Atlantis and Other Places (14 page)

March 24, 1942—
New York Times

A raid by FBI and military agents shuttered the offices of
The New Yorker
yesterday. The raid came on the heels of yet another article critical of the war and of the present administration’s conduct of it.

“We are going to close this treason down,” said FBI spokesman Thomas O’Banion. Mr. O’Banion added, “These individuals are spreading stories nobody’s got a right to know. We have to put a stop to it, and we will.”

He did not dispute the truth of the articles published in
The New Yorker
.

ACLU attorneys are seeking the release of jailed editors and writers. “These are important freedom-of-speech and freedom-of-the-press issues,” one of them said. “We’re confident we’ll prevail in court.”

March 26, 1942—
Philadelphia Inquirer

More than fifty American actors, musicians, and authors sailed from Philadelphia today aboard the
Gustavus Vasa
, a Swedish ship. Sweden is neutral in Roosevelt’s war. Their eventual destination is Germany, where they will confer with their counterparts and seek ways to lower tensions between the two countries.

Another similar party also sailed today from San Francisco aboard the Argentine ship
Rio Negro
. Like Sweden, Argentina has sensibly stayed out of this destructive fight. After stopping in Honolulu to pick up another antiwar delegation there, the
Rio Negro
will continue on to Yokohama, Japan.

“We have to build peace one person at a time,” explained Robert Noble of the Friends of Progress. His Los Angeles-based organization, along with the National Legion of Mothers and Women of America, sponsored the peace initiative. Noble added, “The Japanese did the proper thing under the exigencies of the time when they bombed Pearl Harbor. Now it is all over in the Pacific, and we might as well come home.”

Noble has been arrested twice recently, once on a charge of sedition and once on one of malicious libel. The government did not bring either case to trial, perhaps fearing the result.

Some of the travelers bound for Germany and Japan have volunteered as human shields against U.S. and British bombing. There is no response yet from the governments under attack to their brave commitment.

Bureaucrats in the Roosevelt administration have threatened not to allow the peaceful performers and intellectuals to return to the United States. Travel to their destinations is technically illegal, though a challenge to the ban is under way in the courts. This vindictiveness against critics is typical of administration henchmen.

April 3, 1942—transcript of radio broadcast

People in the States ask me how the morale situation is over here. They ask whether the English have as many doubts about which way their leaders are taking them as we do back home.

The answer is, of course they do. If anything, they have more. They’ve been hit hard, and it shows. Nearly two years ago, Germany offered a fair and generous peace. A sensible government would have accepted in a flash.

But Churchill had seized power a few months earlier in what almost amounted to a right-wing coup. He refused a hand extended in friendship, and his country has taken a right to the chin. London and other industrial cities have been bombed flat. Tens of thousands are dead, more wounded and often crippled for life.

“Look at France,” a cabdriver said to me the other day. “They went out early, and they have it easy now. We just keep getting pounded on. I’m tired of it, I am.”

Calls for British withdrawal from Malta and North Africa grow stronger by the day. Sooner or later—my guess is sooner—even Churchill will have to face the plain fact that he has led his country into a losing war. . . .

April 5, 1942—AP story

Sergeant Leland Calvert is a regular guy. He was born in Hondo, Texas, and grew up in San Antonio. He is 29 years old, with blond hair, blue eyes, and an aw-shucks grin. He is a skilled metalworker, and plays a mean trumpet. He’s a big fellow—six feet two, maybe six feet three. Right now, Leland Calvert weighs 127 pounds.

That is how it is for the Americans stuck on the Bataan Peninsula. That is also how it is for the Philippine troops and civilians crammed in with them. There are far more people than there are supplies, which is at the heart of the problem.

“I don’t know who planned this,” Calvert said in an engaging drawl. “I don’t reckon anybody did. Sure doesn’t seem much point to it. Hell, we’re licked. Anybody with eyes in his head can see that.”

Way back in January, rations for 5,600 men in the 91st Division were 19 sacks of rice, 12 cases of salmon, 3½ sacks of sugar, and four carabao quarters. A carabao is a small, scrawny ox. Well, everybody and everything on the peninsula is scrawny now. Feeding 5,600 people with those supplies makes the miracle of the loaves and fishes look easy as pie.

And that was January. Things are much worse now. Sergeant Calvert has eaten snake and frog—not frog’s legs, but frog. “Snake’s not half bad,” he said. “I drew the line at monkey, though. I saw a little hand cooking in a pot, and I didn’t think I could keep it down.” I asked him about the monkey’s paw story, but he has never heard of it.

Disease? That’s another story. Leland has dysentery. He has had dengue fever, but he is mostly over it now. He is starting to get beriberi, which comes from lack of vitamins. Beriberi takes the gas right out of your motor. I ought to know—I have it, too. Leland does not think he has got scurvy, but he knows men who do.

He has got malaria. Most people here have got it. Again, I am one of them. The doctors are out of quinine. They are also out of atabrine, which is a fancy new synthetic drug. And they are plumb out of mosquito nets. Something like 1,000 people are going into the hospital with malaria every day now. Without the medicines, there is not much anyone can do for them.

“If I knew why we were here, I would feel better about things,” Leland said. “This all seems like such a waste, though. We’re fighting for a little stretch of jungle nobody in his right mind would want. What’s the point?”

Seems like a good question to me, too. It doesn’t look like anyone here has a good answer. I don’t know when I’ll see that girl again. I don’t know if she’ll ever see me again. I wish I could say the effort here is worth the candle. But I’m afraid I’m with Leland Calvert. This all seems like such a waste.

April 14, 1942—
Honolulu Star-Bulletin

According to a Navy Department source, two aircraft carriers and several other warships sailed from Midway yesterday, bound for the Japanese home islands. Aboard one of the carriers, the
Hornet
, are U.S. Army B-25s. Pilots have secretly trained in Florida, learning to take off from a runway as short as a flight deck.

The theory is that the B-25s will be able to strike Japan from farther out to sea than normal carrier-based aircraft could. Most of Roosevelt’s theories about the war up till now have been wrong, though. Maybe the planes will go into the drink. Maybe the Japanese will be waiting for them. Maybe some other foul-up will torment us. But who will believe this force can succeed until it actually does?

Given the administration’s record to date, in fact, many people will have their doubts even then. As a wise man once said, “Trust everybody—but cut the cards.”

April 21, 1942—
Washington Post
editorial

Everyone knows what sort of workman blames his tools. Franklin Roosevelt claims that, if a Hawaiian newspaper had not publicized the plan of attack against the Japanese islands, it might have succeeded. He also claims we would not have lost a carrier and a cruiser and had another carrier damaged had secrecy not been compromised.

This is nonsense of the purest ray serene. The Navy tried a crackbrained scheme, it didn’t work, and now the men with lots of gold braid on their sleeves are using the press as a whipping boy. This effort, if we may dignify it with such a name, was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Reliable sources inform us that the Army pilots involved were not even told they would attempt to fly off a carrier deck till they boarded the
Hornet
. The Japanese have twice our carrier force in the Pacific. Why were we wasting so much of our strength on what was at best a propaganda stunt? Are we so desperate that we need to throw men’s lives away for the sake of looking good on the home front?

Evidently we are. If that is so, we should never have got involved in this war in the first place. Our best course now, plainly, is to get out of it as soon as we can, to minimize casualties and damage to our prestige. We have already paid too much for Roosevelt’s obsessive opposition to Japan and Germany.