The Charlotte News
Thursday, January 1, 1942
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: Well, the rubber gave out on our tires on the way to Durham and we had to spark it back on the rims from whence we came. So, we missed the greatest excitement since General Johnston surrendered to General Sherman at Bennett Place, as the front page today entreats. We've been listening intently to the radio for the results all evening and have yet to hear them. Apparently there is a news blackout in effect to avoid bombing of fans until they are safely back home. Or maybe that has something to do with fans who were bombed. Regardless, we'll just have to wait until tomorrow to fill you in on all the excitement of the Rose Bowl and instead content ourselves with the pre-game festivities.
They probably wouldn't have let us in anyway. Our color isn't right. They only tolerate dark blue over there.
We did manage a bag of peanuts along the way though, and they were quite good.
We must admit that when we stopped at the store and asked how many people had passed through on the way to the Rose Bowl, the storekeeper looked at us a little peculiarly. Apparently, he hadn't heard that the locus was changed.
Whether, incidentally, you know who showed up for this Rose Bowl, we have never ascertained.
Meanwhile, watch out for those yellow submarines of which Admiral Nimitz warns. They can be murder.
The front page continues here. The dramatic story of the heroic Kanaheles, and the invasion of their small Hawaiian island paradise of Niihau by a lone Japanese bomber running out of engine power, and how they handled him once he got frisky and tried to take over the island, as "Scenario" in the editorial column more briefly exposited December 18, is here. There were actually two Japanese islanders assisting the pilot, and Mr. Kanahele was shot three times, not just twice, as we gleaned from another account. And the death of the pilot was accomplished only in part by bashing his head against the wall. Mrs. Kanahele finished the job with a rock. The moral, however, remains the same: when crash-landing your plane after attacking Pearl Harbor, do as the islanders tell you, not as you would were you to have a ready means of escape or realistic hope of commandeering the island and its 182 residents.
More Pearl Harbor survivors arriving in San Francisco, some on stretchers, speak here.
The editorial column today is comprised primarily of a poem, presumably by J. E. Dowd, which we shall let you peruse. (Point of information: We had never seen this poem or any of the news of this date when on December 1, 2005 we related, in connection with the pieces of December 1, 1938, something about Bennett Place, and at the time had delivered to us a 1940 era photograph of a gentleman standing at the battle site of Seven Pines. Indeed, we had never read that poem until today, January 1, 2009. We had never even placed any of the microfilm of 1942 on the reel until just a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, voila... Go figure. If it seeped into our subconscious, it had to do so via the medium of the cardboard carton containing the spool of film.)
We're not quite sure, incidentally, how Bela Lugosi became involved with this poem, but it brings to mind that Mary Cash gave the Bram Stoker novel, with three others, to Cash on February 10, 1941 when The Mind of the South was published. She claimed that, after reading some of it, he awoke at 2:00 a.m. "just plain scared", suggesting to her the power in which words held him. Whether Mary's story in that regard is entirely accurate, we could not say, but it does seem a bit odd. Of course, with Nazis abounding, Count Dracula took on a frighteningly revivified personification in the world of 1941. So, perhaps not so odd for the time.
The worry of the second editorial regarding the prospect of General MacArthur being captured by the Japanese would be obviated by the expedient of the General being ordered soon to depart the Philippines for Australia.
Ray Clapper recounts movingly of his brush with the pub attendees in Whitby the previous summer, as he spent time in England, how life, stripped of the trappings of modernity back to the earlier simplicities, has its advantages. He suggests reading Walden Pond, probably a suggestion well made for any time. Thirty-three years ago, we spent a nice, crisp September afternoon walking in the yellow-leafed woods surrounding Walden Pond. It is worth the journey.
Framed Edition
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