Connally: Punish all Japs
Washington (UP) –
Chairman Tom Connally (D-TX) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said today that all Jap elements, “from the Emperor to the soldier,” must be made to pay for the treachery at Pearl Harbor and the mass murder of war prisoners in the Philippines.
Deploring what he called a tendency in Washington to say, “oh, well, the Emperor’s all right – it’s the military clique that’s to blame,” Mr. Connally asserted that Hirohito “must bear his responsibility for the cruelties and outrages and the war itself.”
Aroused over the Army-Navy disclosure of Jap prison camp atrocities, which have already cost the lives of more than 7,700 American and 14,000 Filipino heroes of Bataan and Corregidor, Mr. Connally continued:
The Emperor, the military group and the people of Japan are all our enemies. They are all fighting us savagely with instruments of death and torture.
We can’t discriminate among internal groups. Our sword is drawn and every one from the Emperor to the soldier shall feel its edge.
Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said Americans must translate their anger over the Jap atrocities into “redoubled effort on the home front.”
He said:
No more strikes – striking at this time is unthinkable, unforgivable, and un-American. Supplies, equipment and men must go forward to Adm. William E. Halsey Jr., Gen. Douglas MacArthur and their associates to speed them on their way to Tokyo.