Enemy move seemingly aimed at New Zealand may be feint for thrust at Aussies’ north coast
By Brydon Taves, United Press staff writer
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House cuts $57 million, votes to forbid sales below parity
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Speaker at Maryland conference charges church does not grasp its opportunities
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Hearings on overtime pay, strike measures due
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Washington, March 14 (UP) –
Legislation to increase the pay of men in all branches of the fighting forces moved toward final Congressional action today after approval by the Senate Military Affairs Committee.
The bill, which would boost the pay of Army recruits from $21 to $42, also provides substantial increases for privates first class, non-commissioned officers and second lieutenants. Similar raised are provided for men of correspondent rank in the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. It would represent a $268,186,613 annual increase in the coast of maintaining the services.
New York, March 14 (UP) –
An anti-aircraft shell touched off by a faulty gun firing mechanism hit a Manhattan skyscraper yesterday.
The shell was one of eight fired by one of the automatic weapons set up along the East River, but the other seven apparently fell into the river. The shell knocked a few splinters from a cornice between the 37th and 38th floors of a building at 120 Broadway.
There were no casualties, but thousands of persons gathered in the streets below and wild rumors circulated. One was that a U-boat was shelling Manhattan and another was that an air raid was in progress.
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By Ernie Pyle
SAN DIEGO – You can’t help but feel war when you are in San Diego, for this city today is existing on the by-products of war – the aircraft factories, the armed forces, and all the wartime construction that goes with them.
The streets are jammed with soldiers, sailors and Marines. In some ways it is like a college town, for in every hotel dining room you’ll see young soldiers or sailors eating with their parents who have come from back home for a visit.
Since I was here last spring more housing projects have gone up, vast new trailer camps for the workers have been established, changes have been made around the plane factories. There are nightly, permanent blackouts in certain parts of the city.
There isn’t much you’re allowed to tell, but you can tell that this is a city living on war. It will be a chaotic day here when the war ends and all this terrific war structure begins to crumble. Unfortunately, it probably never can crumble clear back to the good old sleepy San Diego of 10 years ago.
Censorship is strict here. Occasionally a naval vessel well known to San Diego puts back in, but it isn’t in the papers. Only on special occasions is the news of plane crashes given out. Criticism of war production has not yet appeared in the public prints.
Yet all these things are discussed openly and loudly in every bar and on every sidewalk in San Diego. That seems the biggest problem in the line of military secrecy right now.
Service men like to talk
I’ve heard it all up and down the coast. You can keep the newspapers mum, but you can’t keep the tongues of service men still when they get a few under their belts. As a friend of mine remarked, “The best way for a spy to work in California would just be to sit around the bars all evening, pretend to be drunk, and keep his ears open.”
I have made a few discreet inquiries into the crime and sin situation in this boom town.
This area, if you take in Tijuana across the border, has always had plenty of offer. But today things seem to have slowed down to a good Christian Endeavor pace. The old-time red-light districts, supervised and run with the blessing of the Navy and the police, are no more. Gen. DeWitt has ordered them out all up and down the coast, and out they have gone.
In Tijuana it’s different. The soldiers and sailors don’t get over there much, but Gen. DeWitt doesn’t control the aircraft workers. Tijuana is their Saturday-night howling ground.
Betting on the horses is about the only form of professional gambling left, either in San Diego or Tijuana. Big-time gambling in Mexico went out some seven years ago, when President Cardenas took office. The hotel at Caliente was closed, and is now a public school.
In San Diego there are many bookie joints, but they are raided occasionally. A newspaper friend told me that the last time he checked there were 54 bookmakers in San Diego.
Morals of boys in uniform safe
Agua Calinte doesn’t have a racing season any more, but instead has Sunday races the year ‘round. Betting is permitted. The track makes sure to keep the attendance below 5000 – on account of Gen. DeWitt again – for if the crowds get too big he’ll close the border.
All in all, it appears to me that the parents of the thousands and thousands of boys in uniform in this area have little to worry about along the morality line.
The birth-certificate rage is still on here. You can’t get a defense job without one, and lots of people can’t get certificates. The aircraft plants are hiring women. Women stand in line by the hundreds to apply for these jobs, but most of them don’t have birth certificates.
Prices are up, but not exorbitantly, it seems to me. Friends say there has been considerable slashing of tires, apparently by Axis-minded patriots. Young fellows with a little experience are making $100 a week as carpenters, but they have to work themselves to death for it. The U.S. Grant Hotel’s bar and coffee shop is THE meeting place of San Diego. Unlike the last war (as I remember it), you’ll see as many enlisted men as officers in the nicer cocktail lounges.
If you talk over the telephone now between San Diego and Mexico, your conversation is censored. You’re warned not to mention the weather, troop or ship movements, and so on. At the first word of anything suspicious they’ll cut you off.
Which leads up to the experience of a sports editor, I believe it was, who was trying to talk to a Mexican radio station about a broadcast for a football game this winter.
It seems San Diego has a professional football team called “The Bombers,” and every time the sports editor would mention “Bombers,” they’d cut him off.
He finally had to get the chief operator on the wire and explain it all to her, before he could get his sports information over to the radio station.
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Reading Eagle (March 15, 1942)
Cruiser Houston, destroyer Pope, and British Exeter among sea fighters sunk
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Willing stations told to meet needs first of essential users
Pump owners directed to operate only 12 hours daily
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Washing machines, ironers, office machinery halted
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Honolulu, Hawaii (AP) – (March 14)
Friendly airplanes approaching the Hawaiian Islands today precipitated the fourth air-raid alarm in Honolulu since the war began.
The alarm came abruptly at 9:46 a.m. (3:16 p.m. EWT).
About an hour later, the all-clear signal was sounded when the approaching aircraft were identified as friendly. It was the third alarm in three weeks.
Other torpedoings and rescues reported at various points
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Havana, Cuba (AP) – (March 14)
Advices from Nuevitas said tonight an American merchantman loaded with sugar was shelled and sunk by an enemy submarine at noon today about 40 miles off that port.
The first shell was said to have killed the vessel’s captain. Cuban naval craft sped to the scene to pick up survivors.
Opinions differ among leaders, with some favoring caution
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Finance group majority gives qualified assent
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