Letters, Mar. 30, 1942

Prophecy

Sirs:

TIME’S account of the fall of Singapore, especially the paragraphs headed “Whose fault?” certainly makes Hendrik Willem van Loon out to be a prophet.

In his Van Loon’s Geography, published in 1932, he closes chapter XXXVI as follows:

“It [Singapore] is as strongly fortified as Gibraltar. . . . It will play a great role when the inevitable clash between the East and the West finally takes place. In anticipation of that event, it maintains a set of barrooms, the splendor of which is famous all over the Orient. . . .”

ROBERT FRENCH WILSON

Washington, D.C.

“Ugly Rumor”

Sirs:

In the article entitled “The Stranger Within Our Gates” [TIME, Jan. 19] you state “. . . that Jap high-school boys from Hawaii had helped pilot the planes that attacked Pearl Harbor. . . .”

Although it is a fact that words to that effect made their rounds here in town, there is no confirmation or proof of such a happening. Our local papers and Army officials have openly denied this charge after examination of the bodies of Japanese pilots who took part in the Dec. 7 raid. Furthermore, the comprehensive Roberts report makes no mention of “Jap high-school boys.”

In other words, this is just another ugly rumor. . . .

HlROMICHI KOSAKI

(of Japanese descent)

President of the Student Body

McKinley High School

Honolulu, T.H.

Sirs:

. . . This was, evidently, a rumor which had been carried over to the mainland by evacuees from Hawaii. . . .

LAURA MAU (of Chinese descent)

Sirs:

. . . We, Americans all, study, work and play with Japanese high-school boys here in the islands, and, I am sure, are in a position to know them perhaps a little better than others. They show their feelings, in speech and in deed, that they’re behind the U.S.A. to a man. . . .

COLLEEN LAU

(of Chinese descent)

Sirs:

We assure our sincere and true loyalty in bringing ultimate victory for the democracies.

PEGGY YORITA

(of Japanese descent)

> TIME gladly prints the foregoing excerpts from a dozen letters received from Honolulu students. The rumor was widely current in the U.S. press in December, but denial failed to overtake it.—ED.

He-Man Searls

Sirs:

In your issue of TIME, March 2, it gave me a thrill to read of Fred Searls Jr. as one of Nelson’s Brain Boys.

May I quote from a letter written by myself from Jorgeney, France in April 1918: “There is a former classmate of U.C., a Lieut. Searls here. He is a common earth son of a miner back in California. At college he was a regular fellow, good scrapper, tobacco chewer and brilliant student. Didn’t take him long to make good in the mining game; one of the best geologists in the West, and when the War broke out he was earning big money. He enlisted as a private in one of the first engineering regiments going over. Was made a sergeant, got in the mix-up at Cambrai. He says for an hour they had rail connections to Berlin, having connected their track to the German track in their advance. Assigned as Master Engineer, instructor in our line of work and now is first lieutenant. They had to drag him into an officer’s uniform. The boys are wild about him.”

The purpose in quoting the above is not to pour praise on a man who certainly doesn’t need it, much less crave it, but assure others as it has myself, that, after all, the Government is not going in for dancers and artists as recent publicity would indicate, but is really getting he-men for he-jobs.

GEORGE GERSON

Portland, Ore.

Sirs:

. . . TIME deserves powerful right on wide open chin. Searls had knowledge of explosives and ammunition before TIME’S writer was dry behind the ears!

In China when World War I was declared he left lucrative job immediately, enlisted as private in first contingent to go to France. . . . He learned about ammunition at the receiving end. After the Armistice he blew up German tank barrier to permit passage of division into enemy territory.

Admired and respected by officers and enlisted men in World War I, Fred Searls has long been recognized as not only “top drawer” (vice president and director of Newmont Mining Corp.) but one of the world’s outstanding mining engineers with exceptional knowledge of practical as well as economic matters, also one who gets things done—quickly and well.

Having slept in many a foxhole with him, I take TIME to task for a flippantly misleading background sketch of a most able man, neither melancholy nor laconic, and in the vernacular of the “Cousin Jacks” (an Army nickname pinned on Searls because of his fund of Welsh miners’ stories) I say “Back at ‘ee.”

T. W. RYAN JR.

New York City

> TIME, too, hopefully hails He-Man, Brain-Man Searls, who is melancholy, laconic, regular—and who himself was authority for TIME’S statement that he knew nothing about ammunition.—ED.

The Nerve!

Sirs:

The nerve of Leon Henderson to intimate he might confiscate tires from some of us and give them to others.

Only over my dead body—and some of my friends’ bodies too.

Why should those of us who thought it better to conserve our wealth in the form of tires instead of in trips to the West Indies, for instance, be subjected to such discrimination?

I’ve denied myself and family many things—expensive foods, theaters, nightclubs, etc., etc., just to have what I thought was more important to our welfare. Why should I have to pay for someone else’s lack of planning?

So I ask here that anyone else who agrees with me will they please write their Congressman now, talk it over with others, etc., etc., and generally cause such a “stink”—yes, that’s the word—that Mr. Henderson will realize he put his foot in it when he said what he did—and will be more careful in the future. . . .

(Name withheld by request)

Providence, R.I.

Button Sorters

Sirs:

For a solution to the problem of the thousands of people crying “Give us jobs to do” (TIME, March 9), the “Button Sorters” job might be put back into operation.

In World War I the same old cry was being made, mostly by women who could have done their best job by just sitting tight.

Their persistence finally got tangled in many an official’s hair. In our neighborhood one busy executive in desperation finally worked out a beautiful plan.

He bought barrels of buttons, set up the large gym of a church with tables and issued a call for volunteers to sort the buttons into smaller boxes according to size and color.

The pigeons flocked in in droves and for the duration they sorted and cackled in their all-out aid for victory.

Every Saturday morning they were rewarded with a visit from the smart uniformed Major. . . . He sure was proud of their sacrifices and efforts, and they would never know the thousands of man hours they saved the Army and Navy for fighting service.

Neither did they know that each Saturday after the wow session the Major palmed a five-dollar bill off on the janitor for his effort: staying each evening until all the pigeons left the church and then mixing up all the little boxes of buttons back into the big barrels. . . .

This also might be a workable plan for the uniformed station-wagon monkeys now wasting money, wool, metal (uniforms, pins), rubber and fuel.

MILLARD L. WINTERS

Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Sirs:

I was very interested in noticing in your Letters column the many letters from persons who were asking what they could do to help win the war.

As a tangible suggestion, I would recommend that able-bodied persons in cities and towns who have experience on the farm offer their services on week ends and during vacations to farmers. This offer should be made through the United States Employment Service, local offices of which are familiar with farm labor needs. The persons should indicate the kind of farm tasks with which they are familiar, and the times when they would be available.

Agriculture is faced with the prospect of many local labor shortages which might impair the goals which the Department of Agriculture has set for greatly increased production of food, fats and oils, and fibers needed by the United States and her Allies.

M. CLIFFORD TOWNSEND

Director

Office of Agricultural Defense Relations

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Washington, D.C.