The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 3, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Ironically, appears on the editorial page this date a little piece from the New Republic on an apparently favorite saying of the commanders in Alaska during these post-Pearl Harbor days, "There but for the grace of fog go I", in realization of the fact that weather had perhaps saved Alaska from a similar simultaneous fate to that experienced in December on Oahu and in the Philippines. Ironic is the piece because it appears on the same day when Japanese bombers attacked Dutch Harbor, about halfway along the chain of islands in the Aleutians, bridging Alaska with nearby Soviet territory and the more distant Japanese northern islands.

This attack, planned to coincide with the attack at Midway, was meant obviously to catch and prevent any retaliatory U.S. counter-strike from the Aleutians on Japanese territory. Senator Reynolds, Chairman of the Military Affairs Committtee, had, of course, been publicly advocating the launching of an attack on Japan from the Aleutians, had been advocating establishment of a major naval and air facility in Alaska since 1938.

This small attack was not, obviously, as speculated by some historians, intended as a diversionary tactic to draw the entire Fleet from Pearl Harbor, as the absurdity of that notion in terms of distance--especially given the fact that this attack was accomplished with no more than 34 planes launched from two small carriers, a moderate raid, one which inflicted only slight damage to the U.S. naval base at Dutch Harbor--causes the theory to evaporate into thin air with no need for further comment. The following afternoon, a second raid occurred, on that occasion utilizing 26 planes.

At 12:30 p.m. this date, nine Flying Fortesses—three-fourths of the complement which were in scheduled transit to Oahu from California on the morning of December 7 causing the confusion with the intercepted radar blips—flew from Midway to intercept the Japanese Task Force which U.S. intelligence had determined was headed for Midway. The bombers found their target 570 miles west and proceeded to bomb part of the four-carrier Task Force, though no direct hits were accomplished on this mission and little damage done. Obviously, the primary purpose of the mission was one of reconnaissance, to determine when the Japanese would launch their air strike on Midway, so as not to be caught flat-footed as six months earlier. Rather than deploy a non-belligerent reconnoitering wing, revealing its purpose thereby, the double-edged attack wing could provide the necessary intelligence while masking as a raiding force.

The first wave of Japanese planes, 36 each of fighters, high-level bombers and dive bombers, would take off at 4:30 a.m. on June 4 for Midway, launching from the carriers Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, and Soryu, the complement, less Shokaku and Zuikaku, utilized in the Pearl Harbor Task Force. The Japanese were hampered by the absence of these latter two newest and fastest carriers. Shokaku, recall, was severely damaged a month earlier in the Battle of the Coral Sea and was now in drydock in Japan being repaired; Zuikaku had lost so many of its aircraft that it, too, had been ordered by Yamamoto to return to Japan where it still remained. The Japanese carrier Task Force, dissimilar to the arrangement in the Pearl Harbor Task Force, was trailed this time by several hundred miles by its destroyer support group, the intent being to enable a follow-on strike of the Pacific Fleet after the initial strike at Midway by the carrier-borne aircraft. This arrangement, undoubtedly Yamamoto hoped, would prevent the sort of destruction to the Japanese Fleet occurring in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

The operational Allied carriers in the Pacific at the time consisted of only the Hornet, which had delivered the Doolittle raiders, the Enterprise, and the Yorktown, heavily damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea, but quickly refitted at Pearl Harbor sufficient for limited operations. The Lexington had been sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and Saratoga was still undergoing repairs at Seattle.

As the principal part of the battle begins the following day, we shall defer further comment until tomorrow.

Raymond Clapper writes this date on the editorial page of the miracle of production of guns, planes, tanks, and ships by manufacturers, Ford, Chrysler, G.M., Studebaker, and Kaiser Steel on the West Coast, manufacturers who theretofore knew nothing of guns, tanks, planes, or ships. He posits that knowing nothing of the particulars, but much about the manufacturing process generally, enabled these large companies to produce without the barriers too often encountered in the minds of those familiar with a particular product’s manufacture, the "can’t be done" notion arising from the force of habit accumulating over time with any task with which one becomes so intensely wedded as to cease to view the full picture surrounding it, substituting the creative portion of the task with robotically rote simplicity, once the design and implementation of the design are mastered.

Applying this principle more generally across time, it seems therefore that if we want to produce an electric car which runs fast and well and looks smart, dissimilar to the present ugly little impractical boxes on wheels which range only up to about 60 miles and then need an overnight charge, as the auto manufacturers for the most part offer us today, we should look to people who know virtually nothing about the manufacture of automobiles. Singers, poets, songwriters. That’s a good start.

A former ambulance driver in World War I taking his farewell to arms post-Armistice as a newspaperman, now employed by the New York Daily Mirror, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr.--the great-great-grandson of Commodore Vanderbilt, the nineteenth century shipping magnate--tells of his August, 1939 encounter with Herr Doktor Goebbels in Berlin, just before the Blitzkrieg into Poland. Herr Doktor was predicting, more or less accurately, an easy run of it against Poland. But then he wandered characteristically into Oz, stating that first Britain, then France would succumb to the Nazi tramp within about 60 days--should they, that is, mein freund, be so foolish as to declare war on, how you say, Das Vaterland. To follow, he asserted, would be the United States, but not by invasion; rather, he confidently foresaw, to be accomplished from within.

Whether the context of the story is entirely accurate or not, the Reich’s propaganda minister made a good try of it, and, in parts, of varying points on the compass, he had a suitable foundation on which to build, indeed, the very foundation on which the essential premises of the Nazi system were originally modeled—imperialism, enslavement of others, plunder of wealth, and Big Lie propaganda to dodge its resultant reality, living instead in happy-happy land, all over-layered and infused with the spirit of the wolf tooth via the Nazi preoccupation with anti-Semitism, exalted to pseudo-mystical self-fulfilling confirmation by entwining it, catlike, with Nordic-Teutonic mythology. That, again, of course, not unlike that which some in the United States had done and still were doing in 1942, utilizing instead Biblical text for the mystical-mythological rationalization, underlayment to the flying carpet.

The first subject of the editorial column, nearly faded away in the print, is the insane asylum at Morganton, about which The News had presented in late January and early February the compelling series by Tom Jimison, voluntary inmate for a year, lawyer, defrocked minister, and former News reporter. The piece does not mention this series or Mr. Jimison, though the piece itself may be authored by him, but rather waxes poetic on the institution and its inhabitants. It ends with its two "unavoidable conclusions", the first being that the ever-increasing population of inmates needed ever-increasing amounts of care, and second, that:

Last night, and this is another true story, we had, from all immediate circumstances surrounding it, a very mundane experience. A mundane experience which, when later we set our eyes to the print of today’s page, proved itself to be yet another of those ghostly little incidents of serendipidity which often follow us around as we undertake this journey through the prints of The News.

The thing began simply enough: we went to a shopping center with intent to buy groceries. On the spur of the moment, however, we decided on a detour to the local bookstore within the same shopping center. There, we saw that there was a sale occurring on its stock of movies and so we browsed the movies for awhile. We wound up purchasing three for the price of two. We won’t mention the name of the bookstore because we were short-changed by $15, as we discovered only after we had left the store. We are certain it was accidental though. But that is not the point of the story.

While browsing through the myriad of movies there, all of which qualified for the sale, we decided ultimately on three older ones: "Julius Caesar", the 1969 version, "Lifeboat", the familiar 1944 Hitchcock drama at sea set in this time frame of history, and another--unlike the other two in that we had never seen it, but, having read the novel many decades ago, thought to give it a try--"For Whom the Bell Tolls". This 1943 film was an atypical choice for us, one of about a hundred we might have chosen alternatively at the same price, but there it is. It tolls for thee.

Whether the serendipity of this moment means that we’re a fair candidate for Morganton, we don’t know. But since the facility has been closed down for many decades, we won’t worry too much about that. What you may think of it is your own business. If you think it means that we’re a fair candidate for Morganton, then we ask that you kindly keep your opinions to yourself. We reflect on the matter differently.

Actually, we think that Reverend Donne was in some ways blowing smoke. For, in one sense, we are all very much alone, each of us being born alone, living alone, dying alone. That seems to render us pretty much islands unto ourselves. But, we think we understand that which he meant in a broader sense, that we are all interconnected. You know, like the internet or something. Or, maybe it’s like when you go out to buy a used car. You step onto the lot, and, as soon as you have done it, presto: you become apprised instanter of the true meaning of that statement, "No man is an island." Or, even better, remembering the fate of the stalwarts on Corregidor and Bataan, and their cruel march and confinement for the duration of the war, those who didn't die of starvation, disease, heat prostration, or torture in the meantime, all such that we might live today free from the yoke of feudal economic slavery.

Anyway, we’ll go watch Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman now.

Meanwhile, you can read "New Pinch" which tells of the new Charlotte ordinance forbidding the shattering of glass in the street, to avoid problems for the scarce tires passing over it in the aftermath of the celebration or, alternatively, the frustration there being exhibited, apparently with some attendant zest in regular custom, by the glass throwers of Charlotte, perhaps of the time a well-known deviant sub-tribal element co-existing within the broader population of inhabitants inured or not to the culture. It leads us to conclude that, as Confucius said, what is good for glass is not so good for Tyre.

Well, we’ll let you know how we liked the film.