Roughneck Journalism
Sirs:
Having often expressed my appreciation of TIME as an achievement in reporting, may I demur to the increasing use of your news columns as a vehicle of editorial opinion? Your lines on Vice President Wallace in the issue of Nov. 30 were roughneck journalism, unworthy of your virtues. I believe in criticism, but I also believe in courtesy. Words should be used to heal wounds, not to make them. Give us the facts, and let us draw our own conclusions.
WILL DURANT
Great Neck, NY.
P: TIME said of Vice President Wallace that he had failed to grow up as a politico, that in consequence, to professional politicians, "he would always have a kick-me note attached to his coat-tails." (TIME also took note of his qualities of thoughtfulness and idealism.) If Philosopher Durant regards this as roughneck editorial opinion, TIME is sorry but unconvinced.--ED.
Lively Black Dragon
Sirs:
The excellent book review of Government by Assassination [TIME, Nov. 23], authored by the veteran Tokyo correspondent, Hugh Byas, compels me to take issue, for the first time in the 15 years I have known him, on his chapter dealing with the Black Dragon Society.
The Black Dragon organization flourishes. It is not defunct. It is no myth. The 87-year-old founder, Mitsuru Toyama, is not doddering.
A current newsreel, The Mask of Japan, reveals for the first time, to my visual knowledge, Toyama in person, leading thousands of Japs, and a score of Nazis, in cheering for the Emperor. It is perhaps the only sound track of Toyama's voice.
The Black Dragon Society has as its most active members today the chief of the army air force, General Kenji Doihara, who participated in the underground operations which started the Manchurian campaign in 1931. A former prime minister, Koki Hirota, who worked for Captain John J. Pershing years ago as an office boy in the American Embassy in Tokyo, is the general manager and monitor at Black Dragon meetings.
The Shanghai branch includes Messrs. Sasaki, Kanaya and similar personalities known to every foreign correspondent. Jap navy members include such prominent figures as Admirals Takahashi, Suetsugu, Hasegawa, Yamamoto and Sekine. The head of the Aikoku Meirinkai, a powerful five-million-man military reserve organization, and the element which will form the home front army which we must fight when we invade Japan, is the notorious Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto. Seigo Nakano, who was a next-door neighbor of mine, is a director of the organization. From the second floor of our house, we could see over the high bamboo fence into his garden where often the Black Dragon functionaries would gather. The police who "protected" his place often came to eat in our kitchen when they wanted foreign-style cookies or rare coffee.
The newspapers slanting their editorial policy for the gang are the Nichi Nichi and the Kokumin, the latter edited by a Johns Hopkins University graduate, Hitoshi Tanaka. I've known him a decade. The entire crowd started early in the formation of a now famous Tanaka memorial which proclaimed Japan's destiny in Asia; a total political, economic and military hegemony of the Far East.
Bearded Toyama's Black Dragon headquarters for years sheltered revolutionaries and murderers from other lands. Mr. Byas should recall instantly the haven given to Ricarte of the Philippines, the man who returned to Manila early this year to follow up Japanese occupation of the islands. Not to be overlooked are two Hindus, both married to Japanese, and their maintenance underwritten by Toyama and his followers. They are Rash Behari Bose, and K. Sabarwal, leaders of many mass meetings where Japanese-inspired anti-England haranging was engineered.
One branch in Tokyo is to be found at 79 Onden 3-chome, Shibuyaku. The telephone number is Aoyama 36-0404. The figure four is significant since it translates two ways--"shi" or "yon." The former can also translate death.
Along the Sumida river, in the Yanagibashi district are the houses where subsidiary elements of the Black Dragon Society meet, particularly the army men.
One did not find the Black Dragon boys in the dull, stuffy, British-style Tokyo Club, drinking gin & bitters. Toyama's men were eating raw fish and seaweed in their gathering places in Shinjuku and Mukojima, where, I am certain, Mr. Byas did not have the interesting fortune to enter upon the conclaves and hear the plots. The locale and character are as different as Sherman Billingsley's Stork Club and a Harlem honky-tonk marijuana parlor.
I must not absorb your space to handle the interpretation that "the Emperor might well emerge himself as a wise and statesman-like ruler," other than to express regret that a man whom I admire for years of factual reporting has joined the ranks of others who feel we could use the Emperor as a guidepost, that we must not broadcast anything overseas which would offend the son of heaven, and that we must renounce a military governorship or invasion of Japan. This unfortunate position ranks with the belief that Korea should be left to Japan as a mandate! This reflects British Imperial policy, of the days of Chamberlain, and his patented folding umbrella.
On the day a four-engine bomber drops a ten-ton blockbuster on the Tokyo palace, I will consider then that we have reached the beginning of the end of Japan.
JAMES R. YOUNG*
New York City
Sparks from Flint
Sirs:
SLIGHT TIME OVERSIGHT IDENTIFIED HOME OF EVERY CREWMAN IN "CHENNAULT'S PAPPY" [TIME, NOV. 30] EXCEPT CAPTAIN ROBERT C. WILLIAMS, PILOT FROM FLINT. WE ARE AS PROUD OF BOB AS WE ARE OF OUR EXCELLENT WAR GOODS. HOWEVER, IF CHOICE MUST BE MADE, WE WOULD PREFER OUR FIGHTERS AND OUR ENEMIES, RATHER THAN TIME, TO HAVE REASON TO REMEMBER FLINT.
MAURIE COSSMAN
The Flint Journal
Flint, Mich.
Nurse's Aides v. nurses' aides
Sirs:
In the Nov. 30 issue I read, incredulously, the following paragraph under Education: "But the future of the moron is not completely dark. The war has temporarily created jobs for morons: they are filling in as errand boys and girls, waiters, elevator operators, nurses' aides."
For your information, the women on duty with the Red Cross Nurse's Aide Corps are well educated persons. All have exhibited efficiency, initiative, and good cheer to the best of their ability....
FLORENCE KUNDRATH Tampa
Sirs:
Whether the unfortunate use of the term "nurses' aides" is to be chalked up against Dr. Emily T. Burr as well as TIME'S editor ... I feel that it is an insult to the many women who have become Red Cross Nurse's Aides.
The Grand Rapids Chapter--started the day after Pearl Harbor--now numbers some 200 women from 18 to 50 years of age. After a stiff course of instruction the speakers at the graduation exercises have led us to believe that if we are not so valuable as the registered nurse, we DO rate some credit for mentality beyond the maximum of even the "welladjusted moron" which you say is between eight and twelve years of age. . .
GERTRUDE TORREY LANKESTER
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Sirs:
When the Office of Civilian Defense asked the American Red Cross to train Nurse's Aides to care for the sick in hospitals throughout the country, they had no idea that they were appealing to the morons of the country for this help.
Our requirements are that every Nurse's Aide have a high-school education, or its equivalent, before she enters training. Many of them have college degrees; several have master's degrees. They work in the hospitals to take the place of the trained nurses who have gone into military service. . . .
GERTRUDE GRAWN
The American Red Cross ]
Detroit
Sirs:
And us with our pictures on the front of The Ladies' Home Journal, and articles in Reader's Digest, and our pictures in the local papers--and Mrs. Harry Hopkins doing it--my, my, us poor sore-footed Nurse's Aides find we are morons. . . .
ANTOINETTE HOLLINGSWORTH
Ardmore, Okla.
P: Dr. Burr and TIME should have been more careful to draw the distinction between Nurse's Aides and nurses' aides. The latter, called "ward maids" by some hospitals, are paid helpers who clean up the wards, set up trays, fill water flagons, and do other simple jobs which bring them in relatively little direct contact with the patients. Not all of them, by any means, are morons, but some morons can manage the work, as Dr. Burr pointed out. As for volunteer Red Cross Nurse's Aides, TIME is on the record (TIME, Oct. 13, 1941, Jan. 26, 1942): they are not morons.--ED.
Who Didn't Give Up the Ship?
Sirs:
TIME, Nov. 30, in reviewing Decisive Battles of the U.S.A., says: "Hoisting his large blue battle flag with the white letters DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry outsailed and outgunned the British on Lake Erie."
I had always supposed that this motto was always credited to James Lawrence and that he was supposed to have said it during the War of 1812 and the battle between the Chesapeake, which he commanded, and the British ship Shannon, in which his ship was taken and he lost his life. Did Perry then have flags made, bearing this motto, for his own use ? It seems to me that the words ascribed to Perry ran: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."
If there is an error here I wonder if it is Author Fuller's or if TIME'S book-reviewer is entirely to blame? or simply failed to catch it?
HENRY S. JOHNSON
New Haven, Conn.
P: Reader Johnson, Author Fuller and TIME'S reviewer are all on the beam. James Lawrence said the words. Captain Perry's flagship at Erie was named the Lawrence, and so it was fitting that he should have a battle flag with the motto on it.
TIME Air Express, Special
Sirs:
In cable 4338 we asked New York for permission for the Free French to reproduce De Gaulle's portrait on TIME'S Aug. 4, 1941 cover, and in cable 1166 you gave your okay At the time censorship regulations prevented me from saying why, but now here's the story: the picture was wanted for a leaflet for distribution in France, both occupied and unoccupied. Tens of thousands have been distributed, and I've asked General de Gaulle to sign a sample for you.
DENNIS SCANLAN
TIME Inc.
London
P: The copy of the reproduction signed by General de Gaulle and of the proclamation on its reverse appear above. --ED.
* A 13-year resident of Japan, James Young was for a time INS Correspondent in Tokyo, is author of Behind the Rising Sun.
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