In Pacific –
Air blockade starving Japs
Raids cut New Britain base off from supplies
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
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In Pacific –
U.S. Navy Department (December 25, 1943)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 210
For Immediate Release
December 25, 1943
Navy medium bombers of Fleet Air Wing Two made a low altitude attack on Nauru at dusk on Christmas Eve (East Longitude Date) setting installations on fire. One of our planes is missing.
Army Liberators of the Seventh AAF bombed Wotje on the evening of December 22 (West Longitude Date). Our planes were attacked by 35 enemy fighters, three of which were destroyed, one was probably shot down and six were damaged. Our casualties were one killed and two wounded.
Enemy bombers made five raids on Tarawa during the night of December 22 and 23, causing minor damage.
Enemy light bombers made three nuisance raids at Makin, two at night one during the day, wounding eight men. Two enemy planes were shot down by an intercepting Army fighter.
On the morning of December 24, 15 enemy fighters dropped bombs from high altitude on Makin, causing no damage.
Wilmington Morning Star (December 25, 1943)
O, Come All Ye Faithful
O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem;
Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels:
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ, the Lord.
Sing, choirs of Angels, sing in exaltation,
Sing, all ye citizens of Heaven above!
Glory to God, in the highest glory;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ, the Lord.
Story of Bataan in full wanted
President of clan says nation should be told the facts
Chicago, Illinois –
Albert C. McArthur, president of the American Bataan Clan, today urged the full story of Bataan be told to the nation, saying “someone in Washington made a costly mistake and wants to forget all about it.” McArthur said his organization, consisting of 400 Midwesterners whose sons fought on the Bataan Peninsula, declared there existed a policy which demanded silence from those returned from the Philippines.
He cited the case of Lt. Col. William E. Dyess, Army Air Force hero of the Philippine campaign, who was killed Wednesday in a plane crash at Burbank, California. Lt. Col. Dyess escaped from a Japanese prison camp and made his way back to the United States.
McArthur said Dyess, instead of being greeted in Washington as a war hero, received a “strange reception,” and was told that he knew too much” and was cautioned against telling his story for publication.
McArthur added:
Our thought is that Washington officials and brass hats made one big mistake at Bataan – we don’t know want – whether or not it was failure to furnish ample equipment to the boys there, but they want to forget the whole thing, and want the nation to forget Bataan. And we won’t do it.
The nucleus of the American Bataan Clan is 150 parents of Maywood boys who were in the 192nd Tank Battalion on Bataan.
McArthur’s son, Staff Sgt. Albert C. McArthur Jr., of the 192nd, died in a Japanese prison camp on June 11.
Editorial: Christmas
Christmas, 1943, finds us deafened by the roar of cannon, the zoom of warplanes, the cries of thousands – victims of man’s inhumanity to man.
Someday the war will end; when is known only to God. But it is true; when it does cease, we will have to reappraise human values.
We will have seen and survived the assault on civilization, and material possessions in many lands swept away by the forces of evil.
What will remain are the imperishables – things of the spirit.
We will need these things as never before.
Chief among them are faith, courage, hope.
We will need them to bind up the wounds, repair the ravages of war.
We will need them to replace with love the hatreds bred of war.
We will need them to make us realize the essential oneness of humanity.
Unless we have them, we will fail the generations to come.
These things of the spirit are not to be purchased in the marts of trade. Money cannot buy them. Yet a price must be paid.
That price consists of kneeling at the crib side of an infant. It involves the abandonment of pride – the discovery of the virtue of humility and discerning the emptiness of human values, the nothingness of human plaudits.
The powerful and the great will be making merry at the fashionable inn. The humble and contrite of spirit will be at the stable. Those at the inn will be in the company of Herod, showering him with flattery to win his favor. Those in the stable will be in company with lowly shepherds, paying homage to an infant – too busy to court the patronage of Caesar – and with wise men guided by a star, not to the inn but to a manger.
Caesar and Herod are no more. The splendor they created is gone. Their thrones art overthrown. The inn is in ruins.
The infant in the manger – the Prince of Peace – still rules. The faith, the courage, the hope he brought will triumph even in this period of global combat, if we cultivate the things of the spirit.
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Editorial: Why a slogan, anyway?
President Roosevelt is a little late in wishing to abandon the “New Deal” slogan and substituting “Win the War” for it. The great masses of the American people dropped “New Deal” as a shibboleth long ago.
Even when President Roosevelt’s administration was in its infancy, the Hearst newspapers started calling the “New Deal” the "Raw Deal,” which was going perhaps too far and stemmed from Randolph Hearst’s disappointment as being out of the orchard when plums were falling.
But it is also true that even then, when the NRA, which led off the assault of alphabetical monstrosities, was new, the “New Deal” was losing public confidence and but for the disturbed conditions created by the approach of war its existence probably would have been ended quickly. It has survived only, we may believe, because the bulk of American voters, in full knowledge of its shortcomings, decided in the emergency to bear the ills they had rather than fly to others they knew not of.
As for winning the war, the people at large have had no other thought since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But why should we, a civilized and fairly intelligent people, require a slogan, anyway? Surely our purpose is too great and too well understood to require bolstering with a catchphrase.
The Afro-American (December 25, 1943)
ARMY HALTS STRIKE
Western Electric’s five plants seized on President’s orders
Strikers ignore appeal for resumption of work Monday; may invoke Connally Act
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99TH FLIERS SET RECORD WITH 9 MISSIONS IN DAY
Pilots strafe enemy’s frontlines in Italy
Tuskegee products working in mixed 8th Army group
By Art Carter
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ACK-ACK AND QM UNITS IN ARAWE BATTLE
Tubbs finds well-trained troops set for New Britain push
Groups under Col. Moses on hand; new service club opened; nurses still await assignment
By Vincent Tubbs
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Soldiers walk out on Porgy and Bess co.
$1,000 in ticket money returned when manager said balcony only
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Navy still offers no hope of upgrading to colored seamen
Admits majority are still laborers; plan for officers just on paper
By Michael Carter
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Jitterbugs and zooters spoil post-war job chances
Absenteeism after payday, bad manners, laxity in payment of union dues lessen workers’ desirability; low wages, high living costs, bad housing, job insecurity and Jim Crow are blamed
By Michael Carter
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WAC major backs camp segregation
Wanted all-colored regiment so she could be in charge
By Pvt. Joan Willis, WAC
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Ice cream for Yanks on 1st anniversary in New Guinea
Engineers sport during celebration; have two American women as guests
By Vincent Tubbs
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FEPC causes rehiring of 7 fired seamen in NYC
Captain dismisses 6 colored, 1 Chinese hired in Balto., wanted lily-white crew
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Latest replacement pilots await crack at Luftwaffe
Minister’s son and poet are in quarter moving up to frontlines
By Art Carter
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Editorial: Christmas, 1943
Drew Pearson’s revelation that contrary to the Allied statement there was not a full agreement at the Cairo Conference comes with the force of a bombshell exploding on this second war Christmas.
According to Mr. Pearson, Prime Minister Churchill opposed the use of Chinese troops in India to reopen the Burma Road. Indian troops are unwilling to make the fight alone unless they are promised independence, to which Churchill cannot commit his government.
The story goes that all the other Allies, Russia, China, and the United States, were agreed, except Britain, and the result was the first serious break between President Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister.
One of the immediate results of the rupture, according to Mr. Pearson, is that the U.S. Chief of Staff, Gen. George Marshall, is to remain at home and a British general will be chosen to lead the Allied invasion of the European continent.
If the Pearson story is correct, we haven’t gotten to the place in the fighting where we can see a victory crowned with a people’s peace – a peace in which the world’s exploited populations in Asia and Europe are to have a chance to develop self-government and freedom.
What we are fighting for abroad, if the British government has its way, is the same old imperialism in which the weak are enslaved to support the strong in wealth and power – a new alignment of nations in which the territories of Japan and Germany are taken away from them and parceled out to new masters of which the chief shall be Britain.
If that is the new peace on earth we fight for, it is not worth our participation and sacrifice.
But the mention of it today is important because it represents abroad a feeling which is shared by many at home with respect to our own domestic problems.
We have in America a great crowd of stand-patters who oppose any gains for the common people at home after this war. They demand segregation as usual and certain jobs and services to be labeled “for whites only.” The ballot in the South is to be reserved for certain people. They flag of the nation is to be supported by a streamer reading “white supremacy.”
There are the selfish, greedy interests at home and abroad who say to the 1943 Christmas spirit – “Come back this time next year, I may have some business for you.” But they lie. They have no earnest desire and longing for peace and good will to all men, and they must be destroyed utterly.
The will of the people of earth is for a peace and a victory for all men. The angels’ song echoing over the centuries cannot be drowned out, it is the chant of hundreds of millions. It must not be delayed or postponed. It cannot be stopped.
It is the world’s Christmas spirit, and it will prevail.
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