Detroit evening times., 1942-06-28

pied two islands In the Aeutlan cham, one OF them
having what is described as of the best harbofs
in the world
CINCE, as an American naval officer is reported
- to have said, the japanese do not send boy to
do a mans job it is assumed they consolidat-
ing their positions there with, view to further
occupations.
The further occupations envsioned, of course,
concern Dutch Harbor, and the principal American
bases in Alaska, with progressive encroachment on
the North American mainland
HE American people naturally and confidently
take it for granted that the japanese will be inten
sivey resisted in these enterprises and will not
attain their detectives:
But the people only know about these matters
what they read in the papers, and the papers print
only what the government gives and permits them
to print-which in the of the Aleutian incident
has not been very much very reliable.
IN JUNE 10, week after Dutch Harbor was
~ bombed, when the, Japanese announced occu-
patons in the Aleutians, our official navy spokes-
man said ''none of our inhabited islands or rocks
troubled with unlimited visitors up to this
time"
And of course that is what the papers printed
and what the people knew about the situation and
ALL they knew.
But, on June 12, when the American navy de-
partment acknowledged japanese occupation of
Attu and the presence of japanese naval units at
kiska, the formal communique said the enemy had
been forced ''to retire from the populated regions
of the islands,
GO THE American people learned thus belatedly
- from their government and through the papers
that some of our inhabited islands and rocks did
after all have unlimited visitors
But, so the Associated Press reported from
Washington, ''no strategcal significance was at
tached here tonight to the occupation.
And on June 81, so eminent military strate-
gist Mr. Charles Nicholson, publicity director of
the Democratic National Committee referred in
public statement to "the yarn of occupation of
the Aleutians," saying "they might as well have
landed on an iceberg with equal military effect
n PPARENTLY somebody besides the Austral-
ians and the English is living in fools
paradise" of "syrupy communques," " which is
what former Prime Minister William NJ Hughes
of Australia called the information ladled to the
public from Malaga and Libya
Obviously, the American people have not only
had inadequate information and Interpretation
about the situation in the Aleutians but inaccurate
information and terpretation-which is what the
English are complaining about in Lizya and Cairo
Inadequate public information i'll wartime is
of course always excused by the necessity for mill
tary secrecy, with befuddlement of the enemy as
the purpose.
But since the Japanese instituted the Aleutian pro-
ceedngs and perfectly of the of their
own operations American secrecy to accom-
psh its principal befuddlemen in the minds of our own
people.
The Aleutian occupation is a continuing and major
danger to the United States Any enemy foothold on
our American homeland is dangerous And it accom-
pishes nothing in the interest of diminishing such
danger to ask the American people to believe it is
matter of no Importance.