America at war! (1941--) -- Part 2

Fliers plaster Japanese base

18 tons of bombs rain on Wewak, New Guinea

State funeral services held for Jap fleet chief

By the United Press

State funeral services were held today for Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, Tokyo radio reported, and all Japs observed a minute of silent prayer at 10:50 a.m. JST.

Yamamoto, who once boasted he would dictate peace terms in the White House, was commander-in-chief of the Jap fleet. He was killed in action.

Windsor and La Guardia suggested as Axis chiefs


Former beer baron beaten by four men

Editorial: They’re not forgotten

Edson: Some fantastic flying notions are demolished

By Peter Edson

img

Ferguson: Adolescent husbands

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

In love, as in war, the innocent suffer with the guilty. Right now, great grief is endured by women whose husbands, touched in the head by current hysteria, are behaving like adolescents. Day after day letters come to this column reciting the same story. A wife, married sometimes 10, sometimes 15 and occasionally 20 years, the mother of several children, is crushed by the sudden demand of her husband for a divorce. The reason for his behavior is always the same – there’s another woman, usually a younger, prettier one.

What can a wife do in such a heartbreaking situation?

First, I think, she must realize that men have been catapulted into a period when pretty girls swarm about them like bees around honey. Their workaday world has literally been taken over by women. The few males left in offices, stores and factories are exposed to the most violent temptations. They are smothered in femininity.

In nine cases out of 10, the wife, with the instincts of a wounded animal crawling off to die, makes the mistake of her life by agreeing. She should resist with every ounce of her strength. She should hold her home forty against the invading enemy until she drops in her tracks. For this much is true – the other woman doesn’t wasn’t her man half as much as she wants her position as his wife. He is merely the means of acquiring something dear to most of us – the status of the married woman.

It is her place as mistress of a home that the neglected wife must defend. If the marriage has gone on long enough, she is a real partner is the domestic firm. The children must also be considered, let’s leave love and pride out of it. From a strictly business angle, a wife should not give up her position or her possessions merely because her husband thinks he’s in love with another woman. Given a little time, he usually changes his mind about that, too.

Zasu made her talkie debut in picture with Chatterton

Comedienne, coming in The Bat, uttered first screen words in The Dummy

Censors bow to the wise film scribes

‘Stripteaser’ reference is banned – so writers use some other words
By Erskine Johnson

Zamperini lost in Pacific War

Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Lt. Louis Zamperini, the great mile runner whose personal war with the Axis started in 1936 at the Berlin Olympic Games when he tore down a German flag, is missing in the South Pacific, his mother said today.

Zamperini, holder of the national intercollegiate one- and two-mile run records as well as the national interscholastic mile record, was a bombardier, and had been cited for heroism.

The War Department notified her that he is missing, Mrs. Zamperini said, but gave no details.

Zamperini is a native of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, where many of his relatives still reside.

It was after the Berlin Olympics, when he was 18 years old, that Zamperini provoked international comment by snatching a Nazi flag from in front of Hitler’s Chancellery.

Smuggled flag home

Guards fired on him but he raced away at his best Olympic pace and eluded pursuit. He hid the flag and managed to smuggle it home. Gen. Werner von Fritsch, since reported killed in action in Poland, excused the youth’s action as a boyish prank.

A phenomenal runner in his high school days, Zamperini went on to the University of Southern California and scored victory after victory. His one-mile time of 4:8.2, was made at Minneapolis June 18, 1938, and his two-mile IC4A record was set here the following year, with a time of 9:12.8.

He has been missing since May 27. Among the bombing forays he had participated in was the Christmas Day raid on Japanese-held Wake Island. He won commendation later for ministering to five wounded crew members on the return trip from another bombing mission, in which their Liberator bomber was badly shot up.

Joined Army in 1941

He was inducted into the Army in 1941 and graduated from bombardier school at Midland, Texas, last August.

He held the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster for two citations. He had participated in engagements at Wake, the Gilberts and Marshalls, and the Bismarck Sea battle.

url(1)

1 Like

Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Allied HQ, North Africa – (by wireless)
To me the funniest incident of the Tunisian campaign was the following:

Back in January and February, the headquarters of the II Corps were in a deep ravine some six miles the other side of Tébessa. Wooded mountains rose of each side quite steeply, and the bottom of the gulch was well coated with trees.

The corps was down there in numerous tents, but it was decided to tunnel big shelters into the mountainsides for offices just in case of dive-bombings. So, soldiers were set to tunneling.

It was a major mining job, for they had to bore through solid rock, using air drills and dynamite. They worked in shifts, 24 hours a day. The blasted-out rock was hauled away in trucks.

They bored four great tunnels into the mountainous, each one as wide as an auto and some 50 yards long. At the back end they connected all four tunnels into ne huge room, forming unquestionably the biggest and finest air-raid shelter in the continent of Africa.

It took three solid weeks to build it. And the very day it was finished the Germans broke through Faid Pass and pushed us back through Kasserine, and the corps had to move in a hurry. The government tunnels, all finished, were never occupied even for an hour.

Flea bite cure found

Shaving cream is among the items regularly issued to frontline troops over here. It is one thing everybody has found extremely useful. It turned out to be the best sunburn lotion we know of. The soldiers also out it on flea bites with good effect. They shave with it too, incidentally. It’s just one of those little discoveries of the war.

They tell an anecdote about a soldier on guard duty in the frontlines one night, for the first time. He heard a strange noise, fired at it, and then called out, “Who went there?”

The engineers who built those marvelous temporary steel bridges, strong enough to hold up tanks, over the Tunisian rivers after the Germans had destroyed the original bridges are certainly due a lot of credit.

Perhaps the biggest satisfaction they got out of their work was naming the bridges after they had finished them. They nearly always painted a name on signboards and staked one at each end of the bridge. You could tell one outfit was from New York, for you cross4ed a whole string of bridges named “Manhattan,” “Brooklyn,” “Queensborough” and so on. But the one that tickled me most was a big one at Mateur which bore a sign with large black letters: “Huey P. Long Bridge.”

Sugar sent home

Last December, when I left Oran, I bundled up a canvas bag full of odds and ends that I didn’t want to carry to the front, and left it at one of the Army offices for picking up at some future date. Months went by, and I never got back to Oran, I inquired about the bag a couple of times from travelers who had come from that office, and they reported it was still there. And then just the other day came a letter from Washington saying that a mysterious bag, sent by me and addressed to me, had arrived in America. They described the nah, and it was without doubt my Oran storage bundle. Apparently, somebody just got tired of seeing it around and decided to get it far out of sight.

I can’t remember what was in the bag, except for two items: (1) the only dress uniform I’ve got, and (2) a pound box of cube sugar I brought with me from America a year ago. I don’t need the sugar, as the Army has plenty, and I’ve never had the dress uniform on since the night I left London last fall.

But now that it’s 4,000 miles away I suppose some general will be inviting me out to dinner and I’ll have to go in coveralls. While we’re supposing, suppose we suppose it’s Gen. Eisenhower himself, just to make it good.

36,688 of foe in U.S. camps

Axis prisoners interned in 17 states

War in Pacific called battle for air bases

Knox aide terms raids on Japanese goal of U.S. strategy

U.S. Navy Department (June 6, 1943)

Communiqué No. 402

South Pacific.
On June 5:

  1. In the early morning, a formation of Flying Fortresses (Boeing B‑17) bombed Japanese installations at Kahili, Buin area.

  2. At about noon of the same day a formation of Dauntless (Doug­las) dive bombers and Avenger (Grumman TBF) torpedo bombers, escorted by Warhawk (Curtiss P‑40), Corsair (Vought F4U) and Light­ning (Lockheed P‑38) fighters, attacked a Japanese destroyer, a corvette and a cargo vessel in the Bougainville area. Several large‑caliber bomb hits were scored on the destroyer which undoubtedly sank. The corvette and the cargo vessel were set on fire.

  3. In the above action the U.S. attacking planes were engaged by a large force of Japanese Zero fighters. U.S. pilots shown down 15 Zeros and damaged 3 others. Four U.S. planes are missing.

North Pacific.
On June 4, formations of Army Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) heavy bombers, Ventura (Vega B‑34) medium bombers and Lightning and War­hawk fighters carried out five attacks against Japanese installations at Kiska. Hits were scored on buildings and gun emplacements.


Press Release

For Immediate Release
June 6, 1943

New Ventura bomber sinks enemy submarine

One of the Navy’s new patrol bombers, a Vega Ventura (PV‑1), depth-charged and sank an enemy submarine while protecting an Atlantic convoy. The sinking occurred in April, a short time after the Navy pressed the first of the new planes into service.

The Pittsburgh Press (June 6, 1943)

Final orders issued for invasion; attack in Mediterranean predicted

Allied troops and ships ready, only time and place secret
By Harrison Salisbury, United Press staff writer

Coal hopes high despite threat

UMW and operators ready to tackle pay issue


Labor racketeers told by Senator: ‘Go to hell’

Kansan blisters UAW official for ‘demanding’ he vote against anti-strike bill

‘No use for Lewis’ –
Strikes anger Yanks in Africa

90% urge drastic walkout curbs

Maj. Kermit Roosevelt dies in Alaska on Army duty

Son of late President veteran of U.S., British Armies in 2 wars

June 21 fixed as day to cut meat prices

Rollback to average about 3¢ a pound

Strike costs vital store of coal, coke

Cooling of 11 furnaces only the beginning of war losses
By Dale McFeatters, Press business editor