He might have been in a minor air raid, for he was regarded as perhaps the boldest, most imaginative and—where the United States was concerned—the most unscrupulous of the Japanese offensive fighters. He hated the United States.
One commentator, writing for The Associated Press, ascribed his hatred to the fact that in his youth Admiral Yamamoto was taught by his father to hate Americans. These, he was told, were the barbarous people who had come “in their black ships, broken down the doors of Japan, threatened the Son of Heaven and trampled upon the ancient customs of Nippon.” Admiral Yamamoto was said to have determined upon a naval career because he “intended to return the visit of Commodore Perry.”
The Japanese were responsible for the publication of a letter said to have been written, by the admiral. In this he said:
“I shall not be content merely to capture Guam and the Philippines and to occupy Hawaii and San Francisco. I am looking forward to dictating peace to the United States in the White House at Washington.”
Admiral Yamamoto was 59 years old. He came out of the Japanese Naval Academy in 1904 in time to take part in the Russian-Japanese war. He had two fingers shot off while serving on Admiral Togo’s flagship in the Battle of Tsushima.
He was a poker player, a heavy drinker and a hard fighter. He apparently was not far from Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and his report of what happened there was couched in this language: “America had a full house, but we had a royal flush.” He believed, he told Mr. Bellaire on one occasion, that the American Navy was “a social navy of bridge players and golf players—a peacetime navy.” He always argued that the Japanese were so high in morale that they “would take their own lives rather than live in disgrace after defeat.”
Chapter 15
“EISENHOWER RUBS HIS SEVEN-LUCK PIECES”
June–July 1943
News in the summer months was dominated by the invasion of Sicily, which began on July 9 following the bombing and capture of the smaller island of Pantelleria on June 11. It was, Roosevelt announced, the “beginning of the end” for the Axis nations. This was just as well, since on the home front there were signs of growing impatience with the war effort. In June the Smith-Connally anti-strike bill was introduced into Congress to try to outlaw wartime union activity. Although Roosevelt thought the measure too extreme and vetoed it, Congress on June 26 overrode his veto and the bill became law. The domestic squabbles were soon overshadowed by the massive military undertaking in the Mediterranean.
After a news embargo, The Times finally reported on July 11 the start of the invasion. Eisenhower, noted the report, “Rubs His Seven Luck Pieces,” seven old coins (including a gold five guinea piece) that he kept in his pocket as a talisman. Times correspondent Hanson Baldwin later described the Sicily campaign as a strategic compromise, “conceived in dissension, born of uneasy alliance … unclear in purpose.” It was, nevertheless, an immediate success as Allied soldiers swarmed onto the south and east coasts of the island. Ernie Pyle, the veteran war correspondent, went ashore with the Army on a section of coast with no enemy opposition and found that the American soldiers were “thoroughly annoyed” that there was no fighting after days with their adrenalin pumping. Italian soldiers gave up quickly. Pyle thought they looked like people “who had just been liberated rather than conquered.” By mid-July General George Patton’s U.S. forces were pushing toward Palermo while Montgomery’s Eighth Army was approaching Catania, hoping to cut off the remaining German and Italian troops. Progress in the mountainous zones was slow; though Italians surrendered by the thousands, the German Army fought with its trademark skill and tenacity.
The Sicilian campaign temporarily overshadowed the Pacific and Soviet campaigns, but there was evidence in both theaters that the “beginning of the end” was no exaggeration. General MacArthur launched the start of his South Pacific campaign against the Japanese in New Guinea on June 29, hand in hand with further advances in the Solomons after the victory on Guadalcanal. On the Eastern Front Hitler’s armies launched Operation Citadel on July 5 against a large Red Army salient around the Russian city of Kursk. After making slow progress on both sides of the salient, Hitler terminated the operation when news arrived of the invasion of Sicily. The Red Army had held back large reserves that were suddenly released against the retreating Germans. The result was a devastating defeat, as German armies were ejected from Orel, Bryansk and Kharkov by late August. This was the first major defeat inflicted on German forces in good summer campaigning weather and it marked a decisive turning point in the Eastern war.
Meanwhile, the bombing of German and Italian targets continued relentlessly. Operation Gomorrah against Hamburg left 37,000 dead after a week of bombing, which included a deadly firestorm on July 27–28 that incinerated 18,000 people. In Italy the decision was finally taken to bomb Rome, the Eternal City, which had been left unscathed because of the political risks of damaging its cultural heritage or accidentally striking Vatican City. On July 19 a Times correspondent, Herbert Matthews, flew in one of the bombers to record the operation against the San Lorenzo and Littorio marshaling yards and the Ciampino air base. The headline the following day ran “Times Man from Air Sees Shrines Spared,” though Rome’s Basilica of San Lorenzo was, in fact, badly damaged. Six days later Mussolini was overthrown by a revolt of the army and some Fascist Party leaders. The Times, like many other papers, assumed that the bombing must have accelerated the decision to stage a coup, but it did not yet mean that Italy would surrender.
JUNE 2, 1943
MANY WOMEN SHOW WAR WORK STRAIN
Signs of Fatigue, Loneliness and Sense Of Instability Noted in USO Survey
HOUSING HELD BIG FACTOR
Also Sanitation, Recreation—Trailers Present A Variety of Special Problems
Women in war jobs in various areas are beginning to show signs of fatigue and emotional strain, according to Miss Florence Williams, director of health and recreation for the United Service Organizations division of the National Young Women’s Christian Association, who returned yesterday from a six-month field trip through centers in the East, South and Midwest. She is now drafting a program to aid women white collar and factory workers.
That old adage about “all work and no play” is in evidence among women workers in factories and offices, Miss Williams said. She has noted distinct signs of loneliness and a sense of instability.
“Last year,” she continued, “most women regarded taking war jobs as a game. Today it has become a serious business. Women are showing visible signs of fatigue. In many communities, they just work and go to bed; work and go to bed. They aren’t living right or eating right. And many are working under the misapprehension that it is unpatriotic to have a good time.”
THE PRINCIPAL PROBLEMS
Chief problems noted by Miss Williams were inadequate housing facilities, with girls having to do their laundry in a tiny cubicle that is also the only place where they can receive men visitors: lack of washrooms and adequate cafeterias in both dormitories and plants; locations that offer no form of amusement or relaxation; high cost of food; long hours and too frequent changes of women workers from “graveyard” shifts to swing shifts.
Another problem arises from trailers that wind their way across the country. As many as 350 were found in one Kansas war plant community, with only seventy of these units filled.
Miss Williams, in consulting some of these families, found a distinct contrast between their point of view and that of the community. The trailerites consider themselves modern pioneers, carrying on the tradition of the covered wagon. Towns where they set down their caravans, however, frequently frown upon them. Consequently the women in the trailer colonies are lonely and unhappy, with difficulty in obtaining food added to their social problems.
The USO, Miss Williams said, is helping these colonists set up their own community law and planning committees. For those whose knowledge of child care and sanitation is deficient, the USO conducts child-care classes and teaches mothers,
some as young as 16, how to enforce sanitary laws.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO ‘MELTING POT’
Miss Williams stressed, however, that persons of widely differing cultures are living in trailers parked right beside each other, and that with each group contributing its native games and customs, the trailer colony is adding to the melting pot qualities of American democracy.
Housing conditions in certain areas of Texas are so poor that women war workers have to wade through mud to get to and from their dormitories. In one part of Ohio, the only recreational center is a USO clubhouse, consisting of two rooms over stores twelve miles from the industrial dormitories.
Working the file room of the FBI, 1943.
JUNE 6, 1943
JAPANESE EXCEL IN U.S. COMBAT UNIT
American-Born and Nizei from Hawaii Are Setting Mark at Camp Shelby, Miss.
GROUPS ARE SHOCK TROOPS
Officers Praise Highly Their Zeal for Military Training, Sports and Sociability
Special to The New York Times.
CAMP SHELBY, Miss., June 5—Spiritedly conforming to its regimental motto, the Japanese-American Combat Team is rapidly taking shape here on the red clay drill fields of southern Mississippi. Japanese by ancestry but Americans by speech, customs and ideals, the several thousand Nisei from Hawaii and War Relocation Centers on the mainland are training for the day when they can fight shoulder-to-shoulder with other Americans against a common enemy.
“Go for Broke” is the motto they have inscribed on their self-designed and officially approved coat of arms. It is soldier slang born of dice games, and it means “shoot the works,” or risk all on the big venture before them. It was no idly chosen phrase. The Japanese-Americans realize they have perhaps more at stake in this war than the average soldier. They have known from the beginning they would be under close public scrutiny, each soldier—in the words of their commanding officer—“a symbol of the loyalty of the Japanese-American population” in our country.
WELL SUITED TO COMBAT TEAMS
By temperament, character and zeal they are admirably suited for a combat team. A combat team is a small, streamlined army able to fight its own battles without aid from other forces. The Infantry calls them combat teams, the Armored Forces call them combat commands and the Navy calls them task forces. They do essentially the same thing—specific jobs, operating often independently of other units.
The Nisei are proud to be chosen for a combat team. Young, mostly unmarried and with all the makings of combat team troops, they are keen for action and anxious to make good. Among themselves they boast they have “a year and three minutes to live—a year of training and three minutes of action.” Already they have the psychology of shock troops.
Officers training the Japanese-Americans without exception praise the attitude and early soldierly bearing of the Nisei. For the most part these officers are having their first contact with soldiers of Japanese ancestry. Said one lieutenant: “Once in a while you may have to tell them something twice, but not often. They are so eager to learn they are constantly attentive and usually get it the first time.” Another company officer commented: “I’ve been in the Army twenty-six months and I’ve never seen a group of soldiers with less griping than this organization. And as for profanity, it simply doesn’t exist.”
About thirty company officers are Nisei, the rest Caucasian.
AVID FOR MANUAL OF STUDY
Even off the drill field, the Nisei constantly seek to better themselves by study of manuals and technical books. One bookstore in nearby Hattiesburg is reported to have done about $2,000 worth of business during the first month after the arrival of the Japanese-Americans, selling them textbooks and other works on military subjects, some at prices ranging up to $5 apiece. Recently during a weekend visit of 100 Japanese-American girls from a Relocation Center in Arkansas a sizable group of Nisei were observed in a nearby field practicing grenade throwing, entirely aloof to the presence of femininity.
The Nisei are proud, too, that the Combat Team is 100 per cent an organization of volunteers. In fact, thousands more volunteered than the prescribed quota. Many applicants who were turned down actually wept in disappointment. Many quit high-paying jobs in Hawaii to enlist, and some left wives and children in the islands.
Typical, too, is the reasoning of Private Tadashi Morimoto of Honolulu, a social worker, a graduate of the New York School of Social Work. Private Morimoto in 1940 served six months in the Psychiatric Clinic of the Manhattan Children’s Court in New York. “In Hawaii,” he said, “I met a soldier from New York. He was homesick for his wife and children. He said he hoped for nothing more than an early victory so he could return to civilian life, enjoy his family and his old job. Suddenly it occurred to me that this soldier not only wanted the very things I did, but he was willing to fight for them. Why then should I sit back and let someone else fight for the rights and privileges I myself cherish? I didn’t want anyone else to do my fighting for me. My wife concurred, so I enlisted for the Combat Team.”
From a mainland volunteer came this succinct statement: “We are anxious to show what real lovers of American democracy will do to preserve it. Our actions will speak for us more than words.”
On the post the Japanese Americans already have made a name for themselves in athletics, with their musical talent and in war bond buying. The Combat Team, in two days and with no more than a suggestion from company commanders, bought $101,550 worth of war bonds, putting their cash on the barrelhead.
The Combat Team has two baseball teams, both near the top of one of Shelby’s leagues.
Sentiment, too, runs high among the troops from Hawaii. On Mother’s Day they sent 247 telegrams to the islands at an average cost of $2 a message. A thousand more sent air-mail letters, and many others inquired about personal telephone calls.
Commanding the Combat Team is Colonel Charles W. Pence, who was born in Illinois and served overseas in the First World War in the Fourth Division. Colonel Pence also served for four years with the famous Fifteenth (Can Do) Infantry Regiment in China. Before coming here last February he commanded a regiment at Fort McClellan, Alabama.
Second in command is Lieutenant Colonel Merritt B. Booth, also born in Illinois but who entered West Point from New York and came to the Combat Team from foreign service.
JUNE 12, 1943
ALLIES PLANT FLAG ON FIRST MEDITERRANEAN STEPPING-STONE ISLAND IS OCCUPIED
The Italian ‘Gibraltar’ is Knocked Out By Record Avalanche of Bombs
ALL GUNS SILENCED
Troops Take Over in 22 Minutes as New Design in Warfare Emerges
By DREW MIDDLETON
By Wireless to The New York Times.
ALLIED HEADQUARTERS IN NORTH AFRICA, June 11—Blasted into ruins by hundreds of tons of bombs, the Italian island of Pantelleria, the last Axis stronghold in the Sicilian Strait, surrendered to overwhelming Allied air power this morning rather than endure another day of death and destruction under the most concentrated aerial attack in the history of warfare.
Allied assault craft darted ashore at noon soon after air crews had sighted a white cross of surrender on the airfield and cruisers and destroyers that supported the landing had spied a white flag flying from Semafore Hill, 2,000 yards from the Harbor of Pantelleria. There was slight resistance from Axis troops, dazed by thirteen days of continuous bombing, and all primary objectives were reached by 12:22 P.M. [London estimates placed the garrison at 8,000 Italians, The Associated Press said.]
It was evident that the island was so disorganized by the bombing and frequent shelling by British cruisers and destroyers that news of the surrender had failed to reach all the enemy troops on the island although the commander had surrendered by displaying the white flag and white cross.
GERMAN DIVE-BOMBERS ROUTED
British troops scrambled up the rocky beaches past wrecked gun batteries—the last enemy gun was silenced by dusk yesterday—and the people of the island crept from shelters to watch with eyes dulled b
y fear.
[Within an hour after the surrender of Pantelleria, fifty to sixty German dive-bombers attempted to break up the landing forces, but Americans in Lightning fighters routed the Germans, forcing them to jettison their bombs haphazardly in flight, The Associated Press reported. An Algiers broadcast said that naval and infantry casualties in the occupation were negligible.]
The major share of credit for opening the first breach in Italy’s chain of island strongholds goes to air power, such air power as never before had been concentrated on a target of similar size.
The climax came yesterday when more bombs were dropped on the island than were dropped in the entire month of April on all targets in Tunisia, Sicily, Sardinia and Italy.
As great a weight of bombs was unloaded on the island in the intensified aerial offensive from May 29 to June 10 as was dropped on all targets in the African theatre in the month of May. And this round-the-clock assault was preceded by six days of heavy intermittent attacks.
YIELDED AFTER THIRD DEMAND
The capitulation in the form of the white cross on the airfield came as formations of Flying Fortresses, Mitchells and Marauders were over the island. Two previous requests to surrender were ignored by the commander of the Axis garrison. Once emblems of surrender were sighted by the Allied air and naval forces [at 11:40 A.M., according to The Associated Press], the Allied military commander started occupation of the island.
[The surrender also was made known by Admiral Paresseni, senior Italian officer on the island, in a message to an American air base, saying, “Beg surrender through lack of water,” The Associated Press said.]
The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945 Page 90