The Pittsburgh Press (January 29, 1944)
Punish Japs, nation asks
Sneering at atrocity story, Tokyo says Allies troops ‘can’t take it’
A new battle cry – “vengeance!” – echoed through the United States today after disclosure of Jap war prison camp atrocities, and the conviction grew that only the razing of Tokyo and bringing home the horrors of war to the Japanese people could still the clamor for revenge.
Meanwhile, the Tokyo radio blared forth in ridicule over the atrocity report, taunting the Allies that United Nations fighting men “can’t take it.”
U.S. promises vengeance
Washington (UP) –
A Senate Committee chairman promised today to dig out still-unpublished facts about Jap prison camp atrocities which have already roused the nation to concentration fury and given it a blazing new battle cry – “vengeance!”
This promise, underscoring a White House hint that the full story has yet to be told, came as the conviction grew among Congressional and military leaders that only the destruction of Tokyo and the unleashing of war’s horror upon the Japanese people at home can quench this country’s thirst for revenge against an obscenely brutal and sadistic enemy.
There was no doubt that the American people had been aroused to a pitch of anger unparalleled since Pearl Harbor by the Army-Navy disclosure that the Japs – employing starvation, torture and butchery – had exterminated at least 7,700 American and many more Filipino heroes of Bataan and Corregidor.
Bond buying booms
A United Press survey showed that throughout the country, war bond sales skyrocketed yesterday as angered citizens jammed booths and banks, many of them speaking harshly of the Japs and vowing vengeance as they made their purchases.
White House Secretary Stephen T. Early intimated yesterday that the account of Jap barbarity was a continued story when he said:
The time has come to release factual, carefully-authenticated reports of Japanese atrocities.
Today, Chairman Elbert D. Thomas (D-UT) of a Senate Military Affairs Subcommittee on wear prisoners announced that he would soon summon Army and Navy intelligence officers to closed hearings.
Expresses surprise
Expressing surprise that his group had not been told in advance of the facts in the Army-Navy report, he added:
My committee is going to get all the information it can through the proper channels.
Later, in Los Angeles, Capt. Samuel R. Grashio, companion of the late Lt. Col. William Dyess in the infamous “March of Death,” told how 1,100 Americans and 1,400 Filipino prisoners died horribly in Camp O’ Donnell.
His descriptions, and the figures he quoted were apparently part of the general picture disclosed earlier by the Army and Navy.
Won’t alter strategy
Despite the rising demand for vengeance against the Japs – a demand which found its most clamorous expression among Congressmen – there was nothing to indicate that Allied staff chiefs would permit popular anger, however just, to alter strategic decisions reached after long and careful consideration of all military necessities involved.
These decisions, calling for the smashing of Germany and Japan in that order, will be adhered to unswervingly despite such demands as that of Chairman Andrew J. May (D-KY) of the House Military Affairs Committee that the entire fleet move at once upon Tokyo and “blow it into Hades.”
Plan heavy blows
This does not mean, however, that Tokyo will not one day be destroyed or that Japan’s bestiality will go unpunished until some dim and distant future time when individual and national war criminals shall have been brought to justice.
It is no secret that even now heavy new blows are being mounted in the Pacific, and observers here would not be surprised if Jap garrisons in the Marshall Islands were soon introduced violently to overwhelming force and sudden death.
Although the Allied timetable calls for defeat of Germany first, Adm. Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, announced only recently that American naval strength in the
Temper of people high
On the home front, there were plenty of indications that Americans will manifest their anger against the Japs coldly and practically as well as emotionally – through grater purchases of war binds and increased production of the weapons needed to make the Japs pay for their crimes against decency.
The temper of the people was high, however, as indicated in dispatches from all over the country and in statements by Congressmen. In San Francisco, Lt. Gen. Delos C. Emmons, commander of the Western Defense Command, warned the public not to attempt retaliations against Japanese-Americans. At the proper time, he promised, “unremitting justice will be meted out to the Japanese who have been guilty of these dastardly and cowardly acts.”
Asks personal punishment
In the Senate, acting Republican Leader Wallace H. White Jr. (R-ME) said he hoped vengeance would be “visited not alone on the Japanese Army but on the authorities and the people of Japan.”
Senate Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) declared:
Retribution will be meted out to these brutes, these uncivilized pigs in the form of men. We will be satisfied with nothing less than personal punishment for those in Japan who have been guilty ever since Pearl Harbor of these unspeakable atrocities.
Hits scrap shipments
Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) criticized the administration for failure to stop scrap iron shipments to Japan in 1937, but agreed that “Japan should be wiped off the face of the earth.”
Meanwhile, officials concerned with procuring the tools of battle recalled the spurt in wear production and the marked drop in absenteeism which followed disclosure that the Jap government – in its first bloody break with civilized conventions since Pearl Harbor – had executed some of the Tokyo raiders. They felt that the new disclosures might have a similar but greater effect.
Sees greater production
Cdr. Samuel J. Singer, acting chief of the Navy’s Industrial Incentive division, said that:
Everyone in America is shocked and incensed by this latest revelation of Japanese barbarism, and it can be assumed that this anger will be translated into even greater production efforts.
Joseph C. Grew, former Ambassador to Japan, said Americans will “want to fight this war on the home front with grimmer determination than ever before.”
Knowledge of what Secretary of State Cordell Hull called the “unthinkable tortures” inflicted on defenseless American and Filipino war prisoners was also expected to have its effect at the fighting fronts.
Bismarck battle cited
In military circles, it was freely predicted that there would be more “revenge operations” like that of the Bismarck Sea battle in which U.S. fliers destroyed 22 Jap ships and killed upwards of 15,000 Japs.
In that battle, Jap airmen made the fatal mistake of machine-gunning parachuting U.S. fliers. The Americans retaliated by sinking every ship in the enemy convoy and by strafing Jap troops struggling in the water. Not a Jap escaped.
Another way in which the atrocity report may have its effect at the front was suggested by a War Department officer.
Won’t surrender
He said:
From now on, nobody will let himself be captured by the Japs. He will shoot it out, no matter what the odds are.
One thing was certain – the Japs have contributed irrefutable evidence against themselves in the war criminal trials which will follow the war. Secretary of State Cordell Hull disclosed yesterday that this government is methodically collecting information which will assure punishment of those guilty of the atrocities.
This data, as it is compiled by the War, Navy and State Departments, will be transmitted to the United Nations commission for investigation of war crimes, sitting in London, the American representative of which is Herbert C. Pell.
Fate of captives uncertain
Active in collating such evidence on this side will be the State Department’s Far Eastern Division headed by Joseph W. Ballantine and the legal adviser to the Secretary of State, Green H. Hackworth.
Meanwhile, the fate of American fighting men still in Jap ear prisons remained uncertain. As of Nov. 30, these prisoners numbered at least 18,200, according to official estimates made before revelation of the deaths disclosed by the atrocity report. This total did not take into account the fact that some of the 5,000 soldiers listed as missing in the war with Japan may be captives.
Protests futile
Mr. Early disclosed yesterday that this government no longer had any hope of getting relief supplies to Americans in Jap prison camps, and Mr. Hull reported that American protests against Jap conduct had failed to produce satisfaction.
Mr. Hull also disclosed that attempts to arrange a third exchange of Jap and American civilian internees – like the two thus far carried out aboard the Swedish liner Gripsholm - have thus far proved futile.
He added, however, that this government, at least, would keep on trying.
Japs ridicule atrocity story
By the United Press
A Jap radio spokesman today ridiculed charged that Allied prisoners of war have been mistreated by Japan and taunted sarcastically, “Why don’t they teach their men to stand up and fight to the finish?”
He said, in a Tokyo radio broadcast record by the United Press in London:
The way Americans threw up their hands at Corregidor, the way the British gave up at Singapore – on the heels of loud-mouthed assertions that they would fight to the finish – surely shows that these men must have carried on their backs a pretty wide streak of yellow.
He added that Americans and British “can’t take it.”
Ridiculous stories
He ridiculed the atrocity stories as:
…the final propaganda measure to which the enemy is forced to resort, due to the lack of any other favorable propaganda which they can dish up to their publics.
He charged that Jap women and children caught in the United States at the outbreak of the war were “fed only bread And water for days on end,” and that U.S. troops evacuating Davao in the Philippine campaign “lined up the Japanese residents including women and children and mowed them down with machine-gun fire.”
Allege Allied brutality
The first Jap reaction came last night when the Jap Dōmei News Agency described the atrocity charges as mere “vicious propaganda” and “not worth paying attention to.”
In a wireless dispatch for American consumption, Dōmei said the charges were actually designed to “cover up” United Nations “brutality.”
Jap military quarters, Dōmei said:
…marvel at the Anglo-American audacity to make such groundless accusations after the cold-blooded butcherings of our wounded soldiers by enemy troops at Guadalcanal.
The broadcast, recorded by U.S. government monitors, also reiterated charges that the Allies had “brutal assaults on our helpless hospital ships.”
A Tokyo radio broadcast quoted Jap Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu as telling his people in a nationwide broadcast that “if the enemy did not change his inhuman tactics” in sinking hospital ships, “Japan was preparing retaliatory measures.”
Japs don’t hear charges
Dōmei said the Japs will:
…not be surprised to see another recurrence of similar Anglo-American vicious accusations in the future whenever the enemy cares to resort to inhuman attacks, which are quite to be expected.
Government monitors reported they heard no mention of the Allied charges on any Tokyo broadcast to the Japanese people.
Earlier, the Tokyo radio beamed to the United States a talk entitled “Friendship in Wartime” in which a propagandist bemoaned the “misunderstanding” of Japan.
Political repercussion seen over atrocities
Washington (UP) –
Rep. Gerald W. Landis (R-IN) believes the report of Jap atrocities will have an effect on domestic politics.
He predicted yesterday that President Roosevelt “will not run for a fourth term because of the exposure of the Japanese atrocities on the men of Bataan.”
He charged:
Mr. Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins are directly responsible for not getting supplies to Gen. Douglas MacArthur that would have saved those men.
