America at war! (1941–) – Part 3

[NormanStewart]

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Italy – (by wireless)
The several Air Force units I’ve been with lately are lousy with Hoosiers. I thought I’d take down their names and put them in the column, but the list got so long I realized it would sound like discrimination and the 47 other states might get mad at me.

So I decided to compromise and name only one. He is Lt. James F. Short of Clinton, Indiana. He has been in the Army four years, and was a sergeant up until he got his commission a year ago. He calls himself “one of the 90-day wonders.” He’s only 22, and he is the assistant operations officer of his squadron.

The reason I picked Lt. Short out of all the Hoosiers is that he was born and raised five miles from that proud metropolis from which I sprang – Dana, Indiana.

Compass is enlarged

One afternoon on our field we had an exciting half hour. We had two full groups of dive bombers on the field plus a menagerie of night fighters, day fighters, photo planes, light bombers and cargo ships. We were all standing out waiting for our squadron to come back from a mission, when lo and behold the entire caboodle came back at once. It was the damndest melee in the sky you ever saw. It was as though somebody had broken open a hornet’s nest.

One group of dive bombers approached the field from one direction, and the other from the opposite, at exactly the same time. They both came over the field at about 400 feet, and when they met at mid-runway, they all chandelled off in a thousand directions.

Before that I had thought there were only 360 points on the compass, but now we all know better. Planes were going in at least three times that many directions.

And three to come

Of course, everybody knew what he was doing and it was actually well regulated, but it looked like a madhouse even to other pilots on the ground. Our squadron leader stood there putting on an act of alternately tearing his hair and hiding his face.

In the midst of all this confusion, a Flying Fortress flew over the field and we saw white parachutes begin to spring out behind it. At first, we thought they must be having a practice jump, but you don’t make practice jumps over a frontline. The plane was in trouble.

One by one these scores of dive bombers got themselves successfully landed, and in the meantime seven parachutes had come out of the Fortress. That meant three still inside, and she was still flying.

Finally, the air was clear and the Fortress approached for a landing. The entire complement of the field, several thousand men were standing on top of anything they could find to see the excitement, and the ambulance and firetrucks were all ready. As the Fort approached the field, we could see that the bomb-bay doors were still open.

A bomber is bombed

The big plane touched the runway as softly as down, rolled straight in and through and gradually came to a stop, and we all heaved sighs of relief. The fliers on the ground began acting comically exaggerated scenes of how the ambulance drivers’ faces would fall as they’d reach over in disgust and turn off their switches.

A little later we went around and got the story on the Fortress. One of those unbelievable things had happened that sometimes occur in the best regulated wars. A fellow Flying Fortress had dropped its bombs on this one in midair.

Fortunately, they were only carrying 25-pound fragmentation bombs that day instead of large ones. A couple of these bombs had blown the left wing full of great jagged holes, had knocked out one engine and the radio, and jammed the bomb-bay doors.

One bomb stays alive

But that’s the mildest part of the story. The payoff was that one bomb hadn’t gone off and was still lodged inside the Fortress’ wing, liable to explode at any moment and blow the wing clear off.

When we finally left the plane was roped off, the field engineering officer had got a tall stepladder, had climbed up to the wing, and had been standing there on the stepladder for an hour looking down at the bomb and wondering why he ever chose to be an engineer anyway.

Later that evening some of our pilots and I went to a neighboring field to see some friends. They were complaining about the traffic on their field and said they believed they’d bring their 50 planes over to our field. At which we all howled and said:

Sure, come on over. In the confusion over there you wouldn’t even be noticed.

[NormanStewart]

Pegler: Fourth term

By Westbrook Pegler

New York –
A fourth term for President Roosevelt would just about finish off the form of government under which we lived when he took office in 1933, but even though the men and women in the services undoubtedly would give him a big bulge over Tom Dewey in the autumn election, I say Congress had better find some way to let them have their say.

In thus nominating Governor Dewey, I am anticipating the Republican Convention, but I suppose nobody is going to dispute me.

Congress had better find a way to let these people vote because they would be awful sore at Congress if not, and in the event that Dewey were elected by a strict home-guard vote, he would take office under a handicap of resentment and suspicion in the fighting forces and his authority and prestige as Commander-in-Chief would be badly impaired.

There is some dissatisfaction with the conduct of the home-guard already, mostly because of the strikes.

This annoyance should be directed against Mr. Roosevelt himself, because he is ultimately responsible and the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Merchantmen, WACs and WAVES undoubtedly know it in a subconscious way.

Lewis also blamed

However, in their immediate view, John L. Lewis was the devil in the coal strike and old Green and Murray and the racketeering Fays and de Lorenzos are responsible for the five thousand and odd walkouts since Pearl Harbor.

Most of these people grew up under President Roosevelt. A fellow of say 25 years fighting in Italy or the South Pacific was only a leggedy, bucktoothed kid when Mr. Big walked in and had no mature appreciation of the nature of the American system.

He has no perspective on the changes toward fascism wrought in those 12 years and he is going to feel that he has been gypped of a very important and precious right if he doesn’t get a chance to vote.

Moreover, in addition to the other advantages which Mr. Roosevelt enjoys with this great block of voters, he now appears before them as their champion against a lot of no-good Republicans whose very sincere and valid arguments on the question of states’ rights will seem mean and tricky and inspired by no other consideration than low politics.

A handicap for Dewey

And just as Hitler and Mussolini raised a generation in their own beliefs, the younger Americans whose whole conscious or intelligent life has been spent under the influence of the New Deal were taught not to be fastidious about strict observance of the Constitution and the laws of their own country, the less so when strict observance would subject them to a plain injustice and leave the election of the next President to civilians who have made little or no sacrifice and felt no physical pain.

This will be an awful handicap to Dewey even if he should hop up in Albany this very day with a loud declaration in favor of letting the fighters vote the federal ballot at least.

They all know Mr. Roosevelt.

He has shaped their lives to a great extent, he is their C-in-C and a gaudy showman and they will be more afraid of a change of command in a war which, in the military way and in the matter of production at home, has been going amazingly well, than of changes in their form of government and the status of the civilian under government at home.

They don’t know Dewey, they won’t be able to read his campaign speeches and he won’t be able to get around among them to stand inspection, so the choice in their minds is bound to be one between Mr. Big and Mr. Who.

Like the Democratic National Committee, I am anticipating the Democratic Convention in nominating Mr. Roosevelt for a fourth term and assuming he will run, and for like reasons.

If Mr. Roosevelt doesn’t accept the nomination, he will defeat his own party because there just isn’t any other Democrat who could like Dewey.

And if Dewey, the best vote-getter the Republicans have, should refuse to run, he would be throwing down his party and millions of people who really believe in him and regard him as the only hope of saving what is left of constitutional government under law and restoring some of that which was done away with in the adolescent days of the generation which is now fighting the war.

[NormanStewart]

Clapper: Sailors talk

By Raymond Clapper

Aboard an LST – (by wireless)
We came aboard this LST from a small naval craft which brought us out to a rendezvous at sea.

The captain of the small craft was Ens. David Chase of West Haven, Connecticut. He used to be a high school teacher and he has been in the Navy only 15 months. He has a most interesting crew.

A few minutes after we were underway, they began to gather around to talk, as happens everywhere when a stranger from home appears.

We talked of strikes and presidential politics, the only two public-affairs subjects that get into conversations out here, where everyone is absorbed in his duties and at other times is reading or wondering when he’ll get home.

These men, as most others out here, favor Roosevelt, but not in any blind or slavish fashion. Aubrey Gibson of Waco, Texas, said that if Roosevelt would do more about strikes and inflation, he would get more votes. He said a majority of the crew of this craft were for Roosevelt, with Willkie and Dewey the first and second Republican choices.

Men concerned about strikes

But the men are more concerned about strikes than politics.

That is where they always begin to show heat whereas the presidential campaign seems remote to them.

John L. Lewis has become a symbol for bitterness among servicemen here, the same as I found him to be in Africa and England last summer. His name is used as a symbol for all the union leaders who put strikes above war production.

Remember, these were not normally anti-labor men I was talking with, but the run of the crew – farm boys and workmen, some of them union members.

There were three union men in the group I chatted with while going out to board this LST. Robert Loma of Lorain, Ohio, was a CIO welder at the American Bridge Company plant in Lorain. He said:

I think what John Lewis is doing is close to treason. I don’t see how he gets away with it.

Pro-Roosevelt and anti-strike

Another was a member of the Typographical Union but did not wish to be identified, as he worked in a non-union shop. He said he would like to see the government take over the railroads in order to end strike threats.

He said:

We have to have unions. We can’t let the big corporations run things. But I’m against strikes.

There was more about John Lewis from James C. Jones of Houston, Texas, of the AFL Iron Workers in the shipyards. He said he was sure Roosevelt was the man for the place – speaking of the 1944 campaign. I asked him why the men felt that way. He said it was because Roosevelt was for the working man.

I don’t know how it would add up if I could take a complete canvass, but everything I have found thus far is pro-Roosevelt and anti-strike.

One of the crew, named Gibson, was in the Navy before the war, and when his enlistment ran out in 1940, he took a job in an aircraft factory on the West Coast. In a short time, a strike was pulled.

Gibson said:

I was disgusted, and I reenlisted in the Navy.

[NormanStewart]

Maj. de Seversky: Air invention and engineering burst restraints of military conservatism

By Maj. Alexander P. de Seversky

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[NormanStewart]

Jap guards put Filipino’s head on top of pole

Further horrors in prison camp told by U.S. Army captain

Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Capt. Samuel R. Grashio of Spokane, Washington, today added to the story of American soldiers who stumbled across Bataan under the lash of their Jap captors, then died of starvation and infection in a prison camp around which gleeful guards paraded with the head of a Filipino on the end of a pole.

Covered with lice and open sores, in agony from hunger and dysentery, the captured Americans watched their well-fed guards smoke American cigarettes from a “new-type package,” presumably sent by the Red Cross for the prisoners.

He told of the pluck of a 19-year-old member of the Air Force who died from the barbarism of his Jap captors.

Skeleton in skin

Capt. Grashio said:

He was a skeleton in skin lying by a garbage pit. Blowflies swarmed over countless sores on his body. They were eating him alive. I asked him if I could do anything for him.

He asked me to take him away somewhere so the other boys wouldn’t see him dying there like a rat.

The hero of Capot. Grashio’s story was Lt. Col. William Edwin Dyess of Albany, Texas, with whom he surrendered to the overwhelming Jap horde, and with whom he escaped. Col. Dyess was killed in the crash of a P-38 at Burbank, California, on Dec. 22.

Prodded, beaten

On April 9, 1942, Capt. Grashio said, he and Col. Dyess were captured by a tank-led Jap spearhead while trying to help enlisted men in their unit prepare a couple of boats to flee Bataan.

Dyess and I were ordered out of a car we had gotten into and herded over by the tanks.

They took all our personal things like rings and watches.

Jap enlisted men had a field day. They were under ordered not to treat officers as officers. We were prodded and beaten with gun butts and taunted. About three or four thousand of us were grouped together.

Describes death march

After we surrendered, the Japs grouped some of us around artillery objectives being shelled from Corregidor so that some of our men were killed by our own artillery.

The “death march” toward a prison camp started about 10:30 a.m. PHT, Capt. Grashio said.

He said:

We all prayed for death and cursed the day we surrendered. I am here today because I followed Dyess out. He is the greatest man of the war to me.

The Japs prodded us in relays so they wouldn’t get tired themselves. We got a little water out of a caribou wallow, but had no food.

Legless boy crawls

A Filipino boy with both legs off crawled along on his stomach and was finally abandoned. Many were on crutches.

We vomited as we walked along, always with the Japs shoving and beating us. We couldn’t stop to take care of ourselves, and we had to do that, too, as we walked and stumbled.

Once, Capt. Grashio said, a Jap soldier clubbed Col. Dyess into a ditch for no purpose at all, and he was forced to march on and leave him.

Hit in face

Capt. Grashio said:

At Hermosa a Jap hit me in the face for nothing and knocked my teeth out with a bamboo cane the size of a two-by-hour. In seven days, we got to San Fernando, but we still had no food. Pretty soon they gave us a little rice.

Occasionally American soldiers would go out of their mind and rush for a well. They were beaten back by clubs and guns.

Once a light Jap tank met us head-on. The driver purposely swerved the machine and ran over a soldier, crushing him into the road.

Stand for hours

At San Fernando, the Americans were forced to stand for hours in the hot rays of the sun. Then they were crowded into small freight cars and five hours later were pushed out at the village of Capris.

They marched the remaining nine miles to Camp O’Donnell.

He said:

We again got a few handfuls of rice. We couldn’t wash. I figured there were four or five thousand U.S. troops and seven or eight thousand Filipino soldiers there. I estimated that I saw 1,100 American and 14,000 Filipino soldiers buried.

Two Filipinos help Yanks to escape

Miami, Florida (UP) –
Two Filipino prisoners at the Davao Penal Colony assisted in the escape of three American officers on whose sworn statements the Army-Navy account of Jap prison camp atrocities was based, according to Philippine President Manuel Quezon.

Mr. Quezon said last night that when he heard what the two Filipinos had done, he granted them “absolute pardon” for the pre-war offenses which had occasioned their commitment to the Penal Colony by the Philippine government.

The American officers were the late Lt. Col. William E. Dyess, Cdr. Melvin H. McCoy, and Lt. Cdr. S. M. Mellnik. Whether the aides escaped, too, Quezon did not say. Nor did he disclose their names.

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Allied HQ, New Guinea (UP) –
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commenting on revelations of Jap atrocities against Allied war prisoners, said today “the stories speak for themselves.”

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Minneapolis, Minnesota (UP) –
Marine Maj. Michael Dobervich, 28, of Ironton, Minnesota, said today that he had received a vicious blow with a rifle butt when he was a Jap prisoner and that he knows “those atrocity stories are no baloney.” He is another of the few fighting men who escaped after being captured at Bataan with Lt. Col. W. E. Dyess.

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Davis explains delay in story

Says U.S. feared news would hit exchanges

Washington (UP) –
Director Elmer Davis of the Office of War Information disclosed today that the OWI wanted to “break” the Jap prison camp atrocity report long before the Army and Navy made it public.

But the report was held up, he added, for fear that its release would jeopardize further exchange of civilian internees between the United States and Japan. Efforts to arrange a third exchange apparently have broken down.

Got news in November

Mr. Davis said the OWI learned last November of the existence of an atrocity report made by the late Lt. Col. William E. Dyess, Cdr. Melvyn H. McCoy and Lt. Col. S. M. Mellnik after they escaped from a prison camp in the Philippines.

He said:

The OWI was hoping for a change in policy quite a while back. If the decision had rested with us, the story would have been out long before this.

Part withheld

It was learned from other sources that, for security reasons, a considerable portion of the accounts given by the three officers was withheld from the public. The withheld parts, it was said, dealt chiefly with their methods of escape.

It was also learned that the atrocity account might have been kept secret even longer had not the British decided to publish a comparable report yesterday.

Mr. Davis scoffed at any suggestion that the report’s release was timed to coincide with the Fourth War Loan Drive.

Americans in dark on fate of kin

Washington (UP) –
American kin of men who were taken prisoner by the Japs on Bataan and Corregidor are at the mercy of the enemy on the score of learning whether their captured relatives are still alive or have died in captivity.

The Army-Navy revelation of Jap atrocities said at least 5,200 Americans had died in two prison camps in the Philippines by October 1942, with another 2,500 in such condition that doctors were convinced they could not live long. But Japan has reported the names of only 1,555 Americans as having died in prison camps.

The American Red Cross expects a surge of anguished inquiries as a result of the Army-Navy revelation of torture, starvation and murder of American soldiers but, it said today, it has no means of obtaining the answers.

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Albuquerque, New Mexico (UP) –
Dr. V. H. Spensley, president of the Bataan Relief Organization and father of a soldier who died in a Jap prison camp, said today he doubted the “entire truth” of stories of enemy atrocities in the Philippines and asked if such “propaganda” is required to “sell war bonds.”

[NormanStewart]

In Washington –
Tax conferees agree to hold security levy

War contract adjustment to be debated today; yield increased

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GOP asks votes for all

Washington (UP) –
Senate Republicans were reported today to be studying the possibility of joining amendments proposed by two of their members as an alternative to the administration-supported “federal ballot” soldier-voting legislation.

The Iowa Legislature passed enabling legislation to permit servicemen and women to vote by absentee ballot in this year’s primary and general elections last night. Governor Burke B. Hickenlooper signed the measure a few minutes later.

The plan, as tentatively put forth, would combine the proposals introduced by Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH) and Senator Joseph H. Ball (R-MN) during the past week of debate.

The Taft proposal, offered as a substitute for the entire Lucas-Green “federal-ballot” bill, provides for absentee voting by state ballot and recommends that the various states amend their election laws so that all their soldiers and sailors would have a chance to vote by that method.

The Ball proposal would permit a federal ballot for residents of those states which failed to amend their election laws in such a method as to facilitate soldier voting.

[NormanStewart]

Radio Appeal by President Roosevelt for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis
January 29, 1944

Broadcast audio:

Ladies and gentlemen:

Tonight, on behalf of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, I wish to express heartfelt thanks to all of you who have contributed your dimes and your dollars to further the fight against a cruel disease – a disease which strikes primarily against little children.

The generous participation of the American people in this fight is a sign of the healthy condition of our nation. It is democracy in action. The unity of our people in helping those who are disabled, in protecting the welfare of our young, in preserving the eternal principle of kindliness – all of this is evidence of our fundamental strength – the strength with which we are meeting our enemies throughout the world.

Early in our history, we realized that the basic wealth of our land is in its healthy, enlightened children, trained to assume the responsibilities and enjoy the privileges of a democracy. The wellbeing of our youth is indeed our foremost concern – their health and happiness our enduring responsibility. If any become handicapped from any cause, we are determined that they shall be properly cared for and guided to full and useful lives.

How different it is in the lands of our enemies! In Germany and Japan, those who are handicapped in body or mind are regarded as unnecessary burdens to the state. There, an individual’s usefulness is measured solely by the direct contribution that he can make to the war machine – not by his service to a society at peace.

The dread disease that we battle at home, like the enemy we oppose abroad, shows no concern, no pity for the young. It strikes – with its most frequent and devastating force – against children. And that is why much of the future strength of America depends upon the success that we achieve in combatting this disease.

The dollars and dimes you contribute are the victory bonds that buy the ammunition for this fight against disease – just as the war bonds you purchase help to finance the fight against tyranny.

Tonight, I am happy to receive the report that your generous aid has made possible another year of progress against this dread malady. We are prepared to fight it with the planned strategy of a military campaign – not only because the enemy is a merciless and insidious one, but because the danger of epidemic in wartime makes this fight an actual military necessity.

The tireless men and women working night and day over test tubes and microscopes – searching for drugs and serums, for methods that will prevent and cure – these are the workers on the production line in this war against disease. The gallant chapter workers, the doctors and nurses in our hospitals, the public health officials, the volunteers who go into epidemic areas to help the physician – these are the frontline fighters.

And just as in war – there is that subtle weapon that, more than anything else, spells victory or defeat. That weapon is morale – the morale of a people who know that they are fighting “the good fight” – that they are keeping the faith – the only faith through which civilization can survive – the faith that man must live to help and not to destroy his fellowmen.

We are engaged now in the Fourth War Bond campaign. The outpouring of American dollars in this campaign will assure that superiority of fighting equipment with which we shall blast our way to Berlin and Tokyo. It will also serve notice that we Americans are irrevocably united in determination to end this war as quickly as possible in the unconditional surrender of our enemies. Every one of us has a chance too to participate in victory by buying war bonds.

Tonight, in the midst of a terrible war against tyranny and savagery, it is not easy for us to celebrate. There cannot be much happiness in our hearts as we contemplate the kind of enemies we face and the very grimness of the task that lies before us.

But we may thank God that here in our country we are keeping alive the spirit of good will toward one another – that spirit which is the very essence of the cause for which we fight. God speed the spirit of good will.

[NormanStewart]

EXECUTIVE ORDER 9418
Authorizing the War Food Administration to Place Orders With Other Agencies for Materials or Services to Be Obtained by Contract or Otherwise

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 29, 1944

By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the Statutes of the United States, particularly by Title I of the First War Powers Act, 1941, as President of the United States and as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, it is hereby ordered as follows:

The functions, powers, and duties, with respect to placing orders for materials, supplies, equipment, work, or services, of any kind that any requisitioned Federal agency may be in a position to supply, or to render or to obtain by contract, which are vested in the War Department, Navy Department, Treasury Department, Civil Aeronautics Administration, and the Maritime Commission under Section 7 (a) of the Act of May 21, 1920 (41 Stat. 613), as amended by Section 601 of the Act of June 30, 1932 (47 Stat. 417), and the Act of July 20, 1942 (56 Stat. 661, 31 U.S.C., 686) may be exercised also by the War Food Administration, and by any constituent agency or corporation thereof designated by the War Food Administrator. Any provision of any executive order or proclamation conflicting with this order is superseded to the extent of such conflict.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 29, 1944

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (January 30, 1944)

Rosenberg: Das gefährliche Bespiel

Von Alfred Rosenberg

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[NormanStewart]

Nervenkrieg gegen die Iberische Halbinsel –
England und USA wollen Bolschewismus in Spanien

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[NormanStewart]

Mit dem Zusammenbruch auf den Philippinen fing es an –
Milliardenrausch der Versicherer in USA

Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung

vb. Stockholm, 29. Jänner –
Nicht nur die amerikanische Schwer- und Rüstungsindustrie scheffelt in Roosevelts Krieg die Dollar milliardenweise, auch das Versicherungskapital wirft Zinsen ab wie noch nie. Das ist die Schlußfolgerung des Jahresberichtes der amerikanischen Versicherungsgesellschaften, der jetzt veröffentlicht worden ist.

Die schwedische Zeitung Stockholms Tidningen gibt in einem Bericht aus Neuyork ein ungefähres Bild von dem Rausch, der zurzeit durch die Büros der großen amerikanischen Versicherungshäuser geht. Auf über rund 10 Milliarden Dollar belaufen sich die Beträge, über die allein von Angehörigen der amerikanischen Wehrmacht Versicherungen abgeschlossen wurden, ganz abgesehen von den vielartigen Versicherungsgeschäften auch auf zivilen Gebieten. 90 Prozent der Mannschaften und 98 Prozent der Offiziere hätten sich versichern lassen, dabei seien Abschlüsse über 100.000 Dollar durchaus nichts Ungewöhnliches.

Echt amerikanisch wirkt vor allem eine Schilderung über die geschäftlichen Begleitumstände des Zusammenbruches der Yankees auf den Philippinen. Bisher hat Roosevelt zwar energisch bestreiten lassen, daß bei der Kapitulation der von MacArthur schmählich im Stich gelassenen US-Armee auf den Inseln 30.000 Mann in japanische Gefangenschaft gerieten. Durch die Versicherungsgesellschaften erfährt jetzt das amerikanische Volk die Wahrheit dieser Tatsache. So heißt es in dem schwedischen Blatt wörtlich:

Erst jetzt wird zugegeben daß die Funkverbindung von den Philippinen in den letzten historischen Tagen von Bataan so gut wie ausschließlich für die Vermittlung von Lebensversicherungsgesuchen für die auf der Halbinsel eingeschlossenen Truppen reserviert war. Rund 30.000 Versicherungen dieser Art wurden in Washington gebucht.

Selbstverständlich wurde dieses Geschäft für die Versicherungsgesellschaften zu einem ungemein ergiebigen Fischzug. Es liegt auf der Hand, daß in diesem Falle ungewöhnlich hohe Risikoprämien gezahlt werden mußten, da die Lebensgefahr der Versicherungsnehmer als sehr hoch eingeschätzt werden konnte. Aber die Versicherungsjuden hatten die richtigen Riecher. Sie sahen voraus, daß der von ihren Rassengenossen in den Zeitungen besungene „heroische Widerstand“ nicht bis zum Letzten getrieben wurde, sondern daß, da nichts mehr zu retten war, die Yankees die Kapitulation als Ausweg aus ihrer hoffnungslosen Lage wählen würden. Und sie behielten recht. Auf diese Weise wurden die 30.000 Versicherungen, die zum großen feil en bloc abgeschlossen wurden, nicht fällig und die Versicherungsgesellschaften heimsten ihre Wucherpreise ein.

Diese Enthüllungen zeigen den von Roosevelt entfesselten Krieg in einem neuen Licht, das auch die viel erörterte Frage der zweiten Front berührt. Die Rüstungsindustrie und die von ihr bezahlten Blätter verlangen dieses Unternehmen ja schon seit langem, denn erhöhter Materialverschleiß garantiert ihnen erhöhten Gewinn. Das Versicherungskapital seinerseits ist daran interessiert, daß sich die blutigen Verluste der Yankees in Grenzen halten. Das Leben des einzelnen amerikanischen Soldaten als solches spielt für sie dabei natürlich keine Rolle, ist vielmehr für die Rüstungs- wie für die Versicherungshyänen lediglich von Geschäftsinteresse. Die einzige Frage ist, ob sich die Yankees lebend oder tot besser für die Geschäftsmänner des Krieges verzinsen.

Ein neuer Plan der Plutokraten –
Deutschland ohne Handelsflotte

tc. Lissabon, 29. Jänner –
Außer der Luftfahrt müsse der Achse nach dem Krieg auch jede überseeschifffahrt untersagt werden, forderte der Leiter der US-Schiffahrtskommission, Admiral Land, in einem Bericht an den Kongreß.

Ein Teil der nach dem Krieg überschüssigen Tonnage soll für den Außenhandel Deutschlands und Japans eingesetzt werden. Damit soll gleichzeitig verhindert werden, daß diese Länder sich in absehbarer Zeit wieder eine eigene Handelsflotte zulegen. Man müsse der Achse die Daumenschrauben anlegen und sie auf Jahre hinaus in diesen Fesseln halten.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 30, 1944)

1,500 U.S. planes blast Frankfurt, drop 1,800 tons, down 102 Nazis

44 U.S. aircraft lost; RAF renews fires in devastated Berlin
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer

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[NormanStewart]

Birthday appeal –
Roosevelt asks bonds to blast Berlin, Tokyo

President deplores Axis attitude on handicapped

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[NormanStewart]

Paving the way –
Pre-invasion attacks begun

Parachutes drop picked men in Hitler’s fortress
By John R. Parris, United Press staff writer

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[NormanStewart]

From house to house –
Battle raging on Rome plain

British take vital bridge 20 miles from city
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer

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[NormanStewart]

Pacific attacks continue –
23 Jap planes, 3 ships blasted by U.S. fliers

Six U.S. aircraft lost in raid on Rabaul; vessels in convoy set afire

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[NormanStewart]

More atrocities revealed –
Covit: Playful Jap amputates arm of Yank prisoner

Manila internee says another U.S. soldier was clubbed in back with rifle butt when he stumbled in hot sun
By Bernard Covit, United Press staff writer

Revelation on the Army and Navy of Jap atrocities against U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war has enabled Bernard Covit, former member of the United Press Manila staff who was interned by the Japs, to write about atrocities which came to his attention while he was awaiting repatriation.

New York –
Disclosure of the Jap atrocities to our American and Filipino last-ditch fighters on Bataan and Corregidor, horrible as it is to every civilized person, came almost as a relief to those of us who had borne the knowledge as an awful, secret burden when we returned to the United States aboard the exchange liner Gripsholm.

Reports of the treatment of our soldiers seeped past the barbed-wire fences of our civilian internment camp at Santo Tomas. Our own conditions were far from good, but the knowledge of what was going on at Cabanatuan, 60 miles from Manila, made us almost ashamed of our comparative good fortune.

Many of those in our civilian camp on the University of Santo Tomas campus were relatives and friends of the unhappy men penned like beasts at Cabanatuan and Camp O’Donnell.

Hear of death march

We learned, of course, of the “march of death” – how the miserable, weakened men wee marched into Manila, the stragglers shot and bayonetted. It wrung our hearts to learn that some of the men – some 5,000 or 6,000 – had been marched all the way up to Cabanatuan and housed without bedding on dirt or plank floors, and without what is all-important in the Philippines, mosquito nets to keep off the malaria-spreading insects.

This is the story of a friend of mine – a lieutenant at Cabanatuan:

We are being worked 10 to 12 hours a day. It isn’t so much the work a it is being out under the hot, tropical sun of the Philippines all the time.

Lack hats

Many of the boys have worn out their shoes, pants and shirts. A real hardship is the lack of hats to shade us.

My job is hoeing a long line of vegetables. My back is in pretty bad shape from bending over, but many of the men are suffering worse than I am.

There is practically no medicine at all, and a majority of us are suffering from dysentery and many have malaria badly.

Half die

In my group there were originally about 1,000 men. Today there are a little less than 500 left, most of them having died from malaria and dysentery.

I hate to think of the dozens who have been beaten, mutilated and tortured to death.

I was out in the field yesterday when one of my friends, a sergeant tumbled over as he worked. The poor chap had been wounded on Bataan. He had a badly-infected shoulder and the sun was too much for him.

A Jap guard approached and whacked the butt end of his rifle into the sergeant’s back. I heard a terrible crunching sound and when I ran forward to intervene, I received a backhand blow across the face that sent me sprawling.

Jap lops off arm

Last week one of the men lost his arm from the elbow down when he was so unfortunate as to trip and fall out of line as we were marching back the five miles to camp. A Jap guard playfully made a pass at him with his razor-sharp bayonet and severed his arm. It was lucky one of our men there knew how to take care of him, applying a tourniquet and binding the arm.

There have been dozens of such cases here in camp. The food we receive is usually some rice and mango beans. Once in a great while we are given a banana. Our sole drink is tea or water, which we boil.

Another lieutenant, a medical officer, supplies a list of names of Americans in the camp who had been civilians in the Philippines before the attack on Dec. 8, 1941, and who had volunteered in the Armed Forces. This list was of great interest to those in Santo Tomas because they were in many cases close friends or relatives.

Of 20 names, 10 had died in Cabanatuan. Six had succumbed to malaria, two to dysentery and two of wound infections. Of the 10 remaining alive, three were mutilated.

Beriberi, a malnutrition disease which swells the victims; joints, arms and legs grotesquely, was rife in the camp. When these swellings are lanced, the stench is terrible. In the cramped quarters of the prison camp the well grew almost to hate the ill because of this unpleasantness.

Like punch drunk

My informant told how imprisonment had begun to affect the men’s minds:

The boys walked around as if they were punch drunk. They are absentminded and vacant-eyed. You have to call them several times before they know they are addressed.

Many of them live in a world of their own. At night they babble about home and loved ones in the States [this was a year and a half after the fall of Manila].

It is heartbreaking to hear the boys muttering in their sleep. There have been a few violent cases and the Japs have taken them away. What has been done with them, we have no idea. None has ever returned to the camp.

We learned of a number of attempts at escape from the military camps. Im March 1942, two Australians and a Britisher attempted to escape from our own civilian internment at Santo Tomas. They were beaten and lugged to a narrow out in the cemetery. They were compelled to stand in the pit, knee deep and then the Japs discharged their pistols into them. Some of the officials of our camp who had gone to the cemetery with the men to ease their last moments saw them shot.

The guards did not have shovels but merely kicked dirt over the bodies with their boots. As the group turned away, one of the figures in the grave stirred. A Jap guard turned and poured several more shots into him.

‘Please tell my wife’

The Britisher, a mate on a merchant ship which had been caught in Manila Bay, turned to the internment camp officials just before he died and said: “Please tell my wife.” He had married an English girl two weeks before he sailed for the Far East.

One of the witnesses told me:

It was terrible. The men had no ides until they saw the grave that they were to be killed.

The court martial which had pronounced this barbaric sentence had held its proceedings without the presence of the accused. The death sentence for civilians attempting to escape internment is of course in complete contravention of international law.

Even the commandant of Jap gendarmes, Lt. Tomayusu, was shocked. Removing his uniform to humble himself he went in old slacks and bedroom slippers to army headquarters to plead with the military that the death sentence be remanded. He was paid no heed.

It is my observation that whenever the attention of the world has been called to Jap atrocities, there has been some effort on the part of Jap authorities to mitigate their brutality.

MacArthur ready to avenge heroes

Denver, Colorado (UP) – (Jan. 29)
Senator A. B. Chandler (D-KY) said today that Gen. Douglas MacArthur, fully aware of the Jap atrocities, is determined to avenge each and every one of them.

Senator Chandler, who made a tour of war fronts last fall, said:

Gen. MacArthur told me of the atrocities. He is intensely determined to avenge each hero’s death.

Senator Chandler is in Denver to attend a mining conference. Asked about the atrocities, he recalled previous stories of Gen. MacArthur’s Doomsday Book.

In this book, he said, Gen. MacArthur is keeping a list of each atrocity as it is reported to him, with the names of hundreds of men who have been subjected to him.

Some of his information was obtained from diaries taken from dead Japs, and these diaries confirmed the reports of the atrocities, Senator Chandler said.

The diaries told of operations which Jap physicians performed on American soldiers without the use of anesthetics, “to see how white men would react to torture.”

They also told of one American officer being smothered to death under the heel of a Jap soldier, when he did not revolt at the task of cleaning a cattle field.

Senator Chandler said:

These stories should make us want to go ahead, full speed, in our war with Japan. I have been demanding that we speed up the fight against Japan for two years.

Kirkpatrick: British join in cry against Jap ‘apes’

By Helen Kirkpatrick

London, England –
Britain has reacted with the same horror and loathing which characterized the American reception of reports on the Japanese treatment of prisoners – reports which will do more than any other one thing to impress the British with the greatness of the menace which Japan represents to the civilized world.

As the London *Daily Express” says:

If there lingered in any man’s mind a thread of doubt that Britain would throw the whole terrible weight of her military power against the Japanese the day Hitler is dead and done for, it must snap now, today, on reading what Anthony Eden said to the House of Commons. The bestiality of our other enemy commands the full hatred of all Englishmen. The sword must retrieve our honor as a nation… his honor is the honor of apes, his code is the code of the drooling lunatic.

The Daily Mail says:

The Japanese have proved themselves a subhuman race. It is in that regard that they must in the future be treated. There can be no place for them after this war in the concourse of civilized nations, in the common relations of human beings. Let us resolve to outlaw them.

[NormanStewart]

‘Drums of death beating’ –
No-quarter war on Japs to result from atrocities

Enemy accused of using hospital insignia on ships to ward off air attacks

Washington (UP) – (Jan. 29)
The Army and Navy Journal suggested today that the Japs may be using hospital insignia to ward off U.S. aerial blows against their steadily shrinking merchant fleet.

The Journal’s suggestion, following exposure by the Army and Navy of Jap atrocities against American and Filipino war prisoners, was in reply to enemy threats of retaliation for alleged sinking of hospital ships by U.S. airmen. The Journal’s attitude was the Japs may be making a belated effort “to conciliate world opinion.”

Meanwhile, military observers here agreed that from now on it will be a no-surrender, no-quarter war against the Japs. The Army-Navy story of Japan’s mass murder of more than 7,700 American and 14,000 Filipino heroes of Bataan and Corregidor makes any other kind of war impossible, they felt.

Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH), whose son, Lt. (jg.) Henry Styles Bridges, is on a warship in the South Pacific, said:

They’ve demanded a no-quarter war, and icy American wrath will give it to them. The drums of death are beating in American hearts tonight.

Senator Dennis Chavez (D-NM), from whose state went thousands of young men who were killed or captured in the Philippines, called for “complete, total, absolute destruction of Jap military power.” Senator Chavez said, “From now on, it is no quarter.”

There were indications, too, that home front endeavors against the Japs would be intensified as a result of the atrocity disclosures. Dispatches from all over the country showed War Bond sales soaring.

The futility of expecting civilized conduct by Japan toward war prisoners was summed up in Los Angeles by Capt. Samuel R. Grashio of Spokane, Washington, who escaped from an enemy prison camp with a few other survivors of Bataan and Corregidor: “We all prayed for death and cursed the day we surrendered.”

Want to kill more Japs

A War Department observer here had this to say about the attitude of American fighting men toward their enemy in the Pacific:

We see a lot of soldiers who have come back from Europe and the Pacific. The boys from Europe speak impersonally of the enemy. Those from the Pacific do not. They all want to go back and kill more Japs.

Their motive is revenge. What they have seen makes them hate the Japs personally. They know all about the Japs. They enjoy killing them.

‘No-quarter war’

At the Navy Department, an observer put it this way:

It is a knockdown, drag-out, no-quarter war. You can’t fight Japs any other way. There are no cases on record of any American actually giving up to the Japs since Bataan and Corregidor – and those boys couldn’t help themselves; they were smothered.

If you have been reading the communiqués, you will notice that for some time now neither side has exhibited any great eagerness to take prisoners. Our men feel that not even a dead Jap is a good Jap, but that he is better that way than alive.

This was the attitude of the men who fight. The attitude of civilians was expressed by Congressional demands for “vengeance,” “retribution,” “justice.” Editorials from all over the country spoke of the Japs as “animals who sometimes stand erect,” given to the “congenital bestiality of a subhuman breed,” fit only in the words of the Army and Navy Register, to “be treated as common outlaws.”

The Army and Navy Journal’s view on the Jap hospital ship charges was that:

Insofar as the Japs are concerned, we may infer it was perhaps with some dim notion that it is desirable to conciliate world opinion that they advanced the claim that the action to be taken by them is in retaliation for such acts by our forces.

Probably the truth is their merchantmen losses have become so stupendous, as a result of the hunting of our planes and submarines, and so serious in the effect upon their war effort and standard of living, that they are hopeful of saving tonnage, perhaps by misuse of the International Red Cross code.

The Journal, warning the Japs that their conduct “will bring to them a harvest of heartache and bodily pain,” proposed an International Red Cross investigation into the hospital ship charges, and added:

There could be only one result from such a probe, the fact that American fliers do not attack hospital ships and that such a practice is one of the Japanese methods of conducting war.

[NormanStewart]

Tire rations to be placed on new basis

OPA reclassifies drivers; only ‘essential’ ones get new rubber

…

[NormanStewart]

Truman urged by Kane to run with President

War program investigator is outstanding, says commissioner
By Kermit McFarland

County Commissioner John J. Kane yesterday advocated the nomination of Senator Harry S. Truman (D-MO) as the Democratic candidate for Vice President.

Mr. Kane said he thought it could be assumed that President Roosevelt would be renominated for a fourth term and that the principal job of the nominating convention which will meet in Chicago in June will the selection of a candidate for Vice President.

Vice President Henry A. Wallace apparently will not be slated on the 1944 Democratic ticket.

Outstanding service

Mr. Kane said:

Senator Truman, as chairman of the committee investigating the national defense program, has performed an outstanding war service.

I do not know whether Senator Truman has even been thinking of this idea, but he certainly deserves consideration for the nomination.

He and his committee have done a first-class job of seeing that the men in the Armed Forces, who are doing the fighting, get the kind of materials and equipment they need.

State meeting Friday

Mr. Kane’s suggestion, so far as is known here, is the first linking the Missouri Senator’s name with the vice-presidential nomination. Previously, Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-TX) of the House of Representatives and War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes have been the most prominently mentioned possibilities.

Meanwhile, the Democratic State Committee prepared to meet Friday in Harrisburg to complete a slate of candidates for state offices.

Mr. Kane is backing federal judge Charles Alvin Jones of Edgeworth – the 1938 Democratic nominee for Governor – for the Supreme Court nomination. Another federal judge, Guy K. Bard of Lancaster County, has also been proposed.

Guffey backing Black

If U.S. Senator Joseph F. Guffey is unsuccessful in his efforts to slate Ramsay S. Black of Harrisburg, third Assistant Postmaster General, for the U.S. Senate nomination, the candidate will probably come from Philadelphia.

Congressman Michael J. Bradley and former Congressman James F. McGranery are avowed candidates.

Auditor General F. Clair Ross of Butler is a potential candidate for one of the two Superior Court nominations. Superior Court Judge Chester Rhodes of Stroudsburg, the only Democrat on either appellate bench, will be slated for a second 10-year term.

Democratic leaders virtually have agreed on State Treasurer G. Harold Wagner of Wilkes-Barre to succeed Mr. Ross as Auditor General. Under the Pennsylvania Constitution, neither the State Treasurer nor the Auditor General may succeed himself.

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Senator Byrd reopens feud with Guffey

Pennsylvanian’s job demand for surgeon starts latest fight
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent

Washington – (Jan. 29)
Senator Harry F. Byrd (D-VA) today reopened the still-smoldering feud with Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA) with a prediction that Mr. Guffey will be ousted as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Mr. Byrd charged that Mr. Guffey has been using his influence as head of the committee “to advance his demands upon the various agencies of the government.”

He said:

Senator Guffey was never and is not now the choice of the Democratic membership of the Senate for this position. He was appointed and not elected. As soon as a caucus can be held, unless he first reigns, I make the confident prediction that Senator Guffey will be removed as chairman of the committee.

Guffey admits threat

The Virginia Senator made his complaint against the Pennsylvania New Dealer in a letter to District of Columbia’s Commissioner Guy Mason,. Who became involved in a dispute this week with Mr. Guffey over failure of the District officials to appoint a Guffey protégé as a hospital surgeon.

Mr. Guffey admitted authorship of letters threatening a Senate investigation unless his friend and personal physician, Russian-born Dr. Eugene de Savitsch, was appointed a surgeon at Glenn Dale Tuberculosis Sanatorium.

District officials retorted that the Guffey-sponsored physician was not qualified for the type of work he proposed to do.

Called ‘reprehensible’

Mr. Byrd, in his letter to Commissioner Mason, called Mr. Guffey’s attempt to bet a surgical post for his personal physician:

…especially reprehensible because it was proposed that Savitsch would only perform operations on indigent patients who could not protect themselves.

Mr. Byrd’s letter said:

This is a question of life and death. Yet a U.S. Senator used his political power even to the extent of threats of reprisals against the District Commissioners unless his protégé was permitted to perform experimental operations on the poor people who could have no protection against being operated upon by one who is incompetent, in the opinion of those in authority.

I do not think I have ever heard of a kore contemptible act.

Stand firm, Byrd says

Mr. Byrd urged the District officials to stand firm against Mr. Guffey’s effort to get a job for his physician, and predicted that if Mr. Guffey succeeds in getting an investigation “neither the Senate nor the House would permit you or your subordinates to be coerced in this manner.”

Mr. Guffey aroused Mr. Byrd’s enmity when he identified him as leader of Southern Democratic Senate members, who, he charged, teamed up with Northern Republicans in an “unholy alliance” to defeat the federal soldier-vote bill.

Another speech planned

Mr. Byrd replied, on the Senate floor, with a demand that Mr. Guffey prove or withdraw his charges, promising to speak further on the Pennsylvania Senator’s past record, if he doesn’t do so.

The Virginia Senator has reportedly prepared another speech on the subject of Mr. Guffey.