The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945
Page 89
Sinkings in March had been higher than in the previous two months, Mr. Knox said, but he declined to disclose the percentage of the improvement in the month just ending.
“During the past four months,” he commented, “we have added steadily to the number of surface craft and aircraft being used to combat submarines.”
Commenting on the fact that United States merchant ship losses in the Pacific from submarine action were practically nil, Mr. Knox explained that the Japanese used their submarines for entirely different purposes—service with the fleet, patrol duty and observation, and so forth.
In the Pacific the situation was somewhat reversed in comparison with the Atlantic, for there it was American submarines that were taking the toll of warships and merchant vessels, he said.
There had been no evidence yet that the Japanese were using their developing air bases in the Aleutian Islands, Mr. Knox asserted.
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, 1942.
MAY 2, 1943
Anthracite Mines Closed; 80,000 Standing By Lewis
Hard-Coal Miners Join Bituminous Strike
By WALTER W. RUCH
Special to The New York Times.
WILKES-BARRE, Pa., May 1—The en-tire anthracite field in Eastern Pennsylvania was made idle today by a walkout of about 80,000 miners who remained unmoved by the announcement that the Federal Government had taken control of the mines which they quit last midnight at the expiration of their contract.
Not a shovel of coal was turned in the hard coal region, forming a rough triangle bounded by Scranton, Sham-okin and Pottsville, and it was obvious that the miners were looking toward New York rather than Washington for the cue to return to work.
Although the miners were looking forward to President Roosevelt’s radio address tomorrow night, their leaders who were available for comment declared that nothing he could say would induce the men to resume operations Monday morning.
The only thing that could persuade the men to return, these leaders said, would be word from New York that a new contract had been signed or that the old one had been extended, with wage provisions retroactive to April 30.
There was no disorder in the hard coal field during the day. The men simply failed to appear for work, many of them turning up later on the street corners instead in their Sunday best to discuss the action they had taken.
Spokesmen at the union headquarters in the three hard coal districts of the United Mine Workers of America reported this morning that everything was down tight and not a wheel was turning.
The only ray of hope visible to mine leaders here was the fact that the U.M. W.A. representatives and the operators had resumed their negotiations in New York this morning and might reach some basis for a settlement.
Union leaders were reluctant to discuss the strike, choosing that word should come from New York, and those who did so insisted that their identity be withheld. One of these was a member of the scale committee of the U.M.W.A. who returned today from New York to make a survey of the situation in this field.
VIEW OF CONSERVATIVE LEADER
This man, regarded in the area as a conservative, insisted that the miners now were 100 per cent behind John L. Lewis and would turn a deaf ear to pleadings or orders to return to work in the absence of a new contract or an extension of the old one.
“These men won’t go back to work without a contract,” he said.
“They will not accept a promise from the government or from anyone else. They will only be satisfied when the anthracite operators put their John Hancocks on the agreement.
“I do not expect any change in the situation as a result of the President’s address tomorrow night. All the President can do is to ask the men to go back to work and guarantee them protection. This will be meaningless.”
He said that the members of the scale committee had been directed to remain in their respective fields until the international officers of the union had worked out an agreement with the operators.
“When and if that is done, the international officers will summon the scale committee back to New York to approve the agreement,” he added. “If a contract is signed then, work will be resumed.”
Soldiers with an anthracite miner in 1943.
MAY 3, 1943
MINERS HEAR NEWS; READY TO GO BACK
Some May Resume Work This Morning Despite Need for Ratifying of Decision
By CRAIG THOMPSON
Special to The New York Times.
PITTSBURGH, May 2—A large part of the 125,000 bituminous coal miners in this area tonight heard the news that will send them back into the mines, discontinuing a stoppage that had already resulted in the United States Government taking over the operations of the mines.
In some small communities they gathered in knots around radio sets through which they heard the speech of President Roosevelt.
More important to them, however, was the announcement of John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers Union, that a fifteen-day truce pending further negotiations, had been agreed to by him and Harold L. Ickes, Fuel Administrator.
Through a day of waiting while they listened to radio news bulletins on the movements of Mr. Lewis; they had been grimly determined not to return to their jobs unless Mr. Lewis told them to. After he had authorized a return on Tuesday—apparently deferring resumption of operations an extra day so as to give local union leaders an opportunity to notify the full membership—many of them appeared ready to report for the shift beginning at 7 A.M. tomorrow.
IMPRESSED BY THE PRESIDENT
It was not believed possible to get the mines in full operations before Tuesday morning, or possibly Monday evening. Meanwhile, the miners had accepted a decision by Mr. Lewis, although impressed by the President.
The miners had taken a pretty bad beating from public opinion in this area and were smarting under it. At a little place called Library, near here, about fifty had assembled in the local fire-house around the radio. When reporters showed up to watch their reactions and to report the manner in which they received the decision the men ordered them out.
In other places there was a small amount of criticism directed against Mr. Lewis and a great deal directed against the President. Although some of the miners appeared to have been moved by what the President said, they were determined to string along with Mr. Lewis and said so.
It developed fairly rapidly that the full resumption of operations would involve meetings of the local unions and a ratification of the truce, which was expected to take up most of tomorrow.
During the day while they waited to be told what to do, the miners had been determined that they would not call off the strike unless ordered to do so by Mr. Lewis.
Last night in his radio address the President said: “Tomorrow the Stars and Stripes will fly over the coal mines. I hope every miner will be at work under that flag.” This flag was raised over the Pittsburgh Coal Company at Pricedale Pa., on the day the miners walked out.
How much they might have been influenced by President Roosevelt had not a truce been reached became an academic matter, but there were signs that he probably would not have swung much weight.
MAY 9, 1943
Editorial
EUROPE’S IMPERILED ART
When the United Nations troops march across Europe on the final stages of their journey they may carry with them maps showing where buildings with a historic or artistic interest are located and where paintings and other cultural treasures are likely to be found. So much is indicated, though not precisely stated, in the announcement of a committee formed by the American Council of Learned Societies under the chairmanship of Dr. William Bell Dinsmoor of Columbia University. The committee has been in existence since January, working quietly and not putting out any superfluous information.
The nature of its problem is obvious enough. It is also obvious that the problem has military as well as artistic phases. How much is a museum or a cathedral worth in terms of human life, if that question has to be
answered? Shall such an edifice be bombed or shelled if it happens to adjoin a railway station or fortified point? Or shall infantry flow around it at greater human cost? We don’t suppose Dr. Dinsmoor’s committee wants to say, but the generals will wish all the information they can get. Another aspect of the subject is the discovery and identification of looted works of art. The Nazis in a thousand years would create nothing worth crossing the street to look at, but as thieves they show some discrimination.
One thinks of all the centuries of Europe: the Romanesque, the Gothic and the Renaissance; the builders of Notre Dame and Chartres; the genius of stone-cutters flowering in the day’s work; the painters of religious ecstasy and tavern vulgarity; the masterless men who plied their noble trades in the shadow of tyranny and war; the young who dreamed dreams, the old who saw visions; the passion and revolt which expressed themselves, not in blood but in creation; the growth of a majestic continental culture through slow generations, out of multitudinous lives. This is the foundation on which the future will have to be built. The future will be surer if the visible objects remain. Dr. Dinsmoor and his colleagues can play as significant a role as the generals do.
MAY 16, 1943
LANDING ON ATTU OPENS NORTH PACIFIC OFFENSIVE
Army and Navy Act To Remove a Longstanding Menace to Our Position
By SIDNEY SHALETT
HEADQUARTERS ARMY AIR FORCE OF APPLIED TACTICS, Orlando, Fla., May 15—After nearly a year of sparring, the American landing at Attu Island on Tuesday finally elevated the North Pacific theatre from the side-show category and raised the curtain on a great forthcoming battle. At last American forces are in contact with the Japanese in the North Pacific and the issue is joined.
Details of the fighting were scarce in the early hours after the invasion was confirmed, but it was obvious that the fighting was bitter and that it was going to require a full-scale effort to expel the entrenched enemy. The invasion did not come as a surprise in Washington, for, within the past month, there has been an increasing belief in military and naval circles that we might strike soon at the enemy with something heavier than bombing raids. There was something of an element of surprise, however, in the fact that the first blow was struck at Attu, as Kiska is the main Japanese base in the Aleutians.
JAPANESE SEEM STRONG
There is good reason to believe that the Japanese strength on Attu and Kiska is considerable—probably more than the meager reports concerning that area have indicated. Thus the attack on Attu indicated that our North Pacific strategy is based on the plan of cleaning out the weaker enemy nest first, then probably coming to grips with the main body on the stronger and the strategically located island of Kiska.
As the long-awaited counter-offensive in the Aleutians began, there was much speculation as to how the Aleutians, once restored fully to American hands, might figure in the general war program now being discussed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. There were so many imponderables—the enigma of Russian cooperation in the Pacific war and the ultimate decision as to how air power may be best used against the heart of the Japanese Empire—that there was little clarification of the question.
The two big questions in regard to the Aleutians situation were these:
(1) Could we afford to let the Japanese continue to develop their airfield for bombers on Attu? By now, perhaps, these air bases are nearing completion, or possibly have been completed, although there have been no reports that land-based fighters or bombers have been aimed at our Aleutian bases. The location of these fields indicated that the Japanese were hoping to send out planes against us, starting out their bombers from Attu and letting the fighter escort pick them up at some rendezvous near Kiska.
WEATHER A MAJOR FACTOR
Whatever course the Aleutians situation takes, the occupation of Adak and Amchitka, particularly the latter, is of extreme importance to America’s strategy in the North Pacific. The great enemy of the air offensive in the North Pacific is the weather, which may be best described as vile. When American forces had to operate at greater distance, it was impossible to do much damage to the Japanese. Establishment of the Amchitka airfields, however, makes it possible for our fliers to throw heavier and more frequent punches.
(2) Could we afford, at this stage of the war, to expend the effort necessary to throw them out?
Apparently, by moving on Attu, our chiefs of staff provided the answers to both questions.
If the Aleutians situation develops favorably, one possible use of the Amchitka and Attu airdromes might be against Paramu shiru, the big Japanese naval and air base below Kamchatka.
That the Japanese feared the offensive possibilities that Amchitka opened against them was indicated by the manner in which they attempted, with the limited air strength they can muster in that area, to interfere with establishment of the American base, once they discovered we had moved in. Their raids, however, were mere gnat stings, easily repelled.
MAY 17, 1943
BRITISH BELLS HAIL VICTORY IN TUNISIA
Celebration at Its Peak When von Arnim, Axis Commander, Arrives as a Prisoner
By JAMES MacDONALD
Wireless to The New York Times.
LONDON, May 16—Throughout Britain and Northern Ireland church bells pealed today in celebration of the big Allied victory in Tunisia, but there was at least one man whose heart was not gladdened by their joyful sound, Col. Gen. Jurgen von Arnim.
The German general, who was captured in Tunisia last week, arrived by airplane to be a prisoner for the rest of the war as the church bells were ringing their thankfulness for the Allied triumph.
From spires and domes of Britain’s great cathedrals and from belfries of little parish churches throughout the land the bells sounded. At some railroad stations train travelers heard recordings of church bells being played over loudspeakers.
Radio listeners heard the bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral, of Westminster Abbey, of St. Cuthbert’s in Edinburgh and of Armagh Cathedral in Northern Ireland. At night there were broadcasts to European listeners of the bells of Tunis Cathedral and of a recording of the bells of Carthage Cathedral.
When the chorus of bells was swelling, General von Arnim alighted from a Royal Air Force plane at an airfield in South England. He was brought to London and later taken to an undisclosed destination.
During his captivity General von Arnim, who harbors a bitter hatred against Britain, will receive the courtesies due his high rank as a colonel general. His accommodations at his place of detention, which will be kept secret, will be more comfortable than those of ordinary war prisoners.
MAY 22, 1943
Yamamoto Death Called Mystery; One Authority Suspects Suicide
Two versions of the death of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, said by Tokyo radio to have been killed in action while directing a naval operation from an airplane, were advanced in the United States yesterday.
One of these, put out by the Office of War Information, raised the possibility that he might have been killed in the crash of a passenger airplane. The other was that he might have killed himself over the realization that Japan’s far strung seizures in the Pacific were beginning to be rolled back.
The OWI revealed that the Tokyo radio had beamed to Burma in the Burmese language on April 18 the announcement that a large passenger plane, carrying fourteen persons including “very high ranking officials,” had crashed into the sea between Singapore and Bangkok on April 7. The OWI said that no other reference to this crash was heard. The delay in the announcement of Admiral Yamamoto’s death could be explained by the fact that it might have taken time to verify it or to lead to the conclusion that he was dead.
PROMOTED WHILE DYING
The Tokyo radio indicated Admiral Yamamoto was not killed outright in combat but died later of injuries. Several hours after the original announcement of the death Tokyo broadcast, according to The United Press:
“When His Imperial Majesty the Emperor received word of the grave condition of
the late Fleet Admiral Yamamoto on April 20, he elevated him from the post of Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleets to Fleet Admiral. This gracious gesture on the part of His Imperial Majesty failed to rally the condition of Admiral Yamamoto.”
The Tokyo radio announced that the state funeral to be given the admiral would be the twelfth ever accorded to a Japanese and the second to be given a navy man. The other state funeral for a naval officer was for Admiral Heihachiro Togo.
The supposition of suicide was advanced by Robert Bellaire, former United Press bureau manager in Tokyo, who was interned at the start of the war.
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in 1943.
“I suspect,” Mr. Bellaire wrote, “it may have been hara-kiri. Yamamoto frequently said that he would rather take his own life than lose any Japanese territory. He repeated that when General Douglas MacArthur came out of the Philippines.”
HIS FLIGHT NOT EXPLAINED
While the Tokyo radio limited itself to the simple statement that the Japanese admiral, who was the author of the sudden attack on Pearl Harbor and commanded the Japanese naval operations against the Philippines, has been killed in an airplane on a “far southern front,” an effort to analyze such operations during April, when he was stated to have died, led observers in Washington to the conviction that nothing occurred in that theatre during that month to require his presence in such a dangerous role.