The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Nissi Are Americans FOR a couple of hours I hare been reading various * issues of a Nisei paper called The PmeifU Citizen. It is published in Salt Lake City,...
...There is nobody in Montana" (writes Van Devander)—particularly no politician—who doesn't know what's mesnt by the words 'sixth floor...
...It was not long before he died that Broun wrote in his New York World-Telegram column: 'The masquerade is over...
...Sidney Hillman has been in Arizona, recuperating from illness...
...It is not strange, however, that the CP should now attempt to claim Broun as a patron saint of the Party...
...On the credit side of the CIO Political Action ledger is the appointment of Douglas Anderson of Textile as director of the Oregon snd Washington area...
...Seversl startling witnesses to turn up at the trials in Washington of the indicted pro-fascists...
...Tired, weary, their uniforms ripped and fijled with mud they waited, and Minor strode in, immaculate and shiny, with bright puttees neatly wound and a jaunty beret perched on his head...
...On February 12, for example, a whole page was devoted to the Japanese American Citizens League and its list of 07 sponsors...
...June Arii Terry is of Jspanese descent...
...The fellows booed him away...
...Blazes away Editor Baldinger: "The Communist Party has committed an ultimate indignity against the memory of Heywood Broun, founder of the American Newspaper Guild...
...he desired then to join the Catholic Church and the Communist Party simultaneously, but ended by joining the Church, and not joining the Party, although he remained its fast friend to his death...
...Prats Notes fHE best political writing of the week was Charles van Devander's account in the A em Fori: Poet of how Anaconda Copper controls the State of Montana...
...Terry...
...The general impression left with the reader is that a lot of mean anrhnarrow-mir.ded individuals in that special neighborhood got away off base, but that most regular Americans are on the other side...
...The Pacific Citizen might well have frothed all over its front page...
...Of the nine Anaconda papers, a number are Democratic, a number Republican, bat that makes little difference...
...Courtroom sessions will open in April...
...This list starts with Dr...
...William Shirer is becoming an editor of Free World...
...It quoted a fine editorial from The Arizona Republic...
...The fine action of the Colorado Legislature which we reported last week was given number one place on the front page of February 12...
...In an earlier issue they had recorded the awarding of 58 purple hearts to Nisei members of the 100th Infantry Battalion who had been wounded fighting on the Italian front...
...floberf Minor—Staffed Skirt IN the Daily Worker comic strip that Robert Minor writes, usually entitled "Questions and Answers" ea the change of line, the Communist hack recently sought to invoke the name of Heywood Broun...
...But officially—as represented in their paper—they are calm and collected and judicial about «he whole busines as if they were discussing events on the moon...
...Men," he began in the most pompous, orotound manner, "the world will be prou ofyou...
...In the latter he has been under severe pressure to name a CPer as director of political action...
...The dominoes are dropped and it now becomes possible to look at the faces of the various ones who pretend to be devoted to the maintenance of democracy.' "Broun looked at the faces and turned away in revulsion...
...That's the only way a bombing crew can fight...
...At the instigation of the Governor, you will recall, a bill had been introduced for the purpose of preventing ownership of land by non-citizens of Japanese descent...
...There is a fight brewing in the Marine and Shipyard Workers' Union between John Green, the national president, snd Phil vsn Gelder, the national secretary...
...One of the Presidential candidates devoting an entire speech to labor, seeking to woo the union vote...
...And in Spain in 1936, Minor was present as s CR political commissar...
...You're fighting for each other's lives and for your country—end you're living and proving democracy...
...Terry was taken to one of the relocation camps and later released so that she could rejoin her husband and two-year-old child...
...Labor and Politics J\AN TOB1N is beginning an organizing drive among office workers in rural areas, signing up the clerical help in large "factory fsrms," creameries, pasteurization plants, and other farm places that ship by truck...
...Van Gelder is gunning for several international representatives of the union who signed the anti-Hillman statements...
...Some pretty tough things hare happened to them during the past two years...
...M f mrpie Hoortt ON the same front paga as the Colorado story the V ether featured Item is headed this way: "War Department Identifies II Japanese Americans kilted, Four Hurt, in Italian Campaign...
...Most of them, naturally, are from Hawaii...
...They tost property, had families torn apart and were generally made to feel that the world had suddenly turned against them...
...On his return he has to solve two crucial problems in CIO national political action: the naming of a state director in New York, and the naming of one in California...
...New Deal Senator James Murray is regularly ignored .in the Anaconda press while Barton K. Wheeler is the fair-haired boy...
...A sign was posted, "No Japs Wanted Here...
...Hutchins and his followers obtained 13 weeks radio time on a coast-to-coast hookup on the premise that they would present the major trends in education today...
...They hare one technique that we radicals and liberals and reformers would do well to learn from them...
...If these things had happened to me and my folks, I'd be inclined to be bitter...
...But they know that war psychology does not last forever, and tbey know that, taken as a whole and on the average, we are rather decent...
...About 120,000 of them were torn from their homes on the coast snd confined in 10 relocation camps...
...If Anaconda doesn't like the bill, a red tag is placed (physically) on the bill—and it is killed...
...They feel perfectly sure thst in the end the American people will deal justly with them...
...Hove Confidence la Us TTHEY pay us the greatest compliment which any * minority group could pay...
...My first feeling is one of admiration...
...They story emphasizes the fact that these well-known men and women represent the real America...
...The editor is a good enough newspaper man to know (hat stories mast be humanised...
...Knowing Rovere quite well, snd being acquainted with his political views, it is obvious to me that the tone of the piece waa changed and a different slant given it in sn edi-torisl office rewrite of the piece...
...After a particularly hard hattls one day, when the Lincoln Brigade had suffered »eve7 casualties, Minor came down to speak to the men...
...Jessup will be given a special title...
...And to his death, according to testimony of his intimates, he loathed the sounds and the sight of them...
...In Buffalo and Syracuse, a majority of the committeemen named on the left-wing slates are fellow-travelers...
...Here we hare news stories, tetters, editorials, sport news, advertisements—everything that you expect in an ordinary American publication...
...Everyone knows the details—or should know them...
...It is published in Salt Lake City, and the editor is Larry Tajiri Yea can judge a group of people pretty accurately by what they write and read in their own papers...
...Individually and privately, I feel sure, they must be excited, must feel '1*6sWIstHAtl)w wew weMlaf wrongs...
...We hope he will steer the magazine clear of the rrypto-Stalinist line it haa been traipsing...
...Robert hf...
...In between come a lot of distinguished citizens, scholars, clergymen businessmen and journalists...
...I am told that there are two or three companies, perhaps from 400 to 800 men...
...This sort of CP canonization has no limits in presumption and absurdity, reaching through "Abe" Lincoln and "Tom" Jefferson to Jesus Himself...
...He was talking about American Communists who then jeered, in concert with the Nazis, at the anguish of the women and children of Poland, who called President Roosevelt a warmongering Fascist, who sabotaged their country's defense by instigating strikes in arms plants at a desperate period of national emergency...
...J. P. Morgan the Elder, for instance...
...1 come up from my reading feeling that I begin to know these fellow citizens all of whose names end in rowels...
...It was a nasty outburst of hysteria...
...They treat their misfortunes as s natural result of what Japan has done and of the misfortune that has befallen us...
...They play up the good in our life rather than the bad...
...Mrs...
...Move On...
...William Agar and ends with Dr...
...No sooner had the 22-year-old wife ¦ appeared in her own home than the neighbors raised a rumpus...
...With rousing good democratic arguments they defeated the bill 15 to 12...
...In its current.metamorphosis as a propagator snd defender of the capitalist faith the CP might well turn now, with its latest line and with its usual consitseney, into Wall Street in search of a hero...
...It told its readers that the Mayor of Martinez does his best to protect the rights of Mr...
...Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's race -theorist...
...The result is one of the most blistering attacks ever made on the CP —written by Wilbur Baldinger, editor of the Guild Reporter, official organ of the American Newspaper Guild, CIO, in his colum The Rewrite Desk...
...It was a very effective writing job...
...I don't mean that they ignore the evil...
...But the general editorial policy is to tell the Nesei how many fair-minded Americans there are...
...The strange thing is that these brownish men and women whose names end in rowels sre calm and confident as can be...
...On February 6th, Editor Tajiri lit into William Randolph Hearst in really heart-warming style...
...Her husband, as you would guess, is what you and I would call a "regular" American...
...By MURRAY EVERETT - Inside and Out Tomorrow's Headlines WATCH for: • A new twist in the Americsn Labor Party fight, with national leaders mixing in...
...Life Among tko UHratl 10 HN DEWEY will reply to his neo thorn is t critics in an article on education in the forthcoming issue of Fortune...
...A sensational Truman Committee report blaming the shipyard owners for defective construction in seversl Liberty ships, which resulted in these ships splitting in hslf at sea...
...I don't knew how many of these Japanese Americans there are out there in Italy...
...Ray Lyman Wilbur, President of Stanford University...
...You're fighting as a team...
...In one of his columns Heywood Broun called Minor "the worst stuffed-shirt" he had ever met, and that included all the blubbery business men he knew...
...It reported that the CIO Labor Council came to their defense...
...But that is just whst it did not do...
...During legislative sessions, Ansconds maintains offices on the sixth floor of the Placer Hotel in Helena, and a copy of every bill introduced into the legislature goes to the "Sixth floor" before it resches the legislative floor...
...Davenport's job is being taken over by John K. Jessup who last yesr outlined Luce's position on domestic and foreign affairs in two issues of Life...
...Anaconda's grip on the state ia tightened by the fact that it owns every daily paper in the state but two...
...It passed the House by a vote of 48 to 15...
...But let the decent dead rest To this, I'd like to add two items about Minor thst come to mind...
...In the issue of February 19 one of the columnists heads his essay, "Defeat of Colorado Race Legislation Bolsters Faith in Democratic Processes...
...In the Senate, however, a composite group of Republicans and Democrats led by Robert G, Wadsworth, a Denver Republican, made a fine stand...
...But all the reports agree that they are first-class fighting men...
...Tobin's move is aimed at the party-line CIO Professional Workers Union and at John L. Lewis's farm drive...
...The substance of it was a deadly parallel between the theory and words of Hearst and those of Dr...
...He has bam ia almost every sort of tight place a flying fighter eta be in and still lire...
...Hutchins, with a grant from Time is going to direct a two year study on the freedom of press sad radio in the U. S. We* suggest item one on the agenda —a follow-up to the New Leader editorial last week Storm Over Education...
...Speaking before Commonwealth Club, ef San Francisco, ea February 6, he talked has this: "Under Are a malt's ancestry—what he did befen the war and even his present rank—don't matter at sll...
...in New York any person he names would likely be unacceptable to the CP or the anti-CP CIO unions...
...Russell Davenport, who has been writing the editorials in Life has left Luce to work with Wendell Willkie...
...That will gire you the idea...
...This, in polite language, is s lie...
...In at least one upstate New York county, pro-Dewey Republican party workers are circulating petitions for the ALP left-wing...
...But every one of the 1J speakers followed the Hutchins—neo-Thomist line snd sttscked progressive education and the theories of John Dewey...
...Bo he lets his neat* In on the details of the experience of Turret Gmmsr Ben Kuroki, who hi a young man worth hearing sheet He has taken part in 10 combat mission, over Italy sal was in the dramatic raid over Floesti...
...It featured, instead, an editorial from the Salinas Californian appealing for decency and fair play...
...It has redbaited Broun in The Daily Worker, which in another period referred to the Guild's first president as "a scabby rat...
...Terry works in a war plant, and had arranged a home for his family in Martinez, California...
...It made America look like an uncivilized country...
...Robert Minor, a procurer for the CP band of political prostitutes, said in The Daiiep Worker that "Broun raised with the Party the question of his joining it...
...They understand the strain of war...
...Dewey figures that if the left-wing ALP wins, the party will be killed...
...Go to it, comrades...
...and Mrs...
...Or take the way this paper played the much publicized Martinez, California, story...
...Dick Rovere hss a piece on Sidney Hillsaan in the current issue of Pie...
Vol. 27 • March 1944 • No. 10
