The Muscatine Journal and News-Tribune from Muscatine, Iowa • Page 1

WSJ- BUY Your Journal Carrier Boys have'sold 18,317 Defense Stamps to Dale and Nfi SEWICE AND 1BTABLISHED 1.84JV N0. 40 MUSCATINE, Sub Attacks Press Offensive Against East Indies After SingaporeVictory Four Tankers Torpedoed Men of 20-45 County Total Expected To (teach 2,100 Registration of an estimat- 2100 Muscatuie county 5en between the ages of 20 and of them fathers and under way today, with regular election ces in the wards and pre- cts serving as registration centers. The registration places opened at 7 o'clock this orning and will' remain -until 9 p. m. All men who were 20 years of age on or before Dec.

31, 1941, and who will imt be 45 or ovei today, and who have ously registered, must sign up Alav for possible military serv- icV under the federal selective service registration. It is estimated that today registrants will amount to about 60 per cent of the number signed at tV.e first registration. This was approximately 3,500 in Muscatine county. Later Registration to Follow. The next registration, to be held in the late be U.S.

Answer To Hawaii Raids jjta 45 and 65, age brackets representing some in all-. These men will be classified for civilian protection and war production jobs and will bring to more than 42,000,000 the total yfljistered manpower for all pur- Approximately 9,000,000 men are expected to register in the nation today. Registrants were to be given cards to keep on their person at ail times. Local boards Inter shuffle these registrations and allot each one a serial number. When this has been done, a national lottery will be held at Washington probaby next assign the order ir.

1 regisU-atrants are to be cfilcd. Classification Follows. The new order numbers will be placed at the bottom of the list of order numbers of previous rjgistrants. Lewis rilrshey, national selective service director, said Saturday that time" would be required to classify the new men, but added. "I don't mean a year or six months." 1942 goal for the army is 3,600,000 men.

This may be doubled or more later. Nearly 1,000,000 men from the two previous registrations have been drafted to boost the existing army total to the neighborhood of 2,000,000. Comparative Figures. In the first registration on Oct. 15.

1940, a total of 16,886,591 men between 21 and 36 enrolled in the United States, and its possessions. Only July 1, 1941, another who had turned 21 meanwhile, were registered, making a of 17,639.118. The current registration is expected to increase the total liable to''military duty to over although an important per- cStage of these can expeci deferred status because of dependents, physical disabilities, or work in essential industry or agriculture. estimated by selective s'feicc officials that about in the 20 and '21 year old groups would register, along with 7.350,000 from 36 through 44.. IJeavy Shelling Marks Warfare in Philippines enemy artillery fire and intermittent infantry fighting was''reported in progress today on Bataan the Philippines.

war department communique said also that Japanese war planes were active On the fight front. Singapore gone; the wouldj-relentlessly. increase nswcr States Harbor attack is shown here in the 'first photos to. reach the on Japanese bases in Ihe Marshall and Gilbert islands Feb. photos).

36 Million Appropriation To Expand Civilian Flying Urged 'Washington The house appropriations committee approved today appropriation-bill for and justice departments and the judiciary which carried a 536,000.000 fund for expansion of civilian pilot training. The committee said in a report that the training program already had provided instruction for 70,000 pilots, more than 21,000 of whom had gone into the armed services, and advised the house: "If this war is to be won, obviously it will be won with planes and pilots. We are setting about on a huge expansion of our air power. Scores of thousands of pilots will be needed." The budget bureau had recommended only S20.069.919 for the training and the committee estimated its higher figure provide training for pilots compared with 31,900 pilots provided in the budget estimates. The measure showed an apparent decrease of $150,432,415 from the total carried for the departments last year, but that was more than offset by elimination of a $159.593,050 item of last year for development of landing, areas to be used for national defense under the direction of the civil aeronautics board.

Appropriations for the departments for the next fiscal year, compared with the last fiscal thst- pressure 'on "Bataan 'periin- suiir'to crush Gen: Douglass the Allied command- i has yet been able to fight li :1 Japanese, 'army -to a Pacific' war. New Cold Wave Due In State A cold by light snow today and early heading for the Muscatine area and all of Iowa, the weatherman warned. Temperatures were scheduled to dip about five degrees above zero here in the night while ihe northwest psrt of th-a state was warned the mercury may slip as low as 15 degrees zero. Moderately strong winds were in prospect for this part of Iowa early tonight, diminishing. Tuesday.

Mild w-aathcr which prevailed over th-a week-end, climaxing foggy conditions and a somewhat heavy spring-like shower late Sunday evening, succeeded in obliterating practically all last traces of the snow which has made driving conditions hazardous a', intervals through the past week. The mercury failed to dip to the freezing mark in the night but temperatures were slipping downward gradually today. Unofficial recordings were about 35 degrees at noon. The slate highway commission reported highways nearly normal in, the half of the J'tate today, -ice and Mediterranean AttacksRenewed By Axis Powers Dutch Apply Torch To Oil Refining City By CLYDE. A.

FAKNSWORTH (Associated Press War Editor) The Japanese, already victors at Singapore, gained an- other'' stepping stone today in their, southward offensive Palembang in southern Sumatra but Nations, were the United exacting a frightful price for on the approach to. Java, United States, Dutch and British planes, furrowing Bangka strait with their bombs, scored direct hits on two Japanese cruisers and five crowded- transports. One of the cruisers was set afire. The United Nations command' from its Java headquarters announced that fighters and bombers had caused "great devastation" among the Japanese moving into the Palembang region. The of the Dutch "scorched earth' 1 policy hung over the great oil refining center.

The damags, estimated at was said to be the greatest piece of deliberate destruction by man of his own property. The battle of Malaya has ended in a bloody but complete Japansse victory which planted ihe- Rising Sun, banner; qn battlements of The crucial battle of the Netherlands East Indies has with Japanese capture of the Pal- Churchill FacesTest; Asks Unity London Winston Churchill, standing before his people at one of the blackest hours of their'his- tory, has assured them that the United Nations "will be found fully capable of squaring all accounts" and the question before Britain today is how strong remains her faith in his leadership. Although he' bore a message of disaster, the prime minister declared that ultimately the overwhelming fact of the war would be that As Axis Strikes Blow At Dutch West Indies Island Willemstad, Curacao, Dutch' West Aneta news agency announced, that an enemy- submarine attacked Aruba, today, torpedoed three' tankers and shelled the refinery of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. (The disratch did not specifically say that, the thr (The dispatch did not specifically say three tankers were sunk in this first -Axis attack on. shore objectives in the western hemisphere, but the wording indicated that they were.) American troops recently arrived in Aruba which, is just off the shore of Venezuela, to protect the oil installa- the power of the United States and its vast resources are in it with us." Losses Admitted.

It fell to the Prime Minister Sunday to broadcast to the empire the most dismal news £01' its people since Dunkerque: "Singapore has fallen. Ali the Malay peninsula has been overrun." That bare statement was all that Britain was told ol the loss of great fortress and the fate tions there. The refinery was only slightly damaged in the attack, Ancta said, and there no casualties on land. The number of casualties among the tanicer crews was not learn- A fourth tanker was" torpedoed near Willemstad harbor and was badly damaged, but did not sink. One person was slightly injured on that vessel.

700 Miles From Canal Aruba one of the islands of. the Dutch West Indies, is only about 700 miles from the Panama canal. The others are Curacao, Bonaire islands, and three others Jap Columns In Burma Striking At Vital Point several hundred away near Puerto Rico. Aruba is the site of the worlds -unt Japan's announcement that Singapore had surrendered" unconditionally But Churchill frankly acknowledged: a. "heavy and far- -though' was- pleading for" confidence, he told Britain in' unvarnished words: -Other dangers gather about us out there and none of the.dan- excepl for largest oil refinery, and Curacao has.

the second largest. For that reason British marines landed there in May; 1940. to aid Dutch authorises providing protec- i c-mbang foothold in southern Su-: gors wn h. have hitherto fac- matra. on the invasion road to successfully at home and'in the (By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS) and Australia is girding for east are in any way diminished." tion.

f. Both Aruba and-Curacao refine high octane- (aviation) gasoline taken from the big wells in V-en- ezuela'and Colombia in vast quantities for American defense and year: State department, cncounte red in 400 and justice a partment, $84,438.600 and commerce department, $97,307,000 and S2G0.284.178: judiciary, 512,429,700 and. The landing area item was 'removed after secretary of commerce Jones said that the bulk of last year's appropriation was still available. The largest it-cm in the increase recommended for the justice department was $7,533,000 for emergency expenses of the federal bureau of investigation which- the committee said would permit employment of about 10.000. persons' clerks and 3,600 agents.

snow were I the northern half. Precipitation reports included Ames .55 oC an inch, Burlington .14, Cedar Rapids .20, Charles City .77, Davenport .11, DCS Moines .34, Dubuque .14, Fort Dodge .45, Omaha .10, Story City .42. Iowa's reading up to 7:30 a. was 18 at Sioux City after a high Sunday of 38 at Burlington and Davenport. At mid-morning the thermometer registered 30 at Des Moines: New Battleship Goes Down Ways at Naval Yard Portsmouth, Va.

The battleship Alabama, her grim grey' greatness dwarfing the workers who her from raw steel, plunged today from the Norfolk navy yard building ways -into the waters-of the Elizabeth river. Bows towering a madly cheering throng of men who sped the dreadnaught to completion nine months 'ahead of schedule, the Alabama down the Heavily greased' ways and-'into the river with a mighty splash. threaded their way like grey, ghosts through, a thick near-zero' cloud ceiling banked i from'one horizon to the. Pending the next phase in the ncr battle of may be a Hitler fighting in the Mediterranean was marked today by reports of patrol clashes in Libya, fierce air action, and an Axis assault on a British convoy. Roma announced that Axis air and sea forces had sunk a British destroyer, a patrol boat and seven merchantmen in a three-day attack on a convoy bound from Alexandria to Malta.

The Italians admitted that one of their submarines was missing in that battle and thst British bombers hit the towns of Augusta, Syracuse and Floridia. Sunday in-an assault on the cast coast of Axis airmen continued to hammer Malta, British Mediterranean island base 60 miles from Sicily. The Germans said .15 British planes had been shot down in recent action over Malta and Africa. In land action, the British announced patrol contact -with Axis JPusli Drive In Burma. These closely linked developments in the southward drive of a powerful foe were in turn deeply related to the olh-" major Japanese drive in Burma to cut China off from the supplies of the other United Nations and force the eastern gateway to India.

That, briefly, was the war picture today in the western Pacific region. The United Nations evidently envisaged nothing more than holding actions until their full war potential could be mobilized for the eventual counter- thrust against Japan. Japanese invasion forces pouring into southern Sumatra 'oy sea and' river after a suicidal thrus: by air-borne shock troops had been crushed, have captured Pal- embang. inland center of one of the world's richest oil only 250 miles from'Batavia, capital of the Netherlands East Indies. Australia Girds for Defense.

In Australia, Prime Minister forces over a wide front in Libya. Curlin- called for mobilization of from the coastal.area west of Ain Weatker (Data supplied by U. S. SVcalhcr Bureau). Muscavine and Vicinity Light snow today and early tonight.

Much colder today 'and tonight with moderate cold 'wave with temperature about five 'degrees. Fresh winds today and tonight diminishing Tuesday. 'Iowa Much colder this afternoon, and tonight with' moderate cold wave. Occasional light snow this afternoon and -in. the northeast and extreme east'por- tions- Fresh- to moderately strong winds this afternoon and.

in the east portion, early tonight. -1 Shippers forecast: "Northwest-; below, northeast no southeast 10 above, zero. Mississippi River Stages: Dubuque 7.1; rise Davenport 3.8;, no 0.1.-; El Gazala to about 40 miles south. The Axis may be preparing there to. drive against Tobruk or to outflank it again in a thrust cast- waid against Egypt.

In the European theaters the Russian offensive continued unabated, and British bombers overnight blasted at docks in the German-held French port of St. Na- zairc, apparently seeking out the light warships which helped the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau' escape 'last week from Brest through Dover strait. In Russia, Soviet troops were reported assaulting the basic'win- ter defenses established by Hitler while the Moscow drive to stamp out any German spring offensive continued at a furious pace. The Russians announced they were, meeting German reserves-in battle that nazi counterattacks were thrown back with heavy losses to 'the invaders. Front-line dispatches said the Russians had.

advanced 30 miles in one undisclosed sector. The British radio broadcast a Stockholm-dispatch saying the Red army in- White Russia was within 72 m'iles of the old Polish frontier and the Wilno (Vilna) district on the southeast frontier of Lithuania, Honors Mapped for Men on Duty (Jf) Nearly 700 Des Moines-county youths-serving in the nation's. armed- will be -honored in- Burlington memorial 'auditorium. Judge Paul McCoid' 'Mount Pleasant is scheduled'to "speak. "everything we have' 1 in the commonwealth's fight for life, now that Singapore, long proudly called the British empire's Gibraltar of the Orient, has been reduced to a shell of ruins a prison for empire troops which survived-the ill-starred The Japanese said unofficially that their captives in surrendsred Singapore, numbered 60,000 men and that the million inhabitants of the island included 100,000 British.

London no hope that any large force had escaped for the Singapore strategy had called for a fight to the end. The battle of Australia was seen as inevitable and impending. "No longer is there a time factor in which we can place reliance," said Prime Minister Curlin at Sydney. of Australia demands what the battle of Britain required. We must work and fight as we have never worked and fought 1 called the fall of Singapore Australia's- Dunkerque in the sense that it.

preludes herfight for existence, rather than withdrawal. Jap Transports The Dutch announced 'that 700 parachute shock troops had been down' almost to a man; that three transports- carrying'; Japanese soldiers toward Palembang; and that they had destroyed 'all: vital-' points in the 'Palembang move apparently meant the wiping out. of great refining plants to prevent the Japanese from using fallj.of Singapore Sunday night was announced to empire and'the-world ister a-broadcast'in which''ho'-called for Britain, to meet-the Axis on all fronts. Doubts Expressed. Loss of the island citadel, guardian of the gateway to the Indian ocenn and a rampart for the defense of the Dutch East Indies and- Australia, came after a week of dismaying news for Britain news which had loosed a cry of doubt ir.

the empire's leadership. There was abundant evidence that Churchill may be facing one of'the stormiest political battles of his career when the house of commons meets. Essentially, this was the Prime Minister's message: Formidable as are the factors againtt Britain, they are outweighed by those in her favor. Therefore, the nation must preserve its unity and its confidence in itself. Asks Analysis.

He asked Britain to put "the good and the bad side by side and let us try to sec exactly where we "The first and greatest of evenU." he began "is that the United States is now unitedly and wholeheartedly in the war with us cannot believe there is any other fact in the whole world which can compare- with that. "That is what I have dreamed of. aimed at and worked for, and now has' come to Churchill also cited the might of Soviet Russia, whose example of' unity amid adversity he -laid before' the British. "The Russian'armies have not been defeated," he said, "they have not been torn'to pieces They arc advancing victoriously, driving the foul invader from BY DANIEL DE LUCE Rangoon. Burma," Two Japanese columns, supported by dive bombers and machine-gunning fighter planes, drove perilously close to Thaton today a to choke oft supplies to China over the winding Burma road.

Thalon is only 50 miies southwest of Pegu, important rail center of the Rangoon-Mandalay and PiSiigoon-Martaban lines, -and Jt that- the invaders were at -'the 1 junction The fail Pegu, way.2ding."fevBXiiTia- th-e Allied war machine. Recently ihe Lago the Standard Oil subsidiary oC Aruba. announced plans for expansion of its aviation gasoline facilities and defense, the building of'a new SIO.000,000] American and British planes (A: London military commentator said that the fighting was "obscure'' and lhat.Thaion might now be ih Japanese hands.) Japanese spearheads converged on Thaton from Paan. 12 milo2 to east, and' from Martaban at the mouth of the Salween river, ihe now shattered first line of processing plant mads exhaustive efforts to The Royal Dutch Shell Oil Co. lhe enemy wherever his supply bnes were exposed.

The battleground was oniy 85 bomber miles from Rangoon, and 125 miles by land and rail around the tidc- swcpt Gulf of Martaban. Rangoon newspapers complained of the "lack of objective information and constantly changing descriptions of the fighimg" given by British army communi- ques. They said one day the position was called quiet and the next day evacuation of an important locality was disclosed. has some of its largest refineries on Curacao, supplying more than one third of the oil for the navy The United States stale department announced Feb. 11 lhat United States troops of untuned number had been sent to Aruba and Curacao at the request of tha Netherlands government to op- crate under the direction of.

governor of Curaco. Harbor Important. Aruba's area is about 70 square miles. Curacao'. 1 harbor nearby has long bscn an important ship- pins center, with many i calling to load Veneiuelan oil re- fined there for the eastern U.

S. seaboard and other markets. United Slates ware" sent to the island because the Nether- lands government feared that i Germany might attempt in Ichronize a stab at the West In- I dies with a Japanese offensive in I tile East Indies. i The step was approved by I Venezuela. Previously, in November, the United States sent troops to Dutch Guinea, the South American mainland possession of the Netherlands, southeast of Aruba.

Destruction of Enemy Sub Off Coast Probable that native soil they have guarded so bravely and loved so well "Here. then, are' two tremen dous facts which will in the end dominate the world situation and make victory possible Sees Troubles Ahead. The leader who rallied the British people after Dunkerque with the promise only of "blood. sweat and tears" gave them only a new promise of "a hard, adverse war for many months to come." In a stirring conclusion he bid them "draw from the heart of misfortune the. vital, impulse of victory Let us move forward steadfastly together into the storm and through the.storm." First reactions from Australia echoed the London newspapers' demands that Churchill multitudinous duties, reshape his war cabinet more compact lines with the-'ministers freed-'of departmental duties, and shake out'dead wood.

Melbourne Argus quoted as the -heading "No Time for a 'One-Man Band," that, Mr. Churchill accepts blame -for -major disasters and; at 'the same- demands a vote of confidence he is acting unfairly and Court Upholds U.S. Rights to Draft Industry supreme court said flatly today that congress had constitutional power to draft business establishments for the war effort and added that still other measures may have to be devised to prevent profiteering. Justice Black made these assertions in a 5 to 1' opinion upholding contracts entered into by the government with the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp. for the of ships diiring the first World war.

Replying to the justice department's contention that -the contracts resulted'in "unconscionable profits, for the shipbuilding company, Black said that congress had said that' the profits' had been granted under congressional authority and that the court was powerless to set them aside at this Replying to another contention by" the justice: department, that the 'was -desperately in need, of ships and was--compelled to enter into the contracts by f'duress;" Black the gov- ernment'has commandeer the shipbuilding plant. New York The army air force disclosed today the "probable destruction' 1 of an enemy submarine off the east coast by an army bomber. Four bombs were dropped near tire undersea raider as it crash dive after attacking an American tanker. The disclosure was made at Governors island" wh-en six members of the plane's crew were awarded letters of commendation. The.

army said, that the bombs were dropped from 1,000 fest and that one of them exploded near the hull of the submarine. An oil slick 50 feet in diameter appeared on the surface and was by a second slick a few moments later. The lime and location of the attack were not The army also revealed that the Second Lieut. Louis M. Abernathy, B-25A bomber, commanded by of Arkansas City, has sighted a lifeboat with survivors of the torpedoed American tanker China.

Arrow and directed their rescue shortly before sighting the submarine. FBI Rounds Up West Coast Japs ty-five 'raiding-parties- simultaneously- dences of strategic Sacramento -fields another. FBI round-up; ed enemy, aliens in 'northern and were in.