Gen. MacArthur commanding Pacific attack
Offensive first joint operation of his and Adm. Halsey’s forces
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Begin probe of Jap activities in U.S.
Washington (UP) –
The Dies Subcommittee on Un-American Activities begins an investigation today of Japanese activities in the United States, with a Japanese who fought for the United States in World War I and another who is fighting for it in World War II as the first witnesses.
Chairman John Costello (D-CA), who has promised 10 days of “sensational hearings,” identified the witnesses as Tokie Slocum, who fought under Sgt. Alvin York, and Pvt. Joe Kanazawa, now stationed with a Japanese combat unit at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.
Editorial: Massacre of Nazi U-boats quick shift in war’s trend
Smashing the U-boat menace
One of the most encouraging recent developments in the war – even during a period when good news has been coming steadily from many fighting fronts – is Prime Minister Churchill’s announcement of the total defeat of enemy submarines in the past 60 days.
Mr. Churchill described it as massacre, said that 30 of these undersea terrors were accounted for in May alone and that in spite of desperate enemy efforts, scarcely a single merchant ship has been sunk since the middle of May. In his opinion, the U-boat menace is being crushed.
It is seldom that a situation is so speedily reversed as the war between the Nazi submarines and the Allied fleets bearing men and supplies across the Atlantic. Only last February, our naval leaders were seriously alarmed over our shipping losses. Even though the fighting was going along well in Russia, North Africa and in the Pacific, Washington and London were issuing warnings that the sinkings might neutralize victories ashore.
We were told of the huge packs of U-boats roaming the seas, that the Nazi building program was progressing so speedily that between 500 and 700 subs would be thrown against our supply lines by spring. Sinkings were described as heavier than those boasted by von Tirpitz in the First World War.
Just what is responsible for the vast improvement in the Allied position at sea has not yet been revealed. Of course, the American shipbuilding campaign is a vital factor. The output of our plants, plus those of the British and Canadians, was somewhere between seven and ten times as much as our losses from enemy action in the month of June.
Larger protective forces, better conceived defensive planning – these and many other factors were doubtless involved. Certainly, it is a tribute to the courage and skill of the officers and men of the American and British Navies. But laymen will naturally speculate as to whether some new anti-submarine device has not finally been perfected and put in successful operation.
As a matter of fact, Churchill’s entire speech was optimistic in tone. He spoke of the success of our air attacks on Nazi targets. He reiterated that there would be no compromise with a defeated Axis. He predicted heavy fighting in the Mediterranean and elsewhere by fall.
Americans will take special satisfaction in the dramatic reiteration of his pledge that Britain will fight on with us in the Far East until total defeat of the Japanese is achieved.
U.S. prisoners tortured by Japs, author tells Rotary
Relates how he aided in burial of nurses raped by soldiers
The Japanese are using British and American war prisoners as guinea pigs in experiments on the refinements of cruelty, author and educator Wenzell Brown told members of the Brooklyn Rotary Club yesterday at a luncheon meeting at the Hotel Bossert.
Recalling some of the horrors he had witnessed during six months as a prisoner himself in the Stanley Prison Camp at Hong Kong, Mr. Brown voiced an urgent appeal that everything possible be done for the rescue of the hundreds of men and women left “in the grip of hell.”
It was a hell, as described by the speaker, consisting of confinement under unsanitary conditions, dearth of food and ill-treatment ranging from insults and casual blows to torture and murder. This cruelty, he warned, was inflicted by the Japanese deliberately with the purpose of demonstrating their racial “supremacy” and their fitness, as they saw it, to dominate the world.
Seek race supremacy
Mr. Brown said:
The Japanese are maddened by the idea of race supremacy. To impress it upon their white victims, they walk them needlessly through the streets under guard, slapping them from time to time and repeating, “Don’t look down on the Nipponese.”
They take particular care to inflict these humiliations on the whites in the presence of the Chinese by way of warning the latter that their Allies are weak and powerless to help them. Wherever they go, they emphasize that they are destined to dominate the white peoples.
Mr. Brown was assistant professor of English at Lingnan University until the fall of Hong Kong. During the siege of the city, he served as a special guard on British transport trucks bringing supplies to the frontlines. Captured when the city fell, he was herded with other prisoners, including American and British civilians, into a small Chinese hotel. From there, after two and a half weeks, they were taken to the Stanley prison camp.
Details atrocities
Details of many of the atrocities he witnessed there were of an unprintable nature. But he told of seeing the bayoneting of men at the slightest pretext, and how he helped to bury the bodies of three British nurses raped and killed by the Japanese soldiers.
Eventually, he was released and returned to this country on the Gripsholm. But in leaving, he declared, he pledged that he would tell the world of the sufferings of those still in the hands of the Japanese and to appeal for their rescue. He is the author of the book Hong Kong Aftermath, which is soon to be published.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 1, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
North Africa – (by wireless)
As I have said before in these columns, the Army is almost without exception good to correspondents at the front. I have never yet been treated uncivilly, and usually officers and men will go out of their way to help you.
I remember one instance when another correspondent and I were making a trip of several hundred miles in a jeep with half the windshield missing. Riding behind a glassless windshield gets pretty rugged, even in good weather. All along the way we would drop into motor pools and ordnance depots, trying to get some glass. But there simply wasn’t any.
Then one day, we happened to stop at a small camp merely to inquire the way to a nearby airdrome. And the officer in charge asked out of a clear sky if we would like to have our windshield fixed. We said we sure would, but there wasn’t any glass. He said:
Maybe we can find some. Since you’re staying all night at the airdrome, just forget about it. I’ll find your jeep where you leave it, and we’ll fix it.
And sure enough, a couple of hours later here came the officer and two men with a nice piece of glass. They had cut it from the windshield of a wrecked Flying Fortress, and it made a much better windshield than the original.
There was no reason for them to do it at all, except that they were just nice people. Our benefactors in this case were Lt. James O’Connor of Worchester, Massachusetts, and Sgts. Ernest Kelly of Spokane, Washington, and Lawrence Hunter of Pensacola, Florida.
I am having medals struck off for them on my private medal-machine.
The other day at one of the airdromes, I got to talking with a young fellow who is one of four brothers in service. Such an odd thing happened to them last year that I think you’d be interested in hearing about it.
This young man is Sgt. Ray Swim, who used to work in Denver but whose real home is Grand Junction, Colorado, where his father is a farmer. Ray’s three brothers are also sergeants, to wit: Sgt. Ralph, at Lowry Field, Denver; Sgt. William at Fort Logan, Denver; Sgt. Orville, somewhere in Australia.
Now we go back to the spring of 1942. Ray was then in the bombardier school at Midland, Texas. He got a few days’ leave and decided to go home. He just got on a train and started. He didn’t even let the folks at home know he was coming.
When he got off the train at Grand Junction, he bumped into one of the other brothers, who had also just arrived from camp unannounced. What a coincidence, they thought.
They shook hands and walked around the corner, and there was a third brother, under the same circumstances. And before they got out of town, damned if they didn’t pick up the fourth brother, who had also arrived home unexpectedly. So, there they were – neither of the four had known the other were coming, their parents hadn’t known any of them were coming, and it was the first time the whole family had been together in five years. And to top it all off, it happened on Mother’s Day.
The boy’s mother was almost overcome. They thought for a while they would have to call a doctor for her. But I don’t think the doctors know how to prescribe for sheer joy.
It there is one single scene that could be described as typifying North Africa to the American soldier, it’s the sight of a ragged Arab standing along the roadside holding up an egg between his thumb and forefinger, trying to sell it. Through this individual bartering, I suppose the Arabs have sold billions of eggs to American soldiers. Apropos of this, Bill Stoneham of The Chicago Daily News and Drew Middleton of The New York Times were riding along one day and Bill remarked that he supposed the most difficult feat in Africa would be to reverse the process and sell an egg to an Arab. Drew said, “Oh, I don’t know,” and the bet was on.
Drew bet 200 francs he’d sell an egg to an Arab before Sept. 1. No tricks will be allowed. It has to be a legitimate sale, although Drew is permitted to sell as cheaply as he wishes. So now you see him, every time he goes out into the country, jumping out of his car at frequent intervals, rushing over to a bunch of Arabs, holding out his egg and starting his pleading sales talk of “Ouef, deux francs.” The Arabs just turn and walk away.
Drew admits privately that he has slight hope of winning his bet. It’s harder than selling coals in Newcastle. And the worst part of it is that Drew, being honest, won’t palm off stale merchandise, so he has to go out and pay five francs for a fresh egg every time he starts in one of his futile selling trips.
U.S. Navy Department (July 1, 1943)
Communiqué No. 430
South Pacific.
On July 1:
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Early in the afternoon, Dauntless (Douglas) dive bombers attacked Japanese defensive positions at Lambeti Plantation, Munda, New Georgia Island. Fires were started.
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During the same afternoon, a formation of Avenger (Grumman TBF) torpedo bombers and Dauntless dive bombers attacked Japanese defensive positions and camp sections at Vila, Kolombangara Island.
Seven pilots of the 17 U.S. planes previously reported as missing in Navy Department Communiqué No. 429 have been rescued.
Memorandum to the Press:
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Lambeti Plantation is located several miles east of the airfield at Munda, New Georgia Island.
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Late reports on the Japanese air attack on U.S. forces during the landing at Rendova Island, New Georgia Group, on June 30, indicate that the number of Japanese planes were substantially larger than the total of 110 planes initially reported in Navy Department Communiqué No. 429. It is also reported that U.S. surface and air forces destroyed 101 Japanese planes in the action.
Brooklyn Eagle (July 2, 1943)
JAPS BLAST MUNDA; U.S. TROOPS CLOSE IN
Key enemy base pounded by land and air forces
Marines lead push after seizing port
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Rayburn: Subsidies ban veto on way
Speaker ‘hears’ President will send Congress his message late today
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Meat outlook ‘encouraging,’ U.S. reports
But heavy military, Lend-Lease needs will cut civilian supplies
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