The Pittsburgh Press (February 5, 1944)
Germans rush more men to Cassino bastion for death stand
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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Fleet hammers southern part of Kwajalein in Marshalls
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii –
U.S. Marines have seized seven more small islands at the northern end of Kwajalein Atoll against light opposition, it was revealed today as warships joined in a heavy new bombardment designed to crush desperate Jap resistance on four islands to the south.
Attacking under cover of the sea, air and land bombardment, Army veterans of Attu and Kiska extended their holds on Kwajalein and Ebeye Islands at the southeastern corner of the atoll and were expected momentarily – if they have not already done so – to swarm ashore on nearby Loi and Gugegwe.
Howard Handleman, representing the combined Allied press aboard the joint expeditionary force flagship, said Marines under Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt extended their control of the northeastern portion of the 66-mile-long atoll by occupying seven unidentified islets after capturing the main strongholds of Roi and Namur.
Aided by shells, bombs
U.S. battleships and cruisers, along with bombers, were called in to supplement land artillery in battering down enemy defenses on Kwajalein, Ebeye, Loi and Gugegwe when it appeared they were the only strongpoints of resistance remaining in the huge atoll in the center of Japan’s Marshall Islands.
Army troops under Maj. Gen. Charles H. Corbett have already burned and blasted the Japs from half of both Kwajalein and Ebeye Islands with the aid of flamethrowers, grenades, rifles, bayonets, machine guns and even dynamite.
Smash resistance
Two small islets between Kwajalein and Ebeye have also been occupied following the smashing of “moderate resistance,” Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, disclosed in a communiqué late yesterday.
A Jap communiqué broadcast in England by the Dōmei Agency said garrisons on Roi and Kwajalein Islands had “repulsed part of the enemy force which landed” and were now “firmly holding the defenses sector.” An earlier Tokyo broadcast of the communiqué in Spanish had asserted that the Jas were battling the “remaining” invasion forces on the two islands “with control of the situation having been assured.” Roi was actually captured on the second day of the invasion.
Both versions said that up to Feb. 1, the Japs had shot down 52 Allied planes, damaged 24 more, sunk two destroyers and set fire to a cruiser and another destroyer in the Marshalls. U.S. front dispatches said that up to Thursday neither Jap air nor naval units had attacked the invasion fleet and no vessels had been lost.
Hurl 16-inch shells
The U.S. warships, some of which were already inside the huge Kwajalein Lagoon, together with carrier and land-based aircraft and field guns, sought to duplicate in the south the devastation that paved the way for the Americans’ speedy capture of Roi and Namur Islands at the northeastern corner of the atoll.
Sixteen-inch shells and one-ton atoll-buster bombs were being used in an attempt to pulverize pillboxes and underground emplacements in which the Japs were entrenched for a last-man stand.
Despite the hurricane bombardment, the Jap garrisons on Loi and Gugegwe Islands, the latter flanking one of the main channels into the lagoon, were reported returning the American fire. Gugegwe is only 4,800 by 400 feet in area and Loi, 1,500 by 400 feet.
Land without opposition
The invasion forces landed without opposition on mile-long Ebeye Island, site of a seaplane base complete with ramps, hangars, shops, a pier and a radio station midway between Kwajalein and Loi, Resistance was encountered inland, however.
The Jap garrison on Kwajalein Island itself, at the southern tip of the atoll of the same name, was still holding out on a narrow stretch of land at the northeastern corner, but observers believed it probably only a question of hours before the defenders were annihilated.
U.S. casualties throughout the atoll continued “moderate,” Adm. Nimitz’s communiqué reported.
Adm. Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy, and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox messaged their congratulations to Adm. Nimitz on the success of the invasion.
Meanwhile, Adm. Nimitz proclaimed himself military governor of the Marshalls, the first pre-war Jap territory to be wrested even in part from the enemy. The proclamation, dated Jan. 3, and written in both Japanese and English, noted that the “exercise of the powers of the Emperor of Japan shall be suspended during the period of occupation.
The proclamation said:
It is the policy of the United States forces not to make war upon the civilian inhabitants of these islands, but to permit them to continue their normal lives and occupations in a peaceable manner so far as war necessities and their own behavior permit.
Fighters escort bombers in daylight thrust
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
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Senate unable to round up quorum for session
Washington (UP) –
Too many Senators played hooky from the Saturday session scheduled for today, and the Senate had to call the whole thing off and postpone further consideration of the soldier vote controversy until Monday.
The convening hour of 11:00 a.m. ET found only seven Senators on the floor. The initial roll call was answered by 37 Senators as they filed in during the slow calling of names. A later roll call of the absentees brought the total number of Senators answering their names to 43.
This was still short of a quorum, so Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) moved for a recess until Monday noon.
Senator Barkley had previously expressed hope that the administration’s federal ballot bill could finally be acted on by tonight, shunting back to the House the issue. The House had rejected Thursday night the administration federal-ballot proposal by a 51-vote margin.
Showdown next week
The showdown now due Monday or Tuesday will involve another attempt of the Republican-Southern Democrat coalition to limit the voting to regular state ballots.
There is little chance of a Senate filibuster to delay further final action as a limitation on debate was agreed to earlier this week to speed action on amendments to the pending Green-Lucas federal bill.
A comparison of the official list of those answering the quorum call with yesterday’s test vote on the Taft amendment to restrict use of a federal ballot showed that the state ballot forces had a margin of two on the floor as today’s session began.
Twenty-three of those who voted for the Taft amendment yesterday were recorded as being present. Twenty-one of those who voted with the administration yesterday were recorded as being present.
Use day to clear up mail
Senator Barkley told reporters that he could have obtained a quorum but it would have been difficult to hold the Senators on the floor throughout the day because they traditionally use the Saturday recess to clear up accumulated mail in their office.
The official roll call showed the state ballot forces on the floor included 12 Republicans and 11 Southern Democrats. They were:
REPUBLICAN: Ball, Brewster, Brooks, Bushfield, Butler, Holman, Moore, Nye, Robertson, Taft, Wherry and White.
DEMOCRATS: Bailey, Byrd, Caraway, Eastland, George, Hill, McClellan, McKellar, O’Daniel, Overton and Smith.
The opponents of the Taft amendment recorded present included 14 Democrats, six Republicans and one Progressive. They were:
DEMOCRATS: Barkley, Clark (ID), Clark (MO), Green, Guffey, Hayden, Jackson, Kilgore, Lucas, Murray, Stewart, Tunnell, Tydings and Wagner.
REPUBLICANS: Austin, Danaher, Davis, Ferguson, Tobey and Vandenberg.
PROGRESSIVE: La Follette.
Name candidates with full expectation of being running mates of President
By Robert Taylor, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Keynoting their campaign with “Victory and a just and lasting peace,” Pennsylvania Democrats have named a slate of candidates for state offices with the full expectation that they will be running mates of President Roosevelt in a fourth-term campaign.
Members of the Democratic State Committee yesterday took the first organized action toward a fourth-term campaign when they adopted a resolution asserting that:
The people of this state and of every other state look to Franklin D. Roosevelt for continued leadership.
The Committee instructed State Chairman David L. Lawrence and other committee officers to circulate primary petitions for Mr. Roosevelt and place his name on the ballot in Pennsylvania’s preferential primary April 25.
Speakers at the Committee’s biennial meeting left no doubt that they expected to fight the 1944 campaign on the international issues as both Chairman Lawrence and Rep. Francis J. Myers of Philadelphia, who emerged as the slated candidate for the party’s senatorial nomination, spoke on that theme.
Mr. Lawrence told the 109 members of the Committee:
What we do in the next election and the next administration will determine the speed of victory, the preservation of that victory and its translation into lasting peace, and the security and prosperity of the American people including the 11 million men and women in service in this war.
After receiving the committee’s designation for Senator, Mr. Myers said:
We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of 1918, 1919 and 1920. If we do, the sons of the men now fighting will fight again in 25 or 30 years.
Mr. Myers, 42, a third-term Congressman and former deputy state attorney general, has been an administration follower throughout his service in Congress. His final selection as the senatorial candidate came in a backroom conference nearly two hours after the committee was scheduled to meet.
Complete harmony
The committee members, meanwhile, waited for word from their leaders and endorsed the selection without opposition.
Complete harmony in the Democratic primary, for the first time since 1936, was assured when Rep. Michael J. Bradley of Philadelphia, who had announced an independent campaign with labor backing for the Democratic senatorial nomination withdrew from the race.
The only opposition in the committee occurred when Westmoreland County Democrats, seeking a state judicial nomination for Common Pleas Judge George H. McWherter of Westmoreland County opposed designation of U.S. Circuit Judge Charles Alvin Jones for a State Supreme Court nomination.
Opposition voted down
The Westmoreland Countians, led by State Senator John H. Dent, were voted down, 86–16.
The committee filled out the state slate by designating Superior Court Judge Chester H. Rhodes of Monroe County, auditor general, and F. Clair Ross of Butler, for nominations to the Superior Court; Third Assistant Postmaster General Ramsey S. Black of Harrisburg, for state treasurer, and State Treasurer G. Harold Wagner of Luzerne Country, for auditor general.
Labor, business, farmer must cooperate after war to avoid it
Los Angeles, California –
The central problem of post-war democracy for labor business and agriculture will be “to work together without slipping into an American Fascism,” Vice President Henry A. Wallace said in an address here last night.
A post-war struggled among “big business, big labor and big agriculture” might bring Fascism, he warned at a Win-the-War rally in Shrine Auditorium in which he predicted a “serious conflict” of “the Big Three” unless they all recognize “the superior claims of the general welfare of the common man.”
Mr. Wallace said:
Such recognition of the general welfare must be genuine, must be more than a polite mouthing of high-sounding phrases.
He added:
Each of the Big Three has unprecedented power at the present time. Each is faced with serious post-war worries. Each will be tempted to profit at the expense of the other two when the post-war boom breaks. Each can save itself only if it learns to work with the other two and with government in terms of the general welfare.
Discussing the post-war aims of workers, businessmen, farmers and returning servicemen, Mr. Wallace said they all merged into a general desire for pursuit of happiness.
Scores big businessmen
Organized labor has become of age and has become a responsible partner of management in operating industry and trade, he said.
He scored big businessmen who “put Wall Street first and the nation second” and warned they “will fight with unrelenting hatred through press, radio, demagogue and lobbyist every national and state government which puts human rights above property rights.”
Farmers, seeking bargaining power equivalent to that of labor and industry, have learned the art of lobbying, he said.
He declared:
They intend to use federal power to hold up farm prices after the war.
Mr. Wallace praised businessmen more interested in serving humanity than in making money for money’s sake.
Small man wants chance
He declared:
The small businessman wants a fair chance to compete in a growing market with fair access to raw materials, capital and technical research.
…and demanded that big business not be allowed to control Congress and the executive branch of government so as “to make it easy for them to write the rules for the post-war game.”
Discussing the returning servicemen, he said:\
These young men will run the country 15 years hence.
He warned that:
Their disgust with pressure group politics wrongly channeled could lead to a new kind of Fascism. But, rightly directed, it may result in a true general welfare democracy for the first time in history.
Columbus, Ohio (UP) –
Newspapers must meet the New Deal’s “calculated purpose to discredit the press” with a threefold attack on government propaganda, censorship and centralization of power in the executive branch, Governor John W. Bricker said last night.
In an address hailed by his campaign headquarters as “the strongest” since he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Bricker warned members of the Ohio Newspaper Association of three “dangers” threatening freedom of the press:
First, the use of the press for propaganda “in the nature of a trial balloon for political purposes.”
Second, censorship:
…the road down which the people of Germany, Italy and Japan were led to slavery and ultimate defeat.
Third, concentration of power in the executive branch of the government, making “the danger to a free press more and more imminent.”
Roosevelt means well, Clevelander allows; fears ‘crackpots’
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Washington –
Senator Pat McCarran (D-NV) was named chairman of the important Senate Judiciary Committee today to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Frederick Van Nuys (D-IN).
U.S. raiders wreck 80 Jap planes at Guinea base
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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This exceedingly fitting and gracious editorial appeared in yesterday’s editions of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Press reprints it as an eloquent tribute to a reporter whose work we were privileged to publish.
Other newspapermen have followed the troops to the field and died in line of duty, but none as well known as Raymond Clapper who might be called a volunteer. A Washington correspondent, he could easily have stayed at his desk in that safe place and continued to write clearly and fairly about what was going on throughout the world. But that happened not to be his way, and he chose to go to the Pacific to get his views on war firsthand.
That was one reason why newspapermen rated Raymond Clapper pretty close to the top among our columnists. If he didn’t score as many sensational scoops as his rivals, he consistently knew that he was talking, or writing, about. He could express his views as boldly and as vigorously as anyone, but he always took the trouble to make sure of his facts. Thus, his writing was characterized by that quietness, that objectivity, that sweet reasonableness which was the measure of the man.
Or just say that he was a newspaperman’s newspaperman, a straight-shooter, a conscientious craftsman, a swell reporter who was killed on the job; and let that be his epitaph.