Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 April 1942 — Page 5

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WEDNESDAY, APRIL

8 1042

JAVA’S DEFENDERS

JUST EVAPORATED

Japs Chopped Communications of Dutch and Natives Lost Taste for War When Tanks And Planes Failed Them.

(This is the last of a series of articles analyzing the Jap land campaign which made short work of Java.)

By GEORGE WELLER Coprright. 1342 by The Indianapolis Times and The Chicago Daily News, Ine

SOMEWHERE IN AUSTRALIA, April 8.—In the first days of their invasion, the Japanese had cut off eastern Java

by landing forces at Rembang

and Toeban, thus immunizing

Soerbaja (which, though demolished by the Dutch within

48 hours of the invasion, was

not entered by the conquerors

until the whole island had surrendered).

They also had forced the]

Americans to transfer their] few undestroved flying fortresses westward from Ma-| lang to other fields at Madioen| and Jocjakarta. With this double advantage, the Japs| then accelerated their central

flown either to Australia or Ceylon within 24 hours of the Jap landings.

Split Java in Middle The Jap column which landed at

{Semarang (Samarang) had the task

of splitting Java in the middle, where it is only 75 miles broad by air and 100 miles by road. This is the beautiful Javanese midland

and western Java thrusts. ire tae two contrasting cultures Along the north coast the enemy qf east and west Java meet in lovely chopped the communications of the temples at Borobodur and Pramba-

Dutch commander-in-chief, Lieut. Gen. Heinter Poorten, into slices and had isolated little clots of armored cars,’ trucks, troops and machine} guns along the| lowland railroad and choked highways bor-| dering the Java sea. They then =, wasted no time in monping up Hy: Welter b u t proceeded immediately to cut the island into the same slices as the coastal plain.

Barrier of Motor Trucks

Twelve hours after the invasion started, it was impossible for your correspondent even to approach the front which he had toured with relative ease only the day before. Stoppages of transport blocked everything. These long lines of unprotected motor trucks, full of green-clad troops, became targets for the omnipresent Japanese navy Zeros, who fired shells and inceéndiary bullets into them. Reports floating in to Bandoeng by radio were few and fragmentary; like the British in Malaya, the tch depended extensively upon a system of military telephones, an archaic method of transmission for a war involving remote areas. In the end, as always happens, the high command at Bandoeng was thrown back upon the voice radio used ordinarily for aircraft operations, which is good for close-in tactical punching, but is altogether too public for remote use. Japan's thrust from Rembang, ingenuously described as being aimed at the Djepoes oil fields, was| actually trying to reach Madioen, 35 miles farther inland and, by taking this city, deprive the United States forces of their second air base. The Japs succeeded in doing this within 72 hours of the invasion, but the last flying fortresses had been moved to Jocjakarta and thence

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©) (Read Up)

nan with their exquisite, carved dancing figures apd terraces lined with stone bells, eight feet high. Here, too, at Selo, the Japs met and bypassed the spiritual head of Java, the amiable Susuhunan of Soerakarta, who, like the Mikado, is descended from the gods themselves, whose gaze is supposed to be deadly, and who, pensioned by the Dutch, had been living in seclusion with 20.000 wives, sons, daughters and relatives. The Japs’ aim, again, was to grab the American airfield at Jocjakarta, within 25 mies of the southern coast, but again they found the birds flown. Everywhere the Japs found bridges blown before them, but their engineers were able to solve these delays. Dutch native troops, numbering perhaps 50000, were scattered along the entire island. In hand-to-hand fighting they are adept, but the trouble of this entire colonial war is that few ever see the enemy, to say nothing of coming to grips with him, That was the case in Java.

Nothing Fails Like Failure

Here, as in the Philippines, native troops will fight bravely if certain that their technical means— tanks, airplanes, armored cars, machine guns and tommyguns—are equal to the enemy's and as long as their white, or Eurasian, officers are resourceful, intelligent and successful. But in the Fast nothing fails like failure. An army does not retreat; it simply evaporates, disappears. Unléss the paternal obligations of protection and reward are carried out, native soldiers lose their taste for warfare. The Japs had too much the edge. By contrast with the American forces, furthermore, the Japanese troops also had and have a psychological as well as technical advantage in another sense: Every Japanese soldier knows that the territory he takes with his blood is added thereby to the Japanese empire and thereby becomes his own. For this reason, the army's first act everywhere is to plant the Rising Sun flag as a mark of possession and wealth acquired. Thus the entire political indoctrination of the Japanese has prepared them for seizing an empire from those unable to hold it by arms; making oil, rubber and tin their own.

THE END

U.S. VESSELS GUARD

MANILA'S BACK DOOR

CHICAGO, April 8 (U. P.).—Vice Admiral Thomas Hart, former chief of allied naval operations in the

| |southwest Pacific, revealed last night

that a small but dogged force of 17. 8. gunboats in the Philippines is preventing Japanese infiltration

through the army’s “back door” of Manila bay. “Those small ships have not figured much in the news, and it seems not to bé realized that they are the weapons which have kept the Japs out of the interior of Manila bay,” Hart said in an address before the Chicago Economics club. “But for those gunboats, the Japs could have been all over that bay, in small craft, at the army’s back door and employing the same infiltration tactics which worked well in their advance against Singapore.”

SIX VACANCIES FILLED IN FIRE DEPARTMENT

The safety board named six men to fill vacancies in the fire department yesterday. They were recommended by Chief Harry Fulmer and will begin their duties Saturday. The men are Robert Shipman William R. Walker, Robert T. McNeil, Marion Harakas Glenn Stout and Francis Williams. Four firemen were given indefinite leaves of absence to join the nation’s armed forces. William Bone, pumper company 7; William E. Gearns, trucker company 11, and Sanford Metcalfe, have joined the marines, and Victor Wyss, pumper company 17, has joined the coast guard. The safety board also prohibited parking on the north side of Southeastern ave. from Shelby st. to Boyd ave.

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Campaign for early diagnosis

members.

A committee of laymen and physicians has been named to head an educational drive this month urging the “early diagnosis” of tuberculosis in Marion county. Dr. E. O. Asher, president of the Marion county tuberculosis association, appointed Dr. Gordon Batman, chairman of the county committee. Dr. Asher explained that the county campaign has three objectives. 1. To acquaint the community with the danger signals of tuberculosis.

By MARTIN KANE United Press Staff Correspondent NEW YORK, April 8 (U. P)— They are not pretty pictures. A Japanese bayonet thrust down the open, bleeding mouth of a prostrate farmer— The staring eyes and dropped jaw of a drowned sailor, into whose dead mouth burles the green sea, afiame with the burhing oil of a sinking ship— And Christ crucified again. Nazi, Jap and Fascist joining hands in the thrust of the centurion’s spear. They are the latest paintings of Thomas Hart Benton, whose art never has been intended for the pleasure of nice old ladies. He painted them in fury with a growling brush—eight paintings in eight weeks. They were put on display today at the Associated American Artists galleries and, after showings in other cities, wiil be used by the government in propaganda posters. “I've tested them out on soldiers, plumbers, carpenters and my mid-dle-class neighbors in Kansas City,” Mr. Benton said. “Their judgment is that the paintings will go over. My origihal idea was just to hang them in the railroad station at Kansas City, where a lot of soldiers pass through, but my soldier students suggested that they be sent around the country.

of tuberculosis. . . . Dr. John W.

Ferree, Dr. Gordon Batman, and Mrs, Hugh Carpenter, committee

2. To advise persons to discover hidden tuberculosis by means of the tuberculin skin test and chest x-ray. 3. To stress the dangers of contact with “open” cases of the disease. The Marion County Tuberculosis association points out that early tuberculosis is curable and early tuberculosis can be found through the correct diagnostic means. The bulletin also emphasizes that the April campaign is of an educational nature only and that no funds are being raised.

They're Not Pretty—T hose Benton Pictures of War

“This isn't much different from my usual work, painting American environment. The environment has been changed by Pearl Harbor. These are paintings of a mental environment. I'm trying to bring the people a sense of realism, of the actuality of war and its horrors.” : They do that all right. They are editorials in paint, and alongside them Mr. Benton has written captions to express his thought in words. Thus, for a painting called «Casuality,” which shows a soldier's stiffened body, a severed head, and a bleeding arm, he has written: “If too many things like this occur in far-away places because of halting productive measures at home, the war will be lost to usand the enemy come upon us and make us know at our very firesides the real and shattering human meaning of the word ‘casualty.’ ” He is afraid that too many Americans feel that defeat can mean only “the ceding of a few remote islands, like the Philippines.”

EVACUEES PLEDGED COMFORT SEATTLE, April 8 (U. P.).—Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, replying to the plea of a blind American-born Japanese, said the government would make the evacuation of Japanese “as decent and as comfortable as possible.”

- THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES pen Campaign on T.

PUTS FAITH IN SUB CHASERS

Hepburn, Who Bossed Unit In Last War, Cites

Improvements.

WASHINGTON, April 8 (U. P)— Rear Admiral Arthur Hepburn, who commanded a large fleet of submarine chasers in the last war, believes that these sturdy little craft will “lick the stuffings” out of submarines now operating off the Atlantic coast. The navy has 600 of these patrol boats on order and they are coming off the ways at an ever-increasing rate. “In my opinion,” Admiral Hepburn said today in an interview, “these oraft are most valuable for anti-submarine work, particularly with modern detection devices and when used in co-operation with aircraft.” The admiral, now navy public relations chief, said that in many respects the modern sub-chaser is better suited to hunt down submarines than are destroyers. Furthermore, he added, destroyers have too great a combat value to be assigned to sub-chasing. Decline in Attacks

There were several new developments in the navy's battle against submarines. These included: 1. Disclosure by President Roosevelt that plans are being studied for construction of wooden barges to haul war materials and other essential supplies on the inland water ways along the eastern seaboard, out of reach of submarines. 2. Announcement by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox that the navy is considering operating the merchant marine, Naval experts doubted that this would be done because merchant skippers are now obeying navy orders more closely and increased protection is being provided. 3. A report by Col. Knox of a drastic drop in submarine attacks on coastal shipping last week, due largely to more effective patrol.

Notes Big Improvement

Admiral Hepburn pointed out that the present day, steel hulled sub-chasers are relatively superior to the 110-foot wooden craft which were under his command 24 years ago. Those now being built range from 110 to 180 feet. Equipped with Y-guns, that discharge depth charges, and three inch cannon, these craft are speedier and have longer cruising range than their World War I counterparts. “In the last war,” he recalled, “the chasers were laid down In large numbers without any idea as to how they could be used. President Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy, was responsible for this. He was confident they would serve some valuable purpose and he was right.”

FT. BELVOIR, Va, April 8 (U. P.) —Pvt. Warren Pershing, who once said he “wouldn't be a bargain as a corporal,” is nevertheless beginning to follow his father's military tradition, officers said today. The younger Pershing, 32, and thé only son of Gen. John J. Pershing, world war I A. E. F. commander, has been in the army for two months and already has qualified as a sharpshooter. Formerly a member of a New York brokerage house, young Pershing will complete his basic eightweek engineering training course this week; with high hopes of becoming a commissioned officer. Six feet tall and weighing 187 pounds, young Pershing volunteered for service despite the fact that he is married and the father of a 14-month-old son. It was recalled that at the time he volunteered his services as a

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private, newsmen asked him whether he thought he had any chance of becoming an officer. Young Pershing replied then: “I wouldn't be a bargain as a corporal.” Coming into headquarters from a session of pick and shovel work, Pvt. Pershing pushed back his fatigue hat and told reporters that he likes army life fine. Capt. H. A. Eddinn, who was his company commander when he first came here and who is now the executive officer of his battalion, described young Pershing as “an exceptionally fine soldier.” Young Pershing said that he saw his father frequently but that “he won't talk much even to me.” - The general is now resting at Walter Reed hospital in Washington. “His only comment when he saw me in uniform was that he thought it fit pretty well,” young Pershing said.

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VINCENNES, Ind, April 8 (U. P.).—Opposing counsel were to make opening statements today in the morals trial of Superior Judge Herman M. Robbins after a jury of 10 men and two women, seven of them farmers, were sworn in by Special Judge Willlam 8S. Dudine of Jasper. Selection of the jury was come pleted yesterday. Judge Robbins, indicted last December on five counts charging sex offenses against children, is being tried specifically on a single ine dictment charging him with ase saulting a 14-year-old boy.

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