U.S. Moves In

Hull down in Pacific brine, squat, ugly U.S. freighters were last week carrying the second A.E.F.--men and materials for action in the Far East. Hundreds of young U.S. volunteers were en route to fight in China's skies (TIME, June 23). Advisers were going; men of every skill and walk of life were setting out, some for freedom's sake, some for adventure.

Truckers. Groggy from typhoid and cholera inoculations, but bubbling with enthusiasm at the prospect of the toughest job of a tough career, rawboned, hulking, strikebreaking Dan Arnstein was en route from San Francisco to China. Product of the violence of Chicago's stockyard district, a onetime professional football player, a taxi driver in his youth, veteran of World War I, Dan Arnstein had pounded his way up until he owned and operated the Terminal Taxicab System of New York City. Smooth with success, hard-muscled with exercise, at 50 he had offered himself in a burst of patriotic fever to the Government for $1 a year.

Harry Hopkins had assigned him one of the most important posts on the world democratic front: the reorganization of trucking on the Burma Road. Dan Arnstein and two associates, M. F. Hellman and H. C. Davis, set off to take over. Mr. Arnstein's chief regret: that he could not take his taxi drivers with him to Burma. Moaned he: "Half the boys wanted to quit and go with me; the boys don't want to get paid for it--all they want is excitement."

Fliers. For weeks a U.S. Army air mission inspecting China's air bases (the mission had reportedly been within 40 miles of Shanghai) had played hide-&-seek with the Japanese Air Force. Now the mission was returning, bearing reports and plans.

Curtiss P-40s were already winging their way over the mountains of southwest China; in Washington it was said that more hundreds of fighter planes were promised. Oil was at last available--all the oil and gasoline that the thirsty cylinders of Chiang Kai-shek's war machine wanted.

Off the production lines of General Motors heavy-duty, shockproof army trucks were rolling: 2,000 had been allocated to China for service on the far-famed Burma Road; more were coming. Three complete repair and maintenance shops were being assembled for the rusty, work-worn trucks of China's highway system. Road-building equipment was en route. So were medical supplies. Steel for the construction of a new Yunnan-Burma railway was promised. Most important news of all to China's powder-grimed riflemen: ordnance and arsenal equipment was being given them.

Chinese reaction to all this was mixed. In Chungking, the people already had visions of hordes of American planes darkening the skies. The new airfields--cleared and rolled by the forced labor of thousands of peasants--were ready for U.S.-made bombers. Even Flying Fortresses were said, by Chungking gossip, to be en route. Teahouse strategists pundited: four of these "flying blockhouses" with great walls around them and high watch towers will be anchored in the air at four corners of the city to protect the capital.

In Washington, however, informed Chinese knew that no bombers had been promised China. Desperately the Chinese argued: for four years the Japanese had raked Chinese civilians with death and fire; industrial Japan is ripe for the killing; one bomber to China is the equal of ten to Britain and every bombing of Japan would make the backdoor of the British Empire that much more secure. Urgent too was the Chinese need for transport planes to haul quickly needed vital materials from an Indian railhead to interior points. But the British out-begged them.

Attack. The U.S. was on the move elsewhere in the Pacific. More contractors and new material were being rushed to Guam for construction of a base only 1,500 miles from Yokohama. At Wake, new runways began to ring the lagoon. On Midway Islands, one runway was complete and ready for planes, one enormous hangar sparkled new in the sun. Soon a great bomber runway would be casting up far-sweeping silver-winged planes that could reach the heart of Japan.

Over these island stepping-stones the U.S. was forging a chain about the Japanese Empire. One after another for months PBY flying boats have flown into the Orient. Hundreds of U.S.-made planes are poised on Dutch airfields in the Indies : Martin bombers, Curtiss pursuits. Singapore hangars are filling with Lockheed Hudsons and Brewster Buffalos.

Japanese generals and admirals knew what was happening. This was the kind of silent war Japan had practiced throughout her history. Only the people of the U.S. remained unaware of the battle of the Pacific already under way. Inch-long dispatches tucked away in the back pages of their newspapers arrested their attention for a minute; and they flicked the page.

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