Coal rationing seen probable next fall
Draft already affecting production, official says
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Jap aircraft carrier reported hit by sub
London, March 23 (AP) –
A Daily Telegraph dispatch from Perth, Australia, said today an Allied submarine now in friendly waters had hit a Japanese aircraft carrier with torpedoes on the night of March 3 off Bali and:
If the carrier was not sunk, it will be out of action a long time.
It said the carrier was believed to be a 27,000-ton vessel.
Seven British Spitfires arrive at Havana
Havana, Cuba, March 23 (AP) –
Seven British Spitfire planes arrived here today and it was authoritatively stated that they were en route from a British base to a United States base for overhaul.
In Washington, officials of the State Department and military establishments said they had no information on the arrival of British planes in Cuba and declined further discussion.
London, March 23 (AP) –
A Reuters dispatch from Havana, Cuba, today said British aircraft had arrived there to join United States air patrols operating from Cuba against Axis U-boats.
Women’s Army plan opposed by bishop
Says sanctity of home would be affected
New York, March 23 (AP) –
Contending it would affect the sanctity of the home, the Most Rev. John F. O’Hara, Auxiliary Bishop of the Roman Catholic chaplains and men in the U.S. armed forces, has assailed any proposal to:
…put women in the Army.
Without referring to the 150,000-member Auxiliary Army Corps authorized by the House and now before the Senate, Bishop O’Hara yesterday in an address asked the police department’s Holy Name Society to help oppose the placing of women in the Army.
He said:
I think a good many of you men did kitchen police duty in the last war. You don’t like to peel potatoes, darn socks or sew on buttons. But I think that for the sanctity of the home, you would prefer to do it yourself rather than have women in the Army for that purpose.
Nelson bans double pay for Sunday and holiday work
CIO leaders told to drop ‘privilege’
Murray calls together chieftains of unions to fight new bills
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The Pittsburgh Press (March 23, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LONG BEACH, Calif. – Maj. Harry L. Bateson, the garden man, says Japan was smart all right.
He says she let us build up a seven-year supply of whisky, knowing that wouldn’t do us any special good in war time (and Bateson isn’t a whisky-hater, either).
But while she was doing that, she stripped us of scrap iron, made pretty sure we were going to run out of rubber and tin, and got us in her grasp in many other little ways – not the littlest of which, he considers, is our dependence on her for garden seeds.
Bateson says that during the years after the last war America concentrated on flowers until she was producing 90 per cent of the world’s flower seeds. But on vegetables we did just the reverse. Other countries were supplying 90 per cent of our vegetable seed. And a good portion of that 90 per cent came from Japan.
Consequently, Bateson says, we are in for a dangerous shortage of vegetable seed. Prices have already skyrocketed on some things, he says. He thinks we could re-establish our seed-producing ability within a year, if we would. But will we?
Japs give up farms on coast
As you know, the Japs were the gardeners of California. Now they have to give up their farms and move out, which is all right with practically everybody, including me.
But the transplanting of these Japanese will produce a vegetable shortage unless some program is worked out for taking over their farms. And I can find no such program. The whole thing is pretty chaotic.
Bateson has a solution, which sounds all right to me. As you know, Southern California is the happy hunting ground for retired farmers from all over America. They’re all sitting around half-lonesomely out here in the sun, wishing they had something to do.
Bateson suggests putting these hundreds of thousands of hundred farmers in charge of the vacated Japanese vegetable farms; then picking up or drafting enough unemployed and Mexican labor to run the farms. And there are unemployed people, thousands of them, despite the war boom.
It would please the farmers, utilize the land, and produce the necessary vegetables.
Maj. Bateson has built a small building in his garden plot, resembling a one-room schoolhouse. Here he teaches his classes in “Maj. Bateson’s Practical Garden School.” The class runs every morning from 9 to 12. He handles from 150 to 300 students a week.
He starts them out in a primary way, just as though they had never seen a cabbage or a rake. He teaches them about soil, and watering, and fertilizing, and digging. He teaches them what to plant, and when to plant it. He gives them the rotation that will keep fresh vegetables coming to their table 52 weeks a year.
Expects surge of wartime students
He lectures and draws pictures on the blackboard and answers questions. And then they go into his gardens, where he has plots arranged so they can see vegetables in every stage from the ground-breaking to the harvesting. He says that anybody who can’t garden successfully after six weeks in his class ought to be shot.
These classes have been going for years. So far he hasn’t had any great surge of war garden students, but he expects it.
While I was there a young couple came around to inquire, and the young fellow started arguing that he thought draftsmen should draft and riveters should rivet for the war effort, and let real gardeners do all the gardening. Since he felt that way, I couldn’t figure out why he came around, and Bateson couldn’t either. He says he gets some funny ones.
Maj. Bateson says another great peril to our market basket is going to be the lack of insecticides. He can visualize the garden bugs eating us up.
For he says the base of most insecticides is a plant called perytheum, which is raised mostly in Japan. He says he tried for years to get American manufacturers to buy it from American growers, in order to encourage growth here. But they already had their contracts with Japan, so nothing came of it. And now we have practically no perytheum.
He doesn’t know what we’re going to do about the bug, worm and insect situation.
In addition to his gardens, Maj. Bateson raises rabbits. Huge white rabbits, each of which would fill a harvest table. They’re ready to eat at less than two months of age.
Bateson says you can start with two rabbits and keep a whole family in meat forever. He seems to have everything solved. A backyard full of vegetables, a pen of rabbits, and thou.
Evacuation of Jap aliens begins on Pacific Coast
By E. A. Evans, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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U.S. War Department (March 24, 1942)
Army Communiqué No. 158
Philippine theater.
The fortified island of Corregidor and our positions in Bataan were heavily bombed this morning by 54 Japanese heavy bombers of a new type. Damage inflicted on our military installations was of slight consequence. At least three enemy airplanes were shot down by our anti-aircraft artillery.
Several sharp encounters occurred in Bataan between hostile ground forces. Our artillery laid down a concentrated fire on enemy positions. Japanese losses are believed to have been considerable, while our own casualties were slight.
There is nothing to report from other areas.
U.S. Navy Department (March 24, 1942)
Navy Communiqué No. 61
Far East.
The U.S. destroyers Pillsbury and Edsall have been reported missing since early March and must be presumed lost. The next of kin of the personnel of the Pillsbury and Edsall have been informed accordingly.
The Pillsbury is believed to have been lost in the vicinity of Bali Strait subsequent to the naval engagement in the Java Sea which was reported in Communiqué No. 54.
The last report from the Edsall placed her in waters south of Java.
These destroyers were units of the original U.S. Asiatic Fleet which has been used since the beginning of the war in an attempt to frustrate the Japanese invasion of the islands of the Southwest Pacific. The ships of this fleet were fought with distinction as units of the Allied Naval Forces at Makassar Strait (Communiqués Nos. 32, 33, and 34), Lombok Strait, Bali Strait (Communiqué No. 42) and the Battle of the Java Sea.
There is nothing to report from other areas.
The Pittsburgh Press (March 24, 1942)
54 Jap bombers blast Bataan
Big raid made on Corregidor
Attack seen as opening of all-out offensive
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Yield on double pay or face Congress’ ban, Nelson warns
Federal law threatened by WPB chief
Production head gives workers 30 days to agree voluntarily
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