The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945

by The New York Times

  The universal bad news put pressure on Churchill’s leadership in Britain. The failure in North Africa, the relentless bombing of the island base of Malta, and the rising losses in the Atlantic war all raised a chorus of criticism of Britain’s strategic leadership. “Churchill Weathers Storm,” reported The Times, but it was evident that the British public, after more than two years of war, was tired of failure. Amid the gloom, there was sudden evidence that the Japanese onslaught might finally have reached its limit. Between May 5 and 7 an inconclusive naval engagement was fought in the Coral Sea between American and Japanese aircraft carriers as the Japanese Navy sought to capture the southern area of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The air battle resulted in the loss of the U.S. carrier Lexington, and the loss of the small carrier Shoho plus heavy damage to the Japanese carrier Shokaku. The Japanese captured the Solomons, but were driven back from southern New Guinea. The real turning point came with a second major engagement a few weeks later when the Japanese naval commander, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, led a huge Japanese task force to capture the island of Midway in hopes of destroying the remains of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The Times reported Admiral Ernest King’s communiqué on June 8 about what came to be called the Battle of Midway. The details were uncertain and the Times’s reporting hardly reflects just how important this battle proved to be. All four major Japanese fleet carriers were sunk and one-third of the naval pilots killed, while the Allies only lost the carrier Yorktown. The Battle of Midway would prove to be a turning point in the Pacific war, but its significance was only fully understood later in the year.

  While Midway was being fought, the popular mood in America was absorbed by the assassination of the cruel head of the Reich Security Office, Reinhard Heydrich, who on June 4 died of wounds suffered in an assassination attempt by Czech partisans. The German authorities chose to single out the Czech village of Lidice as an example: all the men were murdered, the women sent to camps and the children forced into foster homes. The outrage was soon world news. The Times asked how the atrocity should be remembered, and a few days later on June 30 it was reported that the Stern Park suburb of Crest Hill, Illinois had renamed itself Lidice in honor of the vanished village.

  MARCH 1, 1942

  MacARTHUR HOLDS NEW BATAAN LINE

  Special to The New York Times.

  WASHINGTON, Feb. 28—Having pushed back the Japanese lines on Bataan Peninsula this week, General Douglas MacArthur’s American and Filipino forces were today holding positions along their farthest front of advance, the War Department reported.

  Fighting had lessened, the day’s communiqué said, and operations were “limited to relatively minor patrol skirmishes.”

  General MacArthur’s troops, after their surprise penetrations of the Japanese positions, the communiqué said, held a line that “extends from slightly north of Abucay on Manila Bay across the Bataan Peninsula to a point on the China Sea, midway between Bagac and Moron.”

  The Japanese retain their main battle positions and the most recent fighting has been confined to skirmishing.

  MARCH 8, 1942

  MAKING OF RADIOS AND PHONOGRAPHS TO END APRIL 22

  Nelson Orders That Plants Then Devote Entire Time to War Production

  Special to The New York Times.

  WASHINGTON, March 7—The War Production Board, headed by Donald M. Nelson, gave orders today that the manufacture of radios and phonographs for civilian use be discontinued after April 22 so that the fifty-five manufacturers in the industry could devote their plants to war production, chiefly radio sending and receiving sets and airplane detection apparatus for the Army and Navy.

  In an earlier order civilian production by large manufacturers was limited between Jan. 23 and April 23 to 55 per cent of their production rate in the first nine months of 1941 and that of small producers to 65 per cent.

  Today’s order permits each manufacturer to complete sets begun before April 22 if he does not use more than $500 worth of materials, not including the cost of wooden cabinets. Continued manufacture of replacement parts is permitted and this, the WPB said, will make it possible to keep the bulk of existing home radios in efficient operating condition during the war.

  1941 EMPLOYMENT 30,000

  The order affects companies which in 1941 employed about 30,000 persons, produced more than 13,000,000 sets, and did a business of about $240,000,000, using 2,100 tons of aluminum, 10,500 tons of copper, 280 tons of nickel and 70,000 tons of steel, all critical materials.

  Robert Berner, chief of the WPB radio section, said the order would not result in unemployment for any appreciable period, but that employment would be greatly increased by the switch to military production, with 95 per cent of the switch expected to be completed before June 30.

  The fifty-five companies already have military orders aggregating $500,000,000, it was said, while an equal amount of such contracts is held by other radio companies not normally engaged in civilian production. All except thirteen of the fifty-five companies affected by today’s order have begun participating in the military business.

  SUBCONTRACTING PLAN READY

  The ordnance branch and the radio section of the consumers durable goods branch of the WPB, to facilitate the conversion of the smaller companies, have worked out a subcontracting plan whereby each affected company which is not a prime contractor will be assigned to a prime contract holder, thus forming a series of “family production groups.”

  The load of war production, it was stated, would be so evenly distributed that there would be work for every company which is capable of performing the precise operations demanded by the Army and Navy.

  The WPB estimated that production of home radios this year will be 3,000,000 before production stops, increasing to about 50,000,000 the number of home radios in the nation.

  APRIL 2, 1942

  BLONDES MAY AID IN WAR

  Undyed, Unwaved Hair Needed For Airplane Instruments

  Blonde glamour girls who plan to get the short Victory haircut may make a substantial contribution to the war under the terms of an announcement made yesterday by the Office of Emergency Management. However, there are two big “ifs” to the bargain.

  War plants making flight instruments, including Julien P. Friez & Sons, a division of the Bendix Aircraft Corporation of Baltimore, need straight blond hair measuring fourteen or more inches in length, but the hair must have been untouched by any dye or chemical, and it must never have been subjected to a permanent wave.

  If a girl’s “crowning glory” meets these qualifications, she may sell it, or the factory will give her pay to the American Red Cross or the U.S.O. In the latter case, she will receive a certificate as a donor of strategic material to war production.

  APRIL 6, 1942

  COLOMBO ATTACKED

  First Assault on Base at Tip of India Causes Little Damage

  Special Cable to The New York Times.

  LONDON, April 5—In the first attack on Ceylon, British base off the southern tip of India, seventy-five Japanese planes today raided the harbor, airdrome and Ratmalana railway at Colombo and were repulsed with the certain loss of twenty-seven craft shot down.

  The heavy loss suffered by the Japanese was cited here as an indication of what happens when their aircraft encounter real opposition.

  Little damage was done to the Ceylon capital in the Easter Sunday assault, it was reported here.

  Vice Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, Commander in Chief of the armed forces on Ceylon, said that besides the twenty-seven raiders definitely shot down, five were believed to have been damaged so badly that they crashed at sea and twenty-five other planes were hit. The raiders operated from an air craft carrier, he said.

  RAID STARTS AT 8 A.M.

  The attacking planes swept in from the Bay of Bengal about 8 o’clock in the morning, heralded by the shriek of sirens, the crash of bombs and the bark of anti-aircraft guns.

  Since Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands, 900 miles from Ceylon and a
n excellent base for aircraft carriers, Colombo has been strengthening its defenses. Recently fire lanes were cut through the city by the demolition of tenements in the slum areas, and today the Air Raid Precaution services functioned smoothly while the bulk of the population took shelter in open slit trenches.

  Some civilians were killed and wounded. Information here was that aside from some excitement caused by the separation of families, there was no trace of anything approaching panic or disorder.

  Powerful forces of defending fighters went up to attack and shot down twenty-five enemy planes. Two other planes were shot down by anti-aircraft fire.

  The raid on Colombo was the closest approach the Japanese have yet made to the mainland of India, and the attack was viewed in many quarters here as the beginning of Japanese concentration on the Asiatic subcontinent.

  As long as Singapore and Java remained in the hands of the United Nations, Ceylon was of secondary importance in the war with Japan. Now the Trincomalee naval base and air bases in Ceylon have assumed tremendous importance. Ceylon, a Crown colony, is a little larger than West Virginia, and is in a position not only of a strategic guardian of India from sea attack, but also is on the supply routes through the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

  Foes Attempt at Surprise Raid Backfires: A Japanese force of seventy-five planes attacked Colombo (1), on Ceylon, perhaps as an intended prelude to an effort to knock out the naval base at Trincomalee (2), but at least twenty-seven of the planes were shot down. The attackers were said to have come from an aircraft carrier, which may have been based on the recently captured Andaman Islands (A on inset). American planes heavily raided the port of Rangoon (B), setting three large fires.

  APRIL 7, 1942

  Editorial

  FOUR MONTHS OF WAR

  Four months ago today Japan struck the blow at Pearl Harbor that brought this country into the war. Since then Japan has been moving forward with uninterrupted success over the longest front in the history of modern warfare. With our allies, we have suffered enormous losses in the East. What can we match against those losses, on the credit side of the ledger? What beginning have we made, against Japan and Hitler? What has this third of a year of war to offer, by way of assurance for the future?

  Without minimizing either the losses we have suffered or the task that lies ahead, at least we can say this much:

  We can say that the American people have kept their heads, their courage, and their faith. They have taken in their stride the abrupt change from peace to war. They are prepared for a long war and a hard one. Bad news has neither discouraged nor divided them. They have accepted with their heads up the worst defeats that the United States has ever suffered. They have responded willingly and eagerly to every call that has been made upon them. Every test of public opinion shows that they are out in front of their leaders in their readiness to pay any price and make any sacrifice that is needed to win the war.

  We say this much; and we can also say that good use has been made of these four months toward solving some of the most important material and tactical problems of the war. The High Command has been overhauled. It is unfortunate that it took Pearl Harbor to give us a unified command at outposts like Hawaii, a reorganization of the War Department, a single responsible head for the machinery of war production. But at least these steps have now been taken, and the results are coming into evidence. The output of weapons of every kind is increasing. Great industries which were encouraged too long to busy themselves with peacetime goods are coming into war production. American troops are taking their places on distant battlefronts. American planes and guns and tanks are counting with increasing force on the side of the United Nations.

  All this is gain. But not until every machine in America that can make a weapon has been harnessed for that purpose; not until every able-bodied man is working longer hours than he works today; not until every lesser interest has been subordinated to the national need—then, and not until then, will we be prepared to fight our hardest.

  APRIL 18, 1942

  60,000 CAPTURED BY FOE ON BATAAN

  35,000 Combat Troops and 16 Generals Taken with 25,000 Civilians, Stimson Reports

  By CHARLES HURD

  Special to The New York Times.

  WASHINGTON, April 17—While beleaguered Corregidor continued today to nick the edges of sustained Japanese aerial attacks, the War Department announced that approximately 35,000 United States and Filipino “combatant troops” on Bataan Peninsula were presumably in the hands of the enemy.

  Included among these forces, unreported since April 9 and believed to be prisoners, were three major generals and seven brigadier generals of the United States forces and one major general and five brigadier generals of the Philippine Army.

  In addition, it was stated, the Japanese captured “several thousand noncombatant and supply troops and about 25,000 civilians.” The civilians were refugees who had followed the armies into Bataan from cities and villages of Luzon Island.

  The losses were detailed in a communiqué distributed this morning at a press conference held by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. The report of the latest military action was released this afternoon.

  RESISTANCE ON PANAY

  No details were given of the fighting on Panay Island, but an official report of “fierce fighting” in the vicinity of Iloilo and Capiz, where the Japanese made landings yesterday, indicated that the invaders were being forced to buy occupation of this island at a heavy price. Panay, in the middle of the Philippines, is about as large as Connecticut and is a wealthy sugar-producing center.

  In its summary of the losses on Bataan the War Department said that sixty-eight Army nurses had been removed safely to Corregidor, but 5,536 patients in hospitals were left behind. A “relatively small number of troops” also were transported to Corregidor, but these apparently were few, compared with the 1,500 Marines and about 2,000 sailors sent to the fortified island by specific order of Lieut. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright.

  NO CONTACT SINCE APRIL 9

  Corregidor has had no communication with Bataan since April 9, the War Department reported, and accordingly there is no way of knowing how many of the missing persons were killed and how many are prisoners.

  The War Department stated that “no reports of casualties for the last few days of fighting have been received, but it is probable that they were heavy on both sides.”

  Heading the list of units lost in Bataan was the famous Thirty-first Infantry, which had been on permanent Philippine station for many years.

  Japanese soldiers march prisoners of war across the Bataan peninsula in what became known as the Bataan Death March, Luzon, Philippines, April 1942.

  Four members of the U.S. army on leave in Manchester, England watch a soccer game.

  APRIL 19, 1942

  Letters to The Times

  NEGROES SEEK EQUALITY

  War, to Them, Is National and Not Racial Matter

  To the Editor of The New York Times:

  Let us understand each other. Here we are black and white living in America, a land dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For more than a century and a half now we have been struggling to realize this goal for our nation.

  Yesterday we had not arrived, we shall not arrive tomorrow. Let all Americans admit that we have not yet attained a society or government in which these unalienable rights are guaranteed to all individuals. It will be best for all of us to face this fact frankly and honestly, and make a sincere effort to correct all political and economic practices which undermine the pillars upon which our democracy rests.

  At the present time democracy, as never before, is being subjected to the scrutiny of friend and foe. Our American way of life is being challenged by forces within and without. These enemies of our system would substitute for our liberties and freedom tyranny and regimentation.

&nb
sp; FULL SHARE DESIRED

  Most Americans, black and white, are against these common enemies. When Negroes insist upon full participation in the war effort of their country they do so because they believe that it will require the full use of all available manpower and material resources to win this war. They further believe that individuals or groups who use the present emergency to realize purely selfish ends are just as much enemies of democracy as the totalitarian powers.

  Each day brings new evidence of the need for an all-out effort on the part of everyone, and Negroes feel that those who deny every loyal American citizen the chance to do his part, whether in the armed forces of the nation, the training center or the industrial plant, are a menace to our successful prosecution of the war.