Mark Scott Smith's Blog: Enemy in the Mirror, page 102

Private Snafu

Private Snafu was a WWII US Army cartoon character in a series of War Department short subjects produced from 1943-1945. The films were intended to teach military personnel about security, sanitation, booby traps etc. and to boost morale. The Private Snafu series, directed by Chuck Jones and other prominent Hollywood animators, featured the voice of  the voice of Mel Blanc as Private Snafu.

It is interesting that the obscene WWII term “SNAFU” (situation normal, all ****ed up) had already entered the accepted lexicon without apparent difficulty.

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New Georgia Campaign – 1943

Darkness came to the jungle like the click of a camera shutter. Then the Japanese crept close to the American lines. They attacked with bloodcurdling screams, plastered bivouacs with artillery and mortar barrages, crawled silently into American foxholes and stabbed or strangled the occupants. Often they cursed loudly in English, rattled their equipment, named the American commanding officers and dared the Americans to fight, reminding them that they were “not in the Louisiana maneuvers now.” For sick and hungry soldiers who had fought all day, this unholy shivaree was terrifying. They shot at everything in sight – fox fire on rotting stumps, land crabs clattering over rocks, even comrades.

– Historian Samuel Eliot Morison on the disastrous battle of Munda

 

When the loss of Guadalcanal appeared inevitable at the end of 1942, Japanese military commanders began preparations for anticipated attacks in the central Solomon islands and on their huge base at Rabaul on New Britain.

But in early 1943, instead of directly attacking the formidable fortress of Rabaul, the Allies devised a plan (Operation Cartwheel) to cut off (rather than directly attack) Rabaul with simultaneous offensives in the Territory of New Guinea and northward through the Solomon Islands. The resulting costly New Georgia Campaign, was a series of land and naval battles taking place in the central Solomon Islands from late June through early October 1943. After a series of advances and setbacks, the Allies triumphed.

 

New Georgia in the Solomon Islands

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Operation Gomorrah – Hamburg July 1943

On July 25 1943, following a 5-month air campaign against Germany’s industrial Ruhr district, the RAF began a 10-day series of air raids on Hamburg known as Operation Gomorrah.

Due to unusually hot and dry weather, the July 27 raid on the city’s working class districts produced a swirling vortex of superheated air that ignited a firestorm with temperatures reaching 800°C. Many civilians jumped into waterways; others were asphyxiated in bomb shelters as the firestorm consumed oxygen. Over 10 days, 42,600 citizens of Hamburg were killed and 37,000 injured in Operation Gomorrah.

__________________________

In May 2014, my wife and I visited Hamburg on a research trip for the book I am writing about the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942. Our visit to the St. Nikolai Church memorial museum beneath the bombed-out church was one of the most moving experiences I’ve had.

              

Lira Walter was here. Mother is alive. Father is dead.

 

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Detroit Race Riot – 1943

In June 1943 a race riot erupted in Detroit Michigan, a city brimming with ~400,000 wartime migrants competing for jobs and housing.

Fueled by false rumors of racial attacks in both black and white communities, the rioting continued from June 20 until June 22 when 6,000 federal troops were ordered to restore peace. 34 people were killed (25 of them black) by police or guardsmen and 433 were wounded (75% black).  ~$2 million of property was destroyed, most of it in the black area of Paradise Valley, the poorest neighborhood of the city.

Contemporary reports by commissions made up of whites attributed the riot to black hoodlums. The NAACP, however, identified longstanding problems in Detroit with housing, job discrimination, lack of minority representation in the police, and police brutality.

Historical analysis suggests that most white rioters were young, unemployed or in semi-skilled jobs. Many traveled far to join armed groups that attacked black neighborhoods. The black rioters were mostly older working men, married and longtime residents of Detroit who were defending their homes and neighborhood against the police and white rioters; however, they also looted and destroyed white-owned property.

 

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Killing Japanese Zoo Animals

The Japanese government disposed of “dangerous animals” (not only carnivores but also herbivores, such as elephants) in zoos and circuses during WWII, including those in Japan and occupied Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria. While some European zoos also destroyed their animals, no country conducted as nationwide and systematic a disposal of captive animals as Japan. Some claim the Japanese government ordered the killings to mobilize the whole civilian population into total war, rather than for the ostensible purpose of public safety.

Here is an excerpt from my book Enemy in the Mirror:Love and Fury in the Pacific War:

In the morning, during a brief stop at Kobe, they heard the terrible news. Hundreds of B-29s had rained incendiary bombs on Tokyo during the night. Forty square kilometers of the city had been set afire and more than 90,000 people were dead. It was beyond imagination. Everyone sat in numbed silence as the train moved on. After staring blankly out the window for many kilometers, Isamu finally closed his eyes and drifted into reverie.

It was a warm Sunday afternoon in 1932 at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo. Lighthearted families strolled between the enclosures of exotic animals. Rising Sun flags fluttered over the promenade and the cherry trees were in full bloom. A banner proclaimed: “Enrich the country, strengthen the Army.” Like a caring older brother, Japan was bringing light to Manchuria. Soon all of Asia would be joined in a sphere of co-prosperity. Isamu beamed at his parents when they bought him a delicious brown sugar rice and millet cake. He loved all the animals, but his favorite was Tonki, the performing elephant. Tonki carried logs, walked along wooden beams and blew a toy trumpet with his trunk. As a finale, he stood on a podium and raised his trunk and a front leg saluting the crowd. The children cheered and the adults applauded.

Isamu opened his eyes. Tonki and the other zoo animals were long gone – starved to death by their keepers in 1943 for fear they might run wild in an air raid. Now the great city itself was burned to the ground. He rubbed his forehead and ran his fingertips through his hair. How much longer can this go on?

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442nd Regimental Combat Team

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was organized on March 23, 1943 when 2,686 Japanese-American volunteers from Hawaii and 1,500 from the U.S. mainland received basic training in Camp Shelby, Mississippi.

In May 1944, the 442nd, attached to the 5th Army under the command of General Mark Clark, drove German forces north in the heavily defended mountainous terrain of northern Italy
In August 1944, the Anti-Tank Company was separated and sent to France in a glider landing to support the Allied invasion of the Continent
In France in the winter 1944, the 1st Battalion, 141st Regiment of the 36th “Texas” Division was surrounded by German troops and running out of food and ammunition. After two previous attempts at rescue by other units failed, the 442nd enter the Vosges Mountains. After five days of horrific combat, the Texans were rescued by the Japanese Americans who suffered heavy casualties
In April 1945, the 442nd led the attack which broke through the Gothic Line, an obstacle that had thwarted Allied efforts for months in northern Italy
The 100th Battalion/442nd RCT, a segregated unit composed of Japanese-Americans, while compiling an astonishing combat record, suffered an equally large number of casualties – ~ 800 killed or missing in action.

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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – 1943

In the summer of 1942, German SS and police units deported ~ 265,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to to the Treblinka killing center and ~11,600 to forced-labor camps. More than 10,000 Jews in the ghetto were murdered during these deportation operations. While ~35,000 Jews were granted permission to remain in the ghetto (with another 20,000 remaining in hiding), the eventual deportation of all seemed inevitable.

When German SS and police units resumed mass deportation of the ghetto on January 18, 1943, a group of Jewish fighters, armed with pistols, fought their German guards. Although most of the Jewish fighters died in the battle, the Germans (after deporting ~6000 ghetto residents) suspended further deportations on January 21. Believing they had halted deportations, ghetto residents constructed subterranean bunkers and shelters in preparation for an uprising.

With orders to liquidate the residents, German forces entered the ghetto on April 19, 1943. With most residents in hiding, the streets were deserted. Suddenly, Jewish resistance fighters, armed with pistols, grenades, automatic weapons and rifles, attacked. The Germans, who were forced to retreat outside the ghetto wall, reported 12 men killed or wounded during this first assault on the ghetto.

On the third day of the uprising, the Germans began burning the ghetto, building by building, to force the remaining Jews out of hiding. By May 8, the Germans had effectively razed the ghetto, captured the Jewish command post and and killed the leaders. A few survivors fought on sporadically for several weeks.

Ultimately, the Germans deported almost all of the ~42,000 remaining Jews from the ghetto. With the exception of a few thousand forced laborers, all of these Jews were later murdered.

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Casablanca Conference – January 1943

In January 1943, two months after the Anglo-American landings in French North Africa in November 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in Casablanca, Morocco. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, engaged in the decisive battle of Stalingrad, did not attend.

At the Casablanca Conference, FDR and Churchill agreed to:

concentrate efforts against Germany in an effort to draw Axis forces away from the Eastern front
increase shipments of supplies to the Soviet Union
launch an invasion of Italy and increase strategic bombing of Germany prior to invading France
increase efforts against Japanese forces in Papua New Guinea
open new supply lines to China through Japanese-occupied Burma.
demand unconditional surrender from the Axis powers

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Der Führer’s Face – Donald Duck 1943

Der Fuehrer’s Face, an animated Walt Disney propaganda film released in 1943 by RKO Radio Pictures, features a nightmare in which Donald Duck works in a factory in Nazi Germany.

The film, intended to promote the sale of war bonds  was scored with original music by Oliver Wallace which included  “Der Fuehrer’s Face”,  released earlier by Spike Jones.

Der Fuehrer’s Face won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film .

 

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Victory Through Air Power – 1943

Victory Through Air Power was a 1943 Walt Disney animated documentary feature film based on the controversial 1942 book Victory Through Air Power by Alexander P. de Seversky. De Seversky maintained:

rapid expansion of both range and striking power of military aircraft meant the U.S. would soon become vulnerable to air attack (as was Britain at the time)
the U.S. must begin preparing immediately for inter-hemispheric war directly across oceans
the U.S. must become the dominant air-power nation, as England in its prime was the dominant sea-power

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Disney studios began to produce propaganda films for the U.S. government. But, unlike most WWII training films, Victory Through Air Power was created to influence government officials as well as enhance public morale. According to film historian Leonard Maltin, the film had a significant influence on President Roosevelt’s commitment to long-range bombing.

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