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

by The New York Times

  Japanese fatalities, General Vandegrift emphasized, do not include the many thousand slain in sea and air battles or those killed in unsuccessful landing attempts.

  Air losses are running about seven to one in our favor, he said, with American fighters alone bagging more than 450 Japanese planes.

  These heavy enemy losses and our growing air and sea power have sharply reduced the threat to American positions, which are being strongly consolidated, the general declared.

  It is still possible, he said, for the Japanese to take advantage of bad weather and land reinforcements and supplies, “but with our augmented air power and the work of our Navy, such a development is no more than a possibility.”

  OUR SUPPLY LINES SAFEGUARDED

  “Our seizure of key bases has blocked the Japs from preying on American supply lines to Australia,” he said, “and their futile counter-assaults on Guadalcanal have cost them dearly.”

  General Vandegrift listed the following highlights of the Solomons campaign:

  1. The American landing on Aug. 7 and mopping-up of Japanese occupation forces in the vicinity of Henderson Field, which took about two weeks.

  2. Landing of about 1,000 crack Japanese troops and their attempt to capture our positions to the southeast which resulted in wiping out 926 of them on Aug. 21 in the battle of the Tenaru River.

  3. The Sept. 13–14 “battle of the ridge” west of Henderson Field. In this battle, which followed heavy enemy artillery bombardment, about 1,500 out of 3,000 Japanese attackers were killed and the others caught by our subsequent offensive.

  4. The Nov. 13–15 action, when American sea and air power smashed a big landing attempt, sinking 28 Japanese ships and damaging 10 others. General Vandegrift said that the Japanese managed to get about 1,000 troops ashore and a few supplies from the transport and three cargo ships which were beached on Guadalcanal in the action.

  “Thus in four months,” he said, “our forces have completed the occupation and initial maintenance of Henderson Field and the surrounding area. Our operations now consist of mopping up the remnants of the enemy and strongly consolidating our base and garrison here.”

  EACH MAN COOKS OWN MEAL

  General Vandegrift’s interview was granted as the base welcomed a rugged band of Marine raiders who arrived yesterday, bearded and footsore, after killing 400 Japanese and seizing three enemy artillery positions in a month’s guerrilla operations in the sniper-infested jungle.

  The guerrillas were led by tough, sun-tanned Lieut. Col. Evans F. Carlson, 47, of Plymouth, Conn.

  He and his men waded streams, hacked their way through dense under-growth and lived on rice, bacon, raisins and tea during one of the longest sustained guerrilla treks on record.

  “We started on a forty-eight-hour mission and remained a month,” Colonel Carlson said. “The men proved self-reliant and resourceful, traveling light and fast.”

  Each man cooked his own meal and at night in the absence of blankets they cut boughs from trees and gathered leaves to make beds.

  Colonel Carlson, who led American forces in a commando-type raid on Makin Island on Aug. 17, said they penetrated miles beyond the American lines “in danger of snipers at every step.”

  “The Japs are capable fighters, and they fight to the last man,” he said, “but our men can play that way, too.”

  On armistice day, Colonel Carlson said, the guerrillas met their first large enemy force.

  “We caught them crossing a river and wiped out twenty or thirty,” he related. “That was only the beginning. The next two days we got forty to fifty more.”

  One of Colonel Carlson’s force, Captain Richard Washburn of West Haven, Conn., told how his patrol group attacked a Japanese unit.

  “We caught a party of about thirty having a holiday, laughing and shouting,” he said. “We slipped up close and let them have it with machine guns and automatics. We killed most of them before they recovered from surprise and returned the fire.”

  DECEMBER 16, 1942

  HOLLYWOOD GROUP SHOWS WAR WORK

  Victory Committee Tells Of Entertainment Provided by Artists During the Year

  SERVICES GIVEN BY 1,141

  6,828 Individual Appearances Made—Government, Charity Agencies Were Aided

  The Hollywood Victory Committee, organized three days after the Pearl Harbor attack to coordinate the efforts of film, stage and radio personalities in the entertainment of the armed forces and in otherwise assisting the national war effort, released yesterday its first annual report through the Industry Service Bureau of Motion Pictures in Hollywood.

  The Victory Committee organized a talent pool of 1,141 artists who not only provided entertainment for men in service, according to the report, but also rendered service to the Treasury Department in bond-selling campaigns, Office of War Information, War Production Board, Office of Emergency Management, Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and other governmental agencies. Also to the USO, Red Cross, Russian War Relief, China War Relief, Army and Navy Relief, Community Chest and other charitable organizations.

  USO CAMP SHOWS GIVEN

  Highlights of the twelve months’ report include the presentation of 352 USO shows at Army, Navy, air forces and Coast Guard camps along the Pacific Coast and in the desert regions of California, Arizona and New Mexico; participation in 273 USO-Camp Show Tours throughout the country, and the 2,773 personal appearances made throughout the country by 270 players in War Bond drives for the Treasury Department.

  To entertain American troops abroad, nine players journeyed to England and North Ireland, and fourteen visited such other offshore bases as Alaska, the Aleutians, Newfoundland, Panama Canal Zone and the Caribbeans. Moreover, 474 players participated in 222 “live” radio broadcasts and 507 gave their services in the recording of 111 radio transcriptions, of which fifty-six were for the War Department.

  CARAVAN VISITED THIRTEEN CITIES

  Assisting various charity drives were 338 performers who appeared at 150 different events, including the Victory Caravan in which forty-one stars visited thirteen cities on behalf of Army and Navy Relief. The total of individual appearances for the year was 6,828, the report states. It estimates that the mileage traversed by the stars in the various personal appearances in the twelve-month period came to approximately 1,000,000 miles.

  The report states that plans for 1943 call for an expansion of the activities of the Victory Committee’s talent pool. In conferences with Lieut. Col. Marvin Young of the Special Services Division of the War Department, the committee says arrangements have been made for performers to entertain at 700 Army camps throughout the country, and that 100 players will be sent overseas to entertain wherever American troops are stationed.

  DECEMBER 18, 1942

  11 ALLIES CONDEMN NAZI WAR ON JEWS

  United Nations Issue Joint Declaration Of Protest on ‘Cold-Blooded Extermination’

  Special to The New York Times.

  WASHINGTON, Dec. 17—A joint declaration by members of the United Nations was issued today condemning Germany’s “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” of Jews and declaring that “such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny.”

  The nations reaffirmed “their solemn resolution to insure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end.”

  The declaration was issued simultaneously through the State Department here and in London. It was subscribed to by eleven nations, including the United States, Britain and Russia, and also by the French National Committee in London.

  The declaration referred particularly to the program as conducted in Poland and to the barbarous forms it is taking.

  The attention of the Belgian, Czechoslovak, Greek, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norwegian, Polish, Soviet, United Kingdom, United States and Yugoslav Governments and also of the French National Committee has been dra
wn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended, the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oftrepeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.

  From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established by the German invader are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labor camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.

  The above-mentioned governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They reaffirm their solemn resolution to insure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end.

  PRELIMINARY STEPS TAKEN

  The declaration had been forecast through diplomatic conversations that had been conducted in recent days looking to a joint denunciation of the persecution. The nations for some time have been assembling evidence, sifting it, and exchanging it among one another.

  Secretary of State Cordell Hull was asked today what practical steps could be taken to reinforce the protest.

  Statements have been made by President Roosevelt and heads of other governments during recent months, he replied, in regard to the development of plans, and concrete progress to discover and assemble all possible facts relating to these inhuman acts together with the names of the guilty persons, to the end that they may be apprehended at the earliest possible opportunity, not later than the end of the war, and properly dealt with. These undertakings, he added, are being carried forward now.

  The matter has been active for months, not only with reference to Jews but also to other innocent civilians who have been the victims of reprisals and persecution.

  President Roosevelt, in a statement on Oct. 25, 1941, denounced the execution of innocent hostages. On Jan. 13, 1942, the representatives of nine governments whose countries are under occupation issued a protest in London and declared that those responsible would be “handed over to justice and tried.”

  Subsequently the attention of Secretary Hull was formally called to “the barbaric crimes against civilian populations” in occupied countries through a communication from the governments of Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway, The Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the French National Committee.

  ROOSEVELT STATEMENTS RECALLED

  President Roosevelt on Aug. 21, 1942, issued a statement denouncing the persecutions and warning those responsible that “the time will come when they shall have to stand in courts of law in the very countries which they are now oppressing and answer for their acts.”

  In another statement, on Oct. 7, 1942, President Roosevelt advocated a United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes for meting out “just and sure punishment” to the “ringleaders responsible for the organized murder of thousands of innocent persons and the commission of atrocities which have violated every tenet of the Christian faith.”

  And last week the president gave sympathetic consideration to a proposal of a committee of Jewish organizations in this country, headed by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, for a United States commission to consider the persecution of the Jews and to act in conjunction with the United Nations in the matter.

  JANUARY 3, 1943

  FRENCH RIVALRY LEAVES TANGLE IN NORTH AFRICA

  De Gaulle’s Demand That Giraud Oust Vichy Aides Complicates Plan To Maintain Present Sovereignty

  WARNING BY U. S. SUGGESTED

  By ARTHUR KROCK

  WASHINGTON, Jan. 2—The announcement in London by a spokesman of the Fighting French—that General de Gaulle cannot consider making an alliance with General Giraud in North Africa until and unless the Imperial Council, deriving from Vichy, is abolished—has further complicated the problem of effecting French unity against the Axis. There is some hope here that, as the military phase of the United Nations in North Africa enters a major dimension, some accommodation may be found between General de Gaulle’s newly announced position and what General Giraud has considered his legalistic necessities. But, should that hope be too long deferred, Washington authorities are prepared with a set of legalisms of their own which would illuminate a perilous post-war alternative to current unity among the anti-Axis French leaders, and thus perchance make unity simpler to attain than, despite the efforts expended, it has been so far.

  This set of legalisms has its source in that section of the Atlantic Charter in which the President and Prime Minister Churchill jointly declare that “they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.”

  NATIVE DEMANDS A FACTOR

  The reference, of course, is to those sovereign rights and self-governments of peoples which were forcibly taken away by the Axis powers since they began their campaign of aggression. But the fact remains that previously the French forcibly took away those very freedoms from the natives of North Africa and are in a small minority in that region. A historian of French expansion in Africa has said that “it had to be wrested from the natives, literally yard by yard.” And there are native irredentists in those lands whose aspirations have been stimulated by the advent of war and the war-induced collapse of French metropolitan power.

  Therefore, if, during the peace conferences that will begin with a long armistice—assuming the victory of the United Nations—native majority elements demand the restoration of their sovereign rights and self-government, an issue might be presented under the Atlantic Charter that would embarrass a good deal the peace-makers of Great Britain and the United States.

  THREAT OF HOLY WAR

  Should such a demand be made, and get the support of the Moslem world to which the vast majority of the North African natives belong, embarrassment might develop into the threat of a holy war, with the green flag of Islam raised on both sides of the strategic Mediterranean.

  An irredentist demand could not possibly present the legal and political difficulties it could if French sovereignty in the area had been suspended during a formal military occupation. If the present arrangement between General Eisenhower and General Giraud is maintained there will be no such suspension, since General Giraud represents the legitimist French Government of the territory. To ask the peacemakers to revert to the status of half a century ago in North Africa would be almost equivalent to a demand from Mexico that Texas be restored to that republic. So many reversions would be involved, including some which would affect Moslem states, that the peacemakers would have no great difficulty in rejecting such a proposal But if North Africa had been formally occupied by the United Nations, with military government superseding civil (as necessarily it would), then the continuity of French sovereignty would have been both suspended and interrupted. The claims of the native irredentists would attain a legal validity which otherwise they could not, and a most vexatious problem would afflict the peace conference, as well as a threat of valuable loss of territory to post-war France and disturbances in the Moslem world.

  EISENHOWER’S POLICY

  It was to avoid the rise of such a situation that General Eisenhower was instructed to seek, and found, a legitimist French civil government in North Africa with which, through the offices of the late Admiral Darlan, he w
as able to collaborate. That legitimacy has now passed to General Giraud, and it operates through the Imperial Council which General de Gaulle says must be abolished before he can himself collaborate with General Giraud in the tasks of war and eventual peace.

  It is therefore believed by some officials here that the United States and Great Britain may be obliged to warn the anti-Axis French leaders that, unless they can settle their differences over procedure and achieve unity in military effort, it may become necessary for the United Nations to break the chain of French sovereignty with a formal military occupation of North Africa and West Africa, thus stimulating a post-war native irredentist movement and clouding the legal claims of France to this vast area of the old French empire in North and West Africa.

  Even if military occupation were made with the specific statement that the region would be restored after the war to a French government of that people’s own choosing, title to the area would be clouded, since the lands were won by force and their population is, after all, overwhelmingly non-French.

  PRODS TO UNITY

  The purpose of such a warning would be to provide a powerful prod to the non-Axis French leaders toward unity under some form of legitimist government that would maintain a link in the chain of continuous French sovereignity. The purpose would not be to prevent or discourage General Giraud from purging the Imperial Council of pro-Vichy members if that should, in his judgment, help to assure local security and meet the basic objectives of the Fighting French General de Gaulle to unified action.