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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Birthday appeal –
Roosevelt asks bonds to blast Berlin, Tokyo
President deplores Axis attitude on handicapped
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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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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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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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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.
‘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.
Tire rations to be placed on new basis
OPA reclassifies drivers; only ‘essential’ ones get new rubber
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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.
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.
WLB member quits to enter Senate race
Roosevelt accepts Wayne Morse’s resignation with ‘sincere regret’
Washington (UP) – (Jan. 29)
Wayne L. Morse, public member of the War Labor Board, resigned today to become a candidate for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate in Oregon. At the same time, he announced his resignation as dean of the University of Oregon Law School.
The party primary will be held in May. Mr. Morse will oppose the incumbent, Rufus Holman.
President Roosevelt accepted the resignation effective Feb. 2, declaring that the reasons set forth by Mr. Morse left him no alternative.
The President said that he accepted the resignation with “sincere regret” and that Mr. Morse had shown as a WLB member “great industry, vigorous thought and an enlightened point of view.” Mr. Morse had done work of supreme importance to the war effort, the President added.
Regrets leaving
In his letter of resignation, Mr. Morse said that in many ways he regretted leaving the board at this time because he appreciated what he described as the importance of its work to the war effort on the home front.
He said:
I believe, however, that the major policies and procedures of the board for the settlement of labor disputes and the stabilization of wage already have been established in decisions rendered by the board.
‘Record will continue’
Hence, I am sure that the splendid record of the board will continue for the duration of the war, irrespective of changes which may occur in its personnel.
Therefore, after weighing all of the factors involved, I have decided to become a candidate for election to the United States Senate.
This decision was reached only after a large number of friends and groups in my home states urged that I could perform a much-needed public service if elected, especially in view of the fact that the issues which will undoubtedly be decided by the Congress in the next six years will greatly affect the destiny of our nation for many years to come.
Army authorities probe major’s anti-strike speech
Walkouts sabotaging soldiers, officer says; inquiry reported prompted by labor
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Theater sues Petrillo, aides for $50,000
2 corporations also named in action involving hiring ‘compulsion’
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In Washington –
Federal union joins in plea for more pay
Many leave U.S. jobs, CIO leader explains to committee
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Dies demands Congress curb Jap plotters
Groups accused of working in and out of relocation centers
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Allies may end food shipments to Spain soon
Seek to force Franco from playing both ends against middle
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Soldier vote compromise believe due
Federal ballot subject to state controls thought likely
Washington – (Jan. 29)
The capital today considered it likely that the Senate and House will accept a compromise on the soldier-vote issue and pass a bill providing for a federal ballot subject to state controls.
Senator Scott Lucas (D-IL), co-author of the Lucas-Green Bill, said he had taken an informal poll of the Senate which showed that the administration has strength enough to pass a federal-ballot bill “without crippling amendments.”
Rep. Eugene Worley (D-TX), sponsor of a companion measure, said there were “encouraging signs” to force a record of how House members stand.
The force of President Roosevelt’s message to Congress terming a straight state ballot a “fraud” on the troops is reported to have increased the public pressure on the Senate and the House to approve the federal ballot, although it angered many Congressmen.
The advantage of time, however, lies on the side of the advocates of the state ballot, for unless the Congress completes action on a soldier-vote bill next week, the War and Navy Departments will have to begin the distribution to the Armed Forces of postcard applications for state ballots, according to the terms of the 1942 soldier-vote law.
Senate debates compromise
The Senate is in the midst of debate on a bill providing for a uniform federal ballot and guaranteeing the right of election officials in the states to determine the validity of the ballots returned to them.
The House is about to open debate on the Rankin-Eastland Bill which the Senate passed before it decided to reconsider the issue and commence debate on the compromise bill. The Rankin-Eastland legislation keeps the voting in the hands of the states and revokes the provision in the 1942 voting act which suspended the poll tax and registration requirements.
The rule adopted by the House Rules Committee forbids the House on the floor to amend the Rankin-Eastland Bill, but the Committee of the Whole House may offer any number of amendments before the bill goes before the House for a vote.
Wary of recorded votes
The effect of this legislative device is to free members of the House from having to make a record vote on the different amendments. No roll calls are taken in the Committee of the Whole House. This will make it easier for Representatives to vote to change the nature of the Rankin-Eastland Bill.