"Just as Bloody"

The first complete U.S. casualty list of the war was at last pried loose from the Army & Navy last week by Elmer Davis' new Office of War Information. The casualties, except for the Philippine Commonwealth Army (whose losses are not accurately known):

Killed Wounded Missing Prisoners

Army 902 1,413 17,452 ?

Philippine Scouts 479 754 11,000 ?

Navy & Marines & Coast Guard. 3,420 1.051 7,672 1,022

Total 4,801 3,218 36,124 1,022 +

> Most Army losses were at Bataan, Corregidor and Java, and most of the men listed as missing are probably prisoners. Of the Army's wounded, at least 475 are patched up, back on duty. (In all World War I only 4,526 U.S. men were taken prisoner.)

> Many of the missing Philippine Scouts are also probably prisoners of the Japanese.

> Most of the Navy's prisoners are Marines taken at Wake Island.

Total U.S. losses for the first seven months of the war --44,143--were high compared with the first seven months of World War I--when the U.S. lost 139 dead, wounded and missing.

The Navy has already lost more men in seven months than in its whole 167-year history. At Pearl Harbor alone, more U.S. sailors were killed (2,144) than in all World War I (1,233). Total U.S. losses (2,370 dead) in 80 minutes that day exceeded any of the twelve big Civil War battles except the three-day battle of Gettysburg. Said the Army and Navy Register last week: "At Antietam, called the most dreadful day in American history, the total Union loss in soldiers killed was 2,108--considerably less than the casualties at Pearl Harbor."

Said the Register: "War is just as bloody now--in spite of wishful thinking to the contrary--as it was in the First World War when men by the millions were mowed down by machine-gun fire as they went over the top." And the reason U.S. losses are still so low is that the body of the Army has not yet engaged the enemy.

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