"Admiration & Gratitude"
Sirs:
Through the three and a half years of misery, ghastliness and humiliation which is the lot of a prisoner of war in Japanese hands, I had clung to life with the hope of a return to a world I understood, but my imagination never rose to a conception of the heights of the reception which the American Army gave us.
It started on the 26th of August when our P.O.W. camp of 509 British, Dutch and a few Americans in the center of Japan's Northern Island was visited by four torpedo bombers from the U.S.S.Hancock. . . . They bombed us with food, tobacco, candy, TIME and LIFE, in sailor's kitbags addressed "To the men we have not forgotten." . . . The amazing cordiality, informality and fantastic speed with which we were clothed, fed, deloused, bathed, injected, inoculated and whizzed down here by Liberators and air transports, on occasion with nurses, was an epic of dynamic friendliness finding a way through.
May I express my admiration and gratitude to a country which produces in its rank & file such an innate sense of human decency that it can handle military formality and extend a generous friendliness even to strangers. . . .
(PvT.) DAVID MARSHALL Straits Settlements Volunteer Force Perth, Australia
Monstrous Crime
Sirs:
I have just seen the statement in your Oct. 15 issue, referring to the 34 U.S. clergymen who sent a protest to President Truman against the horror of the atomic bomb. You say this statement "seemed to imply that its use might have been excusable to 'save ourselves in an extremity of desperation.' "
No such implication was intended or contained in the protest issued by myself and my colleagues. We denounced the use of the bomb under whatsoever circumstances as a hideous atrocity and an outrage upon every principle of ethics and religion. Our nation stands disgraced before the world as the perpetrator of this monstrous crime.
JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
Minister
The Community Church of New York New York City
"Secret"
Sirs:
We can't hold our tongues any longer. . . . If we intend to keep the "secret" of the bomb, in the face of almost universal opposition from scientists, then we must expect distrust and eventual aggression from nations claiming to be fearful for their own safety. . . . If, however, we give the "secret" to an international control commission, we i) show the Russians (against whom, after all, this secrecy is being directed) that we are ready to trust them, i) give a strong impetus for success of the United Nations Organization, 3) furnish a strong moral persuader to other nations to follow our example in cosmopolitan behavior, and 4) lose nothing which we won't lose shortly in any event, if we haven't already done so. . . .
This all seems so clear and logical to us. Does it sound "idealistic" to you?
R. C. COGSWELL
Captain, A.U.S. C. R. HENDERSON
Captain, A.U.S.
C. W. DENKO ist Lieutenant, A.U.S. (S/SGT.) W. E. GRUNDY Chicago
Swivel-Soldiers
Sirs:
.. . The originator and designer of this unique and strictly unofficial emblem, Lieutenant Ray H. Northcutt, SG (s), U.S.N.R., fortyish and vice president of a prominent West Coast construction firm, "got religion and joined up," expecting assignment to Seabee construction overseas.
Relegated (and reconciled, perforce) to a desk job in Washington, B.C., because of substandard eyesight, he found expression in this brainchild which he designed on V-J day holiday morning as a shoulder patch for himself and fellow officers to wear, he says, in American Legion parades.
He persuaded a military emblem manu facturer to make a minimum order for a reasonable figure and now is being besieged by Naval personnel and others to have more made of this insignia, so appropriate for the many desk-bound fighters of this war.
DOROTHY F. COLQUITT Washington
Wrong Ericlcson
Sirs:
TIME ERRS IN STORY ON UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA [OCT. 22]. FRANKLIN C. ERICKSON, EMINENT GEOGRAPHER BUT NO KIN TO THE UNDERSIGNED, WAS NOT INVOLVED IN THE DURHAM INTER-RACIAL DINNER NOR WAS IT A TWOSOME AFFAIR BUT RATHER AN HONORARY DINNER GIVEN BY NEGRO CITIZENS OF DURHAM, MOSTLY DEMOCRATS, IN RECOGNITION OF A MEMBER OF THEIR RACE WHO HAD ACHIEVED NATIONAL PROMINENCE. THE UNDERSIGNED WAS ONE OF SOME 20 WHITE PEOPLE WHO WERE INVITED AND ATTENDED. E. C. DANIEL, THEN A CUB REPORTER FOR RALEIGH NEWS AND OBSERVER, AND NOW WITH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, PLAYED UP THE STORY IN A SENSATIONAL MANNER, FEATURING UNDERSIGNED'S NAME PROBABLY BECAUSE OF UNDERSIGNED'S BEING AT THAT TIME CHAIRMAN OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF NORTH CAROLINA. . . . REQUEST YOU MAKE THIS CORRECTION IN FAIRNESS TO MY COLLEAGUE FRANKLIN C. ERICKSON.
E. E. ERICKSON Chapel Hill, N.C. Professor of English
Sirs:
... I was in no way connected with this incident. This event involved another person on the University faculty and a confusion in names on your part has caused this serious error. . . .
FRANKLIN C. ERICKSON rM, i mi XT/^ Professor of Geography Chapel Hill, N.C.
New Deal? Old Deal?
Sirs:
At this writing I am stationed on an island in the Philippine group preparatory to leaving for the States. ... On what basis can anyone condone the act of the British and Dutch in the recent killing of natives, who revolted against the Imperial troops in Java ? . . .
Evidently old and tried British and Dutch despotic treatment of their Colonial Empires is something else, not in the least similar to the Japanese taking over the Philippines and setting up governments headed by traitors.
The word must have been passed even in the deepest and blackest holes of these poverty-stricken countries that there was a new deal on, forceful rule was out, and equality because you're a HUMAN BEING in 11 The Indonesians try to rule their own country, the Annamese revolt against the return of French rule, and they're cut down by machine-gun fire like animals. I can't understand the mental make-up of people who were themselves just released from the yoke of the vanquished and now take up the mantle of Conqueror again.
These small countries have a right to revolt against the rule of a foreign power, and be allowed to give the terms to permit the foreign country to remain in their country. It's up to the U.S., who stands the shining model of what these little countries want, to come to their assistance, and tell the imperialistic countries that the free & easy pickings are over, the Indonesian and the Annamese are right, no one can deny them.
[AiR CORPS LIEUTENANT'S % Postmaster NAME WITHHELD] San Francisco
Homing Pigeon Sirs: Contrary to Ray Bethers [TIME LETTERS, Oct. 29], who says the "present discharge button is not popular," I maintain that it is the best liked, most coveted emblem designed since 1918.
The Navy, as usual, has a much more picturesque word for it than the Army's "ruptured duck." To us, it is the "homing pigeon."
(AMM 2/c) JOHN R. SUYDAM Pensacola, Fla.
Sirs:
I sincerely sympathize with the veterans who have to wear the "ruptured duck" discharge button. However, if the War Department will accept my humble suggestion, this situation can be remedied.
I have designed a three-inch emblem that can be pinned to the top of your eyeglasses where it can't be missed. In case you don't wear eyeglasses, I have an unbreakable neon sign for the lapel. At night it lights up and reads "I'm a veteran."
An ex-G.I. and Happy Button Wearer
M. LIPINSKI Jersey City
That's Why Darkies Were Born
Sirs: IN THIS WEEK'S [OCT. i] ISSUE OF TIME,
YOU CREDIT JACK LAWRENCE WITH THE AUTHORSHIP OF THAT'S WHY DARKIES WERE BORN. IF PHIL BAKER, ON HIS TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT BROADCAST WERE TO SERVE UP A $64 QUERY ON THIS SONG, I WOULD TESTIFY, IN ORDER TO CLARIFY TIME'S RECORDS, THAT THE NUMBER CAME FROM THE PENS OF RAY HENDERSON, TUNESMITH, AND LEW BROWN, LYRICIST, AND THAT IT WAS INTRODUCED BY EVERETT MARSHALL IN THE 1931 EDITION OF GEORGE WHITE'S SCANDALS, FOR WHICH BOTH HENDERSON AND BROWN WROTE THE ENTIRE SCORE.
BEN F. HOLZMAN
William Morris Agency Beverly Hills, Calif.
To Reader Holzman, his hypothetical $64; to Hit-Songsmiths Brown & Henderson, TIME'S apologies.--ED.
Man of the Year
Sirs:
. . . The man who saved the lives of the countless thousands who would certainly have otherwise died on the beaches of Japan and on the typhoon and kamikaze-swept waters of the Western Pacific.
Gratefully I give you my choice for Man of the Year, Dr. Vannevar Bush!
EDGAR D. SMITH Ensing, U.S.N.R.
% Fleet Post Office
San Francisco
Sirs:
The man of 1945 is a composite picture --the American G.I. He has fought around the earth on a scale hitherto unimaginable, has suffered, bled, and died for a cause he deeply felt but was never able to put into words. To all the peoples of the earth who know him, he is a symbol of deliverance.
HARRY NOLDER JR. Washington
Sirs:
Permit me to second the nomination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as Man of the Year. . . .
His life will be regarded as the symbol of the fight of peoples of the world against Fascism wherever it occurred during this past ten years. . . .
ROSANNA SHANNON
Los Angeles
Sirs:
... In my opinion Hank Greenberg is your Man of the Year. His courageous spirit shines above all others.
ROGER S. GREENBERG Detroit
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