L L^T,. - SUNOCO. MONDAY. JANUARY 5. 19;11. GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: ■Hwru Gi battle between American bombers and Japanese warships. They were army bombersf but^the War Department doesn’t say from what base they were operating. Wherever they were, they caught a squadron, apparently quite a sizeable squadron. of Jap ?/arships off the coast of Mindanao, the most southerly of the Philippine islands. In the engagement that followed. Uncle Sam’s men landed three direct bomb hits on a battleship and sank a Japanese destroyer. That’s the highnote of tonight’s army communique Number Twenty-Six. The American planes A were four-engined bombers, and they pounced on the Jananese off Davao I on the east coast of Mindanao. The Communique adds that other hits were 1 / LEAD - 2 made on other enemy vessels with undertermined damage. Best of all, our planes, everyone of them, returned to their base uninjured. There’s nothin^ to report from other areas, adds the Communique. But ka this morning’s War Department report tells of a engagement in Luzon. The Japanese delivered an attack in forc6 on General MacArthur’s American and Philippine troops concentrated northwest of Manila. The enemy were repulsed and, sWar A Department, "this was one of the most serious reverses suffered by the Japanese invaders since the war began. The Army tells us that at least seven hundred Japanese were killed in this action. The Communique went on to explain: "The tactics pursued by the Japanese in the invasion of Luzon, were to crush the greatly outnumbered defenders between two invading forces operating as pinceV.q north and south LEAD - 3 I? The Japanese trap was closed," says the War Departmert, i "but American and Philippine troops were not in the % draws. To this extent the strategy of the Japanese failed, necessitating yesterday’s frontal attack which ^ likewise failed." !■ I And now for the Navy Communique, Number Twenty-Four. In the Far East, the United States warship! HERON, a small seaplane tender, was engaged in a fight ^ with Japanese planes for upwards of seven hours. Ten ^ four-engined enemy flying boats and five twin-engined land plane bombers tri^d to down that little seaplane E tender. The enemy dropped forty-six^ hundred—pound bombs and three torpedoes. But, adds the Navy Department, only one bomb landed n--t^-on the HEBON, though three tfeear missed her The Communique adds that "due to ikK skillful handling, the ship most courageously fought against LEAD - 4 over-whelming odds and destroyed one four-engined flying boat, badly damaged at least one other, and probably more. Though that one direct hit, the HERON managed to reach port safely. <2. 04^. In accordance with an order of the Secretary of the Navy, the Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic fleet, Thomas A. Hart, has awarded the Navy Cross to Lieutenant ^.Yilliam ^everette Cabler, Commancfwing officer of the HERON, and recommended that he be advanced immediately to the rank of Lieutenant- Commander. nurses and doctors of the Naval Hospital at Canacao, Cavite, were evacuated to Manila before the enemy occuoied the city. arjsue-a M M I tii i i The Navy also tells us that the patients, | } N»¥y—Gximmun-^”the submarine i situation in the Atlantic area and off the west coast of the United States wx remains unchanged." s MALAYA About the battle forSingapore, we haven’t much detailed information tonight. The British are saying very 1 ittle, t hough they admit they have withdrawn their force^""^y®«^further under enemy A pressure on the west coast, that is, on the Straits of Malacca./ The Japanese claim to have landed further south in that area and ^ have tk* taken a . Buthere -noth ing place called Kuala Selanger The principal dispatch out of the fortress itself tonight concerns a new tactic employed by the 2 A I I I British. Theyus ing againsuthe Japanese an | A I i attack similar to the one they delivered on the Nazis in Norway. British Empire commandos penetrat^^ far ♦*1 \ behind the enemy lines, and gatherii^ at a rendezvous near the chief supply line of the Japanese. There they bushwhacked a Japanese convoy with hand grenades, and wiped- it out. The report adds thrt. "only one 1 y MALAYA - 2 Japanese left the first truckload of troops thus attacked and he was blown out -- very dead,** says the story. The most reassuring news about Malaya comes from Australia. Radio Melbourne prophesies that Allied naval reinforcements are on their way to the Malayan theatre of war, and that they will threaten the sea-going tonnage of Japan. m til -0 RUSSIA In Russia, the Red armies today were pushing ahead | in a new direction. With the important city of Borovsk once more in their hands, they are battling ahead to Mojaisk dn the central front. In the communiques from KuibysheV, thejsoviet spokesmen announce candidly that the advance ofi Mojaisk is part of a pincers movement aimed at the important rail center of Smolensk. Borovsk,; which they took after the fiercest kind of house-toiiouse fighting, is southwest of Moscow but southeast of Mojaisk. If they get Mojaisl;, they’ll be on the direct rail line to Vyasma and Smolensk. A later broadcast this evening from Radio Moscow claimed thkt they had recaptured several more towns on the road to Mojaisk, ^nu -trh killTO thousands of German soldiers and capturw^ furthe large quantities of booty. A.n optimistic dispatch from London te^lS us that RUSSIA - 2 the pincers movement beinp operated by the Red army, threatens to encircle the German spearhead which last November presented such a great threat to 'ioscow. The newspaper PRAVDA had a story that the Soviet troops were chasing the German, Rumanian and Italian ariiii6S in ihe Criiii6n» The experts are pointing out that since | Hitler £i,^^^o.«tiider-in-Chief^von Br.uchit.ch, he has been losing .ore and .ore .en, and his ar.les are being forced back fro. the positions .hich he had intended the. • lino A+ the same time we to hold as a winter line, at , me re.e.ber .hat British Prl.e Uinister Win.ton Churchill said to correspondents in .ashinpton^ «hen they asked hi. about the aasi rout in Bussia./V<3r.'Mj<^tJtaW<-^^ the contrary, the Ger.ans were .Ithdra.ing In good order. 1 _j ADD RUSSIA And here*s the latest from the Soviet center. The Red armies have retaken a place called Kozelsk, a hundred and thirty miles west and south of Moscow. The most important thing about this is that it *s the first big town they have taken back from the Nazis in the province of which Smolensk is the principal city. So they are well on their way toward Smolensk. I ill I FRANCE Another assassination in France; and the victim is -- or was -- a man of prominence; in the eyes of the Nazis, for he had been a Nazi Frenchman all along. In a railway carriage on the road to 'J, Paris, police found the dead body of Yves Paringaux. ^ That*s a name new to most of us,,but important in the New France, for Paringaux was chief of staff of ? the Ministry of the Interior of the Petain Cabinet. A six-footer and we are told, a politican of the violent storm trooper type. In a recent interview he boasted that he owed his political advance mostly to plenty of fist work. He was an avowed Fascist, onece a member of the turbulent Croix de Feu that raised so much hubbub in French politics six years ago The first report of his assassination. which came from the German official agency, had it that not only Paringaux had been killedbut also his chief, Pierre Pucheu, the pro-Nazi Minister of the / FRANCE - r ^ ^ht Interior. But that was found to be untrue, probably the result of v/ishful thinking. ^e^ckX Pucheu is one of the loudest advocates of full collaboration with Hitler. i y^France tonight is distraught with consternation and dismay. Correspondents in Vichy describe it as a major crisis. Naturally, the Nazi partisans jumped at the opportunity of Kxxxk cashing in on the assassination. Ex-Premier Pierre Laval left the bed where he had been convalescing from his own wounds and rushed to Paris. There was a fiery broadcast from Paris this evening by Parcel Beat, the man who was wounded last year at the =!i •♦1 same time as Laval. Since the Paris radio is rigidly controlled by the Nazis, it was obviously with their full approval that Peat made his inflamatory broadcast. In his | I Paris newspaper he had already pronounced the arrival of — I a crisis, blamed it on our Ambassador, Admiral Leahv In his broadcast hm declared that France was threatened | A. ■ FRANCE - 3 Tith the loss of North Africa and all the rest of her empire if she did not immediately plunge into full EBBHz coooeration with the Nazis. A colleague of Marcel Deat declared in his newspaper that the Anglo-Saxons want to induce France to commit suicide. Ambassador Leahy» he added, wants to make France into another Jugoslavi§i, to play a suicide role for the benefit of Britain. Sf: Beat's broadcast was the first time the collaboration party in France had been permitted to use m: the radio for violent harangue#. And tonight S xk there is | A i plenty of room for wonder what repercussions are going to V follow from the assassination of" tte^government offic fl r CONGRESS The curtain rises on another act of a drama, m a sometimes unfairly criticized drama -- on Capitol Hill, in Washington. The second session of the Seventy-Seventh Congress of the United States convened i| today. Nothing much done, just the opening prayers m and the formal ceremonies, the introduction of new I members including a Republican Senator, Eugene Millikin | from Colorado to fill in the rest of the term of Senator Alva Adams who died. The Democratic and Republican leaders than went to the White House to wait upon the President and inform him that the Seventy-Seventh Congress was once more in session. The first big scene of this drama will be enacted tomorrow; with all of us permitted to take a silent part. For at twelve-thirty Eastern Standard Time, President Roosevelt will appear before the lawmakers and read to them a special message that he has been preparing, a report on his latest colossal plans for pushing the war, and CONGRESS - 2 1 on his conferences with British Prime Minister Churchill. | I' i i The proceedings will be broadcast all over the world, so then we’ll learn what we are all so anxious to know, particularly what additional news he has to reveal. TT. So many spectacular things were made public last week. culminating with the appointment of Sir Archibald Wavell as Generilissimo, that it will be particularly exciting to hear what the President has t• fi] REGISTRATION Re£^ is trat ion day will be an February Sixteenth* refistretion for military servic^. That’s the date set aside by the President in his proclamation today. \But he has not taken advantage of the full powers given him in the act passed by Congress a couple of weeks proclamation applies only to men between the ages of twenty and forty-four. i 4: And of course those between twenty-one and thirty-five who are already registered, need to do it again. In other words, the men who will have to remember JAk, February Sixteenth .are those between the ages of twenty is- iifJ and twenty-one .and thirty-five and forty-four. --- ^ ill The last draft netted seventeen and a half m 1illion men. The next one will bring in some ten million more ^ trv/V-iSL i/y75>uto * And here’s a^rm|Bkmj|r particularly interesting to young men and their parents. Lads who have their REGISTRATION - 2 twentieth birthday after December Thirty-First, NineteenForty-One, do not register, only those who have become twenty this year. The law applies to every male citizen resident aliens of friendly nations in the United States, A Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. \ I I BPIDGFS West coast Labor Leader Harry Bridges is not to be deported, does not have to go back to Australia. That is, unless Attorney General Biddle ov^jMC^'^es the decision of the Immigration Appeal^'^ard, which was / published today. The Appeals Board has completely reversed the order of the official examiner who found that Bridges! had had unholy commerce with Communist organizations, 'Arlii»k wui'cr-- I. fjyyiH ]i i in nP lilii TTlfii hii1 II h I ih Qtivyrmuciilj b/ frrrrg—rrr.-.-^ioximes^ It took the Appeals Board ninety pages to say 0 pinirgg. the K ^ ^ H Australian had jfLevev been mixed up with the Communist | Party after he had entered the United States, A for his ha V ing. belonged to the I.W.W. the Appeals Board that the Wobblies t^ve not an illegal outfit in favor of violence. I n I AUTOMOBILES Makers of motor cars have been asked to t over tho»~Bnirinp ng^^more than five j billion dollars worth of war weapons. Between five V 1 T • I Dilj-ions and six billion dollars^'announcai Director 0 P M , /«=*A I JFat*s more than double the / ? figure originally planned / i Knudsen and Hillman admitted would mean- the building of new plants as well as the conversion of i most of the existing factories. There was a big meeting j in Washington today with more than two hundred men present, union chiefs^ managers and government officials. over-all committee of industry and labor, a permanent committee plan A the work. As Knudsen acknowledged, it will^©^ the making of lot of new tools. / A The C.I.O. spent a -slice of its money in half-paje advertisements today, with an open letter to f 5 I AUTOUOBILFS - 2 the Office of Production ilanagenent, beginning with the address: "Mr. O.P.M." The Ad went on to say that we, the natior^ with the greatest mass production machinery, have been unable to match Japan in equipment. And it continues:- "Mr. O.P.M., why aren't we doing it?" Then it sets forth that half of the nation's auto plants are closed downJ^ By the end of January, virtually all of them will be blacked out, but not by Hitler and Japan. The C.I.O. continues that approximately a quarter of a million automobile workers, trained in methods \ precis ion, mass production also highly skilled I A A tool and die makers, ^ By the end of January there will be four hundred thousand of them. j/The nation has lost two million man-days every week iin war production, through failure to put the four hundred thousand automobile workers to work. The C.I.O. says AUTOMOBILES further that our own war production is poorly in allocated, on an insignificant scale, in adequate quantities,. With only a few plants turning out the vital materials of war. For instance, only one General Motors plant is being converted. And the C.I.O. backs up its statements by extracts from the report of the Tolan Committee of the House of Representatives. TIRES , ^ Some people in Norfolk, Virginia, parked their car last night, as most of us do when we have to go indoors. A Op the back seat they left a purse containing a valuable diamond ring. When they returned, the purse was there, with the diamond ring intact. But one of the wheels was jacked up and the tire gone. And inside the purse was a note which read: Roses are red. Violets are blue. W^e like your jewels. But your tires are new.” Hugh, have you anything new to offer?