Recent Articles – Page 9 – Old Magazine Articles

The Resistance of the Norwegian Church
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

The attached article is the PM review of The Fight of the Norwegian Church Against Nazism (1943). It was written by Bjarne Hoye and Trygve M. Ager during the midst of the German occupation. Their subject was the leading roll played by the Norwegian church the widespread anti-Nazi resistance.

“The book reveals that the earliest attempts at Nazification of Norway were met by a ‘general mobilization’ of the people under the leadership of the church. The Christian Council for Joint Deliberation was formed and ‘welded Norwegian Christians together in a single firm block of resistance.'”

The Japanese Run Out of Ships
(PM Tabloid, 1944)

After the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the U.S. Navy believed that the Japanese had lost over half their original strength:

“Naval observers in Washington are exhilarated by the evident extent of the Japanese defeat but, in true Navy tradition, they are being canny about it. It isn’t what we have sunk or disabled [that matters], it’s what is left that can still fight.”

The Crisis Calendar Leading Up to the Attack
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

Listed herein are 17 events that transpired between the U.S. diplomatic corps and their opposite numbers representing the Empire of Japan.

Pearl Harbor and the Significance of Radio
(PM Tabloid, 1941

“The news of [the Pearl Harbor] attack broke out at a time on Sunday afternoon when a comparatively few newspapers in the U.S.A. were being published (there were no evening papers on sunday). The result was that the nation learned of the war and its immediate developments almost entirely by radio. The National Broadcasting system held the bulletin for a few minutes, and at 2:30 gave the news simultaneously to its Red and Blue networks, and subsequently to the whole world over its international short-wave system.”

Japanese Fleet Crossed the Sea While Kurusu Talked
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

“Don’t believe that the Japanese ordered their dawn assault only yesterday. The fact is that they ordered it not days ago but weeks ago. While Japan’s special envoy, Saburo Kurusu, was busy talking in Washington, the ships that were to attack us were already on their way. While he was staling and waiting ‘for instructions’, they were getting into position. More than that: they had their orders before Kurusu even started talking.”

Arrests
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

The mass arrests of Japanese Americans began the evening of the Pearl Harbor attack:

“As the arrests began last night, Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that FDR had authorized him to apprehend as ‘alien enemies’, Japanese aliens considered dangerous ‘to the peace and security of the U.S.A. He said that at least 1,000 Japanese nationals would be affected, but there would be ‘a fair hearing for all persons apprehended.’ “

Looking for Spies on the Japanese Home Front
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

“The spy phobia possesses all inhabitants of Nippon. No one believes a foreigner can possibly be living in or visiting Japan for any simple reason such as business or pleasure. He must be in the pay of a foreign government. This entails a counterespionage system in which every Japanese joins with enthusiasm.”

Impressions of Tokyo
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

During the August of 1945, C.C. Beall (1892 – 1970), popular commercial illustrator of the Forties, was dispatched by Collier’s to illustrate the surrender of the Imperial Japanese Empire on the decks of the battleship Missouri – and to draw-up whatever else caught his fancy on mainland Japan. Much of his account concerns his search for food and suitable lodgings.

T.E. Lawrence: On Allenby’s Right
(Liberty Magazine, 1936)

“General Storrs said, ‘I want you to meet Colonel Lawrence, the uncrowned king of Arabia.'”

“Now it all came back to me!
This was the man Todd Gilney had spoken of – the man who had fostered the Arab revolt against Turkish rule. He was the leader who had singlehandedly welded a hundred warring desert tribes into a compact fighting force which now protected Allenby’s right wing.”

T.E. Lawrence: On Allenby’s Right
(Liberty Magazine, 1936)

Migrant Labor in Wisconsin
(Christian Herald, 1952)

The townsfolk of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, found the seasonal presence of the Spanish-speaking cherry pickers quite irksome until a sincere effort was made by local clergy to bring the two groups together.

Antisemitism Grows Globally
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

Although the title of this 1934 article pertains to “racial prejudice”, make no mistake: it actually addresses the growth of Jew hatred. Reporter Cedric Fowler examined numerous hate groups throughout the United States, such as the German-American Bund, the Silver Legion of America, the American Fascists, the White Shirts of California, the White People’s Club of West Virginia, and the Patriotic Speakers Bureau. Nasty groups all.

The Japanese Spy Problem
(American Legion Magazine, 1939)

“At the end of last year, our authorities discovered that there were nearly one hundred Japanese leg men in New England reporting to the Boston office. More than five hundred in Washington; something above two hundred in Chicago; twenty-five hundred were in the New York area; twenty-five in Cleveland; thirty-eight in Detroit; eighty-odd in Florida, and so on out to the West Coast where around three thousand Japanese are ‘on duty’ from San Diego to Port Washington.”

Amerikanskies
(American Legion Magazine, 1939)

This article is one that has reoccurred throughout the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-First. It recalls the good will that has existed between the American soldier and the children in the countries that hosted them or the lands they occupied. The American Doughboys in W.W I France were very sympathetic with the numerous orphans that were created in that war and contributed heavily to their charities. Their comrades serving in Siberia were charmed by the boys and girls of that land and quickly became fast friends. The attached article was written by a former officer posted to the Siberian Expedition, and in this column, he put pen to paper and recounted the happy friendships he witnessed between the Amerikanskies and the children of Siberia.

Observations Concerning Comic Strips
(Vanity Fair, 1923)

“From a study that covers practically all the comic sequences, I have roughly estimated that sixty percent deal with the unhappiness of married life, fifteen percent with other problems of the home, such as disagreeable children, and in the other fifteen is grouped a miscellany of tragic subjects – mental or social inferiority, misfortune and poverty. This last group contains a few subjects that carry no definite plan from day-to-day but are based on transient jokes such a Prohibition and the income tax.”

W.W. II and the Absent Poets
(Pageant Magazine, 1944)

Attached is an interesting article by the noted poet and poetry anthologist, Louis Untermeyer (1885 – 1977). He praised the soldier poets of the First World War and expressed his bafflement concerning the absolute dirth of competent rhyme-slingers in the Second World War:

“Why then, it has been asked again and again, is the poetry of this war so thin, so emotionally anemic, so unrepresentative of the fierce struggle in which the world is engaged? Why has no poet, not even a single poem, emerged to stir the heart and burn into the mind?”

The Truman Doctrine
(See Magazine, 1947)

“The Truman Doctrine is the only road to lasting peace. Twice within 30 years the stubbornly-observed practice of ‘minding our business’ has brought war.”