Sunday, November 1, 1942. Excapes

Japan's Ministry of Colonial Affairs ceased to exist, its functions going to the Ministry of Greater East Asia.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—November 1, 1942: US War Department designates Japanese aircraft with human names, initially with male names for fighters and female for all others.

This came about later than I'd realized.  She has a set of playing cards depicting Japanese aircraft up on her blog as well.

She also notes:

 US ceases production of liquor—warehouses contain a four-year stock.

I was completely unaware of that.  Note that this pertains to hard alcohol, not beer.

Films produced in this era routinely show casual drinking, which would at least suggest it was relatively common, and at least personal recollections I've heard suggest that very much was at the time.  The cessation of production should have had no immediate effect on prices for anything aged, which would have been most hard alcohols.

Alcohol had only become legal, once again, in 1932, and even then it was readily available, as some later depictions suggest.  Prohibition had a devastating impact on the production of Rye, which had predominated the quality American production prior to 1919 and which has never really fully recovered.

The Marines launched the Matanikau Offensive on Guadalcanal.  It would run for four days and secure Koli Point.

The Germans took Alagir in North Ossetia, in the USSR.

Four German sailors broke out of Fort Stanton, New Mexico. They'd soon be captured by a mounted posse, during which one of them was wounded.

Portugal held elections, but as it was a one party state, the victory of the National Union Party was somewhat foreordained.

Pornographer Larry Flynt, who was responsible for Hustler magazine, was born on this day.  Huslter followed in the wake of Playboy and Penthouse, and was cruder than either two, that avenue having been opened up for glossy smut due to Playboy.

It was the Solemnity of All Saints, as it is now, which is a Catholic Holy Day of Obligation.  Given as this one fell on a Sunday, there would have been no requirement for attendance at an extra Mass for Catholics on this week in 1942.

Tuesday, October 24, 1972. Jackie Robinson passes.

Jackie Robinson died on this day in 1972.

He was only 53 years old when he died of a heart attack, a condition brought on by diabetes and heart disease.

Silent screen actress Clair Windsor, whose career bridged into sound, died at age 80.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat conveyed a council of war in which he announced plans to launch a limited war against Israel.

Field Marshal Sadeq, had not reported to the Supreme Council what the purpose of the meeting was to be, and even though he was ordered to prepare a plan of war by October 1, he was fired a few days later.

The Japanese crime syndicate the Yakuza divided its operations into territories, thereby ending years of inter gang strife.

Monday, September 18, 1922. Canada throws the anchor out on Anatolian Intervention

Japanese Prince Kuni Kuniyoshi and his wife on this day in 1922.

The Turkish Army, or rather the army of the revolutionary Young Turks, which had replaced the Turkish parliament and brought about what would effectively be the modern era in Turkey, captured Artake and Pergaea, ending, completely defeating the Greeks.  On the same day, the Canadian government informed the British government that Parliament (the British one) would have to act before Canada would send troops to the Dardanelles.

Canada knew that Parliament would be reluctant to do this, and the Canadians were reluctant to form military units for an Anatolian expedition.  

Who could blame them?

Hungary was admitted into the League of Nations.

Just this week, FWIW, Turkey was declared by the EU to be essentially a post, or quasi, democratic state.  By its own admission, it's an Illiberal Democracy, but it nonetheless took offense.

The former Kasier Wilhelm II announced his engagement to Hermine Reuss of Greiz. His first wife, the Kaiserin August Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein had died in April 1921.  Hermine was a widow.

In spite of the fact that the German monarchy did not exist, the announcement was unpopular with German monarchists as well as with Wilhelm's sons, who deemed it too soon to the Kasierin's death.

She'd outlive the former Kaiser by six years and see the emergence of post-war Germany, passing in 1947.  Following her second husband's death in 1941, she moved to Nazi Germany and lived on his retained estate in Silesia.  She fled the advancing Red Army in 1945 and was arrested by the Soviet thereafter.  She died at age 59 in a small apartment she had secured in Frankfurt.

The Yankee's won the pennant, defeating the St. Louis Brown's

Navajo men at Lee's Ferry on this date in 1922.

Tuesday, September 1, 1942. Miscarriages of Justice.

On this 1st day of September 1942, the United States District Court in Sacramento, California ruled wartime detention of Japanese Americans to be legal.

Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō (東郷 茂徳) who had opposed war with the United States on the basis that it was unwinnable, resigned and went into retirement.  The cause of his resignation was his opposition to the creation of a special ministry for occupied territories.  He was appointed thereafter to the upper house of the Japanese Diet, but did not take an active role in it.

He returned to his former position in April 1945 and worked towards acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration.  He advocated Japanese surrender after the atomic strikes of August of that year.  

In spite of his opposition to the war, he was tried as a war criminal in 1948 and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.  He died as a prisoner two years later at age 67.

He was an unusual man in multiple ways.  He'd studied in Germany when young and then entered the foreign ministry.  He served as ambassador to Germany in 1937 and then later was assigned to the Soviet Union, where he'd negotiated a peace settlement between the USSR and Japan following Khalkhin Gol.  He married German Carla Victoria Editha Albertina Anna de Lalande, who was a wide of was well known German architect, with Japanese marriages to Westerners being uncommon then, which remains the case today.  She survived him and died in 1967.

Tōgō's family, including his wife's daughter by her first marriage and the couple's daughter.  His descendants have continued to have diplomatic careers.

Both of the examples above provide interesting examples of the miscarriage of official justice.  Internment should have been deemed illegal, particularly as to U.S. citizens who were truly being deprived of their liberty without due process.  And while there were Japanese war criminals, Tōgō''s conviction seems to have been for simply being on the losing side of the war.

Royal Air Force Wellingtons bombed Afrika Korps supply lines at night, destroying fuel supplies, which halted Panzerarmee Afrika for most of the day.  

Wellingtons over Europe.

We don't think of Wellington bombers much in the story of the war, but they did in fact see combat service.

The Germans took the Black Sea port of Anapa.

According to the Wyoming State Historical Association, on this day in 1942 official approval was given to commence use of the Casper Air Base, which had been constructed in an incredibly small amount of time.  The existing county airport was Wardwell Field, the Casper area's second airport (the first was in what is now Evansville).  Today, what was Casper Air Base is the Natrona County International Airport, which actually uses at least one fewer runway than was constructed by the Army in 1942.  Wardwell Field's runways, in contrast, are city streets in the Town of Bar Nunn.

Thursday, August 13, 1942. Pedastal hit, Montgomery takes command, Japan enacts laws against what they had committed, Stalin writes a memo, Bambi opens in the United States.

The Pedestal convoy was hit again by German and Italian torpedo boats.  They sank four freighters and damaged the HMS Manchester.

Torpedo hitting the Ohio.

The oil tanker Ohio, manned for the trip by a British crew, was attacked by aircraft and finally immobilized and then abandoned, but with fuel tanks intact.  She did not sink.

It's of note here that much of what we're told about World War Two naval action really isn't applicable to the war in the Mediterranean, and as we saw from the Battle of Savo Island earlier, it isn't to the early war in the Pacific either.  It's often claimed that torpedo boats were worthless in World War Two, but as late as 1942 they certainly were not.  Indeed, this is just once of several instances in the first half of the war of torpedo boats performing successfully just as they were meant to, making surface raids at high speed against larger war ship and coming out on top.  Additionally, air cover clearly wasn't adequate or wasn't cutting it for convoy escort in the Mediterranean.  This convoy had an aircraft carrier with it, but it was itself one of the first vessels to be sunk.

On this day, the Italian Navy, still a major force in the Mediterranean, had to recall, however, a major task force that was attempting to intercept Pedestal due to a lack of German air cover, and British submarine action.

The excellent, but unfortunately discontinued, blog World War II Day-By-Day also notes this naval action on this day:

Caribbean. U-600 and U-658 attack as 2 USA-South America convoys pass the strait between Cuba and Haiti. At 5.07 AM, U-658 sinks Dutch SS Medea in convoy WAT 13 (5 killed, 23 rescued by convoy escorts). At 9.48 AM, U-600 sinks Latvian SS Everelza (23 killed, 14 rescued by convoy escorts) and American passenger/cargo ship SS Delmundo (8 killed including 3 passengers, 50 survivors including 5 passengers picked up by British destroyer HMS Churchill) in convoy TAW 12.

At 7.50 AM in the Gulf of Mexico 25 miles off the coast of Louisiana, U-171 stops US tanker SS R.M. Parker Jr. with 2 torpedoes and finishes her off with the deck gun (all 37 crew and 7 gunners rescued 8 hours later by US Coast Guard auxiliary craft USS Pioneer).

South Atlantic. At 7.40 AM 400 miles Southwest of Freetown, Sierra Leone, U-752 sinks American SS Cripple Creek carrying 7500 tons of war supplies from USA to British 8th Army in Egypt (1 killed, 38 crew and 13 gunners in 3 lifeboats rescued after 4 days by British armed trawler HMS St. Winstan). 1400 miles West of Freetown, Italian submarine Reginaldo Giuliani sinks American SS California with the deck gun and torpedoes (1 killed, 35 survivors)

Bernard Law Montgomery took over the British 8th Army in the wake of the death of Gen. Gott.

Montgomery in August 1942.  He had a love of irregular uniform items, and ins this case is wearing an Australian slouch hat, although that item was popular with British officers.

Montgomery, one of the most controversial senior commanders of the Second World War, had been considered for the post prior to Gott being appointed, but had lost out to Gott. With Gott's death, he was the natural choice. He was of Scots ancestry and from what might be regarded as a sort of Scottish variant of the Anglo-Irish community. While born in England, his father was a Church of Ireland minister who would ultimately be sent to Tasmania, where Montgomery grew up.  While his father Henry had inherited the family estate in Ulster, there was not sufficient money to support the family until his father took the position in Tasmania.

His father was a dutiful clergyman and spent much of his time on the road in the rural areas of what remained a British colony at the time.  While he was gone, his mother, only in her twenties, constantly beat and then ignored the children.  This treatment made Bernard something of a bully in his youth and caused lasting animosity between him and his mother, whose funeral he did not attend in 1949.

The family returned to England in 1897.  Bernard joined the Army in 1908.  By all accounts he had a difficult personality, but in spite of American claims to the contrary, he was a brilliant tactician with a great appreciation of how to use troops who were inadequately equipped with thin resources.

The Germans took Elista on the Eastern Front.

The Australians retreated at Deniki on New Guinea, and the Japanese landed troops at Buna.

The Japanese, acting with rich hypocrisy, passed the Enemy Airman's Act.  It stated:

Article I: This law shall apply to all enemy airmen who raid the Japanese homeland, Manchukuo, and the Japanese zones of military operations, and who come within the areas under the jurisdiction of the China Expeditionary Force.

Article II: Any individual who commits any or all of the following shall be subject to military punishment:

Section 1. The bombing, strafing, and otherwise attacking of civilians with the objective of cowing, intimidating, killing or maiming them.

Section 2. The bombing, strafing or otherwise attacking of private properties, whatsoever, with the objectives of destroying or damaging same.

Section 3. The bombing, strafing or otherwise attacking of objectives, other than those of military nature, except in those cases where such an act is unavoidable.

Section 4. In addition to those acts covered in the preceding three sections, all other acts violating the provisions of International Law governing warfare.

Article III: Military punishment shall be the death penalty [or] life imprisonment, or a term of imprisonment for not less than ten years.

The hypocrisy was that Japan had used air assets extensively against Chinese civilian populations by this point in the war.  Using air assets against civilians is in fact a crime, but in this case, the Japanese were familiar with that crime by having done it.  Not only this, the murder, rape and enslavement of civilian populations was a common practice by Japanese ground forces.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that 1) the British had arrested the German advances in North Africa but were nowhere near reversing them; 2) the Japanese were still advancing in the South Pacific and the recent U.S. offensive in the Solomons was now imperiled by a lack of progress on Guadalcanal and the Japanese Navy driving the U.S. Navy from that island's coast; 3) British efforts to contest for the Mediterranean were hardly an unqualified success; and 4) tens of ships were going down in the Atlantic every day, Joseph Stalin wrote a memo protesting the Allied decision not to land in France in 1942.

What Stalin seemingly was missing is that while he was losing the war inside of Russia at that moment, all the evidence was that the Allies were still losing it in the Pacific and barely hanging on in North Africa.  A landing in France was simply impossible.

Bambi opened in the United States.

Aerial view (altitude 3,000 ft.) looking northwest at the start of construction of Dry Dock No. 4. East terminus of Palou Avenue, San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA.

Tuesday, August 8, 1922. An eventful Tuesday.

Here's more on the story involved in the photograph appearing above.

1922 - Into the Grand Canyon and Out Again by Airplane

Louis Armstrong made his first appearance with a major act, playing with King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band in Chicago.

In Italy, Mussolini ordered Fascist Blackshirts to demobilize after recent strife.

Mussolini with the Blackshirts in October, 1922.

Irish Republicans raided the Western Union station at Valentia Island and severed the four remaining cables that linked the US and Ireland, although how that helped their cause or was intended to escapes me.

The HMS Raleigh ran aground on the Labrador coast and was lost, but without loss of life.

The vessel was almost new at the time.

A monarchist group in Vladivostok declared Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia to be the heir to murdered Czar Nicholas.  The rebel organization that convened the process to do so was headed by Gen. Mikhail Diterikhs. The Grand Duke was already living in exile and the fortunes of the remaining Whites were desperately poor.

Shogakukan, a Japanese magazine and comic publisher that is still in business, was founded.

Saturday, August 1, 1942. Unintended Consequences

Today in World War II History—August 1, 1942: The American Federation of Musicians begins a yearlong strike . Permanente Hospital opens in Oakland, CA, for employees of Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond.

So reports Sarah Sundin's blog.

She also reports that the Japanese set up a puppet government in Burma on this day.

I had no idea of the yearlong American Federation of Musicians strike over royalties by recording companies.  Union members were not allowed to record for a commercial recording company, although they could appear on the radio. The strike took several months to have an effect due to a backlog of recordings, but it ultimately did, and the full strike lasted until 1944.

The strike did not affect vocalists, who continued to record.  This resulted in an increase of vocalist's popularity, and it became one of the contributing factors to the decline of the big bands.

Dealt with elsewhere, the Permanente Hospital item reflected a shift in how healthcare was being provided to workers that would accelerate during World War Two, giving rise to the current insurance based American healthcare system.

Saturday, July 15, 1922. Flat tire.

The Saturday Evening Post hit the stands and mailboxes with a classci Cole Phillips' illustration of a woman beset by a flat tire.

The Japanese Communist Party (日本共産党 or Nihon Kyōsan-tō) was formed by three former anarchists, proving that one goofball crackpot body of thought can easily yield to another.  It would be outlawed, but wouldn't really go away, in 1925, and then be allowed again following Japan's defeat in World War Two.

The first fully automated telephone exchange appeared in the United Kingdom.

The Second Sino-Japanese War: Every Fortnight

    

A person might not the comparisons that could be made in this highly interesting video, with Germany in Russia in 1917 and 1918.

I.e., what's the point of taking ground in mainland China if the U.S. Navy is about to sail into Tokyo Bay?

Saturday, June 23, 1922. Portents.

The Saturday Evening Post hit the stands with an enduringly popular Leyendecker illustration.

Judge, which had recently combined with Leslie's, made fun of the cost of a dinner date.

Walther Rathenau, German Foreign Minster, was assassinated by right wing German nationalist.  Germany's march towards Nazism was commencing.

On the same day Hitler began serving his prison sentence.

The American Professional Football Association voted to change its name to the National Football League.

The English Ladies Football Association hold its only championship.

Japan announced it would withdraw its occupation forces from Siberia, save for Sakhalin Island, by the end of October.

Wednesday, June 17, 1942. Yank goes to press.

First issue of Yank's pinup girl.

Yank magazine, a service produced magazine issued entirely by enlisted men, was issued for the first time.  

Actress Jane Randolph appeared as the pin up girl for the of the first issue, something that was a feature of every issue. Generally, the pinup was pretty mild, as would be expected from a service magazine.  The first issue's color pinup was unusual for any magazine of the era, as color was much less used in magazines at the time.

I'd like to put up the front cover of the magazine, but I can't find it.  Generally, Yank featured a black and white photograph.  It occasionally had combat illustrations on the cover, a lot of which were of very high quality.  Every now and then the pinup girl made the cover if she was a famous actress, such as Rita Hayworth.   The magazine was published throughout the war.

A second group of German saboteurs landed in Florida.  This was the second part of the plot to land German operatives in the US to sabotage German production, something that didn't go far due to the nearly immediate defection of two of the operatives who were landed in New York as addressed the other day.

Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo was slightly wounded when a Korean nationalist shot him. The assailant was immediately killed by the return fire of Japanese policemen.

The Afrika Korps took control of the coast road to Bardia, thereby surrounding Tobruk.

Easter Sunday, 1922

 April 16 was Easter Sunday in 1922.

On that date, Michael Collins survived an assassination attempt when his attackers failed to recognize him in Rutland Square in Dublin, and shot at some cars instead.  Collins was carrying a revolver and fired at his would be attackers.

Germany and Soviet Russia entered the Treaty of Rapallo which renounced all territorial and financial claims the two countries had against each other and restored diplomatic relations.

Japan's famous Imperial Hotel sustained damage in a fire.

Tuesday, March 28, 1922. Transferred Intent.

Mrs. Bertha Shelton, March 28, 1922.  No, I don't know who she was, or why she was photographed.

To would be Korean assassins attempted to kill the former Japanese Minister of War Tanaka Giichi as he disembarked a ship in Shanghai, but missed and instead killed an American woman.

In Berlin a would be assassin attempted to kill former Russian Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov at a gathering of Russian exiles.  He missed and killed Vladimier D. Nabakov, the father of the author by that name who is famous for the novel Lolita, which I've never read.  The assassin, Sergey Vladimirovich Taboritsky, was a Russian untranationalist and monarchist who would go on to be a Nazi during in the Third Reich. He survived the war and died in 1980 at age 83.

Thursday, February 23, 1922. Booze sniffing hounds, Naval San Diego, Communist Theft, Japanese Suffrage.

Dog trained to sniff alcohol, February 23, 1922.

Lenin issued a decree authorizing confiscation of valuables from the Russian Orthodox Church as a relief measure for the famine caused by his failed economic policies.

The degree to which Communism was and is criminal can hardly be exaggerated.  The moronic economic policies forced upon Russia depressed its economy for decades, with it taking decades for certain sectors of it to return to pre Communist output, particularly agriculture.  It also resulted in massive famine. Theft from the Church was not going to relieve that, and more than anything else expressed the degree to which the criminal enterprise could now freely act against it.

The Church appealed the decision, but unsuccessfully.

The U.S. Navy established San Diego as a U.S. Destroyer Base, San Diego, forever altering the character of the city.

Worth noting, if San Diego had been fully retained as the headquarters for the Pacific Fleet between the wars, the attack at Pearl Harbor would have really had much less impact than it did, assuming that it would have occured at all.

The Japanese parliament rejected universal suffrage, which resulted in a riot that evening.

Saturday, February 21, 1942 Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn convicted.

Another interesting installment of Sarah Sundin's blog starts with this item:

February 21, 1942: House of Representatives begins hearings about removal of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.

I was completely unaware that hearings had occurred.

Interestingly enough, a spy in Hawaii who was detected and convicted for his efforts, was convicted on this day, which she also reports.  The spy, in the pay of the Japanese, wasn't a Japanese American or immigrant, but rather Dr. Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn, a physician, whose entire family was in the pay of Imperial Japan.

The arrangements had actually been made by the German Abwehr through Goebbels, who had used Kuehn's 17-year-old daughter as a paramour.  Indeed, her role as his mistress may have played a part in the selection of her father and mother, and ultimately her and her 11-year-old brother, for this task, as at the point they were chosen, he may have tired of her and this provided a convenient way to send her packing.  Her father, a veteran of the German Navy during World War One, had become a post-war physician whose practice failed, leading him to become an ardent and somewhat influential Nazi.

They set up a system of sending coded messages by flashlight from their attic, something that wasn't detected until the Pearl Harbor attack.  Various adult members of the family were then arrested, tried and convicted.  Kuehn was sentenced to death, but he cooperated with American intelligence at that point and provided valuable information to the US on spy networks in the country.  His sentence was commuted to 50 years, but following the war he was deported to Germany.  His detained and convicted family joined him there.

On the same day, U-boats were very active in the Caribbean, sinking several ships.  The German Navy also sent the Scheer and Prinz Eugen from Germany to Bergen Navy. The RAF is unable to interdict them.

The Saturday news magazines were out, it being that day. The Saturday Evening Post went to press with a color photograph of an anti-aircraft gun crewman sighting through the gun's sight.  Liberty featured a woman looking through a Valentine style heart, in what must have been its belated Valentine's Day issue.  It featured an article on Lourdes.  Colliers featured a cartoon of a woman in the Army (or maybe the Marines) and a Sailor, sitting on something, back to back, with a heart behind them, in their Valentine's Day issue, apparently.  The sailor is oversize and athletic, and the female soldier/marine, extraordinarily buxom with her slip very much showing.  This demonstrates a real trend that was going on in society at the time that we recently discussed, and probably ought to a bit more when we have the chance.

Thursday, February 19, 1942. Commencement of Japanese Internment.

Today is remembered as a black mark on American history, and is now officially commemorated as the Japanese Internment Day of Remembrance.  It was the day in which President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, resulting in internment.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 19: 1942 Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable."  This would lead to internment camps, including Heart Mountain near Cody.

 Map showing interment camps and other aspects of the exclusion of ethnic Japanese from the Pacific Coast during World War Two.

The text of the order read:

Executive Order No. 9066

The President

Executive Order

Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104);

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area here in above authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.

I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.

This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House,

February 19, 1942.

While the choice of Heart Mountain in Park County was not one that Wyoming asked for, the event would prove to be a bit of a black mark on Wyoming's history as well.  Governor Lester Hunt, who did not come into office until 1943, would be vociferous in his statements regarding the internees and the legislature would take at least one act in regard to them, that being voting to deny them the right to vote in the state's elections.

On the same day, Darwin, Australia was bombed by the Japanese, inflicting heavy losses on facilities at the town. Twelve ships were sunk in the harbor, making the raid somewhat comparable to Pearl Harbor.

Like the attack at Pearl Harbor, the raid came in two stages and was a surprise attack, albeit on a nation already at war.  The Japanese aircraft were air and land based.  More bombs were used in the attack than had been used in the Pearl Harbor raid.  Australian defenses were relatively light and incapable of dealing with the attack. The resulting chaos resulted in a breakdown of civil authority, with looting taking place even by Australian troops in the town.  Many people would leave the city never to return, or only to return many years later.

The raid was the largest to occur against mainland Australia during the war and was an unqualified success.  The goal was to remove Darwin as a base for the Australians to counteract Japanese forces in Indonesia.

The Vichy government commenced a lengthy trial in Riom with the aims of showing that the preceding Third Republic had been responsible for France's defeat at the hand of the Germans in 1940.

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, the city staged If Day, a simulated German invasion.  The event was a huge success which boosted local bonds sales, which was the goal, enormously.

Monday, February 16, 1942. The Bangka Massacre and the Japanese New Order of Coexistence and Co-prosperity on Ethical Principles.

Nurses of the 2/13th.

Japanese soldiers murdered 22 Australian nurses and 60 Australian and British men on Bangka Island in Indonesia.  Most of the nurses in their captivity on the island, including the murdered ones, were raped.

The nurses were part of the 2/13th Australian General Hospital who had ended up on the island when a ship carrying them, and civilian men, women and children was sunk by Japanese aircraft.   They surrendered to the Japanese, who held the island.  One nurse and two men survived the massacre, but one of the men died soon thereafter.  They all later surrendered due to the impossibility of surviving on the island.

As with some other atrocities committed by the Japanese against the Australians, the Australian government worked to suppress some of the grimmer information following the war.  That the nurses were raped was not revealed until 2019.  Japanese authorities on the island following the war claimed to have no knowledge of the killings.  Japanese atrocities of this type were common.

On the same day, Hideke Tojo appeared in front of the Japanese Diet and proclaimed that the war aim a "new order of coexistence and co-prosperity on ethical principles in Greater East Asia."

Monday, February 13, 1922. The last stand of the Russian Whites, Viktorin Molchanov, Vasily Blyukher, Gloria Swanson and Harrison Ford.

The Battle of Volochayevka in the Russian far east came to an end with the withdrawal of Russian White Forces.  While it was a Red victory, the withdrawal was a White tactical success, but more or less a Pyrrhic one, save for the men that it saved from being taken by the Reds.  Following this, the Whites would come apart and remaining White forces and the Japanese occupation force in the area would be withdrawn.  It was, effectively, the last battle of the Russian Civil War.

The drama was played out in the odd context of the final days of the Whites in Russia.  In November 1921 the Whites, organized as the Far Eastern White Army, launched an offensive against the Soviet peudo state, the Far Eastern Republic. They were supported in this endeavor by the Japanese.    They had experienced initial success, but suffered setbacks in December and thereafter lost ground.  On October 25, 1922, their remnants and that of the Japanese forces were withdrawn.

The victorious Vasily Blyukher, servant of Red butchery, who would go on to be beaten to death by Red butchers.

The White commander, Viktorin Molchanov, relocated first to China, and then to the United States, dying in San Francisco at age 88 in 1975.  The Red commander, who was technically in the army of the Far Eastern Republic, Vasily Blyukher went on to become an advisor to the Chinese in from 1924 to 1927.  He was beaten to death in Stalin's purges in 1938, the same reward that a vast number of effective Red Army commanders received from their leader in the same time period.

To make this a bit odder, this region today is in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, a remnant of the Soviet Union.  Created to be an "independent" region for Russia's Jewish population by the USSR, at its peak 25% of its population was Jewish.  Today, only .2% of the population is.

The movie Smilin' Through was released.  It featured Norma Talmadge and Harrison Ford in a melodrama.

No, not that Harrison Ford, this Harrison Ford:

Ford was a silent movie actor, making his last picture, and his only "talkie" in 1932.  He toured with the USO during World War Two.  He was hit as a pedestrian by a car in 1951, and would spend the rest of his life an invalid, dying in 1957 at age 73.

Saturday, February 4, 1922. Ford buys Lincoln.

An illustration by Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle graced the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on this day in 1922.

Ford Motors announced it had purchased the financially distressed Lincoln Motor Company.  The purchase out of receivership was for $8,000,000.

Japan agreed to withdraw troops from Shandong, restore German interests, surprisingly, in Qingdao, and given the Jinan railway back to China.

A mob in British India burned down a police station in Chauri Chaura killing 22 policemen. The action had been sparked by police killing protesters some time earlier.

The family of newly elected Congressman John. L. Cable posed for this photograph:

Sailor suits for boys remained popular at the time, as this photo demonstrates.

Sunday, January 25, 1942. Australia initiates conscription.

As Sarah Saradin's blog, notes, the following things happened on this day in 1942:

January 25, 1942: Japanese set up puppet government in Thailand, which declares war on US and UK. Japanese land at Lae, New Guinea. Australia orders full mobilization; all white male British subjects 18-45 years are eligible for conscription.

It's worth noting that conscription was not popular in Australia.  The Australians were justifiably freighted that the Japanese would land on Australia and outright conquer it, a thought that seems fantastical today, but which is less extreme than one might imagine.  Japan's population grossly outnumbered Australia's and Australia, for the most part, is only populated on its coasts.  Japan was, at the time, expanding its conquests massively, and on this day were making landings in New Guinea and Borneo.  As noted, their puppet government in Thailand declared war on the US and UK.

Nonetheless, Australians, who have always had a strong contrarian streak, didn't like the idea of conscription and at first Australian conscripts only served in Australia itself, matching a pattern that was true for Canada, at first.  Late war Canadians conscripts could be sent overseas, and Australian ones ended up fighting in the Pacific. The quality of Australian conscript combat troops was notably poorer than their volunteer troops, with morale really being the reason why.

The United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa reciprocated Thailand's declaration of war.  Thailand's ambassador to the US refuses to deliver the declaration and defects, going on to form a Free Thai government in exile.

Japanese submarines shelled Marine Corps positions at Midway unsuccessfully, and submerged due to counterfire.

Uruguay severed diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan.

The Red Army surrounded the Germans at Kholm.   The Germans overran British lines, including armor, at Msus.