America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

1718

Worse than Tarawa and Saipan –
Marines storm Japs in Peleliu caves

Leathernecks charge ‘Gibraltar’ across jagged coral at high cost

AFHQ, Southwest Pacific (UP) –
Marines fighting across sheer, jagged coral, today assaulted a chain of superbly-constructed Jap cave fortresses on the ridges of western Peleliu under battle conditions even worse than those at Tarawa, Guadalcanal and Saipan, front dispatches reported.

Richard W. Johnston, United Press writer, who went in at the beach at Tarawa and scaled Mt. Tapochau on Saipan, reported from Palau: “Peleliu Ridge surpasses them both.”

He disclosed that the 1st and 7th Marines had suffered considerable casualties.

Caves connected

From connecting caves equipped with steel doors, Japs were reported pouring a crossfire of small arms, mortar and artillery at leathernecks inching their way over the sharp coral. The surface was so rough that men injured themselves merely by falling down.

Maj. Gen. Roy S. Geiger said the terrain was “the worst I ever saw.”

From the standpoint of territory captured, the Marines appeared near the end of the Peleliu campaign because they hold two-thirds of the island.

Blast Davao

Farther west, land-based Liberator bombers, intensifying the two-way drive on the Philippines, battered the port of Davao without opposition Monday.

Mr. Johnston said the caves on Peleliu were five levels deep, making the entire chain of coral cliffs into a gigantic bombproof shelter.

“This is the first Jap base in the Pacific which literally is comparable to Gibraltar,” he wrote.

Tokyo radio indicated that the Japs feared an American landing in the Philippines was imminent. More than 50 Liberators of the Far Eastern Air Force carried out the attack on Davao, showering 120 tons of bombs on airdromes, supply and personnel installations.

Clear Angaur Island

The heavy raid, first large-scale operation since carrier planes from Adm. William F. Halsey’s Third Fleet hit Mindanao nearly two weeks ago, came as soldiers and Marines were cleaning up enemy forces on Morotai, 250 miles south of the Philippines.

A Jap Dōmei News Agency broadcast said that about 80 carrier-based planes raided “the main island of Palau,” presumably Babelthuap, in daylight Tuesday (Tokyo Time). The dispatch also reported that U.S. planes raided Truk in the Central Carolines the same day.

The Army’s 81st (Wildcat) Infantry Division already crushed Jap opposition on Angaur Island in the Palau group, after killing 600 enemy troops.

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz announced that the Marines killed a total of 7,045 Japs, approximately three-fourths of Peleliu’s garrison, in less than one week of bitter fighting on the strategic island, 560 miles east of the Philippines.

Japs hemmed in

The remaining Japs, including picked troops. Were hemmed into an area 1,000 yards wide and 5,000 yards long, Blue Network correspondent William Ewing reported from the flagship off the Palaus.

Adm. Nimitz also disclosed that Marines from Peleliu had occupied a tiny unnamed island, 100 yards off Ngabad. The island, the fourth taken since the invasion of the Palaus last week, was apparently occupied without opposition.

On the right flank on Peleliu, along the eastern shore, enemy resistance practically ended, with only a few stragglers to be mopped up.

Headquarters revealed that the Army troops which overwhelmed the Japs on Angaur in four days were seeing combat for the first time.

Attack Talaud Islands

Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s stepped-up aerial offensive against the Philippines also brought new attacks on the Talaud Islands, nearly midway to Morotai, Celebes, Ceram and Amboina.

The raids, including the heavy strike on Davao, failed to bring a single Jap plane into the air, and only meager anti-aircraft fire.

Mitchell medium bombers and Lightning fighters joined in a heavy attack on Celebes Island airdromes, 200 miles south of Mindanao, for the 16th time in the last 17 days. Four enemy planes were destroyed on the ground.

In the ground operations on Morotai, a headquarters spokesman said U.S. troops have established a 12-mile perimeter on the island to protect construction work on the Pitu Airfield.

1719

Combat casualties above 400,000

Army total 337,743 through Sept. 6

Washington (UP) –
U.S. combat casualties in this war, as officially announced here, passed 40,000 today to reach a total of 400,760 as compared with 389,125 a week ago.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson announced that Army casualties through Sept. 6 totaled 337,743. The Army total was 10,127 greater than that announced by Mr. Stimson a week ago.

Navy, Coast Guard and Marine casualties as announced today contributed 63,017 to the overall total. The Navy total was 1,508 larger than that of a week ago.

Mr. Stimson announced that of the Army wounded, 72,583 have returned to duty.

The official totals follow:

Army Navy*
Killed 64,468 25,152
Wounded 177,235 23,867
Missing 47,315 9,532
Prisoners 48,725 4,466
— — —
TOTAL 337,743 63,017
1720

Law or no law!
Lewis orders miners to get set for strike

General walkout in April indicated
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

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1721

Teenage youth accused of kidnapping twins’ mother

Woman is rescued by gas station attendant after writing message on ration coupons

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1722

americavotes1944

He speaks tonight –
San Francisco welcomes Dewey

‘How you’ve grown!’ says nominee’s uncle

Betting is 11 to 5 for Roosevelt

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Frank Stone, veteran Loop betting commissioner, said today that betting on the presidential election was getting more brisk with President Roosevelt established as an 11-to-5 favorite over Governor Thomas E. Dewey.

Mr. Stone said he had already handled $50,000 in bets on the presidential race.

San Francisco, California (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential nominee, today opened a two-day campaign for California’s 25 electoral votes.

The New York Governor and Mrs. Dewey arrived from Portland at the Oakland railroad station where they were greeted by California Governor Earl Warren and other state Republican leaders.

Governor Dewey will speak here tonight in a nationwide broadcast, and will speak tomorrow night in Los Angeles.

Mr. Dewey’s address tonight will be broadcast at 11:00 p.m. ET over KDKA.

One of the welcomers here was Governor Dewey’s uncle, Howard S. Reed, professor of plant physiology at the University of California.

“My, how you’ve grown!” the uncle, who hadn’t seen his nephew since Dewey was two years old, said.

At the Leamington Hotel, Governor Dewey met a large delegation of Republican Party workers and a group of mayors of cities on the east shore of San Francisco Bay. Crowds gathered on the mezzanine floor of the hotel while Governor Dewey shook scores of hands at a semi-official reception.

Governor Dewey reached California after a swing down the Pacific Coast from Washington in a fighting mood.

Housecleaning promised

He promised that if his bid for the White House is successful the nation will witness “the biggest, the finest and most complete housecleaning” of the national government in history.

He proposed “a whole new approach to the relationship between the government of the United States and its people.” That is to be the subject of his San Francisco speech tonight, and it was the measure he had for crowds which greeted his special train at Eugene and Klamath Falls, Oregon, en route southward from Portland.

Confidence urged

At Klamath Falls, Governor Dewey told a train-side audience of approximately 2,500 that “all you need is a government that will say to you ‘we believe in this country’ and you will go ahead to the greatest future in the history of the nation.”

He interpreted their nighttime reception as an indication that “you agree with me that the New Deal has not yet destroyed your confidence in the future” of the nation.

Throwing a bitter criticism of the centralization of power in the federal government during the last 12 years, Governor Dewey said he did not contemplate in such administrative posts appointees who would take such jobs “for the purpose of telling 130 million people that they know better how to run their lives than the people do themselves.”

He promised, instead, “a government of sound principles, which believes in our future, which wants to create jobs, and to go forward.”

Governor Warren, before leaving Sacramento to meet Governor Dewey in Oakland, said he would venture no prediction on whether the state’s 25 electoral votes will be in the Republican or Democratic column in November. He said he thought the campaign depended on “good hard work.”

1723

americavotes1944

If nominee dies, here’s routine

Washington (UP) –
The Democratic and Republican National Committees would name presidential or vice-presidential candidates if either post on the party tickets were vacated by death, resignation or for other reasons between the time of their nomination and the meeting of the Electoral College, officials said today.

Electoral votes are counted on Jan. 3 following each presidential election to choose the President-elect and the Vice President-elect.

If a vacancy should occur in the office of President-elect between the counting of the electoral votes and the date of inauguration, the Vice President-elect would become President.

Discussion of this situation was precipitated by Tuesday’s accident involving the train carrying Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey on a cross-country campaign tour.

‘Landon with mustache,’ Ickes says of Dewey

Washington (UP) –
Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes today described Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey as “a Landon with a mustache” and said he hoped the GOP nominee would keep up his speaking tour.

Mr. Ickes said that he intended to make several campaign speeches and would pick Mr. Dewey’s Cabinet for him in a Pittsburgh address Sunday.

1724

americavotes1944

Roosevelt works on political talk

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt has returned from his conference with Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Québec and has begun work on a political speech he will make here Saturday night, the White House disclosed today.

The speech will be broadcast by KDKA and WJAS at 9:30 p.m. ET.

White House Secretary Stephen T. Early said the President would devote most of the day to work on the speech, which will be addressed to members of the International Teamsters’ Union (AFL) at a meeting in a Washington Hotel. Mr. Roosevelt said some time ago that it would be his first political speech of the presidential campaign.

1725

I DARE SAY —
The great oaks…

By Florence Fisher Parry

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1726

americavotes1944

Chief of WLB defends board, cites work

‘Stalling’ charges by Dewey denied

Washington (UP) –
Chairman William H. Davis of the War Labor Board today replied to Republican charges of WLB “stalling” by stating that the board has already settled close to 300,000 wage cases and will clear its docket of pending voluntary cases in four weeks, and of dispute cases in 19 weeks.

Mr. Davis said in a formal statement:

Newspapermen have asked me to comment on certain statements regarding the work of the War Labor Board made by Thomas E. Dewey [the GOP presidential nominee] in his speech at Seattle on Monday night.

Since Jan. 12, 1942, the Board has settled 9,983 disputes involving eight million employees. Since Oct. 3, 1942, when wage stabilization went into effect, the Board has disposed of 275,000 voluntary applications involving more than 11 million workers.

4,262 a week

National and regional boards, he declared, are disposing of voluntary cases at the rate of 4,262 a week and dispute cases at the rate of 153 a week.

Mr. Davis’ reply to Governor Dewey was issued together with the report of a special WLB factfinding panel set up to hear the demands of the United Electrical Workers (CIO) for wage increases of 17 cents an hour in 81 plants of the General Electric and Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Companies.

The panel, noting that employees of the two concerns, had already been granted all raises allowable under the Little Steel wage formula, said any further increases would require “a revaluation and reformulation” of the national wage stabilization policy.

Public hearings scheduled

Therefore, the panel said, a final settlement should be held up until the WLB decides what action to take on the Basic Steel and American Federation of Labor panel reports on revising the wage policy.

Public hearings on those reports will begin next Tuesday.

On the cost-of-living increase, which forms the basis for the unions’ wage demands, the panel said it was “apparent” that living costs between Jan. 1, 1941, and Dec. 31, 1943, rose somewhere between 1.4 percent and 28.5 percent over and above the 15 percent in wage raises allowed by the Little Steel formula.

The panel held that no increases could be given the workers under the present wage stabilization policy, adding, however, that there was no action either of the President or Congress preventing the Board from recommending, and the President from modifying, the Little Steel formula in the light of living cost rises.

1727

Roosevelt asks ‘TVA’ be set up for Missouri

Aid to business, agriculture cited

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1728

Row between AFL, CIO causes West Virginia war plant shutdown

Dispute over use of glass cutting machine makes 1,000 men idle in vital factory

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1729

Albany lawyer elected commander of Legion

U.S. urged to join world peace force

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1730

americavotes1944

Truman belittles ‘indispensable’ talk

New York (UP) –
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Harry S. Truman said today he agreed with Republican presidential nominee Governor Thomas E. Dewey that no man was an “indispensable man” for President.

Republicans – not the Democrats – Senator Truman said, originated the “indispensable” argument. He said:

We never said there was an indispensable man. We say we believe a man of experience should be in the White House.

Senator Truman charged that Governor Dewey in his “interesting pictures of a President and Congress of the same political faith,” had exceeded the “limits of veracity.”

He said that Governor Dewey knows that election of a Republican Senate this year “is a mathematical impossibility,” and “the boast that the Republicans can win control of the House is almost as baseless.”

1731

Simms: Palau called key to Japan’s defense line

Foe soon may risk all to stop Yanks
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor

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1732

Sumatra pounded by Allied planes’

Large fires started in railroad center

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1733

Yanks close on key pass in Apennines

Fifth Army drives on Bologna, Italy

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Death demanded for two Fascists

Ex-Rome police chief and aide on trial

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1734

Report of warning denied by Stimson

Washington –
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson today denied Republican assertions in Congress that the War Department received a warning from the Australian government prior to Dec. 7, 1941, that a Jap task force was headed for Hawaii.

He added, at his news conference, that he would answer no further questions about the Pearl Harbor attack until the Army’s current investigation is finished.

1735

Nazi bombers rain death on Dutch fete; 65 killed

Raid stops Eindhoven liberation celebration; resident says freedom’s price not too high
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer

Eindhoven, Holland – (Sept. 20, delayed)
This debris-littered town of 100,000, whose celebration of liberation by the Allies was cut short by a German air raid, dug out today after its worst beating of the war – but still believing the price of freedom was not too high.

Sixty-five of the inhabitants were killed, 150 wounded seriously and damage was estimated in millions of dollars.

Site of an important radio works, Eindhoven had known air raids before, both German and Allied. None matched the one last night for suddenness and savagery.

Thirty minutes before the raid, crowds were cheering American and British soldiers who entered the town Monday.

Flags, bunting shredded

Dutch flags, which had been brought out of hiding after four years to fly for 24 carefree hours with bunting in bedecked streets, hung in burned shreds today from charred poles.

Streets where children had danced to accordion music, where crowds jammed around American vehicles so thickly that traffic was halted, were strewn with glass, brick, stone and cherished possessions.

The anti-climax to the celebration came between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. A rumor spread through the crowds that 117 German tanks were counterattacking the town.

Some tanks did get within shelling distance of the main British armored corridor and dropped a few rounds near a road north of here before they were eliminated.

As the rumors mounted, part of the troops were evacuated.

I was dining with Bill Downs of CBS at a hotel near the center of the city when I first noted panicky civilians outside running out and we started for headquarters.

Queen’s pictures hidden

From some of the windows the Dutch, fearful of German return, had removed flags and pictures of Queen Wilhelmina. Most of the American and British troops seemed to be gone. A few civilians stood wonderingly before houses.

Just before we reached headquarters, a lone German, twin-engined bomber swept over and dropped orange, yellow and green flares.

The town was without air-raid shelters so we sped toward the open country. We got only as far as the town park before the first bombers arrived.

Eindhoven pays fiddler

We lay on the ground while bombs ringed us and explosions within 100 feet showered us with twigs, branches and dirt. Shrapnel clipped through the leaves above. Ammunition exploded in deafening bursts.

Eindhoven was paying the fiddler.

Today cheerfulness was returning to the town. As the Allies pushed on toward the front, the inhabitants took time to look up from their rooms and shovels, smile and shout “hello.”

1736

Editorial: Big stick, loud words

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1737

americavotes1944

Editorial: Stalin electioneers for FDR

One of the current mysteries is how such busy men as Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin find time to mix in American politics for the reelection of President Roosevelt. Even harder to understand is how such intelligent men can fail to see that these efforts are self-defeating, that they boomerang in favor of Governor Dewey.

Nothing causes deeper resentment in Americans than attempts by foreign governments to influence elections here. That always has been so, and it is even truer today because of greater emotional tension.

Though Mr. Churchill had been warned by earlier hostile American reaction to such blunders by the British press and officials, he could not resist the temptation in his Québec statement last week to put in a few personal plugs for the fourth term candidate – without specifically mentioning the election.

Marshal Stalin is less subtle. He simply takes one of his Moscow party-line magazines, and a stooge writer, and cuts loose against Mr. Dewey and the Republicans. He has the GOP candidate and party smeared with all the lies and insults which pass for clever propaganda in a dictatorship, but which informed readers in a democracy find revolting.

According to War and the Working Class, the Republican Party “always has been a citadel of isolationism.” But the article slips in its list of alleged isolationists by including prominent Democrats and by admitting that Mr. Dewey “has attempted to shake off diehard isolationists like Hamilton Fish and… Gerald Smith.”

Extreme reactionaries, Fascist elements, and even Hitlerite agents are trying to use the Republican Party, it charges, which is supported by the National Association of Manufacturers, DuPont, Ford, General Motors. These firms are said to be trying to preserve their interests in Germany, Italy and Japan.

Of course, this poison pen stuff is not much different from that of Marshal Stalin’s Communist organization in this country, which is working so hard to reelect Mr. Roosevelt.

We do not suggest that Candidate Roosevelt approves of such blundering tactics by his Stalinite supporters in Russia and in this country. As a smart politician, he knows that the loving Red buss bestowed upon him is apt to be politically a kiss of death. And the Republicans know that many voters will judge Mr. Dewey by his enemies.