Friday, February 27, 1942. The Battle of the Java Sea, Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, The Raid on Brunvel.

February 27, 1942: Battle of Java Sea begins—Allied ships fail to prevent Japanese landing at Java, take heavy losses. Nazis order construction of gas chambers at Auschwitz. Seattle school board accepts forced resignation of Japanese-American teachers.

Sarah Sundin's blog notes a series of significant events for this day.

The big one, in the context of the fighting, was the beginning of the Battle of Java Sea, which would be an Allied defeat.  In human misery and global crime context, the beginning of the construction of the gas chambers at Auschwitz can't help but be noted.  And then there's the forced resignation of Japanese American teachers in Seattle.

A grim day all the way around.

Radar station at Brunvel, with surprisingly modern looking dish.

The British conducted Operation Biting, an airborne raid on a radar station in France.  The raid on Brunvel secured the radar array which the troops took with them when they withdrew by sea, giving the British a first-hand example of new type of German radar.  It was a completely successful raid.

Monday, February 27, 1922. The 19th Amendment Upheld.

Rosa Maye Kendrick, daughter of Wyoming Senator John B. Kendrick, on February 27, 1922 in Washington, DC.

The United States Supreme Court, in two separate decisions, upheld the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote.

 

The Best Posts of the Week of February 18, 2022

The best posts of the war torn week of February 18, 2022.

Blog Mirror: Four Eyes: Eyeglasses and the WW II GI

Looking to 1953

The Storm

Friday, February 24, 1942. The Battle of Los Angeles

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022.

Ukraine is crying out for help and has been for some time. . .

Ukraine is crying out for help and has been for some time. . .

 Forces With History #150

Biden Nominates Kentaji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court

 

Jackson with Justice Breyer, whom she is nominated to replace.

She's no doubt qualified and is a sitting DC Circuit Federal Appeals Court Judge, but I'll admit I'm disappointed.  Jackson is a Harvard Law graduate, making the Ivy League grip on the court seemingly irreversible.  She's also married to another Harvard graduate, a surgeon, who is of the Boston Brahmin class.

I was hoping for a less Ivy League nominee.

She's likely to pass, however, the Senate Judiciary Committee and receive enough votes to be seated, an important consideration for any nominee is this highly polarized era.

Friday, February 24, 1942. The Battle of Los Angeles

 

The Battle of Los Angeles occurred started on the night of February 24, 1942, and lasted into the morning of February 25, the result of jittery nerves amplified by a submarine shelling Ellwood the day prior.  Much of what sparked the event remains somewhat of a mystery.

The Air Force's official history of the event summarizes it as follows:

During the course of a fireside report to the nation delivered by President Roosevelt on 23 February 1942, a Japanese submarine rose out of the sea off Ellwood, a hamlet on the California coast north of Santa Barbara, and pumped thirteen shells into tidewater refinery installations. The shots seemed designed to punctuate the President's statement that "the broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies." Yet the attack which was supposed to carry the enemy's defiance, and which did succeed in stealing headlines from the President's address, was a feeble gesture rather than a damaging blow. The raider surfaced at 1905 (Pacific time), just five minutes after the President started his speech. For about twenty minutes the submarine kept a position 2,500 yards offshore to deliver the shots from its 5½-inch guns. The shells did minor damage to piers and oil wells, but missed the gasoline plant, which appears to have been the aiming point; the military effects of the raid were therefore nil. The first news of the attack led to the dispatch of pursuit planes to the area, and subsequently three bombers joined the attempt to destroy the raider, but without success. The reluctance of AAF commanders to assign larger forces to the task resulted from their belief that such a raid as this would be employed by the enemy to divert attention from a major air task force which would hurl its planes against a really significant target. Loyal Japanese-Americans who had predicted that a demonstration would be made in connection with the President's speech also prophesied that Los Angeles would be attacked the next night. The Army, too, was convinced that some new action impended, and took all possible precautions. Newspapers were permitted to announce that a strict state of readiness against renewed attacks had been imposed, and there followed the confused action known as "The Battle of Los Angeles."

During the night of 24/25 February 1942, unidentified objects caused a succession of alerts in southern California. On the 24th, a warning issued by naval intelligence indicated that an attack could be expected within the next ten hours. That evening many flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert called at 1918 [7:18 pm, Pacific time] was lifted at 2223, and the tension temporarily relaxed. But early in the morning of the 25th renewed activity began. Radars picked up an unidentified target 120 miles west of Los Angeles. Antiaircraft batteries were alerted at 0215 and were put on Green Alert—ready to fire—a few minutes later. The AAF kept its pursuit planes on the ground, preferring to await indications of the scale and direction of any attack before committing its limited fighter force. Radars tracked the approaching target to within a few miles of the coast, and at 0221 the regional controller ordered a blackout. Thereafter the information center was flooded with reports of "enemy planes, " even though the mysterious object tracked in from sea seems to have vanished. At 0243, planes were reported near Long Beach, and a few minutes later a coast artillery colonel spotted "about 25 planes at 12,000 feet" over Los Angeles. At 0306 a balloon carrying a red flare was seen over Santa Monica and four batteries of anti-aircraft artillery opened fire, whereupon "the air over Los Angeles erupted like a volcano." From this point on reports were hopelessly at variance. 

Probably much of the confusion came from the fact that anti-aircraft shell bursts, caught by the searchlights, were themselves mistaken for enemy planes. In any case, the next three hours produced some of the most imaginative reporting of the war: "swarms" of planes (or, sometimes, balloons) of all possible sizes, numbering from one to several hundred, traveling at altitudes which ranged from a few thousand feet to more than 20,000 and flying at speeds which were said to have varied from "very slow" to over 200 miles per hour, were observed to parade across the skies. These mysterious forces dropped no bombs and, despite the fact that 1,440 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition were directed against them, suffered no losses. There were reports, to be sure, that four enemy planes had been shot down, and one was supposed to have landed in flames at a Hollywood intersection. Residents in a forty-mile arc along the coast watched from hills or rooftops as the play of guns and searchlights provided the first real drama of the war for citizens of the mainland. The dawn, which ended the shooting and the fantasy, also proved that the only damage which resulted to the city was such as had been caused by the excitement (there was at least one death from heart failure), by traffic accidents in the blacked-out streets, or by shell fragments from the artillery barrage. Attempts to arrive at an explanation of the incident quickly became as involved and mysterious as the "battle" itself. The Navy immediately insisted that there was no evidence of the presence of enemy planes, and Frank Knox announced at a press conference on 25 February that the raid was just a false alarm. At the same conference he admitted that attacks were always possible and indicated that vital industries located along the coast ought to be moved inland. The Army had a hard time making up its mind on the cause of the alert. A report to Washington, made by the Western Defense Command shortly after the raid had ended, indicated that the credibility of reports of an attack had begun to be shaken before the blackout was lifted. This message predicted that developments would prove "that most previous reports had been greatly exaggerated." The Fourth Air Force had indicated its belief that there were no planes over Los Angeles. But the Army did not publish these initial conclusions. Instead, it waited a day, until after a thorough examination of witnesses had been finished. On the basis of these hearings, local commanders altered their verdict and indicated a belief that from one to five unidentified airplanes had been over Los Angeles. Secretary Stimson announced this conclusion as the War Department version of the incident, and he advanced two theories to account for the mysterious craft: either they were commercial planes operated by an enemy from secret fields in California or Mexico, or they were light planes launched from Japanese submarines. In either case, the enemy’s purpose must have been to locate anti-aircraft defenses in the area or to deliver a blow at civilian morale.

The divergence of views between the War and Navy departments, and the unsatisfying conjectures advanced by the Army to explain the affair, touched off a vigorous public discussion. The Los Angeles Times, in a first-page editorial on 26 February, announced that "the considerable public excitement and confusion" caused by the alert, as well as its "spectacular official accompaniments," demanded a careful explanation. Fears were expressed lest a few phony raids undermine the confidence of civilian volunteers in the aircraft warning service. In the United States Congress, Representative Leland Ford wanted to know whether the incident was "a practice raid, or a raid to throw a scare into 2,000,000 people, or a mistaken identity raid, or a raid to take away Southern California’s war industries." Wendell Willkie, speaking in Los Angeles on 26 February, assured Californians on the basis of his experiences in England that when a real air raid began "you won’t have to argue about it—you’ll just know." He conceded that military authorities had been correct in calling a precautionary alert but deplored the lack of agreement between the Army and Navy. A strong editorial in the Washington Post on 27 February called the handling of the Los Angeles episode a "recipe for jitters," and censured the military authorities for what it called "stubborn silence" in the face of widespread uncertainty. The editorial suggested that the Army’s theory that commercial planes might have caused the alert "explains everything except where the planes came from, whither they were going, and why no American planes were sent in pursuit of them." The New York Times on 28 February expressed a belief that the more the incident was studied, the more incredible it became: "If the batteries were firing on nothing at all, as Secretary Knox implies, it is a sign of expensive incompetence and jitters. If the batteries were firing on real planes, some of them as low as 9,000 feet, as Secretary Stimson declares, why were they completely ineffective? Why did no American planes go up to engage them, or even to identify them? ... What would have happened if this had been a real air raid?" These questions were appropriate, but for the War Department to have answered them in full frankness would have involved an even more complete revelation of the weakness of American air defenses.

At the end of the war, the Japanese stated that they did not send planes over the area at the time of this alert, although submarine-launched aircraft were subsequently used over Seattle. A careful study of the evidence suggests that meteorological balloons—known to have been released over Los Angeles—may well have caused the initial alarm. This theory is supported by the fact that anti-aircraft artillery units were officially criticized for having wasted ammunition on targets which moved too slowly to have been airplanes. After the firing started, careful observation was difficult because of drifting smoke from shell bursts. The acting commander of the anti-aircraft artillery brigade in the area testified that he had first been convinced that he had seen fifteen planes in the air, but had quickly decided that he was seeing smoke. Competent correspondents like Ernie Pyle and Bill Henry witnessed the shooting and wrote that they were never able to make out an airplane. It is hard to see, in any event, what enemy purpose would have been served by an attack in which no bombs were dropped, unless perhaps, as Mr. Stimson suggested, the purpose had been reconnaissance.

Now regarded by most as an amusing event, several people did die during it, and it showed the extent to which Americans were nervous and the defense of the coast uncoordinated.  UFO fans have adopted the event as their own, asserting that the unidentified objects were alien spacecraft.   The comedy movie 1941 was based on the event.

The Japanese actually did overfly US territory on this day, but with a submarine launched floatplane that flew over Pearl Harbor.

In a real air raid, the U.S. Navy raided Wake Island. The raid featuring carrier launched aircraft and surface ships targeted Japanese destroyers at Wake, but the Japanese thought it was an effort to retake the island.

A Soviet submarine sank the Panamanian registered MV Sturma which was carrying 781 Jewish refugees in the Black Sea.  Only one person survived.

German ambassador Franz von Papen survived a Soviet backed assassination attempt in Turkey when the assassin's gun misfired, and he accidentally detonated a bomb he was carrying.

The Voice of America began German language short wave broadcasts.

Norwegian Lutheran Bishops all resigned rather than swear loyalty to the Quisling regime.  The Lutheran Church, the state church of Norway.

Monday, February 23, 1942. The Japanese bombard Ellwood, California.

A Japanese submarine shelled Ellwood, California.

The event was directly tied to a scheduled radio address by Franklin Roosevelt, which the Japanese were oddly concerned about.  

That address was a fireside chat on the progress of the war.  In it, Roosevelt stated:

My fellow Americans:

Washington's Birthday is a most appropriate occasion for us to talk with each other about things as they are today and things as we know they shall be in the future.

For eight years, General Washington and his Continental Army were faced continually with formidable odds and recurring defeats. Supplies and equipment were lacking. In a sense, every winter was a Valley Forge. Throughout the 13 states there existed fifth columnists – and selfish men, jealous men, fearful men, who proclaimed that Washington's cause was hopeless, and that he should ask for a negotiated peace.

Washington's conduct in those hard times has provided the model for all Americans ever since – a model of moral stamina. He held to his course, as it had been charted in the Declaration of Independence. He and the brave men who served with him knew that no man's life or fortune was secure without freedom and free institutions.

The present great struggle has taught us increasingly that freedom of person and security of property anywhere in the world depend upon the security of the rights and obligations of liberty and justice everywhere in the world.

This war is a new kind of war. It is different from all other wars of the past, not only in its methods and weapons but also in its geography. It is warfare in terms of every continent, every island, every sea, every air-lane in the world.

That is the reason why I have asked you to take out and spread before you (the) a map of the whole earth, and to follow with me in the references which I shall make to the world-encircling battle lines of this war. Many questions will, I fear, remain unanswered tonight, but I know you will realize that I cannot cover everything in any one short report to the people.

The broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.

We must all understand and face the hard fact that our job now is to fight at distances which extend all the way around the globe.

We fight at these vast distances because that is where our enemies are. Until our flow of supplies gives us clear superiority we must keep on striking our enemies wherever and whenever we can meet them, even if, for a while, we have to yield ground. Actually, though, we are taking a heavy toll of the enemy every day that goes by.

We must fight at these vast distances to protect our supply lines and our lines of communication with our allies – protect these lines from the enemies who are bending every ounce of their strength, striving against time, to cut them. The object of the Nazis and the Japanese is to of course separate the United States, Britain, China and Russia, and to isolate them one from another, so that each will be surrounded and cut off from sources of supplies and reinforcements. It is the old familiar Axis policy of "divide and conquer."

There are those who still think, however, in terms of the days of sailing ships. They advise us to pull our warships and our planes and our merchant ships into our own home waters and concentrate solely on last ditch defense. But let me illustrate what would happen if we followed such foolish advice.

Look at your map. Look at the vast area of China, with its millions of fighting men. Look at the vast area of Russia, with its powerful armies and proven military might. Look at the (British Isles) Islands of Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Dutch Indies, India, the Near East and the Continent of Africa, with their (re)sources of raw materials – their resources of raw materials, and of peoples determined to resist Axis domination. Look too at North America, Central America and South America.

It is obvious what would happen if all of these great reservoirs of power were cut off from each other either by enemy action or by self-imposed isolation:

(1.) First, in such a case, we could no longer send aid of any kind to China – to the brave people who, for nearly five years, have withstood Japanese assault, destroyed hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and vast quantities of Japanese war munitions. It is essential that we help China in her magnificent defense and in her inevitable counteroffensive – for that is one important element in the ultimate defeat of Japan.

(2.) Secondly, if we lost communication with the southwest Pacific, all of that area, including Australia and New Zealand and the Dutch Indies, would fall under Japanese domination. Japan in such a case could (then) release great numbers of ships and men to launch attacks on a large scale against the coasts of the Western Hemisphere – South America and Central America, and North America – including Alaska. At the same time, she could immediately extend her conquests (to) in the other direction toward India, (and) through the Indian Ocean, to Africa, (and) to the Near East and try to join forces with Germany and Italy.

(3.) Third, if we were to stop sending munitions to the British and the Russians in the Mediterranean area, (and) in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, (areas) we would be helping the Nazis to overrun Turkey, and Syria, and Iraq, and Persia – that is now called Iran – Egypt and the Suez Canal, the whole coast of North Africa itself and with that inevitably the whole coast of West Africa – putting Germany within easy striking distance of South America – 1,500 miles away.

(4.) Fourth, if by such a fatuous policy, we ceased to protect the North Atlantic supply line to Britain and to Russia, we would help to cripple the splendid counter-offensive by Russia against the Nazis, and we would help to deprive Britain of essential food supplies and munitions.

Those Americans who believed that we could live under the illusion of isolationism wanted the American eagle to imitate the tactics of the ostrich. Now, many of those same people, afraid that we may be sticking our necks out, want our national bird to be turned into a turtle. But we prefer to retain the eagle as it is – flying high and striking hard.

I know (that) I speak for the mass of the American people when I say that we reject the turtle policy and will continue increasingly the policy of carrying the war to the enemy in distant lands and distant waters – as far away as possible from our own home grounds.

There are four main lines of communication now being traveled by our ships: the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. These routes are not one-way streets, for the ships (which) that carry our troops and munitions out-bound bring back essential raw materials which we require for our own use.

The maintenance of these vital lines is a very tough job. It is a job which requires tremendous daring, tremendous resourcefulness, and, above all, tremendous production of planes and tanks and guns and also of the ships to carry them. And I speak again for the American people when I say that we can and will do that job.

The defense of the world-wide lines of communication demands – compel relatively safe use by us of the sea and of the air along the various routes; and this, in turn, depends upon control by the United Nations of (the) many strategic bases along those routes.

Control of the air involves the simultaneous use of two types of planes – first, the long-range heavy bomber; and, second, the light bombers, the dive bombers, the torpedo planes, (and) the short-range pursuit planes, all of which are essential to (the) cooperate with and protect(ion) (of) the bases and (of) the bombers themselves.

Heavy bombers can fly under their own power from here to the southwest Pacific, either way, but the smaller planes cannot. Therefore, these lighter planes have to be packed in crates and sent on board cargo ships. Look at your map again; and you will see that the route is long – and at many places perilous – either across the South Atlantic all the way (a)round South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, or from California to the East Indies direct. A vessel can make a round trip by either route in about four months, or only three round trips in a whole year.

In spite of the length, (and) in spite of the difficulties of this transportation, I can tell you that in two and a half months we already have a large number of bombers and pursuit planes, manned by American pilots and crews, which are now in daily contact with the enemy in the Southwest Pacific. And thousands of American troops are today in that area engaged in operations not only in the air but on the ground as well.

In this battle area, Japan has had an obvious initial advantage. For she could fly even her short-range planes to the points of attack by using many stepping stones open to – her bases in a multitude of Pacific islands and also bases on the China coast, Indo-China coast, and in Thailand and Malaya (coasts). Japanese troop transports could go south from Japan and from China through the narrow China Sea, which can be protected by Japanese planes throughout its whole length.

I ask you to look at your maps again, particularly at that portion of the Pacific Ocean lying west of Hawaii. Before this war even started, the Philippine Islands were already surrounded on three sides by Japanese power. On the west, the China side, the Japanese were in possession of the coast of China and the coast of Indo-China which had been yielded to them by the Vichy French. On the North are the islands of Japan themselves, reaching down almost to northern Luzon. On the east, are the Mandated Islands – which Japan had occupied exclusively, and had fortified in absolute violation of her written word.

The islands that lie between Hawaii and the Philippines – these islands, hundreds of them, appear only as small dots on most maps, but do not appear at all. But they cover a large strategic area. Guam lies in the middle of them – a lone outpost which we have never fortified.

Under the Washington Treaty of 1921 we had solemnly agreed not to add to the fortification of the Philippines (Islands). We had no safe naval bases there, so we could not use the islands for extensive naval operations.

Immediately after this war started, the Japanese forces moved down on either side of the Philippines to numerous points south of them – thereby completely encircling the (Islands) Philippines from north, and south, and east and west.

It is that complete encirclement, with control of the air by Japanese land-based aircraft, which has prevented us from sending substantial reinforcements of men and material to the gallant defenders of the Philippines. For forty years it has always been our strategy – a strategy born of necessity – that in the event of a full-scale attack on the Islands by Japan, we should fight a delaying action, attempting to retire slowly into Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor.

We knew that the war as a whole would have to be fought and won by a process of attrition against Japan itself. We knew all along that, with our greater resources, we could ultimately out-build Japan and ultimately overwhelm her on sea, and on land and in the air. We knew that, to obtain our objective, many varieties of operations would be necessary in areas other than the Philippines.

Now nothing that has occurred in the past two months has caused us to revise this basic strategy of necessity – except that the defense put up by General MacArthur has magnificently exceeded the previous estimates of endurance, and he and his men are gaining eternal glory therefore.

MacArthur's army of Filipinos and Americans, and the forces of the United Nations in China, in Burma and the Netherlands East Indies, are all together fulfilling the same essential task. They are making Japan pay an increasingly terrible price for her ambitious attempts to seize control of the whole (Atlantic) Asiatic world. Every Japanese transport sunk off Java is one less transport that they can use to carry reinforcements to their army opposing General MacArthur in Luzon.

It has been said that Japanese gains in the Philippines were made possible only by the success of their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. I tell you that this is not so.

Even if the attack had not been made your map will show that it would have been a hopeless operation for us to send the Fleet to the Philippines through thousands of miles of ocean, while all those island bases were under the sole control of the Japanese.

The consequences of the attack on Pearl Harbor – serious as they were – have been wildly exaggerated in other ways. And these exaggerations come originally from Axis propagandists; but they have been repeated, I regret to say, by Americans in and out of public life.

You and I have the utmost contempt for Americans who, since Pearl Harbor, have whispered or announced "off the record" that there was no longer any Pacific Fleet – that the Fleet was all sunk or destroyed on December 7th – that more than a thousand of our planes were destroyed on the ground. They have suggested slyly that the government has withheld the truth about casualties – that 11,000 or 12,000 men were killed at Pearl Harbor instead of the figures as officially announced. They have even served the enemy propagandists by spreading the incredible story that shiploads of bodies of our honored American dead were about to arrive in New York harbor to be put into a common grave.

Almost every Axis broadcast – Berlin, Rome, Tokyo – directly quotes Americans who, by speech or in the press, make damnable misstatements such as these.

The American people realize that in many cases details of military operations cannot be disclosed until we are absolutely certain that the announcement will not give to the enemy military information which he does not already possess.

Your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart. You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us. In a democracy there is always a solemn pact of truth between government and the people, but there must also always be a full use of discretion, and that word "discretion" applies to the critics of government as well.

This is war. The American people want to know, and will be told, the general trend of how the war is going. But they do not wish to help the enemy any more than our fighting forces do, and they will pay little attention to the rumor-mongers and the poison peddlers in our midst.

To pass from the realm of rumor and poison to the field of facts: the number of our officers and men killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th was 2,340, and the number wounded was 940. Of all of the combatant ships based on Pearl Harbor – battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines – only three (were) are permanently put out of commission.

Very many of the ships of the Pacific Fleet were not even in Pearl Harbor. Some of those that were there were hit very slightly, and others that were damaged have either rejoined the Fleet by now or are still undergoing repairs. And when those repairs are completed, the ships will be more efficient fighting machines than they were before.

The report that we lost more than a thousand (air)planes at Pearl Harbor is as baseless as the other weird rumors. The Japanese do not know just how many planes they destroyed that day, and I am not going to tell them. But I can say that to date – and including Pearl Harbor – we have destroyed considerably more Japanese planes than they have destroyed of ours.

We have most certainly suffered losses – from Hitler's U-Boats in the Atlantic as well as from the Japanese in the Pacific – and we shall suffer more of them before the turn of the tide. But, speaking for the United States of America, let me say once and for all to the people of the world: We Americans have been compelled to yield ground, but we will regain it. We and the other United Nations are committed to the destruction of the militarism of Japan and Germany. We are daily increasing our strength. Soon, we and not our enemies, will have the offensive; we, not they, will win the final battles; and we, not they, will make the final peace.

Conquered nations in Europe know what the yoke of the Nazis is like. And the people of Korea and of Manchuria know in their flesh the harsh despotism of Japan. All of the people of Asia know that if there is to be an honorable and decent future for any of them or any of (for) us, that future depends on victory by the United Nations over the forces of Axis enslavement.

If a just and durable peace is to be attained, or even if all of us are merely to save our own skins, there is one thought for us here at home to keep uppermost – the fulfillment of our special task of production – uninterrupted production. I stress that word "uninterrupted."

Germany, Italy and Japan are very close to their maximum output of planes, guns, tanks and ships. The United Nations are not – especially the United States of America.

Our first job then is to build up production – uninterrupted production – so that the United Nations can maintain control of the seas and attain control of the air – not merely a slight superiority, but an overwhelming superiority.

On January 6th of this year, I set certain definite goals of production for airplanes, tanks, guns and ships. The Axis propagandists called them fantastic. Tonight, nearly two months later, and after a careful survey of progress by Donald Nelson and others charged with responsibility for our production, I can tell you that those goals will be attained.

In every part of the country, experts in production and the men and women at work in the plants are giving loyal service. With few exceptions, labor, capital and farming realize that this is no time either to make undue profits or to gain special advantages, one over the other.

We are calling for new plants and additions – additions to old plants. We are calling for plant conversion to war needs. We are seeking more men and more women to run them. We are working longer hours. We are coming to realize that one extra plane or extra tank or extra gun or extra ship completed tomorrow may, in a few months, turn the tide on some distant battlefield; it may make the difference between life and death for some of our own fighting men. We know now that if we lose this war it will be generations or even centuries before our conception of democracy can live again. And we can lose this war only if use slow up our effort or if we waste our ammunition sniping at each other.

Here are three high purposes for every American:

1. We shall not stop work for a single day. If any dispute arises we shall keep on working while the dispute is solved by mediation, or conciliation or arbitration – until the war is won.

2. We shall not demand special gains or special privileges or special advantages for any one group or occupation.

3. We shall give up conveniences and modify the routine of our lives if our country asks us to do so. We will do it cheerfully, remembering that the common enemy seeks to destroy every home and every freedom in every part of our land.

This generation of Americans has come to realize, with a present and personal realization, that there is something larger and more important than the life of any individual or of any individual group – something for which a man will sacrifice, and gladly sacrifice, not only his pleasures, not only his goods, not only his associations with those he loves, but his life itself. In time of crisis when the future is in the balance, we come to understand, with full recognition and devotion, what this nation is and what we owe to it.

The Axis propagandists have tried in various evil ways to destroy our determination and our morale. Failing in that, they are now trying to destroy our confidence in our own allies. They say that the British are finished – that the Russians and the Chinese are about to quit. Patriotic and sensible Americans will reject these absurdities. And instead of listening to any of this crude propaganda, they will recall some of the things that Nazis and Japanese have said and are still saying about us.

Ever since this nation became the arsenal of democracy – ever since enactment of Lend-Lease – there has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda.

This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, (and) that Americans have considerable industrial power – but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight.

From Berlin, Rome and Tokyo we have been described as a nation of weaklings – "playboys" – who would hire British soldiers, or Russian soldiers, or Chinese soldiers to do our fighting for us.

Let them repeat that now!
Let them tell that to General MacArthur and his men.
Let them tell that to the sailors who today are hitting hard in the far waters of the Pacific.
Let them tell that to the boys in the Flying Fortresses.
Let them tell that to the Marines!

The United Nations constitutes an association of independent peoples of equal dignity and equal importance. The United Nations are dedicated to a common cause. We share equally and with equal zeal the anguish and the awful sacrifices of war. In the partnership of our common enterprise, we must share in a unified plan in which all of us must play our several parts, each of us being equally indispensable and dependent one on the other.

We have unified command and cooperation and comradeship.

We Americans will contribute unified production and unified acceptance of sacrifice and of effort. That means a national unity that can know no limitations of race or creed or selfish politics. The American people expect that much from themselves. And the American people will find ways and means of expressing their determination to their enemies, including the Japanese Admiral who has said that he will dictate the terms of peace here in the White Mouse.

We of the United Nations are agreed on certain broad principles in the kind of peace we seek. The Atlantic Charter applies not only to the parts of the world that border the Atlantic but to the whole world; disarmament of aggressors, self-determination of nations and peoples, and the four freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

The British and the Russian people have known the full fury of Nazi onslaught. There have been times when the fate of London and Moscow was in serious doubt. But there was never the slightest question that either the British or the Russians would yield. And today all the United Nations salutes the superb Russian Army as it celebrates the 24th anniversary of its first assembly.

Though their homeland was overrun, the Dutch people are still fighting stubbornly and powerfully overseas.

The great Chinese people have suffered grievous losses; Chungking has been almost wiped out of existence – yet it remains the capital of an unbeatable China.

That is the conquering spirit which prevails throughout the United Nations in this war.

The task that we Americans now face will test us to the uttermost. Never before have we been called upon for such a prodigious effort. Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.

"These are the times that try men's souls."

Tom Paine wrote those words on a drumhead, by the light of a campfire. That was when Washington's little army of ragged, rugged men was retreating across New Jersey, having tasted (nothing) naught but defeat.

And General Washington ordered that these great words written by Tom Paine be read to the men of every regiment in the Continental Army, and this was the assurance given to the first American armed forces:

"The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the sacrifice, the more glorious the triumph."

So spoke Americans in the year 1776.

So speak Americans today!

The attack on Ellwood's oil facility, which is located near Santa Barbara, was about 20 minutes in length.  It didn't achieve much actual damage, but it did serve to make Californian's nervous.

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.

The Storm

February 21, 2022

 Highs today are predicted, in advance of a big winter storm, to only hit 24F.

That's according to one source.  According to another, that figure is 15F.

In my part of town, they're 31F right now. . .

Well actually not, now its an hour later than when I first typed that, and its 28F and lightly snowing.

Oddly, the Weather Channel claims its 8F right now and that the high will be the aforementioned 15.

Tomorrow, according to the first source mentioned, the low will be -9F. That's cold, but we've hit that several times this year already.  That figure is supposed to arrive with snow. . . which is supposed to arrive today, and in fact somewhat has. The Weather Channel predicts a high tomorrow, however, of -2F and a low of -16F.

Wednesday, according to one source, the high will be -2F, and the low -20F.  But the Weather Channel states it will be 2F and -15F respectively.

Thursday it will be 2 and -12F.  Or 16 and -2.

I guess we'll see.

February 21, 2022, cont.

Well, it's 6F now, at 8:54.

Quite a drop in just a couple of hours.

Cont:

4:20, 0F, been snowing all day.

February 22, 2022

5:24 a.m., -11F.

And then down to -15F, now back up to -12F.

And snowing.

Looking to 1953

There's a really interesting, and scary, article on Salon right now which consists of an interview of Joe Walsh.

For those who don't recall him, Walsh was a Republican who ran against Trump.  He'd been a Tea Party Republican who was an early defector in opposition to Trump and, apparently, has remained there.  Indeed, he was associated with Trump allies before he bolted to sound a warning against Trump, which he's still trying to sound.

The reason I note this is that the article, while it definitely has its flaws, is insightful and, for anyone reading this blog, probably a little familiar.  A lot of what he's warning about has been addressed here.

Walsh's main point, and its a good one, is that Trump populists have an existential view of the world that's fundamentally such that it's become unapologetically anti-democratic. Therefore, those who have the view that once Trumpites learn what really occurred in regard to the November 2020 election, i.e., it wasn't stolen, or what really occurred on January 6, i.e. it was an insurrection, that they will change their mind and oppose Trump are simply wrong.  The reason for that is that their Weltanschauung is such that Trumpites view their opponents as existentially illegitimate.

That's a really scary point, but its correct in large measure.  And he's correct on how we got there. . . in part, and also, not in part.

Walsh takes the view that going back to the Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan, without every mentioning Reagan, the GOP adopted, or rather co-opted, this view, for its own purposes.  That's' partially correct.  And he's definitely correct when he notes that the Trumpites know that they were completely ignored in their concerns by generations of American politicians, left and right.  And like we've said, by voting for Trump in 2016 they were voting to throw in the match and burn the system down.  Like we also said at that time and since, if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic candidate in 2016 (and frankly, maybe 2020)  he would be President now.  Sanders appealed to the exact same base.  

And as we've also noted, by choosing Uber Establishment Hilary Clinton, the Democrats blew it.

What we've noted, but what the article doesn't, is that the roots of this go back further than the 1976 election.  They go back at least to the 1960s when fundamental long established aspects of western culture came under surfaced attacks from the left.  Animosity in some part of the left to western culture had existed for almost all of the 20th Century, but they had not been able to emerge into mainstream political and cultural discourse until after World War Two.  Part of that attack came in other ways right after the war, and we've been dealing with another in our series on an attack on the culture that came from another quarter.  As we have noted before, the war did something that set things up in some fashion for what occurred in the 60s.  But it was the massive introduction of new wealth, combined with an expansion of the economy, combined with the Vietnam War that really exploded into a left wing eruption in the culture by the fateful year of 1968.  The article misses that.

The hard hat reaction to 1968 existed in that very year.  But the elite drift to the left, which had been going on since the 1950s, really accelerated at that time and the left, using the courts, started gaining ground in the 1970s to force cultural changes up on the country through litigation, not through the ballot box, where the ballot box would not suffice, or seem to suffice.  As also noted here before, such decisions really do not tend to really fix an issue in the public's mind immediately, and sometimes not at all.  Combined with that, in the 1970s, the American economy began to fundamentally change with nothing done to stop it. Both Democrats and Republicans winked at manufacturing jobs, particularly low tech manufacturing jobs, going overseas, confident in the view that what this would undoubtedly mean is the arrival of high paying replacement jobs that everyone wanted.

Walsh puts this in terms of "1953", more or less arguing that populist Republicans seek to return the country to its status, economically certainly, but culturally also, that it had in 1953.  His analysis is sophisticated in some sense, and not in others.  In one way he gets it correct that contrary to what the press asserts, outward racism isn't part of it, but at the same time the sense that the "perfect" world of 1953 was a white one.

More accurately, of course, the United States of 1953 had a white protestant culture.  The Catholic Ghetto was still very much a thing in 1953 and Catholics were attending university for the first time.  And the big advancements in civil rights for African Americans were very much part of the story of the 1950s, although that may be part of it too, as almost all Americans look back on that as a success.  1953 was during the era in which American industry dominated the world without question, although 53 is an odd choice as the Korean War, which was not actually a popular one, was ongoing.  Having said that, the Vietnam War was yet to occur.

1953 was the year in which Playboy magazine premiered and the assault on the traditional family really, therefore, began in earnest.  It was also, however, during an era in which most men, including men with no college degree, could support a family without anyone else in it making an outside income.  That era has very much passed.

Of course, the irony of an idealized pass is both that it never actually matches the reality of  the past or the current lives of those who advocate for it.  Many in the populist camp look back on this prior era strongly romantically, however, and Walsh is correct. The desire is to return the culture to something like that era.

A desire to return to past standard, or even some of them, is not in and of itself anti-democratic or illegitimate.  Globally, strongly conservative, and not just populist, movements often have varying elements of that as a goal. Certainly the American conservative movement, at least weakly, had that as a goal to some extent for some time.  The problem becomes when the mindset of some with such goals reduces them both to myth, and strongly endorses a conspiratorial view of their opponents.  Liberals, in taking to the courts, were not engaging in conspiracies, although there were always some extreme left wingers who acted somewhat hidden goals that they were advancing incrementally.  The problem that the left, and the larger society right and left, now has is that its overarchingly difficult for those outside of the populist right to grasp that many in that section of the electorate have convinced themselves that what was done was completely illegitimate and that those who took those positions are illegitimate as well.

With that view, the Trumpites, and they vary enormously in loyalty and world view, go from being somewhat predisposed to believe that the left would resort to stealing an election all the way to believing that views outside of their own are so fundamentally flawed as to be irrelevant.  The big problem is the question of to what degree do the latter makeup the GOP today.  Seemingly, in some quarters at least, they're driving the party.

Given that, as noted in the article, the hope that the sun will come out, people will look around, and return to their democratic senses, as seems to be the hope in the left and center, may well be a forlorn hope for at least the time being.  What's the way out of a danger for democracy if this is the point we've reached?

Ironically, the answer may be in part the same way we got here.  In spite of the whining and crying about them, the current Supreme Court seems intent on dismantling "progress" by judicial decree, and leaving that, whatever that is, up to the state legislatures and Congress.  If distrusts of the parties and the government started with the courts, which it did to some extent, maybe this will start to restore it.  The problem still is, however, that it took us around fifty years to get to this point.  Getting back. . . well there may not be fifty years to do it.

And even if there is, are there enough on the right and left from whom democracy is the first principal, to get there?

Sunday, February 22, 1942. Harris takes command.

February 22, 1942: Air Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris takes command of RAF Bomber Command. President Roosevelt orders Gen. Douglas MacArthur to leave Bataan for Australia.

So states the opener of Sarah Sundin's blog for the day.

"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naïve theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”  Harris.

 

An unrelenting advocate of the RAF's Area Bombing Directive, he remains an extremely controversial figure, perhaps the most controversial British figure of the Second World War.

Harris was born and raised in England, but moved to Rhodesia at age 18.  While just about to enter ranching in that country in 1914, he reluctantly joined the 1st Rhodesian Regiment.  He transferred to the RAF as a pilot in 1916.  He remained in the RAF after the war and never returned to Rhodesia even though he considered it to be his country, although for a time after his retirement from the RAF he managed a mining company in South Africa.

As also discussed by Sundin, Douglas MacArthur was ordered by Franklin Roosevelt to leave the Philippines.

The Admiral Scheer and Prinz Eugen arrived at Bergen, Norway.  Later that day, the left for Trondheim.

Wednesday, February 22, 1922. Remembering Washington.

It was Washington's birthday.

Or, more properly, it is Washington's birthday.  He was born on this date in 1732 to Johan and Mary (nee Ball) Washington.

Pro and anti factions of Sinn Fein signed a truce regarding cooperation with the Irish Free State and agreed to revisit the topic in three months.

WOR in New York began regular broadcasting with a mix of music and news.

British Food in America - The online magazine dedicated to the discussion & revival of British foodways.

British Food in America - The online magazine dedicated to the discussion & revival of British foodways.

Best Posts of the Week of February 13, 2022

Posted way late, we might add.

Friday, February 13, 1942. Deciding to build the AlCan.

Trudeau invokes the Emergency Act

Secrets of Playboy (Parts 1&2).* 3, 4, 5

Pandemic Part 10. A new paradigm?

In the spirit of scaring the crud out of somebody. . .

What will a war between Ukraine and Russia mean for everyone else?

Monday, February 21, 1972. Nixon lands in China.

 Richard Nixon landed in China on this day, or yesterday depending upon where you were, in 1972.  

In the US, on this day, 60,000,000 people tuned into their television sets to watch President Nixon deplane and shake the hand of Zhou Enlai.

It was the start of a rapid process in which the United States would recognize the Communist government in Peking, which of course was the government of the country, as that.  Up until that time, the Nationalist government in Taiwan was recognized as the government of China.

Rather obviously the status of Taiwan continues to linger. . . 

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.

Tuesday, February 21, 1922. The crash of the Roma.

On this day in 1922 the Roma, in what should have served as a warning for the later craft the Hindenburg, crashed in a firey explosion after striking electrical lines.  Normally she was filled with helium, but on this day she was filled with hydrogen.

The crash resulted in the deaths of 34 people, with only nine surviving. As a result, the US would never fill an airship with hydrogen again.

Blog Mirror: Four Eyes: Eyeglasses and the WW II GI

An excellent look at eyeglasses in the U.S. military during World War Two.

Four Eyes:  Eyeglasses and the WW II GI

Friday, February 20, 1942. Action in the Pacific

Sarah Sundin's daily blog on the Second World War has an entire series of really interesting items in it for this day. Well worth reviewing,  which you can do here:

February 20, 1942: First US Eighth Air Force officers arrive in England. Japanese land on Portuguese East Timor and Dutch West Timor in the East Indies.

Among those items is Navy pilot Edward O'Hare being credited with shooting down five Japanese aircraft within six minutes on this day in 1942, a feat which secured him the Congressional Medial of Honor. 

The aircraft that O'Hare struck were Japanese Betty bombers headed towards the USS Lexington which was off of Bougainville.  In reality, O'Hare shot down only three aircraft, rather than the six he thought he had, or the five he was credited with,although he so disrupted their attack that he prevented it from being a success.  One of the stricken Japanese bombers did attempt to fly into the Lexington, so four were in fact lost during the raid.

The heroic O'Hare was killed in combat in November, 1943.

Sundin also reports that the first advance party of the U.S. 8th Air Force arrived in the United Kingdom.

The 8th, of course, would go on to figure enormously in the US strategic bombing campaign over Germany.

Sundin also notes that the vast majority of Norwegian teachers, on this day, refused an order to become fascists, leading to some of them enduing up in concentration camps.

The Battle of Badung Strait ended in a Japanese victory, with the Japanese navy driving off a much larger combined Allied task force.   

The Japanese landed forces on Portuguese Timor and took the airfield.  Portugal wasn't in the war and was now enduring its second Timorese occupation, as the British and Australians had occupied it first to prevent it from being attacked by the Japanese.  The Portuguese protested the occupation without success.

Portuguese Timor was in the midst of an interesting transition at the time.  The Portuguese government had just turned education over to the Catholic Church, and as a result, the educational fortunes of the population were improving.  During the Japanese occupation of Timor the distinction between Portuguese and Dutch Timor were ignored, fairly obviously, but the Portuguese reasserted their possession in 1945 and would maintain it until 1975.  The region was then invaded, following the political turmoil in Portugal of that period, by Indonesia, but in 2002 it gained independence.  It's own independence movement can trace its origin to the improved educational lot of the population that started in 1941.

The Japanese also attacked Koepang in Dutch Timor on the same day, logically enough as it was all one island. The action was unusual in that it featured Japanese paratroopers who landed to take an airfield, but who were successfully repulsed by Australian troops.  Japan did have paratroopers but they received little use during the war, and were in fact mostly only used in the early stages of the war in the Pacific.

German U-boats started raiding ships off of the Lesser Antilles.  The Italian submarine Torelli participated with them.

The Hakim of Bahrain, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, died on this day in 1942.  Under his administration, which commenced in 1932, oil exploration in the country commenced.  Bahrain was a British protectorate at the time, something that had come about as the ruling family needed outside support due to their unstable position in the country.

Monday, February 20, 1922. General Diaz to be President of Mexico. . . if revolution to oust Obregón succeessful

Which it would not be.

This was a nephew of Mexico's former dictator, we should add.

As the headline demonstrates, there'd been questions on whether the Washington treaties had secret protocols.  They did not.

Gen. Diaz was apparently living in New Orleans at the time.

Billy Sunday visited the White House.

Sunday had been a professional baseball player who became a hugely influential evangelist, perhaps loosely comparable to Billy Graham in his era.

A group of students did as well.