Guidance invoked for MacArthur
General urged rector of his church for prayers
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Urge births despite war
It’s patriotic to have baby, experts tell married couples
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The Pittsburgh Press (April 6, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
PHOENIX, Ariz. – It’s a long jump from Palm Springs to Phoenix, but when I jump, I jump big.
Breaking away from California is sort of like pulling your boot out of the mud. You can’t do it gradually. You have to heave.
It was hard for me to leave California, for I have developed a very great affection for the place. I suppose it’s the farmer in me, but I’ve long passed the day when I can sneer sophisticatedly either at Hollywood or the climate. I like them both.
Now I’m headed east. I waited as long as I could for the Japs to bomb California. If California gets it now, they’ll just have to take it alone, for I can’t keep running back every time somebody blows a siren.
Business is certainly good this year in the desert. I had intended stopping over a few days at Yuma, but couldn’t even get a place there to lay my head.
It was the same story in Phoenix. We got in after dark and couldn’t get a hotel room even though I had phoned ahead. Finally I just sat down in the lobby of the Hotel Westward Ho and started to cry. So they took pity and dug me up a room in a private club.
In Phoenix and Tucson, they say, the tourist season has been as good as ever – maybe a little better. Many people have come to the desert who otherwise would have gone to California on their vacations. And, too, lots of Californians have come inland – just in case. They say that two-thirds of the traffic these days is eastbound.
From bank teller to pill roller
Coming across, I picked up a soldier, and asked him how far he was going. “Just as far as you are,” he said.
“I’m going to New York,” I said, “but it’ll take me about two months to get there.”
“Well, I’ll get off at Dallas,” the soldier laughed.
He was on six-day leave, hitch-hiking clear from the Coast to Dallas to get married. He figured he could make it in 48 hours each way, which would give him two days at home.
He had been in the Army six months and liked it all right. He was a bank teller before he joined up – so the Army made a pill-roller out of him, a medical attendant.
When we crossed the Colorado River at Yuma, Army sentries stopped us. They stop only cars in which service men are riding. They wanted to check my soldier’s furlough papers.
They were O.K., so the guard said, “All right, roll up your windows and cross the bridge.”
When we got on the Arizona side and stopped at the Agricultural Inspection Station, I asked the inspector why we had been told to roll up our windows.
“Oh, it’s the Army,” the inspector said. “I’ve never been able to find out the reason.”
I asked several people, and nobody knew why. Maybe I’m just too dumb to be roaming around loose like this, but I can’t make any sense out of such an order. If anybody knows, I wish he’d write and tell me.
Few free meals handed out
In Phoenix there is a little restaurant, only about twice the size of your living room, where you can get a good meal for 40 cents or so. The place never closes.
On the window they have a sign saying: “A free meal to any person finding this cafe without a customer day or night.”
I asked the cashier how often they had to give away a free meal.
“Well, when I worked here three years ago,” she said, “we’d give away about two a year.”
“But how about now?” I asked. “Surely between 2 and 5 in the morning there must be times when nobody’s in here.”
“Oh, it’s busier than ever then,” she said. “We haven’t had to give a free meal in ages. Why, between 2 and 5 in the morning it’s so packed we can’t even scrub the floor."
There’s one Hollywood item still left in my system, before we get too far away.
A friend of mine out there recently saw Gene Autry, the Western star, and found that Gene is due to be drafted in the early summer. And this friend spoke as follows:
“Gene’s ready to go, but I think it’s foolish for the Army to take a man like that. Here he is paying the government a quarter of a million a year in taxes. When he goes in the Army that revenue will stop. Don’t you think that’s penny wise and pound foolish?”
The question stopped me. I’d never even thought of anything like that before. Is that a sound theory or not? It does seem sensible at first, but there must be a flaw in it somewhere.
U.S. Navy Department (April 7, 1942)
Navy Communiqué No. 68
China Sea.
Information has just been received that a U.S. submarine while on an extended patrol in the China Sea has sunk two Japanese merchant vessels.
One of these ships was a combination passenger and cargo vessel of approximately 10,000 tons. The second was a cargo ship of about 5,000 tons.
These sinkings have not been reported in any previous Navy Department communiqué.
There is nothing to report from other areas.
Reading Eagle (April 7, 1942)
India reported seeking aid of FDR
Leaders want help to break pact deadlock
Signs grow British offer is headed for rejection; Allies hunt Jap fleet
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Knox reveals drop in sub raids
Coast blows of U-boats held down
Navy Secretary hints vigilance of U.S. fleet may be responsible
New tactics used
Protective methods are employed against waves of attackers
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Jones tells of synthetic rubber plans
Says program pushed to produce 700,000 tons annually
He denies delays
Reports U.S. stockpile of natural rubber 342,101 long tons
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Losses heavy on both sides in Bataan war
Japs continue scoring ‘some success’ in repeated attacks
Air raid severe
Enemy amphibian plane destroyed on water in Manila Bay
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