clamor stirred by Japan’s “infamous” attack on Pearl Harbor 11 days ago.

A fighting general of the air, who is an exponent of the heavy bomber as a major striking force, became commander of Hawaii’s land and air defenses, replacing an infantry general of the same rank.

Full admiral in command

The naval change places a full admiral, who is a pioneer submarine commander and expert, in charge of all naval vessels in the Pacific.

The shakeup came in the midst of a secret presidential inquiry into the Japanese surprise attack which plunged the United States into war and which Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox said had caught the American defenders “not on the alert.” The Joint Army-Navy Inquiry Board, which will seek to fix the blame – if there is any – for the Hawaiian forces being caught off guard, holds a second secret meeting today.

Ousted were the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet and two high generals in command of Hawaii’s land and air defenses.

Follow Knox’s statements

The oustings were described officially as being made “in view of” Secretary Knox’s findings on his flying visit of inspection to Pearl Harbor where the surprise enemy assault took a toll of 2,897 Army and Navy lives, destroyed many planes and sank six U.S. warships, including the 32,600-ton battleship USS Arizona.

Relieved of their commands at “this critical hour” were:

• RAdm. Husband E. Kimmel, 59, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet and functional commander of the Pacific Fleet, who was replaced by RAdm. Chester W. Nimitz, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, who was commander of this country’s first submarine flotilla. Nimitz will be raised two ranks to a full admiral.

• Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, commander of the Hawaiian Department land and air forces, replaced by Lt. Gen. Delos C. Emmons of the Air Corps who visited Great Britain last summer and upon his return took a hand in the reorganization of the U.S. air defenses on the basis of his study of Nazi air methods, including establishment of interceptor commands.

• Maj. Gen. Frederick L. Martin, commander of the Army Air Corps in Hawaii, replaced by Brig. Gen. C. L. Tinker of the Air Corps, a veteran of service in the Philippines who was promoted to Brigadier General (temporary) last year.

The selection of Gen. Emmons as commander of the Hawaiian Department was regarded as of important significance in view of the vast and destructive role played by air forces – even against battleships – in the Battle of the Pacific.

Fliers in command

Military men said that two hard-fisted flying fighters will have the defense of Hawaii in their hands in the combination of the 53-year-old Emmons and Tinker.

The High Command’s stress upon aerial defense had been revealed previously in the naming of an air officer to command of all the Army forces in the Panama-Caribbean area, Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews.

The removals were carried out in lightning wartime moves and Adm. Kimmel was instructed to turn over his command to VAdm. William S. Pye, commander of the Battle Force and second-in-command of the Pacific Fleet pending the arrival of Adm. Nimitz on the scene. Adm. Kimmel was told to report for “temporary duty” to the 14th (Hawaiian) Naval District.

Gen. Emmons is already in Honolulu, having been relieved of his former duties as Chief of the Air Force Command.

Gen. Tinker is “proceeding” to Hawaii, it was announced, to replace Gen. Martin after giving up his duties with the 3rd Interceptor Command of the 3rd Air Force at Drew Field, Florida.

The removal of Kimmel, Short and Martin does not carry any connotation of guilt for what happened at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, it was explained, although they, as the ranking commanders of the Pacific defense forces, are the key figures in the presidential inquiry.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson in the Army’s announcement, issued simultaneously with a Navy announcement, said the changes were made:
…in view of the preliminary report of the Secretary of the Navy with whose views as to the unpreparedness of the situation of Dec. 7 the Secretary of War concurs.

Furthermore, Secretary Stimson said, the change will “expedite the reorganization of the air defense in the Hawaiian Islands.”

Mr. Stimson said:

This action avoids a situation where the officials charged with the responsibility for the future security of this vital naval base would otherwise at this critical hour also be involved in the searching investigation ordered Tuesday by the President.

The Navy’s announcement refrained from any explanation for Adm. Kimmel’s removal, but it was believed that the reasons given by Stimson for the Army shakeup applied.

Whether there will be court-martial proceedings against any of the naval, army and air commanders who defended Hawaii on Dec. 7 depends upon the findings of the five-man inquiry board headed by Associate Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts. There were predictions in some quarters that several military and naval careers would be “wrecked.”

No longer commander

Adm. Kimmel, it was stated, was automatically relieved of his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet when he was replaced, although this was not made clear in the Navy’s first announcement.

The Pacific and Asiatic Fleets are now conducting joint operations and Adm. Nimitz will be in command of both.

Adm. Nimitz will immediately take over the administrative functions of Commander-in-Chief, later to relinquish these routine duties to a subordinate.

The Atlantic Fleet remains under the command of RAdm. Ernest J. King.

Adm. Nimitz’s present post as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation will be taken over by RAdm. Randall Jacobs, who has been ordered from sea duty with the Atlantic Fleet.

No historical parallels

Military officials said that there were no near parallels in U.S. military and naval history for the shakeup in the Pacific but pointed out there have been three important shakeups reaching to the top of the British High Command since the start of the war, beginning shortly after the Dunkirk evacuation.

In the American Civil War, a half-dozen generals were successively placed in supreme command of the Union forces by President Lincoln before Gen. Ulysses S. Grant led the Union forces to a final victory.

The panicky flight from Manassas in July 1861 did not bring any court-martial charges but was a contributing factor to the removal of Gen. Irvin McDowell a year later. The Ball’s Bluff massacre of Oct. 21, 1861, in which only 800 of 1,900 Union troops escaped, brought a storm of criticism in Congress and Gen. Charles P. Stone was court-martialed and imprisoned, shaking confidence in Gen. Stone’s superior, Gen. George B. McClellan, who was later removed as Commander-in-Chief.

[NormanStewart]

Roosevelt writes to 1956’s President asking West Point honor for hero’s son

Tribute paid to Capt. Kelly who died in Jap battleship

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt has written a letter which will be delivered in 1956 to the man then occupying the White House, asking him to appoint the son of America’s first World War II hero – the late Capt. Colin P. Kelly Jr. – to West Point.

The White House today made public a letter written by Mr. Roosevelt, addressed “To the President of the United States in 1956,” asking that individual to name Colin P. Kelly III, now three years old, as a cadet in the United States Military Academy.

The boy’s father, an Army Air Corps officer, single-handedly sank the Japanese battleship Haruna off Luzon in the Philippines Dec. 9.

The text of Mr. Roosevelt’s unusual letter:

To the President of the United States in 1956:

I am writing this letter as an act of faith in the destiny of our country. I desire to make a request which I make in full confidence that we shall achieve a glorious victory in the war we now are waging to preserve our democratic way of life.

My request is that you consider the merits of a young American youth of goodly heritage – Colin P. Kelly, III – for appointment as a Cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point. I make this appeal in behalf of this youth as a token of the Nation’s appreciation of the heroic services of his father, who met death in line of duty at the very outset of the struggle which was thrust upon us by the perfidy of a professed friend.

In the conviction that the service and example of Captain Colin P. Kelly Jr., will be long remembered, I ask for this consideration in behalf of Colin P. Kelly III.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

The father of the Kelly child was 26 years old, a native of Florida and a 1937 West Point graduate. His widow and son are now in New York.

[NormanStewart]

Senate draft vote due

19-44 age limit due to be approved; House rejects Roosevelt plea, backs minimum of 21

Washington (UP) –
The Senate was asked to approve today a bill making 19 to 44 years (inclusive) the age span of military service liability.

The House, which approved the legislation yesterday without a record vote, refused to draft men younger than 21, and similar opposition to lowering the age appeared developing in the Senate.

Senator Sheridan Downey (D-CA) announced he would move to recommit a bill to the Senate Military Affairs Committee, believing the measure had been approved too hastily. He said the nation had been “so neglectful” that training of more than a million men in the next 12 months would be impossible.

Most Senators, however, withheld judgment pending the opportunity to study the printed record of secret hearings at which Army officials gave their reasons for wanting the age limits extended. The lack of the printed hearings yesterday was what caused Robert A. Taft (R-OH) and Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-MI) to request postponement of the final vote at least until today.

The hearings revealed that the Army is thinking in terms of more than four million men in service.

Referring to the House report refusing to lower the draft age from 21 to 19 years on the ground that four million men would be available to the Army without it, Brig. Gen. Wade H. Haislip, Assistant Chief of Staff for personnel, testified before the Senate Military Affairs Committee:

Four million men isn’t an army today.

The Germans have over eight million men under arms today, and to limit the War Department in a war where we don’t know where it is going to reach, whether it is going to touch every part of the country, to say, “You can only have an army of four million men,” I think is dangerous.

He added that:

Our Air Force will be a million men before we are through.

A letter from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson urged that no restrictions be placed on priorities in calling men, and that the War Department not be pinned down as to the ultimate size of the Army, which was “subject to change almost overnight.”

Wants manpower surveyed

Mr. Stimson said the reason for registering all men from 18 to 64 (inclusive) was “to obtain a comprehensive and accurate survey of the whole mature manpower of the nation,” and that extending the draft ages was “to make available if and when necessary a great pool of men to meet all contingencies now foreseeable.”

Gen. Haislip said the Army felt “that we have to have a vast army before we are through.”

Expansion, he said, will be accomplished “without any set number in view” as rapidly as equipment can be obtained for training.

He added that the Army would not await further housing developments because:

The War Department cannot admit that we have to build a house and provide a bed for every soldier before we expand our Army.

Allowances discussed

He told Senator Downey he believed “very definitely” that the Army could take in more than a million new men during the next year.

Brig. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective Service, testified that draft boards’ “attitude toward dependency and hardship cases is going to have to be inevitably tighter.”

He indicated that many men who married after the draft law was passed, or whose wives are working, will be called where heretofore they have been deferred. He said that $25, $30, or perhaps $40 a month may have to be voted as an allowance for wives or other dependents, matching allotments made by the soldiers.

He said:

I think late marriages will not be a problem anymore, because we are going to take them in. I don’t think we can do, anything else.

Support needed

And I submit Congress will have to be asked to pass an allowance and allotment law – discipline him [the soldier] if you will – so that there is some means of supporting that wife who may become in fact dependent on him, especially if she has children.

Here’s the way Selective Service headquarters lines up American manpower:

Number of men between the ages of 18 and 21 (inclusive)	3,000,000-3,500,000
Number of men (registered) between the ages of 21 and 36	17,500,000
Number of men between the ages of 36 and 44	8,000,000-9,000,000
Number of men between 44 and 64 (estimated)	20,000,000
Number of men between 18 and 64 (inclusive)	40,000,000
Number of men already inducted (estimated)	800,000
Potential armed force from 19 to 44 (inclusive)	8,000,000
Number of men classified and registered between 21 and 28	3,000,000

[NormanStewart]

WAR BULLETINS!

Army to stop all enlistments

Washington –
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson announced today that the Army is suspending all further voluntary enlistments as “soon as the present rush of patriotism subsides” and will get all further manpower, including Air Corps personnel, through Selective Service.

Two Nazi battleships bombed again

London, England –
The Air Ministry reported tonight that it was believed the 26,000-ton German dreadnaughts, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, were hit in today’s Royal Air Force attack on Brest, where damages from previous bombings were being repaired.

Spain may be neutral in Pacific

Madrid, Spain –
Spain was reported today to be preparing to announce her neutrality in the Pacific War in contrast to her “non-belligerent” policy toward the European conflict.

Shanghai faces bread shortage

Shanghai, China –
The Shanghai radio said today that the city, now under Japanese occupation, faces a serious bread shortage because of a bakers’ strike. Japanese authorities were said to have opened two flour warehouses and to have started distribution of flour.

Greeks and Slav rebels join forces

New York –
CBS today heard the British radio broadcast that Greek and Yugoslav “freedom armies” had joined forces in the Balkans and were making a united fight on German and Italian troops. A joint intelligence service was reported organized to pool information on enemy movements.

Americans in Norway told to report

London, England –
A German official news agency broadcast said today that all U.S. citizens in Norway had been ordered to report to police stations nearest their homes.

Vichy withdraws charge against British

London, England –
The Admiralty said today that the Vichy government has withdrawn its charge that a British submarine sank the French steamer Saint Denis.

Roosevelt signs war fund bill

Washington –
President Roosevelt today signed the $10-billion supplemental war appropriation bill. The measure carries $9,283,000,000 in cash appropriations and $794 million in contractual authorizations. It provides sufficient funds to purchase equipment for a two-million-man Army and critical supplies for a 3,200,000-man Army.

British silent on anti-Axis talks

London, England –
The government adopted a policy of silence today concerning the “tremendously important and vital talks” now reported in progress among the anti-Axis nations of the world. Clement R. Attlee, government spokesman in the absence of Prime Minister Churchill, declined to volunteer any information. Mr. Churchill’s continued absence from the House of Commons may indicate he is participating in the conferences which are said to be in progress simultaneously in Washington and in Moscow.

Formosa quake toll now 319 dead

Tokyo, Japan – (Radio Tokyo heard in New York)
The Ministry of Overseas Affairs said today that 319 persons were killed, 174 seriously wounded and 263 slightly injured in the earthquake which rocked the Kagi area of Formosa. The Ministry said 1,768 homes were destroyed.

Jap ships bombed by Dutch

Batavia, NEI –
The official Aneta News Agency reported today that Dutch Indies Army bombers have heavily attacked a concentration of Japanese warships and transports off Miri, British North Borneo. A Japanese cruiser has been set afire in a bombing attack. The damaged warship had previously been listed as a destroyer.

Luftwaffe batters Russians

Berlin, Germany – (Radio Berlin heard in London)
The German High Command said in a communiqué today that:

Our air attacks on the central sector of the Eastern Front again inflicted heavy losses on the enemy yesterday.

The official German news agency said Russian troops had pierced one sector of the Northern Front despite a very heavy German artillery barrage.

Dutch repulsed Jap air attack

Los Angeles, California –
Radio Batavia reported today that the first attack on Dutch New Guinea had been made by the Japanese and that it had been repulsed, according to NBC’s listening post here. Bombers attacked a village, but planes of the Dutch Navy chased them away before damage could be inflicted, the report said.

[NormanStewart]

Steamer hits mine, 200 Filipinos die

Manila, Philippines (UP) –
Approximately 200 persons were killed when the inter-island steamer Corregidor struck a mine and sank in Manila Bay yesterday, a witness estimated today.

The disaster was described as the worst Philippine maritime tragedy in recent years. The vessel, formerly engaged in trans-Channel service between England and France, carried 326 passengers and crew members.

[NormanStewart]

Gonzales: War hits Joe Public

Rationing of new tires by state and city boards due Jan. 4 – golf and tennis balls eliminated
By John D. Gonzales, United Press staff writer

Washington –
Joe Public, who drives his auto to work, for Saturday night whoopee and for Sunday outings, may not be able to buy a new tire for the duration of the war – or until Far Eastern shipping lanes are reopened.

That brings the impact of war directly to the home front.

Price Control Administrator Leon Henderson, also director of the OPM’s Civilian Supply Division, revealed today that the state and local machinery is being set up to ration auto tires – beginning Jan. 4 – only to persons and agencies classed as essential to industrial efficiency and civilian health.

The same machinery, he said, may be used to ration other scarce commodities.

Mr. Henderson said civilian consumption of crude rubber must be reduced to at least 10,000 tons a month. Current consumption has been at the rate of nearly 47,000 tons a month.

Under the severe overall rubber rationing program, producers would be required to eliminate production of golf and tennis balls, bathing suits, stationers goods such as rubber bands, toy balloons, and hundreds of other items. Rubber supplies would be guaranteed for the production of fire hose, hot water bottles, syringes, protective clothing, jar rings, surgeons’ gloves, friction tape and essential mechanical goods.

Defense officials estimated that the United States will probably produce only 30,000 tons of synthetic rubber next year. This production, they believe, will be used to place amounts drawn from stockpiles for military and essential civilian uses.

Mr. Henderson said that if no controls over tire sales were inaugurated, the nation would be without tires in two months since there are only eight million tires in the United States and motorists are buying them at the rate of four million a month. As an interim measure to the permanent tire rationing program, he said the OPM would soon extend the ban on new tire sales from Dec. 22 to the date of the new order.

The tire rationing program will be administered by state and local boards which are being set up by the Office of Price Administration. After Jan. 4, would-be tire purchasers will have to convince those boards that they fall within an “eligible list” group, to be announced later by Mr. Henderson, before they can receive a card entitling them to a tire.

Monthly tire sale quotas will be determined by the government on the basis of the amounts of crude rubber which can be used in the production of new tires. Then, these quotas will be broken down into state and county quotas on the basis of commercial vehicle registration.

While some production of new tires will be permitted, and four new tires may be placed on new autos, Mr. Henderson said that:

For the time being, production of new passenger car tires will be almost entirely eliminated.

He indicated that the ban might be lifted if supply lines to the Far East are reopened.

The rationing plan would also fix prices for new tires, control sales of retreaded tires and the retreading of tires and carry with it all legal sanctions possessed by the OPM’s Priorities Division for strict enforcement.