The film ‘whodunits’ acquire fancy names
‘Psychological horror offerings’ preferred in Hollywood
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U.S. Navy Department (June 21, 1943)
Communiqué No. 420
South Pacific.
On June 18‑19, during the night Army Liberator (Consolidated B‑24) heavy bombers attacked Japanese installations at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. A number of hits were scored on the enemy positions. Although seven enemy Zero fighters were in the air over Tarawa, they did not press a determined attack against the U.S. bombers.
On June 19, during the night Army Liberators attacked Japanese positions at Kahili, Buin area. A number of fires were started.
On June 20, during the morning, Navy Dauntless (Douglas SBD) dive bombers and Avenger (Grumman TBF) torpedo bombers escorted by Army Warhawk (Curtiss P‑40) and Navy Wildcat (Grumman F4F) fighters attacked Vila, Kolombangara Island. A supply dump was hit and a fire started. Hits were also scored on the runway.
North Pacific.
On June 20, during the day, Navy Ventura (Vega PV) medium bombers attacked Japanese installations at Kiska. Results were not observed.
In all of the above operations, all U.S. planes returned.
Press Release
For Immediate Release
June 21, 1943
Merchant vessel survives five air attacks; shoots down four planes, probably two more
The story of how an American merchant vessel last January, ran the gauntlet of five air attacks in the Eastern Atlantic. and Mediterranean, during which the Navy gun crew commanded by Lt. (jg.) Robert H. McIlwaine, USNR, of 34 E 62 St., New York City, shot down four enemy planes and accounted for two more “probables,” was told when the ship arrived recently at a United States port.
Although damaged by near misses and by a bomb which penetrated to its highly inflammable cargo but failed to explode, the vessel was able to keep position in the convoy and to discharge its cargo on schedule. Temporary repairs were made, and the vessel continued to do her job for many weeks before coming to the United States for permanent repairs.
The Free Lance-Star (June 21, 1943)
SEVEN KILLED, MANY INJURED IN FIERCE DETROIT RACE RIOTS
Governor calls state troops to keep order
Violent disorder overwhelms city
Detroit, Michigan (AP) –
Widespread race riots that cost the lives of six Negroes and a white physician and resulted in more than 200 injuries to Negroes and whites alike flickered and flared intermittently this afternoon.
Governor Harry Kelly of Michigan, before speeding to Detroit from Columbus by Army bomber, ordered Michigan State Police and state troops mobilized to preserve order.
Mayor Edward J. Jeffries Jr. of Detroit said he would ask the Governor on his arrival to declare martial law in the city.
About 75 military policemen, drawn chiefly from an Army post at suburban River Rouge, arrived at police headquarters this afternoon. They were to be assigned to patrol duty to keep servicemen out of the riot areas, police officials said.
Tear gas was used within a stone’s throw of the City Hall when a group chased a Negro youth from Monroe Ave. into the Campus Martius, on the east side of Woodward Ave. Officers used the gas to disperse the crowd which gathered.
The physician who was fatally beaten as he was answering a call in the riot area was identified as Dr. Joseph De Horatiis.
Six Negroes were also dead, victims of the racial flareup, and a police sergeant was critically wounded in a gunfight with a Negro store-looting gang.
Detroit, Michigan (AP) –
Michigan State Police and state troops were ordered to Detroit today to restore order after six persons were killed and some 200 injured in widespread race riots.
Capt. Donald S. Leonard of Michigan State Police announced shortly before 11 a.m. that Governor Harry Kelly of Michigan had ordered mobilization of the state forces.
At that time, outbreaks of violence which had spread from an altercation at the Belle Isle Bridge late last night were continuing despite the mobilization of the entire 2,500 members of the police force of the nation’s fourth largest city.
Six Negroes had lost their lives. A white physician, attacked while answering a call and a police sergeant were critically injured. The police sergeant was shot in a gunfight with a Negro store-looting gang.
Capt. Leonard said the Governor had directed mobilization, at two Detroit armories, of 1,000 state troops picked from the best-trained companies of the state. In addition, he said, between 400 and 500 members of the State Police force including those in Michigan’s upper peninsula, more than 300 miles from Detroit, were already mobilized and standing by ready for action if needed.
Governor Kelly arranged to fly to Detroit from Columbus, Ohio, where he had gone for the annual governor’s conference.
He said at Columbus:
I am not declaring martial law. I am trying to hold the situation without that.
The Governor said:
We’ve got to stop this today if we’re ever going to.
Rampant disorder
Groups of Negroes and of whites milled about on street corners in a wide section bordering and northeast of downtown Detroit, hurling stones and bricks at passing automobiles bearing members of both races. Automobiles were overturned. Police reported every window on Hastings St., “Paradise Valley” of the Detroit Negro section, broken for a distance of 25 blocks.
Hospitals were crowded with persons awaiting treatment of injuries.
Before noon, police had arrested 326 persons on charges ranging from felonious assault to disturbing the peace and carrying concealed weapons.
All saloons in Detroit and suburban Hamtramck were ordered closed. Police directed pawnshop and hardware store operators to remove from windows and shelves all stocks of guns, ammunition and knives and to lock them in safes.
Two Negro leaders, the Rev. Horace White of Plymouth Congregational Church and Otis Saunders of the Double-V Committee, a Negro organization, reported to Mayor Edward J. Jeffries they were met by jeeps when they toured the area of violence in a police car with sound amplifiers, appealing for a cessation of fighting.
False report
White and Saunders said one cause of the emotional disturbance that resulted in the riot was a widespread, erroneous report among members of their race that a Negro woman and child were slain Sunday on Belle Isle, recreational and swimming spot in the Detroit River.
They recommended mobilization of 200 Negro leaders deputized as special officers, as the best means to halt the rioting. Police agreed to the recruiting of 200 Negroes as special aides, but said they would not be deputized and would not carry arms.
Auxiliary special policemen, trained by civilian defense units to aid the police during air raids, were ordered mobilized. Among them are many Negroes.
At noon, Police Commissioner John Witherspoon said the outbreaks of violence appeared to have tapered off into isolated incidents.
Thirteen Detroit elementary schools were closed, after Deputy Superintendent of Schools Herman J. Browe reported thousands of pupils were either kept at home by frightened parents or were taken home after word of the rioting spread.
Operations of two streetcar lines leading through the Negro section were halted when motormen refused to take the cars through that district for fear of violence.
Workers leave jobs
The Ford Motor Company reported hundreds of Negro workers had asked to leave work for the day because they had received calls from their homes saying they were needed.
Mayor Jeffries asked United Automobile Workers officials to have all plant stewards instruct their members to stay out of the downtown area this afternoon and tonight.
Disturbances which occurred over an area roughly 3 square miles heavily populated by Negroes and lying east and northeast of the downtown area, spread this morning to Woodward Ave., “Main Stem” of Detroit which runs from the Detroit River north.
At Woodward and Adelaide Sts., a crowd of 300-400 whites was reported milling about, stoning every passing automobile that carried Negroes. Police reported it consisted mostly of young men dressed in overalls and working clothes. A barrage of rocks forced one car to strike a safety zone; the car was then overturned.
This group was finally dispersed when police riot cars arrived with 20 officers carrying machine guns and tear-gas pistols.
Senior Inspector Edward Graff reported a crowd of 500 Negroes broke into a pawn shop on Hastings St., obtaining revolvers and ammunition. Hastings St., known locally as “Paradise Valley,” is the center of the Detroit Negro area.
Many arrested
A survey of five police precinct stations at 8 a.m. showed at least 238 persons held for assault and disturbing the peace.
One of those slain bore a draft card issued to Carl Lincoln, 19. Patrolmen Harold Bole and Vernon Hayden said they fired after he threw a brick at Bole. The officers said they were called to Hancock and Beaubien Sts. by two Negro patrolmen who reported Lincoln was molesting women and throwing bricks into the street. One of the police bullets struck him in the chest.
The others killed were identified through cards on their persons as William Hardges, 27, and Robert Davis, 28.
Police reports said two officers were wounded in a gun battle with Negroes at Division and Hastings Sts.
Most of the widespread rioting which had continued through the early morning hours was reported under control at 7 a.m.
After a conference of high law enforcement officials, Capt. Donald S. Leonard of the Michigan State Police said he believed that Detroit police were getting the situation in hand and that he would advise Governor Harry F. Kelly “there was no immediate need for martial law.”
Disorder widespread
Windows of stores in the Negro district were smashed, there was considerable looting, and at least 20 taxicabs were stoned and damaged, police reported.
The conference of officials began at 4 a.m., and continued in session for several hours. One of its actions was to close all saloons in the Negro district.
Inspector Robert Turner, harbormaster at Belle Isle, said the rioting started at about 10:30 Sunday night on the broad bridge that leads from Jefferson Ave. to Belle Isle, popular recreation park in the Detroit River. Turner said that the hot Sunday brought about 50,000 persons to the island, “90% of them Negroes,” and that there were several minor fights during the day. Turner said he believed a minor squabble on the bridge in the midst of the traffic jam caused the outbreak.
The disorder spread to Jefferson Ave. and then into the main Negro district.
In an effort to control the situation, several hundred sailors from the naval armory which adjoins the Belle Isle Bridge, were strung in a line across Jefferson Ave., blocking off traffic.
The 1940 U.S. census gave Detroit 149,119 Negroes out of a total population of 1,623,452.
Previous trouble
There have been a number of minor racial incidents in Detroit during recent months and several strikes have occurred at war factories over the racial issue on production lines. The most important of these was early in June at the Packard Motor Car Company following which R. J. Thomas, president of the United Automobile Workers (CIO), declared in a speech that he had “absolute evidence” that it had been promoted “by agents of the Ku Klux Klan, acting for the enemy.”
The Ku Klux Klan denied that it had anything to do with the Packard strike.
The Double-V Committee, a Negro organization, issued a public appeal at 4:30 a.m., addressed to the “Negroes of Detroit” and stating:
Despite incidents which occur which are exceedingly unjust, unfair, and discriminatory against our group, we must not resort to violence or give way to race hatred.
Troops called in Detroit race riots
Columbus, Ohio (AP) –
Governor Harry F. Kelly of Michigan announced today he had ordered full mobilization of the Michigan State Guard and State Police to cope with a race riot in Detroit.
Kelly also asked Maj. Gen. H. S. Aurand, commander of the 6th Service Command, to hold in readiness a battalion of military police at River Rouge.
Kelly said:
I am not declaring martial law. I am trying to hold the situation without that. The troops will be taken into Detroit company by company, if and as needed.
I am asking the Army to have its military police battalion at River Rouge on the alert.
Kelly, here for the annual governor’s conference, acted after conferring by telephone with his secretary, Tom Kenny, at Lansing, and Mayor Edward J. Jeffries of Detroit.
Arrangements were made to fly Kelly and his Adjutant General LeRoy Pearson to Michigan in an Army bomber at once.
Kelly said:
If we can bottle this fast, we won’t need martial law. Thank Heaven the Michigan State Guard is well-organized.
In a telephone conversation with Oscar Olander, Michigan State Police Commissioner, the Governor declared:
My orders are these, bring in more than you need than less. We’ve got to stop this today if we’re going to. We’ll try to handle it without martial law.
The Governor expressed satisfaction that there was sufficient manpower to handle the situation quickly.
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Reds’ citizenship upheld by Supreme Court
‘Overt act’ necessary to annual rights of citizenship; victory for Willkie
Washington (AP) –
In a 5–3 opinion, the Supreme Court ruled today that the American citizenship of an alien cannot constitutionally be cancelled merely because he was a member of the Communist Party.
Justice Murphy, who delivered the majority opinion, asserted that cancellation of citizenship was not justified by imputing a “reprehensible interpretation” of an organization to a member unless there were “overt acts” committed by a member “indicating that such was his interpretation.”
Chief Justice Stone and Justices Roberts and Frankfurter dissented. Justice Jackson, a former Attorney General who handled the litigation in the Justice Department, did not participate.
The long-awaited decision constituted a victory for Wendell L. Willkie, the 1940 Republican presidential nominee, who represented the communist involved before the Supreme Court.
Murphy declared that “clear, unequivocal, and convincing” evidence was required for setting aside a naturalization decree and that such evidence had not been presented against William Schneiderman, state secretary of the Communist Party for California and a native of Russia, who became a citizen in 1927.
Murphy said:
Were the law otherwise, valuable rights would rest upon a slender reed, and the security of the status of our naturalized citizens might depend in considerable degree upon the political temper of majority thought and the stresses of the times. Those are consequences foreign to the best traditions of this nation, and the characteristics of our institutions.
Schneiderman came to this country in 1908 at the age of three, became an American citizen in 1927, and his citizenship was ordered cancelled in 1940 by the federal district court in San Francisco on the ground that he had concealed his communist connections.
Solicitor General Charles Fahy, the government’s spokesman, said the Naturalization Act required that an alien who obtained citizenship be “attached to the principles of the Constitution” and be “well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.”
He added that the evidence established that in 1927, the Communist Party and Schneiderman “believed in, advocated, and taught the overthrow of this government by force and violence.”
Willkie said Schneiderman had given “unimpeached testimony” that he had never believed in or advocated the use of force or violence or disbelieved in organized government. He added that government attorneys admitted that the constitution of the Communist Party USA, adopted in 1938, did not advocate force or violence.
The federal district court in San Francisco held that Schneiderman had obtained citizenship illegally because he failed to reveal that during a five-year probationary period, he belonged to an organization advocating violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
Supreme Court upholds restrictions on West Coast Japs
Washington (AP) –
The Supreme Court held constitutional today military regulations imposing a West Coast curfew on all persons of Japanese ancestry and excluding them from specified areas.
Chief Justice Stone delivered the opinion on a challenge of the regulations by two American-born persons of Japanese ancestry, who contended they were citizens of this country against whom the restrictions could not constitutionally be applied.
Stone asserted that:
In a case of threatened danger requiring prompt action, it is a choice between inflicting obviously needless hardship on the many, or sitting passive and unresisting in the presence of the threat.
Approximately 70,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry were said to have been evacuated from their homes under the orders.
Martial law at Beaumont ended
Beaumont, Texas (AP) –
Martial law invoked Wednesday by Acting Governor A. M. Aikin Jr., following racial rioting that resulted in two deaths, was lifted Sunday and 1,600 Texas State Guardsmen left for their homes.
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Brooklyn Eagle (June 21, 1943)
U.S. weighs wartime rule as strike paralyzes mines
Ickes studies plan to operate pits for the duration
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5 slain, 200 injured in Detroit race riots
326 arrested – 3,500 cops fight for order – 2,500 home guards, troopers held ready
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Race rioting growing out of a fight between a white man and a Negro at Belle Isle last night spread through the downtown Negro section today and before noon, five persons were dead.
Authorities, faced with the prospect of the rioting getting out of hand, ordered 2,500 home guards, auxiliary police and state troopers to “stand by.”
A white man was reported near death at Receiving Hospital. A physician, he was pulled from his overturned car and beaten severely.
Approximately 3.500 policemen were put on duty to quell the rioting.
Governor to arrive
The main area of rioting was a two-mile strip of Negro residential and business district east of Woodward Ave., Detroit’s main thoroughfare.
Governor Harry F. Kelly announced at a governor’s conference in Columbus that he had chartered a special plane and would arrive here early this afternoon to confer with civilian and military authorities.
Police reported 326 persons taken into custody and more than 200 injured. The latter included eight policemen.
Police said the riots were touched off late last night during a fight between a white man and a Negro at Belle Isle Park south of the city. Other persons joined in and the rioting spread slowly early today to Negro sections of the city. “Zoot suits” were not involved.
Mayor Edward J. Jeffries Jr. and Police Commissioner John Witherspoon were reported to have asked the State Liquor Commission to “dry up” the entire city – close all state-owned or controlled liquor stores. Establishments in the Negro sections had already been closed.
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U.S. fliers hit Tarawa, Nauru in double pay
Both points are Jap strongholds in gilberts – use Liberator bombers
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OPA and OWI lives at stake in Senate test
Chance for saving food subsidy stronger than Elmer Davis’ hope
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Two more destroyers launched at Kearny
Kearny, New Jersey (UP) –
Two destroyers, the USS Dortch and the USS Gatling, were launched here yesterday.
The first was sponsored by the daughter of the late Capt. Isaac Foote Dortch, a veteran of the World War I campaign against U-boats. The wife of the grandson of the late Richard Jordan Gatling, inventor of the Gatling gun, sponsored the second.
The Pittsburgh Press (June 21, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Africa –
Our soldiers like Leopoldville fine, although they suffer from a monotony complex. For even a town of 50,000 has its limitations.
Of an evening they can go into town, have a couple of beers at a sidewalk café, and then go to a movie. The Army runs a truck back out to camp each night after the movie.
The only prostitute in Leo was an anemic French Mademoiselle who followed the worldwide custom in all lines of endeavor of upping the price about 300% the moment Americans heave into view. But the colonel in charge beat her to it by putting her place out of bounds the instant they arrived.
There ensued a long correspondence in which the Mademoiselle was first insulted, then standing on her rights, then humble, then pleading, and as it wound up, she got so utterly lonesome she finally wrote and begged the colonel just to let the boys come in to sit and talk about the weather. The colonel still said no. The boys said she only weighed 85 pounds and was too ugly to talk to anyhow.
Thus died the only vestige of a Sadie Thompson story that I’ve run onto in the tropics.
We had a big Army hospital at Leo. It was built to care for hundreds, but the most it ever had was a few score patients. The staff was still hanging around when I was there, but they’ve moved long before now.
An odd thing about it was that due to the censorship of mail, and the average American’s complete lack of knowledge about Africa’s size and climate, most of the nurses’ families back home thought they were about 5,000 miles from the war.
One Saturday night when I was there, the doctors and nurses gave a big farewell party for themselves and invited me. The early part of the evening was spent signing each other’s Short-Snorter bills. Then finally it came to the point where I either had to get up and dance voluntarily or else be dragged bodily out onto the floor by a few husky nurses, so I slipped out the back door and ran home.
Some of the nurses wrote their names down for me on scraps of paper. Much time has passed, and now I can’t remember what each individual looked like or anything, but here they are, and I know that by now they’re in a happier place and as busy as they want to be:
Chief Nurse Josephine Balestra, of Salinas, California (we had a common bond, for Salinas is where I registered for the draft); Rachel Badger of Ogden, Utah; Gracie Blair and Mayellen Ross, both of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania; Sarah Hale and Bertha Pollard, both of Richmond, Virginia; Jane Mogarry, of Butler, Pennsylvania; Kathleen Merran of Philadelphia, and Catherine Androulski of Washington, DC.
The surgical and medical staff was largely from the Presbyterian Hospital in New York. Lt. Col. William Casey, of Portland, Maine, was in command, and he spent most of his time worrying about the prodigality of keeping surgeons who were $30,000-a-year-men in civil life just sitting there 5,000 miles from the nearest shooting, with nobody to operate on. But, as I say, they’ve moved since I was there.
On the staff were such men as Maj. Charles Flood, assistant dean at Columbia, and Capt. Robert Wylie, who they say is one of the finest chest experts in New York.
They were a grand band of Americans there at Leo, all sort of hanging closely together in desperation against boredom and nothing-to-do and lonesomeness.
Out at the camp the few boys who are left do a little work on the roads and keep the camp utilities going, and that’s about all. The first night I was there, they asked me to come and sit with them at the post exchange, and they all stayed at camp just to pump me with questions about what it was like in Tunisia and the rest of Africa.
Their attitude was that they would prefer to be up north in action, but since they weren’t and had nothing to say about it, they guessed they weren’t so badly off at that.
None of them felt that the tropics were getting them or anything like that.
The boys amuse themselves by going on Sunday picnics into the bush, playing cards at the post exchange of an evening, taking lots of photographs, sending home ivory carvings, going to town to see the movies, and writing letters.
Their mail service is good, their food is all right, their health is fine, and life in general for them is OK – with the one important exception that after a while, it just sort of gets like living in a vacuum.
PROCLAMATION 2588
Directing Detroit race rioters to disperse
Whereas, the Governor of the State of Michigan has represented that domestic violence exists in said State which the authorities of said State are unable to suppress; and
Whereas, it is provided in the Constitution of the United States that the United States shall protect each State in this Union, on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive, when the Legislature cannot be convened, against domestic violence; and
Whereas, by the law of the United States in pursuance of the above, it is provided that in all cases of insurrection in any State or of obstruction of the laws thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the Legislature of such State, or of the Executive, when the Legislature cannot be convened, to call forth the militia of any other State or States and to employ such part of the land and naval forces of the United States as shall be judged necessary for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection and causing the laws to be duly executed; and
Whereas, the Legislature of the State of Michigan is not now in session and cannot be convened in time to meet the present emergency, and the Executive of said State under Section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution of the United States, and the laws passed in pursuance thereof, has made due application to me in the premises for such part of the military forces of the United States as may be necessary and adequate to protect the State of Michigan and the citizens thereof against domestic violence and to enforce the due execution of the laws; and
Whereas, it is required that whenever it may be necessary, in the judgment of the President, to use the military forces of the United States for the purposes aforesaid, he shall forthwith, by proclamation, command such insurgents to disperse and retire peacefully to their respective homes within a limited time;
Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby make proclamation and I do hereby command all persons engaged in said unlawful and insurrectionary proceedings to disperse and retire peacefully to their respective abodes immediately, and hereafter abandon said combinations and submit themselves to the laws and constituted authorities of said State;
And I invoke the aid and cooperation of all good citizens thereof to uphold the laws and preserve the public peace.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
The White House
June 21, 1943