America at war! (1941– ) (Part 1)

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Editorial: Who will win the war?

Lt. Gen. Ben Lear, an able military veteran, says that the war will be won by ground troops. A large segment of articulate opinion believes it will be won by aviation.

Experts say only land-based aircraft have any major value. A naval hero says only carrier-based planes have been worth their salt in fighting Jap craft.

Who will win the war? Isn’t it possible that each arm is necessary – that the war may be won by the intelligent use of all weapons, each playing an assigned part in a master plan?

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7706

Editorial: A Baruch Committee for manpower

The manpower muddle needs the Baruch Committee treatment.

The problem of getting the right men – and women – in the right jobs at the right time is one of the toughest this country has ever faced. And one of the most important.

It hasn’t been solved, it isn’t being solved, and apparently it never will be solved by the present methods of approach.

It is, like rubber, like food supply, like anti-inflation measures, like many another of Washington’s wartime problems, a victim of indecision, divided counsel and conflicting authorities.

We can raise an Army and Navy big enough to win the war and at the same time provide the war industries, the farms and the essential civilian Industries with workers. We can, because we must.

But to do all that, we must have a master plan for the use of manpower.

And though the need for such a plan has been evident for many months, though Paul McNutt’s War Manpower Commission has been in existence for nearly a year, no master plan is in evidence.

This is not to single out Mr. McNutt for special criticism. Not until last week did the War Department issue any adequate statement as to the size of the army it intends to raise and equip. There has been little coordination between the Manpower Commission and the Selective Service. And it is true, as Mr. McNutt tells Congress, that he has no power to compel employers or workers to obey his orders.

Mr. McNutt wants compulsory-service legislation, and promises that a proposed draft will be submitted to the President within two weeks. But his own Management-Labor Policy Committee contends that such legislation is not yet necessary. The big labor organizations take the same stand. And the Tolan Committee of the House argues persuasively that, until there is better machinery for mobilizing manpower, an attempt at compulsion would only cause greater chaos.

Certainly the drafting of workers would create many new and irksome problems. Mr. McNutt talks them down. He thinks most people affected would comply voluntarily. It has been proved time and again that most Americans will comply willingly with drastic restrictions, if – but only if – they are convinced that the restrictions are wise, and intelligently applied, and necessary to win the war.

As yet, in our opinion, most Americans are not convinced of the necessity for drafting workers, and are emphatically not convinced that compulsory service would be applied intelligently.

This whole subject should be referred to a non-political committee of unbiased, thoughtful and public-spirited men, not necessarily the same who served so effectively on the Baruch Rubber Committee, but of comparable caliber and prestige, with instructions to recommend a master plan and a real solution. That would take a little time now, but in the long run, it would save both time and trouble.

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7707

Editorial: Our Mexican ally

Our government is making progress in smashing the fifth-column movement and the southern submarine menace so closely connected with it. In this clean-up job, Mexico has helped a lot.

Much of the credit for the increasingly close cooperation between Washington and Mexico City should go to our Ambassador, George S. Messersmith. As a foreign service officer of nearly 30 years’ experience, and a former Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Messersmith knows how to get things done. The Good Neighbor Policy, advanced by President Roosevelt, Secretary Hull and Under Secretary Welles, is not so good in the field when it has to be applied by some generous campaign contributor or worthy politician playing diplomat.

Fortunately, we have been represented better in Mexico in recent years than in some other foreign posts. And that is the basis for solution of present problems.

At the moment, rehabilitation of Mexican railroads is to the fore. Our war industries are getting Mexican ores and concentrates, and must receive more. Mexican labor can be useful when we have a serious shortage of manpower on the farms, particularly if the two governments can control the experiment in planned seasonal migration and eliminate the low-wage evil of the past.

In addition to economic, financial and cultural cooperation, and joint effort against fifth-column activity, Mexico has a less publicized role in the Pacific. Without her military collaboration it would be much harder to guard the flanks of our Panama Canal and Pacific Coast defenses.

The old Mexican distrust of the United States, left over from the period of dollar diplomacy and Marine intervention in the Caribbean, is disappearing more rapidly than anyone dared hope. If the relations between the two countries can be kept on the present intelligent policy, both will benefit greatly.

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Editorial: Canada can teach us

Elmer Davis did a good job in Montréal the other day. The Director of the U.S. Office of War Information praised the fighting forces of our neighbor, and also the Canadian government’s policy of telling the truth about war losses.

We in this country are negligent in voicing the pride which we feel for our neighbors-in-arms. We have been boorish at times in praising our own exploits at the expense of our allies’.

Dieppe is a case in point. Though that valiant raid was predominantly Canadian, a few newspapers in this country headlined it as a Yankee affair – and some English newspapers also neglected to give full credit to the Canadians. Too many Washington reports of the Battle of the Aleutians fail to note the help we are getting from the Canadians.

Equally justified is Director Davis’ praise for the Ottawa government’s “candor and common sense” in announcing bad news. It took courage to tell Canadians that two-thirds of their Dieppe force was lost, Unfortunately, all of Mr. Davis’ efforts in Washington have not convinced the White House and the War and Navy Departments of the wisdom of such a frank policy.

Washington withheld publication of the loss of our three cruisers off Guadalcanal for 65 days – compared with Australia’s 10 days of silence on the sinking of its cruiser in the same battle – though the enemy announced destruction of those four cruisers the next day. The usual Navy Department delay with bad news is about five weeks.

Washington is still withholding the report on our plane losses at Pearl Harbor and Manila after 10 and a half months. As Mr. Davis put it in Montréal:

A free people wants to know how the battle is going, and will fight all the harder if it realizes how hard it must fight for victory.

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7709

Millett: Family must back victory

Every household has patriotic duty
By Ruth Millett

…

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RICKENBACKER LOST ON PACIFIC FLIGHT
Ace missing 3 days on secret mission

Wide area south of Hawaii searched for bomber, prospects ‘gloomy’
By Frank Tremaine, United Press staff writer

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Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker. Will his luck hold out again?

Honolulu, Hawaii –
Army and Navy planes and surface vessels searched the sea south of the Hawaiian Islands today for Capt. E. V. (Eddie) Rickenbacker and the crew of a bombing plane which disappeared Wednesday evening.

At 2 p.m. EWT, Capt. Rickenbacker, the plane, and its crew had been missing 66 hours and authorities felt that prospects of finding them were “gloomy.”

But there was hope. In addition to the chance that the plane had made an emergency landing on one of the countless atolls in the Pacific and had been unable to establish radio contact, there was the possibility that all the men were adrift on the life raft with which the plane was equipped.

Planes sink quickly

Land planes forced down at sea sink almost at once, but the rafts, painted yellow so they can be spotted from the air, are easily launched. There have been cases since the war started of Navy pilots drifting on them for as long as a month before being rescued.

Though the fortitude of the greatest American ace of World War I is well known, he is now 52 years old and was seriously injured in an airplane crash near Atlanta, Georgia, in 1941, and authorities feared that he might not have the physical stamina to endure prolonged exposure to the blistering sun.

On special air mission

It was revealed in Washington last night that Capt. Rickenbacker, who is president of Eastern Airlines but is serving as confidential aviation adviser to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson had been aboard a bombing plane of unspecified size but believed to have been a four-motored one, which disappeared while en route from Hawaii to “an island in the South Pacific.” He was on a special inspection trip on behalf of Lt. Gen. H. H. Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces.

Washington reported that it was believed there Capt. Rickenbacker was en route to Australia.

The number of men with Rickenbacker was not known, but was believed to be 9 to 11.

Gas for only an hour

Late Wednesday afternoon, the plane reported that it had gasoline for one more hour of flight. Then nothing more was heard and because of that, it was feared it had been forced to make a crash landing at sea.

The plane disappeared in approximately the same region where Amelia Earhart Putnam disappeared in 1937, during the course of an around-the-world flight, never to be heard from again.

Capt. Rickenbacker only recently returned from Great Britain where he was on a mission similar to the one on which he was engaged when he disappeared.

His presence here had been a closely guarded secret known only to a few high military and civilian authorities. His friends here refused to believe he had perished, saying he had a faculty for pulling out of difficulties.

Capt. Rickenbacker flirted with death most of his life. He was an auto racing hero in the early days of the motorcar, a flying ace who took on seven German planes at one time by himself in World War I, an auto manufacturer and head of Eastern Airlines.

His narrowest escape from death was in the crash of one of his own company’s planes near Atlanta, Georgia, on Feb. 27, 1941.

Eight persons were killed; he suffered a broken hip and numerous other fractures, and lay pinned in the wreckage for hours before rescuers arrived. Despite his pain, he did what he could to make the other injured comfortable and kept them from lighting cigarettes that might have set the wreckage on fire and burned them all.

Toured air units

Although his health was not fully restored, he made a 14,000-mile flying trip around the country early this year at the request of Gen. Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Forces, to deliver talks to air combat units.

Before Pearl Harbor, he urged a stronger air force and said most Americans did not appreciate the global problems confronting the Allies.

Capt. Rickenbacker was born in Columbus, Ohio. He quit his first job, selling autos, to become a racing driver and won one of the early Indianapolis Memorial Day races.

Pershing’s chauffeur

He volunteered in the Signal Corps in 1917, but because he had no college education, found it difficult to get into flying school, until after he had served several months in France as Gen. John J. Pershing’s personal chauffeur. He was sent to the flying school at Issoudun.

Soon after he graduated, he became commander of the 94th Aero Squadron. His record, the best of any American flier, was shooting down 25 German planes.

He was awarded the Croix de Guerre, French Legion of Honor medal and the Congressional Medal of Honor for his attack upon seven German planes – five fighters and two bombers. He shot down one bomber and one fighter, and the rest fled.

Mother confident he’ll be found

Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Mrs. Elizabeth Rickenbacker, 79-year-old mother of Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, today would not give up hope for her son who is missing somewhere in the Pacific.

Mrs. Rickenbacker was quoted as saying by the missing aviator’s brother, Dewey C. Rickenbacker:

Eddie had many narrow escapes from death and I am sure he will be found alive and well.

The brother reported that his mother was upset by the report but she expressed the firm belief to him that Capt. Rickenbacker would be found alive and well.

Dewey Rickenbacker said:

She’s as confident that he will pull through this as she was that he would live through that crash last year in Georgia when the doctors just about gave him up.

The brother disclosed that Capt. Rickenbacker visited them only last Sunday.

Mrs. Rickenbacker hopes for the best

New York (UP) –
Mrs. E. V. Rickenbacker sat by her telephone today, hoping for the best.

Friends called and tried to comfort her. Occasionally, she wept a little.

She said:

There is nothing I can do – nothing. That is what makes it hard. I just sit here and wait.

Lt. Gen. Henry Arnold telephoned her from Washington yesterday that her husband was missing.

She said:

Since then, I’ve just been sitting here, hoping he will call again to tell me all is well.

With forced jollity, she said:

Oh, I’m used to waiting for news that Eddie has arrived. He always has spent a lot of his time going places. He’s not reckless and he knows the air. And he always has said that he’s the darling of Lady Luck.

She and Eddie were married in 1922. They had two sons: David, 15, and William, 18, who are attending school in Asheville, North Carolina.

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7711

What about the army and Air force? Did they allow soldiers and pilots to keep diaries or were they torched too?

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7712

The Army and Air Force has little or no regulations against it, as of now.

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Ferguson: Ants and grasshoppers

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

Women scouts from the War Production Board in Washington are traveling about the country in a so-called educational effort to inspire scrap contributions from housewives.

If this were not so expensive it would be funny, for there is something humorous in the grasshopper begging the ant for help. And certainly, the ants of our time are the homemakers. They are the only native Americans who have ever saved material things.

Most of them are both sentimental and sensible, and so they hold on to the used gadgets they have loved and put aside items which they feel might be useful later on. Today their trash is handy stuff for Uncle Sam and the men have sent out an SOS for it. Winter has descended upon our male grasshoppers and it’s a good thing everyone didn’t listen to the pet theories of those who have been preaching waste for a decade.

It used to be painful to move about the country, because the sight of good used cars filling scores of vacant lots, of half-worn material piled in junkyards, and of farm implements left to rust and rot in all kinds of weather outraged our housewifely instincts.

We are emerging from a period which will be noted in history for its crackpot economic ideas. The destruction of foodstuffs and of machines will be regarded someday as a major scandal – because, whatever new political “isms” may teach, thrift, like chastity, is a fixed virtue. What’s more, it must be bred into a people.

You can’t produce character, as you do tanks and guns, by working double shifts and overtime. Because we were rich and supposedly invincible, we have wasted our substance like the Prodigal Son – behavior we are already living to regret.

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U.S. Navy Department (October 25, 1941)

Communiqué No. 167

South Pacific.
During the night of October 22-23, U.S. long-range aircraft attacked enemy ships in the Shortland Island area of the Solomon Islands. Bombs and torpedoes inflicted the following damage on enemy vessels:

  1. One light cruiser damaged by one direct and one probable torpedo hit.
  2. One destroyer damaged by a bomb hit.
  3. One heavy cruiser (or battleship) possibly damaged by a torpedo hit.

All of our planes returned.

During the late morning of October 23, our airfield at Guadalcanal was attacked by 16 enemy bombers escorted by 20 “Zero” fighters. Our Grumman “Wildcats” intercepted and shot down 1 bomber, damaged 3 others and destroyed the entire fighter escort.

During the night of October 23-24, enemy troops, using tanks and heavy artillery barrage, made four attempts to penetrate our western defense lines on Guadalcanal. Our Army and Marine Corps troops and artillery batteries repulsed each attack and destroyed five enemy tanks.

During the early morning of October 24, an additional enemy attack against our western defense lines was broken up by our aircraft and artillery. One U.S. plane was lost.

During the night of October 24-25, U.S. aircraft attacked an enemy surface force of several cruisers and destroyers about 300 miles northeast of Guadalcanal. One cruiser was reported probably damaged by a torpedo.

On October 25:

  1. During the morning, troops from enemy transports were landed on the northwest end of Guadalcanal Island. No amplifying report on these operations has been received.

  2. During the day, Douglas “Dauntless” dive bombers from Guadalcanal made three attacks on an enemy force of cruisers and destroyers immediately north of Florida Island. One enemy cruiser was damaged by bombs and the force withdrew.

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The Pittsburgh Press (October 25, 1942)

Deferment for farmers –
Senate votes year’s drill in teen draft

Restriction adopted despite opposition by Roosevelt

Bulletin

Washington – (Oct. 24)
The Senate today adopted an amendment to the teenage draft bill authorizing deferment of bona fide farm workers from military service until they can be satisfactorily replaced. The amendment was sponsored by Senator Millard E. Tydings (D-MD), who said it had the approval of Selective Service officials and would help meet a “terrible shortage” of farm labor.

Washington (UP) – (Oct. 24)
The Senate today voted, 39–31, to insist on a year’s military training in the United States for 18 and 19-year-old youths before they may be assigned to combat.

It adopted an amendment by W. Lee O’Daniel (D-TX) offered to the pending bill to lower the minimum draft age to 18.

President Roosevelt, his military leaders and Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky had said the restrictions would keep planes grounded.

‘Better soldiers’ sought

Mr. O’Daniel, in a final plea for adoption of his amendment, said it:

…has been insinuated that those Senators who believe teenage boys should have one year’s training are interfering with Army officials.

He added:

What we’re endeavoring to do is trying to help them further because we believe these boys will be better soldiers after a year’s training.

The Senate adopted the O’Daniel amendment by roll call vote as a substitute for a similar one by George W. Norris (I-NE). The only difference was that Mr. O’Daniel’s amendment required a year’s training for both 18 and 19-year-olds, while Mr. Norris; applied to 18-year-olds only.

Marshall’s plea cited

Lister Hill (D-AL), administration whip in the Senate and spokesman for the War Department on year’s training issue, urged his colleagues to accede to the plea of Gen. George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, that no training requirement be written into the bill.

Mr. Hill asked:

Are we going to send word to Berlin that the message that Gen. Marshall sent to the Senate saying it would eb almost impossible to administer this bill was met by the Senate insisting on writing in the restriction?

He said there was a misunderstanding about Gen. Marshall’s position on the training question. The Chief of Staff, Mr. Hill said:

…never has taken the position that every soldier has to have 12 months’ training.

…but has said it takes at least 12 months to train an army division.

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Life raft may save him –
Rickenbacker hunted at sea

Planes comb wide area for ace in Pacific

Honolulu, Hawaii (UP) – (Oct. 24)
Hope for the rescue of Capt. E. V. (Eddie) Rickenbacker, World War I air ace and Eastern Airlines president, was pinned tonight on the possibility that he is afloat on the life raft with which his plane was equipped when it was presumably forced down in the Pacific Wednesday.

Army and Navy personnel aboard planes and surface craft carrying out the search kept sharp lookout for such a yellow raft, part of the emergency equipment of all military planes in this area. The searchers were aided by a full moon.

It was believed possible that Capt. Rickenbacker could stay afloat on a life raft for weeks. The feat has been accomplished by several Navy pilots who have been forced down at sea.

The Army announced that:

All available facilities are being used for the search.

…and the Navy’s big flying boats were cooperating. The hunt spread out southwest of Oahu, where Capt. Rickenbacker’s plane was last reported.

Capt. Rickenbacker’s presence in Hawaii had been a closely guarded secret until yesterday’s announcement by the Army in Washington that his plane was missing. He was making a military inspection trip for Lt. Gen. H. H. Arnold, Army Air Force chief.

Capt. Rickenbacker is 52 years old and not fully recovered from a crash of one of his company’s planes when he set out on his Pacific inspection tour.

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7717

Christmas package ship lost on ship to Britain

Washington (UP) – (Oct. 24)
The Army Postal Service today announced the loss of 4,986 sacks of mail, consisting largely of Christmas packages addressed to American troops in the British Isles. The mail was aboard a sunken United Nations cargo vessel.

The packages were those mailed to the Army Post Office in New York City during the latter part of September, through Oct. 3. Packages arriving there later than Oct. 3 were not among the lost shipment.

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More enemy boats sunk –
Pacific admirals shifted; Navy raids Japanese isles

Halsey replaces Ghormley as commander in Solomons area as U.S. fleet units attack foe in Gilberts and Ellices and blast 4 ships
By Sandor S. Klein, United Press staff writer

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Navy raids Jap bases east of Solomons, sinking two patrol ships and damaging a destroyer and merchant vessel at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. The Ellice Islands were also raided. Tarawa is 1,500 miles east of the Japs’ main South Pacific base at Truk. Tarawa is about 1,100 miles from Guadalcanal in the Solomons.

Washington – (Oct. 24)
The Navy announced today that Vice Adm. William F. Halsey Jr. has been made Commander-in-Chief of the South Pacific Area in a shakeup coincident with steadily increasing activity by powerful Japanese forces bent upon recapturing vital Guadalcanal in the Solomons.

The new commander replaces 59-year-old Vice Adm. Robert Lee Ghormley who launched the American attack on the Solomons Aug. 7 and has directed it since.

A few hours after the announcement of the shakeup, the Navy disclosed that U.S. warships had resumed far-ranging raiding operations in the South Pacific similar to earlier raids which Adm. Halsey himself has led against the Japanese-held Gilbert, Marshal, Wake and Marcus Islands.

No news of Solomons

The new raids, the communiqué said, were carried out in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, approximately 1,000 miles from the beleaguered Solomons, and resulting in the sinking of two small enemy patrol vessels by gunfire. A Japanese destroyer and one merchant ship were damaged.

Meanwhile, the Navy said:

There has been no report of any new action in the Solomon Islands area.

Adm. Halsey, 59-year-old holder of the Distinguished Service Medal for his leadership of brilliant actions against the enemy in the early months of the war, takes over the South Pacific command at a time when mounting American losses are causing some criticism in Congress of the conduct of the Solomons campaign.

Invasion fleet massed

Just a week ago, Rep. John M. Costello (D-CA), member of the House Military Affairs Committee, told the House he feared the Navy had attempted a “grandstand play” in the Solomons by failure to seek Army cooperation. Other Congressional leaders have voiced similar fears privately.

Meanwhile, the Japanese have been able to concentrate a powerful invasion fleet in the Solomons and have already pushed out “feeler” thrusts against the American garrison on Guadalcanal, presumably preliminary to an all-out assault.

Ship losses heavy

Thus far, U.S. losses in the Solomons have included at least 12 ships – three heavy cruisers, five destroyers, three auxiliary transports and one transport – plus unannounced numbers of ships damaged, aircraft destroyed and men killed or wounded. In addition, the Australian cruiser Canberra was sunk early in the campaign.

The most alarming development announced was recently the occupation by enemy forces – disclosed yesterday – of the strategically situated Russell Island, only 30 miles northwest of Guadalcanal. Possession of this island gives the Japanese a valuable supply base for their ground forces on Guadalcanal.

Jap forces regrouped

The enemy’s ability – repeatedly established since Oct. 14 – to land forces and heavy equipment, to push home night warship bombardments of the vital American-held Guadalcanal airfield, and to carry out increasingly-heavy air attacks on the field was regarded as evidence of the extent to which the Japanese have regrouped their forces since their defeat in the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea.

Adm. Halsey, who won the Navy Cross as a destroyer squadron commander in World War I, commanded the Pacific task force which raided the Japanese-held Marshall and Gilbert Islands last January. For this “brilliant and audacious” attack, President Roosevelt awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal.

Led raid on Wake

Adm. Halsey is a naval aviator – the son of a naval captain – and has commanded aircraft carriers. Since 1934, he has been identified with the Naval Air Service. In the Marshall and Gilbert Islands raid, his task force destroyed 16 enemy ships, including a converted 17,000-ton aircraft carrier, and 41 planes. He also led the successful raids on Wake Island, Feb. 24, and Marcus Island, March 4.

In replacing Adm. Ghormley, the Navy did not say what his new duties would be. The retiring commander, whose home is in Moscow, Idaho, is not rugged physically.

Other changes in the South Pacific Command announced at the same time included the designation of Vice Adm. Herbert F. Leary, heretofore Commander of United Nations Naval Forces in the Southwest Pacific under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, as a Pacific task force commander. He will be succeeded by Rear Adm. Arthur S. Carpender who was his second-in-command.

Enemy suffers reverses

Adm. Leary succeeds Vice Adm. William S. Pye, who moves from the task force leadership to the presidency of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

Heavy as U.S. losses have been in the Solomons, the Japanese have suffered reverses too. Enemy losses thus far announced include 10 ships sunk, three probably sunk and 46 damaged. Navy communiqués have announced destruction of 353 enemy planes.

Congressional criticism of the Solomons campaign has stressed fear that the Army and Navy High Commands are still not cooperating effectively.

Congress may act

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson recently attempted to allay such criticism with the disclosure that Army troops and airmen had been dispatched to the Solomons. Mr. Stimson added the assertion that Gen. MacArthur, United Nations Commander-in-Chief in the Southwest Pacific – Australia and islands to the north – was cooperating closely with the Navy.

Some Congressional leaders have said privately that unless the situation, as they saw it, was corrected soon, they would bring it to a head after the November elections.

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Speeding to war work thwarts ODT purpose

Washington (UP) – (Oct. 24)
War workers are the chief violators of the 35-mile-an-hour national speed limit, according to an Office of Defense Transportation report.

Representatives of the International Association of Chiefs of Police told ODT Director Joseph B. Eastman that some war workers are possibly under the impression that the limit does not apply to them because their work is of an essential nature.

Eastman pointed out that such workers should be among the first to cooperate in a rule designed for their benefit.

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Luxury foods due to go –
U.S. may lose ice cream; butter, cheese dole seen

Agriculture Department cites failure to attain milk gial, increased wartime demands

Washington (UP) – (Oct. 24)
Ice cream may join the list of “luxury” food items losing wartime priority, it was indicated by the Agriculture Department today. The rationing of other dairy products such as butter and cheese is also considered possible.

The Food Requirements Committee has found that, while American dairymen surpassed all previous milk production records, total output fell about five million pounds short of the 1942 food-for-victory goal. The heavy demand for milk and milk products may force the committee to recommend rationing.

Ice cream would be one of the first items to disappear, the Department predicted. Butter and cheese would next be placed on the rationed list. A system would be set up to divert adequate supplies of whole milk to children, mothers and invalids.

A pattern which may be followed throughout the war on the food front was recently fashioned in the case of so-called “luxury” vegetables. The Department of Agriculture asked growers of asparagus, avocados, lettuce and other winter crops to divert their acreages to more essential foods, such as beans, peas and carrots.

It was made clear to producers of luxury items that they will have last call on manpower, equipment and fertilizers.

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WPB freezes sales of vacuum cleaners

Washington (UP) – (Oct. 24)
The War Production Board today prohibited until next Jan. 1 all sales of new domestic vacuum cleaners to anyone except the Army, Navy, Lend-Lease, or holders of Board of Economic Warfare export licenses.

The action was described as “a temporary measure, pending determination of supplies of vacuum cleaners in the hands of manufacturers,” who must file inventory reports with the WPB by Nov. 9.

WPB said:

If it should be found that manufacturers’ stocks are sufficient to supply all military requirements, it is expected that vacuum cleaners in dealers’ and wholesalers’ hands will be released.

Vacuum cleaner production was stopped April 30.

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Roosevelt hurdle scrapped

Cambridge, Massachusetts – (Oct. 24)
A metal fence, over which President Roosevelt used to jump as a Harvard undergraduate, was razed today and sent to the scrap pile.

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Army list 3 more missing Tokyo raiders

Washington (UP) – (Oct. 24)
The War Department today revealed the names of three more American fliers who are “understood to be missing” after the April 18 bombing of Japan under the leadership of Brig. Gen. James Doolittle.

The three are:

  • 1st Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, Hyrum, Utah;
  • 1st Lt. Robert L. Hite, Earth, Texas;
  • 1st Lt. Robert J. Meder, Lakewood, Ohio.

This brings to eight the number of American fliers which the War Department this week has disclosed as missing. Prior to this week, the Department had not disclosed that any of the fliers had been listed as missing.

The first admission that four fliers were missing came at a press conference of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson after the Tokyo radio had said that some of the Doolittle raiders were being held captive.

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Scrap your compacts, women are urged

Washington (UP) – (Oct. 24)
American women were urged today to give all their compacts, except one, to the scrap metal drive, and check up on their cosmetic counters for other salvage items.

Mrs. Mary B. White of the War Production Board said most women “have half a dozen lipstick holders” and “can’t possibly use all of them.”

She said:

We need the unused ones for the war effort.

She said the nation is “loaded up” with discarded material and that:

We should make a systematic monthly canvass of American homes, organize the family into a salvaging squad, and have our Boy Scout sons make salvage bins.

Mrs. White said she plans to begin salvaging silk and nylon stockings, probably around Nov. 1. Only stockings containing part silk or part nylon will be salvaged – no rayon. Underwear will not be a salvaged item, she explained, because the weave is not suitable to making powder bags.