Millett: Be a dad to soldier’s lad in honor of Father’s Day
Little fellows need a man to lean on
By Ruth Millett
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‘Victory without real Americanism isn’t enough,’ says DAR executive
Flag Day meeting is counseled about post-war needs
By Anne Weiss
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Supreme Court radio rules effective here
Stations freed to reject network programs
By Si Steinhauser
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‘Zoot-suit’ riots end, Navy ban off
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
The Navy today officially recognized the end of zoot-suit rioting here by lifting its out-of-bounds order.
Effective at noon, sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen can spend their leaves anywhere in the Los Angeles area.
RAdm. D. W. Bagley, commandant of the 11th Naval District, said the ban was lifted following a message from Mayor Fletcher Bowron “assuring the commandant that the police department was prepared to handle the situation to the satisfaction of all concerned.”
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Africa –
Here’s a good lesson in not believing everything you hear. Up in North Africa last winter, there was a report from people who should know that more than 50% of our troops in tropical Africa were down with malaria. We just accepted it as true.
But when I went to Central Africa, I found that malaria among our soldiers was less than 1%! And dysentery is even lower.
The false rumor was based on one single detachment of troops. They were the first to hit Africa last spring, they were in an infested jungle, they were without mosquito nets for the first four days, and practically the whole camp was down with malaria. The percentage was actually greater than the rumored 50, in that one case.
But that was soon over, and today that place is as healthy as any other. And nowhere else have we ever had a serious run of the fever.
Actually, the general health of our troops in the tropics is better than in the average camp at home, Army doctors say. It’s because we exercise such extraordinarily careful protection over our men’s health. You can’t travel around Central Africa without feeling a tremendous pride in the Army’s Medical and Sanitary Corps.
Let’s go to another part of Africa – a place so deep that it takes days of flying to get there. Right from our camp you can hear the throb of tom-toms all over the country at night. The soldiers only have to take a boat ride to shoot crocodiles. The place is practically the capital of malaria and dysentery.
Our campsite – picked by local officials – was in the worst swamp around. Yet the Americans thrive there. The answer lies in spraying and burning and oiling the swamps, using mosquito netting. Watching all dirt and filth, and taking 10 grains of quinine a day.
They had an astonishing example there of American sanitation. The troops were living out in this swamp-like camp. But the Army nurses were living temporarily in the nearby city. They were living in a hotel – a big, modern, lovely place. And every single one of the nurses came down with dysentery – one of them died – while only three of the soldiers out in the swamp got dysentery. Those three vases were traced to eating occasional meals in town, at the same place the nurses got theirs.
An Army doctor told me the other day that probably every one of our soldiers in that area does have malaria germs in him, but the daily quinine keeps them from becoming active. I asked him, then, how long it would take the germs to die after leaving malarial country.
He said:
If we were to be ordered home tomorrow, I’d have the boys continue their daily quinine for six weeks. By that time, all the germs would be out of them.
Throughout the tropics all Americans sleep under mosquito netting, and wear boots of an evening, and most of them take quinine. In some places, they take one tablet a day (five grains), and in more dangerous places two a day. Nobody uses face nets, so far as I know.
A few people can’t take quinine. It gives them a bad skin rash, and too much ringing in the ears. These people are put on atabrine. And then there are other people who are allergic to atabrine and get deathly sick after taking it. These people are kept on quinine.
A few of our men have cracked up under the tropical strain and had to be sent home. But they are very few. The average man gets along all right in the tropics if he is careful, keeps regular hours, and doesn’t drink too much.
It is true that the tropics sap your energy. You just don’t have the old git-up-and-git you had back home. You feel sleepy of a morning, you’re a little dopey most of the time, you welcome the siesta after lunch. You’re less efficient than back home.
In one of our camps where soldiers were doing hard manual labor such as mixing concrete, they tried both an hour and a half and two hours and a half for the lunch-and-rest period. Hospital figures showed the two-and-a-half-hour noon rest was necessary. So that’s what they’re on now.
But of course, they’re young. Now me, at my age, I have to rest all day.
U.S. Navy Department (June 16, 1943)
Communiqué No. 413
South Pacific.
During the evenings of June 13 and 14, Flying Fortress (Boeing B‑17) and. Liberator (Consolidated) heavy bombers attacked Japanese installations at Kahili and on Shortland Island in the Buin area.
On the evening of June 14, Army Mitchell (North American B‑25) medium bombers escorted by Navy Corsair (Vought F4U) fighters bombed the runway and antiaircraft positions of the airfield at Vila, Kolombangara Island.
On June 15, in the early morning, Japanese planes dropped bombs on Guadalcanal Island. No personnel or material damage has been reported.
The Pittsburgh Press (June 16, 1943)
AIR FLEETS BLITZ SICILY BASES
British King visits Africa; Italy jittery
Allied fliers hammer at airfields on stepping stone island
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
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Italians realising that they might have to fight Nigerians and Ethopians on their home turf.
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Texas manhunt paralyzes city
Bulletin
Beaumont, Texas –
One white man was killed today when rioting broke out anew between mobs of white men and Negroes. The riots started last night.
Beaumont, Texas (UP) –
Texas State Guardsmen stood watch with fixed bayonets and submachine guns today over approximately 75 white men who had been arrested following hours of rioting that had brought war industries to a standstill and had driven all Negroes from the streets in terror.
The outburst followed the assault of a young white mother by a Negro yard worker. Throughout the night, small gangs of white war workers, many of whom had dropped their tools to join the manhunt, had raced through the Negro section in search for the assailant.
The hunt came to a climax at noon when approximately 100 men, most of them shipyard workers, gathered on the first floor of the 14-story courthouse building, demanding of the sheriff that he either turn over to them the alleged Negro assailant or take them along on the search for him.
Big-hatted Sheriff Bill Richardson brought a semblance of order out of the courthouse mob by offering to fight the men one at a time and telling them to go home or back “to building ships.”
Most of the men were from the Beaumont shipyards and had walked away from their job when the search for the Negro began last night, a search which ran into street fighting and rioting and burning in the Negro section of the city.
The sheriff added:
Let me tell you, I’m going to keep order and law in this country.
Someone shouted that Richardson’s statement was “just politics.”
Sheriff Richardson replied that the mob had already hindered the capture of the Negro by last night’s fighting which he said gave the Negro a 15-hour start.
Tenseness relaxes
He said:
You fellows took up all the time of the peace officers needed to keep order.
Tenseness seemed to relax after the sheriff had spoken to the crowd. The mob dispersed, although Guardsmen remained at police headquarters. Meanwhile, police and sheriff’s deputies were searching the surrounding country and watching highways and roads leading out of Beaumont for the Negro.
As the situation grew more tense, following night-long rioting, police had sent to nearby Port Arthur and Orange for ammunition replenishments as they called on the Texas Rangers, Texas Highway Police, Office of Civilian Defense Auxiliary Police and Texas State Guardsmen for help.
Cafés are closed
Chief of Police Ross Dickey described the situation as tense.
There were no Negros at all in the downtown section and few white persons were venturing into the stories. All cafés downtown were closed.
Fire Chief Steve O’Connor announced that the fire department had answered 16 alarms in the Negro section since midnight.
Mr. O’Connor said there was extensive property damage along Gladys St., main Negro thoroughfare, and reported that a large, two-story funeral home had been badly damaged and looted. A Negro liquor store had also been cleaned out, he said.
Hospitals filled
No deaths were reported from hospitals where the injured, both white and Negro, had been taken. One hospital was filled with injured Negroes, one of whom was in critical condition.
Meanwhile, Negroes either stayed off the streets or traveled with police protection. Laundries and restaurants, dependent on Negro help, remained closed. Highway patrolmen escorted several hundred Negro workers from the Pennsylvania Shipyards and took them to the Negro districts.
Mother makes complaint
Feeling had spread 26 miles to the south, at Orange, where one of the shipyards there excluded Negroes from work today. Orange State Guardsmen were sent earlier to Beaumont to help restore order.
Rioting started after a young white mother, the wife of a shipyard worker whose name was withheld, reported she had been attacked by a Negro youth to whom she had given work and food. She said the Negro came to her house asking for food, saying he had been rejected by the Army and that he had no money.
She told police that later in the day, after she had put her three small children to bed for their naps, the Negro came in the house and attacked her.
The second attack
It was the second attack by a Negro on a white woman in Beaumont in 10 days.
A Negro was shot to death by police after he had allegedly attacked a young telephone operator who was going from her work to her home late at night.
Police Chief Dickey said no trace of the accused Negro attacker of yesterday had been found.
The white men did not form one large mob, but broke up into smaller groups, the police chief said.
The small mobs of men were joined by scores of workers from the shipyards here as many of them put down their tools, left their jobs and started looking for Negroes.
Governor orders all help needed
Houston, Texas (UP) –
Governor Coke Stevenson, in Houston today en route to Newport News, Virginia, for the launching of the cruiser USS Houston, instructed Homer Garrison, chief of the department of public safety, to get every man into Beaumont needed to control the situation there.
Governor Stevenson was informed of the trouble when he arrived here from Austin and instructed Mr. Garrison to call him en route to St. Louis and from St. Louis to Washington if the situation grows worse.
Beaumont ruled out of bounds
Dallas, Texas (UP) –
Maj. Gen. Richard S. Donovan, commanding general of the 8th Service Command, today declared Beaumont, scene of rioting between Negroes and whites, out of bounds for all military personnel.
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He’s 54 and she’s 18 –
Chaplin and protégé Oona O’Neill speed away on marriage journey
Comedian and playwright’s daughter obtain license in Santa Barbara; Miss Barry? She’s under care of physician
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