Editorial: Not propaganda
There has been widespread public protest that the government used the Jap prison atrocity report for propaganda purposes. Because it was made in the midst of the Fourth War Loan Drive, many people accepted it as a horror story designed to boost bond sales.
This charge isn’t true. The report was not timed for the bond drive – that was accidental.
The Chicago Tribune had obtained and widely syndicated a story written by Lt. Col. W. E. Dyess, one of the escaped prisoners. This forced the government to reconsider its policy of withholding the story, which it could no longer enforce. We believe that the government acted wisely in making the report official, instead of permitting a portion of it to be revealed through the medium of a Chicago paper.
The Army and Navy apparently realized that publication of the story would bring shock and grief and terrible uncertainty to the families of every American soldier or sailo9r reported missing in the Pacific theater of war. Therefore it had refused to sacrifice, for propaganda effect, the feelings of those American families. When it became impossible any longer to do so, the story was released. And it was merely by chance that the release came in the midst of the War Bond drive.
But once the report was made public, inevitably and legitimately it was used as an added reason for buying bonds and for increased effort all along the home front. There is only one answer to the Jap atrocities – the retribution of complete and final Jap defeat at the earliest possible moment.
Let us get on with the job!