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-.1542. •. I. ""a.17."~AGE......~.Monf"p......it No. 139

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KNOW· ',"YOUR E'NEMIES!

A 'SPECIAL ISS:U'E OF ",

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A prewar view of one section of Tokio. with the Tokio railway station in the background. This is thelargest railroad depot in the Japanese .Empire.::~~~~ •••••\.,~ ..••- ... ,.-..e-: ..•- .... ", ..-.4'p";\:,.~ ••... li?,N 'm'fl!>'!""~' ... , .•.•.

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A typical street scene in Kobe. This is a prewar pie ture--photographers always had the greatest dif.fieu)ty obtaining any but general views of Japan.

Another view of Tokio. showing the beautiful Kasumigaseki, a park avenue at the left. At this timeTokio had 2,400,000 people, subways, and elevated lines..2.

Japan•

The scene of.action in the Pacific isgrowing hotter and hotter. We aredrawing a fine bead on the Japs forthe first time ,since the war began.But for us to assume that Japan willcrumble as soon as the Nazis quit is,ou .. military Jeaders say, just plainnonsense. We have a vicious and de-termined enemy in Japan. The Japis tough and not afraid to die. • • •This issue tells the peacetime andthe wartim~ story 0'1 Japan, thecountry we've still got to lick.

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T HIS issue of Copper Commando isdevoted to Japan. It is devoted to Japannot because we like the country. but be-cause. since it is our greatest remainingenemy. it· is only wise that we learn asmuch about it as We can.

As the war advances in the Pacific,and as we turn our eyes more and moreto those Japanese islands which menaceour civilization, we shall have a greaterneed to know the' Jap.

It is only smart that we get oversome of our illusions about the country.As we indicate later on, too many of usfeel that it is a paper-house countrywhich bombs can reduce to dust. It istrue .that many parts of Japan, beingfarming country. ar~ natural targets forbombing missions. Also the fact thatplanes can rake the country once our po-sitions are established, is also in our favor.

But industrial Japan, where theplanes and tanks and guns are beingturned out, differs not too much from ourown country. The big industrial centerslike Tokio and Kobe are on an industrialpattern very much like OlK own-in factit was pretty much stolen from our own.

Japan is like Germany in one respect.While it does not employ the people ofconquered countries at slave labor to theextent that Germany does, it has grounddown its own people to such a point thatnearlv all producers in Japan work atslave wages for long hours.

The average Jap lives on a diet whichwould kill a Butte miner in practically no~. But the Japs seem to thrive on it-~ only real physical handicap he has,apart from. the fact that he is naturallyshort, is bad eyesight. This bad eyesightworks in OlK favor because in aerial com-bet our fighters are generally able to out-maneuver the little Jap and to shootstraighter when needed, Cer~inJy a di-et

NOVEMBER 10, 1944.'

that consists largely of rice, fish, soybeans, and tea would not enable a minerto break much rock. In the year beforethe war, the average Jap is estimated tohave eaten abo~t a hundred pounds offish a year and only four pounds of meat.Today, according to "Fortune," which hasrecently produced a fine issue completelydevoted to Japan, the [ap's ration ticketgives him only eleven and a half ouncesof rice a day. It is noted that some ofthis rice is unpolished and is mixed withbarley from other areas. The Japs don'tlike unpolished rice, not alone for its un-pleasant taste but because it gives themintestinal trouble. The number of upsetstomachs in the Japanese military is in-creasing dai Iy.

In peacetime, the strange Jap couldget along quite well on this restricteddiet; but the war has made great demandson the ,fighting men; who need more andbetter food. They are getting the bestthei r government can provide at the ex-pense of the people themselves. Thehealth of the Japanese nation has declinedsteadily ever since Pearl Harbor.

As wi II be shown later, the japs livea life of the strictest mental, physical andindustrial discipline. Their children arecompelled to take rigorous physical train-ing under government direction. Young-sters of primary school age work in thefields and factories, along with theirmothers and sisters. This was the cus-tom long before Pearl Harbor and it hasbeen vigorously continued since. Todayhalf of the workers of Japan are women,with working hours ranging from twelveto .sixteen hours a day. This industrialspeed-up was created when Japan startedsettling itself for an all-out assault againstthe United States ..

Farming is the chief occupation ofJapan and the principal product is rice.Because the islands of Japan are smalland because ·the population is so dense,there is probably not a square foot of till-able soil in the whole Japanese Empirewhich has not been worked over and overagain. The soil is not rich for the mostpart. It requires a great deal of fertilizer.The Japanese farmer is probably the hard-est working farmer in the world. Thegrowing of rice is an extremely difficultand tiring operation and the Japanesefarmer lacks modern equipment.

The Japanese government has alwaysmaintained a strict grip on the civilian,whether he is an industrial worker in aplant or a farmer. The government oper-ates a secret police force just as efficient,and perhaps more so, than the gestapo ofGermany. This was not simply an out-growth of the war. The government hasalways made a point of having the peoplethink only what it wants them to think.And for a long time the government hasconsisted of military over-lords of Japan,a handful of ruthless and brutal militarymen who bend the wi II of the people totheir own choosing. This is more truetoday than ever.

J

BRONZE BUDDHA: This is typical of many scenes in Japan. To this Buddha, in Kobe, many pilgrimscome to worship each day.

CODI.DlOndoVOL. III

(;opperNOVEMBER 10, 1944 NO.6

AN ISSUE DEVOTED TO JAPAN, THE COUNTRY WE'VE STILL GOT TO BEAT.

Material for this issue has been gathered from the War and Navy Departments, the Office ofWar Information, many. private sources such ,as "Fortune," "Labor-Management News," etc.

Photographs of peacetime Japan are from the files of R. I. Nesmith and Associates, New Yorf(.Wartime pictures have been procured from the Signal Corps, Army Air Forces, and U. S. Navy.

The map on pages 8-9 is supplied by Rand McNally 6' Company. The cover was drawn espe-cially for Copper Commando by Buck O'Donnell of the Engineering Research Department of theAnaconda Company from a U. S. Army Air Forces photograph.

All material in this issue has been reviewed by the War Department and the Navy Department

•COPPER COMMANDO is the official newspaperof the Victory Labor-Management ProductionCommittees of the Anaconda Copper MiningCompany and its Union Representatives at Butte,Anaconda, Creat Falls and East Helena, Montana.It is issued every two weeks. • COPPER COM-MANDO is headed by a ioint committee fromLabor and Management, its policies are shaped byboth sides and are dictated by neither ••• COP-PER COMMANDO was established at the rec-ommendation of the War Department with theconcurrence of the War Production Board. Itseditors are Bob Newcomb and Mar, Sammons;

its safety editor is John L. Boardman; its chiefphotographer is AI Cusdorf; its staff photographelis Les Bishop ••• Its Editorial Board consists of:Denis McCarthy, CIO; John F Bird, AFL; EdRenouard, ACM, from Butte; Dan Byrne, CIO;Joe Marick, AFL; C A. Lemmon, ACM, fromAnaconda; Jack Clark, CIO; Herb Donaldson.AFL, and E. S. Bardwell, ACM, from Creat Falls..••• COPPER COMMANDO is mailed to the homeof every employee of ACM in the four location,-if you are not receiving your copy, advise COP.PER COMMANDO at 112 Hamilton Street.-Butte, or beHer still, drop in and tell u..

'.

~ APAN is a long, irregular chain ofislands, about 1,200 miles long and aver-aging 120 miles wide. The biggest islandis called Honshu (on which Tokio is lo-cated) ; the other three are Hokkaido tothe northeast and Shokoku and Kyushuto tne southwest. Over a period of yearsjapan has acquired many other islands,usually by conquest, but these four arethe important ones.

The four islands lie in about thesame longitude as the United States-thenorthern tip of the top island is in aboutthe same longitude as Maine, and thesouthern tip of the lowest island is abouteven with the northern part of Florida.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, therewere over seventy million people living injapan proper, almost half the number inthe United States, but greatly crowded.It is a country of mountains (none, ofcourse, to comp~re with Montana's) andvalleys. "Fortune," in its special issuedevoted to japan. points out that Japan's

••• but preparing for War,rivers produce plenty of electric powerbut that you can't travel on them by boat.The major cities lie in an area beginningwith Tokio on the island of Honshu, andending with Nagasaki, at the extremeend of the island of Kyushu-you can see

A pilgrim visits a Jap shrine.

I

them on the big map on pages 8-9. Thisis for the most part flat country, wherethe chief occupation is rice farming, andthe country is so crowded that every inchof ti liable soil is put to work. "Fortune"observes that, of all Japan's forty-fivecities of ITIorethan 100,000 people, onlythree are beyond the reach of 16-inchnaval guns, and that if Japan should losethe outpost islands she has acquired inthe past forty years, she would havelittle chance to defend herself against astrongly-armed foe, for no part of Japanis more than seventy miles from the coast,a distance which in these days is only afew minutes' f.lying time for a big bomber.

It is part of the national characterof the Japanese that they represent them-selves as peaceful, home-loving people.For generations they gave to the outsideworld the impression of being thoroughlysatisfied with what they had. But the Japshowed himself in his true colors whenhe attacked China some years ago.

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W HEN the commanding officer of anarmy lays his plans. for destroying hisenemy, he learns as much about theenemy's strength as he can. We all knowhow General Eisenhower mounted thegreat Invasion of Europe, employing everyounce of power at his command. But be-fore he did it, he took the full measureof German strength. So far as he wasable to find out, he discovered exactlyhow many .planes and guns and tanksGermany could throw against an offen-sive attack.

$0 the same is true of our finalenemy, Japan. The tempo of J.,ar in thePacific is rising; we all hope that thewar with Japan will be of short duration.But we must know what Japan is andwhere her strength lies. It is necessaryfor our commanders to know the militarystrength of the enemy, but it is also nec-essary for them to know the mood of thepeople. They have to know what the Japwill do under given circumstances.

We ourselves ought to be interestedin Japan and know more about it than wedo. When a general in the Civil War re-marked that "We must take full measureof the enemy," he meant that we mustknow not only his fighting strength buteverything else about him that we couldfind out.

So let's take a look at peacetimeJapan. Let's study the Jap and see whatsort of a fellow he is and why he does thethings he does.

Most of us have curious ideas aboutthe Japs. We seem to think that they livein a country of paper houses. We rate the

. average Jap as a man exactly five feethigh with tortoise-shell glasses and buckteeth who is always saying he is sorryabout something. Up to the time of PearlHarbor, most of us regarded Japan as athird-rate nation that couldn't even lickChina.

But Pearl Harbor changed all that.We found out something about the Jap

we never knew before. We found outthat their country, instead of being aweak nation with .no industrial strength,was a first-rate power with vast factoriesproducing guns and munitions, with awell-trained and hard-hitting army, and anavy able to hold its own with the best.

$0 we began to get over the notionthat Japan' was a nation of love songs andbutterflies and meek little people.

In the big picture below we have aview of the famous and -symbolic Fuji,also called Fujiyama. It is one of the trulygreat sights of Japan. In years gone by ithas spewn its molten lava across thecountryside wrecking homes and killing ,people. But the Japs still revere it.

The paper house viewpoint aboufJapan is widespread, but those two build-ings at the top of the page should giveyou a fairly good indication that Tokio,for example, is a pretty modern city. Theyhave plenty of. big, well-built buildings.It isn't a nation of doll houses.

Here are three views of Japan: Above, left, is theMCOftdlargest department store in Tokio--Shin-;uku branch of Mitsuko.hi. In the center pictur.

is the so-called Street of Lanterns at Nara. Thoseare hand-drawn ,inrick.has, the popular meansof tran'portation ill Japan, despite the comin, ef

buses and trolley cars. At the right i. NihonbashiStreet, the' Wall Street of Tokio. Below is the fa-MOUI volcano Fujiya~, at time •• till active.

Not too different from American apartmenthouses is this Tokio apartment house. The lapshave adopted many eastern ways; at least half.he population prior to the war dressed American

THEPEACETIME Tokio, Japan's key city.was always quite a gay and colorful place-in peacetime. In physical 'appearance.,apart from the fact that many of itsbuildings are modern and well built, ithad a carnival atmosphere. There were I

gay lights, now probably well blacked outbecause of the hard-hitting Superfor-tresses: gayly-dressed .women iii thecustomary kimono clacked on woodenshoes up and down the streets.

Apart from the slant-eyed faces ofthe people, the sometimes strange dress,and the signs, in Japanese, Tokio might'usually have been taken for any cosmo-politan city in the world. It has street c~rlines and bus routes, smart shops anddepartment stores, moving picture thea-tres and restaurants. The peacetime Japlived in a very simple way-the civilian lifeIS more simple and rigid now than it everwas before .. The average Japanese home.was of very plain design. Its furniturewas scant-it is customary for the Japa-nese to sit on the floor rather than inchairs: They dressed simply, ate rice andfish and drank their tea, and went abouttheir daily work quietly.

style. These apartments have modern conveni-ences. The middle picture shows the Tokio mu-nicipal sanitorium and another apartment houseis at the right. In the pictures at the bottom of

JAP

the page we see laps outside a Tokio movie hOllse,two beggars with their cllrious hats and fifes, attcIa typical street scene is shown at the lower rightin Kobe.

AT HOMEThe life of the average Jap was al-

ways well ordered, because he had beenschooled in the belief that the Emperorwas all powerful and that obedience tothe wishes of the Emperor was his firstlaw. The average Japanese is better dis-ciplined than even the average Nazi be-cause he has been schooled all his life toobey. In Germany, Hitler to many tookthe place of God, and this was as Hitlerwanted it. But in Japan, the EmperorHirohito IS God. The royal line of Japangoes back thousands of years, and to eachgeneration of Japanese the Emperor hasalways been symbolic of the highest deity ..That helps to' explain in some measurewhy the Jap, when_ he was ordered to go..." war, went at it as ruthlessly as he did.

"'Y1erelyfollows his superiors' ordersbri.rdly ; he is so built that he does noteven stop to consider whether the order isgood or bad. If he is ordered to sacrificehimself for his Emperor, he does it me-chanically. He does not even stop to

think about it. Of course, with thegradual weakening of Japan, there hasbeen of recent date a weakening of Japmorale--three years ago, it ,was unusual

to hear of a Jap surrendering. Today itis not too unusual for a Jap to toss downhis gun and give himself up. But wemusn't count on too much of it.

Here on this page we show you somemore fairly typical scenes in Japan. Thereat the upper right, for example, is a down-town municipal apartment building inTokio. Those who believe that all Japa-nese homes are built on stilts should lookagain. Equally, the building in the centershowing a municipal sanitorium doesn'tgive anyone the impression that one smallbomb will knock Tokio apart. Tokio willbe torn apart, but it won't be as simple ajob as we all seem to kid ourselves intothinking it will be. Before Tokio is tornapart we'll see the bloodiest war of themall.

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What do you suppose it was thatturned the Jap from a supposedly peace-loving citizen, going quietly about hisbusiness each day, to a brutal and bloodywarrior? As we've said, much of it goesback to the ingrained religion of the Japsthat the Emperor is their God and whenthe Emperor commands, it is up to themto obey.

.6. . NOVEMBER 10. 1944.

THEe

EMPEROR'OF'"

.JAPANMOST of us are familiar with the pic':tuee of Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan.But, beyond the fact that we know he tSa small feHow with glasses and a mus-tache, we don't know much about him.Very few Americans have been permittedto meet him. Actually even few peopleof the high councils of the Japanese' gov-ernment or in the military are permitted-to see him.

Hirohito is in his .early forties, andwhile the Japs deify him and regard himas the very spirit of Japan, actually he isquite a commonplace fellow. He is a seri-ous-minded man who is not much inter-ested m sports--he is supposed to playtennis and golf only passably and he is apoor fisherman.

IMany of us believe that Hirohito has

great power-actually he has virtuallynone at all. He is a puppet ruler. He ishemmed in and surrounded by statesmenfrom civil and military life who shapethe policies of Japan without regard toanything that Hirohito thinks. The Jap-anese people worship the name Hirohito·and the position of the Emperor. Actually.while to them the Emperor is godlike,in the Japanese cabinet and in militarycircles, it is only the position that Hire-hito holds that is important. The manhimself amounts to nothing.

If Hirohito were suddenly to gocrazy or fall ill, the Japanese governmentwould continue without any.great change.

He is like a "greeter" who may rep-resent the president or governor in wel-coming visiting dignitaries, bestowingmedals, sending telegrams of congratula-tions. He is the man who has a tremen-dous wardrobe of different uniformswhkh he wears on state occasions.

Those reporters who declare thatHirohito has tremendous power fail torealize the difference between the' manand the job he holds. We talk looselyabout knocking Hirohito off the throne,but it won't make any difference whetherwe knock him off the throne or not. Whatwe must destroy is the machinery behindhim.

On this page are views of typicalJaps. These are the people who lowerthetr eyes when the Emperor passes, notbecause they-respect him as an individual,but because they worship the exaltedposition which he holds.

NOVEMBER 10, 1944.

Many laps are deeply religious. Here we see religious pilgrims passing through a Japanese village ontheir way to one of the many religious shrines of worship.

The Ceisha girls (or dancing girls, as iftey shall be known in this family magazine because of thelarge juvenile leadership) • In Japan no dishonor is attached to being a Geisha girl.

Japanese homes are rigidly simple. This is a typical prewar scene in a Japanese home. Note the ab-osenee of chairs-Japs always kneel or sit on the f:oor. .7.

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to smash the Japs! Here is a typical U. S.troop convoy headed for the fighting front.

W~

AU. S. Navy baby carrier arrives with a load ofP-38's. This carrier is a new ty'pe.

Copper wire is uncoiled for communications nearMunda by Signal Corpsmen following a landing.

Deep in the Pacific jungles, this wounded soldier;s being given water by one of his comrades.

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A Jap zero plane destroyed by one of our bomb-ing crews when they strafed the laps recently.

Army nurses watch troops board a ship at a Cali-fornia port. All these men have now seen action.

A depth charge from a Navy PBY explodes witha shatterb'g roar. These charges are "ash cans!"

It. typical island scene in the Pacific where theSeabees use bulldosers to build highways.

The Yanks- mop up on Bougainville. It takes aflame thrower to rout some 'aps from positions.

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Native carriers pause on the way back from thefighting with their cargo, an American soldier.

Among the war's nursing heroes are Chinesewomen who serve as nurses to their own men.

Camouflaged Infantrymen pass a ruined SaipanJap sugar refinery, blasted by bombs and gun fire •

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These planes are off to help evacuate woundedAmerican fighters from fighting fronts.

U. S. Army orderlies load wounded Chinese sol-diers into a plane while an Army nurse looks on.

This is Seagraves Hospital Unit in China. BeH...hospital facilities are n~w built for the wounded.

THIS war is going into its second and.we hope, final stage. The military situa-tion in Europe is more than hopeful. Weshould be able to look forward to a mop-ping up of the Nazis in the reasonablynear future although it's not sure.

To too many people, that means theend of the war. To too many people, itmeans that japan, cut off from her soleremaining ally, will buckle to her kneesand give up. People foolish enough tobet on such thinzs are wagering theirmoney on the end of the war in thePacific,

Wars aren't won by betters. Norare they won by wishful thinkers who, intheir zeal to get back to what they callthe normal way of living. can pipe-dreamthemselves into believing that Japan is acomplete push-over. For- its size and forits materiel, Japan is without doubt thetoughest fighting nation in the world.The leading military experts say that wewill lick Japan without question. But letus take note of the fact that the out-standing military authorities won't saywhen. It depends on the number of menand the amount of materiel we can hurlagainst the Jap. The Army and Navy andMarines and the Air Forces will providethe men, but it is up to the productionmachinery of the U. S. and its Allies toprovide the materiel. ,

Pearl Harbor produced some bumguessers in this country. There weremany who rose in their wrath on Decem-ber 7 three years ago and declared thatwe would smash Japan to bits in no time.There were many who said that Japanhad no navy and no fighting force, thatit had had many years to demobilizeChina and had done nothing. Accordingto these people, we would mop up japanin no time.

Then, with stunning suddenness, wesaw possession after possession of this

The Star, and Stripe, replace the Japaneae fla&-

country and of the British empire toppledover, wrested from us in many cases with-out even a struggle. It was then that westarted to awake to the fact that japanhad a first-class fighting machine.

Let's look at the score today, as someof our guns turn away from the Atlanticand start drawing a bead on the JapaneseIslands, as the battle wagons of the At·lantic steam their way across the Pacific,as the plane output which has poured intoContinental Europe begins to be divertedto the Pacific Theatre.

The weakest link in our Pacificchain is in China. We have suffered nosmashing defeats there, but we have lost50- much of what wehave gained, throughthe inability of the United Nations tosupply adequate materiel to our opera-tions there. We have lost air field afterair field in China; we have been cut offfrom supply bases and routes. Everythingwe get into China to build a foothold forourselves must be flown in at staggeringcost. The picture in China today is muchworse than it was a year ago. Yet thebest military minds agree that, in orderfor us to bring japan to terms, we mustfight it out from bases in China. Thereappears to be some hope that, with thefinal collapse of Germany, the Russianswill grant air bases to us. But this hasnot· happened yet and there is no im-mediate sign that it will.

,

This Navy destroyer is headed for the war sone.

THE LONG ROAD AHEADEven though the war has been moving swiftly in the

Pacific, we have actually just started in on the big

fight there. For the Jap is a long way from quitting.

In the picture above, we see three U. S. Navyfighting planes, built by Crumman, assigned to the

fighting squadron of an airct:aft carrier. Theseplanes are sing'e wing, single engine and highly

• 12 •

ANYONE attempting to understandthe war in the Pacific should get out amap and see the tremendous. distancesthat must be covered. Then they wi IIbegin to understand the common sensethat was used in capturing 'islands fromthe [aps for bases. It seems clear that.the offensive war in the Pacific will be, carried for the most part by the Navy. with the Air Forces working in combina-tion with the Navy.

Actually japan's army is rated todayas strong, if not stronger than it wasat the time of Pearl Harbor.,

Two yea rs have passed since we senta small force of medium bombers overTokio. Since that time we have made'vast land, sea, and air gains in the Pa-cific, looking forward to the day whenwe will again be bombing Tokio. Itseems certain that future bombings willbe greatly increased, and that some dayTokio wi II get the same sort of blastingsthat Berlin has had.

But. even when the date for large-. scale bombing of Tokio is reached, wemay sti II have a long war ahead of us.Too many people suppose that whenwe send great armadas of planes againstTokio, the city will burn and crumbleaway. It won't happen. '

We have every right to be cheeredby the progress of the war, but we haveno right to feel that it is anywhere nearfinished. Under Secretary of War RobertP. Patterson sums it up this way: "Weknow that the japanese will defend withfanatical zeal against our assaults. Thatfanaticism, that willingness to die fight-ing, is attested to by the small numberof Japanese prisoners we have taken. Dur-ing the first two years of war our Ameri-can forces captured more than 170,000Italians and more than 110,000 Germans.Although we have killed thousands ofjapanese, in two years of war we havecaptured less than 400. I know of nosingle fact which so clearly indicates thesize of our job ahead in the Pacific."

"" ~maneuverable. right: theone of Uncle Sam'. death-dealing battlewagons.

NOVEMBER 10, 1944.

WHEN the fi rst B-29 Superfortressunloaded its cylinders of death high overBangkok early in June this year. our ArmyAir Forces won a three million dollargamble.

For the A. A. F. had staked threemillions on a giant superbomber designedto fly higher and farther with a greaterbomb load than any warplane in theworld. It had scraped bases out of thefar away soil of India and China. It hadtrained thousands of technicians on theground and in the air on the operationsof a plane very few knew anything about.The big B-29 is the plane upon which weare depending to deal the knock-out blowto Japan from the air. .

_The -history of the plane's produc-tion is the history of A. A_ F. brains anddoggedness and American productiongenius. Brlgadier General Kenneth B.Wolfe, now chief of engineering and pro-

- curement, Air Technical Service Com-mand. who for four years shouldered theresponsibility for the development of theB-29, recently stated: "We started fromscratch. We began with what was still,by military necessity, an incompletely de-signed, experimental airplane, more com-.plicated than any ever before used inaerial warfare ... Officially we receivedour first experimental XB-29 from Boe-ing in May, 1943. Two weeks later thefirst production-type plane was flownsuccessfully. The first of the combatB-29's rolled off the line in July, 1943.

UN h kO .ew crews were c ec mg oat In

the B-29's as they were being flight-test-ed. As rapidly as these tests uncovered'bugs,' the engineers took the problemsto Wright Field's laboratories an-dworkedthem out. Their expeditious handling ofour design and mechanical problems con-tinuously contributed to improve the per-formance and reliability of our new plane.We were rolling because we had to roll.We were accomplishing a week's re-search, testing and modification andtraining every twenty-four hours."

The B-29 will probably go down inaviation history as one of the greatesttechnical accomplishments. Having oncetried her teeth on Japan, she can lookforward to doing it again when those incommand say the time has come.

On this page are various views of the pride of theArmy Air Forces-th'£l B-29 Superfortress. At thetop of the page is a headron view of this greatship. Notice the .double-wheel undercarriage.Some of the difficulties we face in our ·Pacificwar can be realised by a look at the picture just

above, which shows a grader at work at a 8-29base in India. This is a taxi strip which is beingconstructed for Superforts at aU. S. Army Twen-tieth Bomber Command base somewhere in India.Thousands of cubic yards of concrete were usedin building strips thick enough and strong enouR'1_.

Here at the left is a dramatic view of the tail of aB-29; you can get an idea of the sise of this shipby comparing it with the one below. Before theSuperfortress can pounce Oft Japan, however,everything must be ia re.dine .... We have beea

set back badly by the loss of several of our B-2~bases in China and these are serious blows. Be-.fore these great ships can fly on their missions ofdestruction, they must have bases from which totake oK and bases to which to return.

Here a Consolidated 8-24 Liberator bomber ofthe U. S. AAF flies above the swinging palms ofMakin Island.

In the Burma theatre,. Infantrymen forded thisriver ..Cen. Stilwell sits beside driver.

Transportation of supplies will be a difficult job.Native laborers are helping keep lines open.

Less than seventeen yards from the enemy, In-fa~t'lmen take time out to read old magasines.

A jeep becomes a am ance to moveIn, men from the hospital to the landin, strip.

Plus Sign

We've come a long way since Pearl Har-bor. W·ith the greatest Navy, the great-est Air Force. and the greatest fightingcrew in' the world. we've out-distancedJapan. Here are some encouraging noteson what our country has done.

As the war swings into the Pacificphase, it is clear that, of all our advan-tages over Japan, war output leads thelist. For instance, we produce 8,000planes a month to 1,500 by the japs. Pa-cific commanders believe Japan has lostthe initiative for a strategic offensive be-yond the range of land-based planes. Ja-pan's merchant shipping has been steadi-ly reduced at a greater rate than can bereplaced. That .isn't all: japanese indus-try has been bombed, to some extent atleast, by the Superfortresses. Islandskipping has neutralized about fifty ma-jor bases on Japan's outer defenses andhas brought us to within striking distanceof the inner defense zone. Allied forcesare in position for another stride whichwould cut north-south sea arteries. Thetactical ability of Jap generals has not yetbeen proven. The Jap officer systemseems to put poor military men at the top.

In sea fighting the Japs have beenout-fought, and, as our Navy is releasedfrom Atlantic duty to turn its attentionto the Pacific area, this situation shouldbe sharpened. In air combat, our recordis five to one.

A final fact which has hurt japanand which will hurt her more: She hasfailed to realize full value from the richsources of raw material conquered earlyin the war. She wanted rubber and oiland tin, but when she grabbed these re-serves, she failed to turn them to her ownuse.

We have not been idle in improvingour arms. We have developed in recentmonths long range flame throwers usinga secret fuel. The Locust, an airbornetank that can be carried by gl ider andattack by surprise behind the enemy, is anew development. We are now turningout the powerful and fast M-18 mobilegun tank destroyer, carrying a 76-mmhigh velocity cannon at a 55-mile-an-hourpace. This tank destroyer is called "thehottest thing in armored warfare today,"It fords water up to six feet in depth.

'. All these things are on' the creditside of our ledger. On the basis of thesegains and advantages, it would look some-thing like an easy job for us to knock outthe Nips. But let's look at the next pageand see where they stand.

...Infantrymen pour from an LSI to land on anisland in the Pacific held by the [apanese,

This is the interior of a shack vacated by laps inthe Pacific when the Yanks moved in.

\American field gun pounds lap positions on a

cave-infested island in the South Pacific.

American fighting men on their way to the Pa-cific sone of war enjoy the morning sunlight.

A U. S. Navy seaplane tests its floats in a rough-water take-off. These planes will come in handy.

This is our own flak, but nothing prevents theJaps from using it against us when we attack'.

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We have transportation djfficulties in the Pa-cific. It's really tough country to fight in... - ,.~- .

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•Civilians must be protected but their mass move-ments hamper our fighting forces in operations •

Our boys live and fight under the worst physicalconditions. Warfare in the Pacific will be tough.

.Every piece of Allied equipment must be frans-ported many miles in order to do a fighting job.

Minns-SignThe Japs planned this war a long time'ago, and even though things are' goingagainst them, they have too many aces leftin the hole for us to get complacent. Weface another year and probably more ofwar with the Japs.

~ U5T as most people know too littleabout Japan in peacetime, so too manypeople know too little about Japan in timeof war. This is no criticism of the Amer-ican people; it is more a suggestion thatwe take the measur~ of the enemy.

Let's sum up this report of japan byseeing just where she stands today. It'sa cinch that the laps still think they canwin this war. They aren't laying downtheir guns. 50 let's find out why theythink they have a better than even chanceto lick us: In the first place the Japs arebelieved capable of increasing productionof almost every kind of war equipmentand milita'ry supplies. Before Alliedmight can be brought to bear on Japan,it must be based within striking distanceof Japan's home islands. As this is writ-ten, we are still about fifteen hundredmiles away.

Before a major invasion can belaunched, the. Japs know that the vastshipping problem must be solved by usthrough new construction and release ofpart of the shipping now in the Atlantic.The Japs know that one of our objectivesis to open safe ocean routes to China.Yet the Japs 'know that about the on Iypossible bases for anything smaller thanthe B-29 in attacking Japan are on theAsiatic mainland, At the present time thecourse of the war in China is all in Japan'sfavor and we have lost several of our B-29bases.

The Japs know that. in spite of thelong drain of the Chinese war and othercasualties. japan's army has not yetreached full strength, Japan has yet todraft an estimated 3.500.000 men,

There are these other points: Japan'sindustries are largely beyond the rangeof air attack in comparison with theround-the-clock saturation bombing ofGermany. japan has strategic supplies onthemain island and large amounts of ma-teriels have been stockpiled. japan hasbeen producing planes faster than we candestroy them and their planes have im-proved in quality.

The Nips still have a powerful fleet;they can operate on interior lines of sup-ply while our Own supply lines are ex-tended with every victory. The jap can-not be starved out as long as supplies canbe brought in from Manchuria and Korea.

So let's not kid ourselves we've gotthem licked.

Heat and disease and difficult fighting condition.make the Pacific a hard place to

The wounded must be- taken care of under condi-.mpO:SS.IDleto put into words,

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The Allies must be prepared with every form ofcombat • including the submarine,

~Or every Jap we kill we must risk the livO$ ofAmerican fighting men far from home.

The price of raising the Stars and Stripes overenemy territory must be paid with blood ..

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PEACEFUL, isn't it? A year or so ago they were working beside us in the mines or at thesmelters or ~nthe shops. V!le watched them grow up; watched them march away withtheir chins up. They aren't cO,!,ing back.

Jap bullets cut them all down, mowed t hem into the beachhead which, in a matter ofseconds, became their burial ground. It doesn't much -matter that we killed ten for everyone we lost. .

The lap is the most ruthless killer in the world. He fights accordi~g to his own rulesonly. As long as one of them is free to roam with his gun, or to rattle his saber, this worldisn't safe.

The war is over? Let's stop kidding ourselves. We've got probably another year totwo years of it, the bloodiest war of them all. To suggest that the war is won, that we canreturn to peacetime plans now, is to break our faith with boys like these, who have givenevery single thing they had to give.

All they ever would have asked of us is t hat we stay on the job until every murderingJap is wiped out. It is an easier task than thei rs was.

Saturday, November 11, is Armistice Day. Let's be certain that the ArmisticeDay that comes with the end of this war means more than the last one has.