Evening star., 1945-11-09
Wainwright, Moved Again, Is Treated Better
sJups Seek to Use Him in Propaganda Work

19QnQo WOTk
erations, and thus you. yourselves,
have no hope of repatriation. None
Of you will live long enough"
He waited for reply, but got
none. Then he announced abruptly
that the picnic was over, and we
walked back to our camps under
guard.
Late in November, 1943, we re-
ceived an old copy of the English
language Nippon Times at Musaq
and in skimming through it my
name leaped out of the page. 1t was
a Domei dispatch:
"BUENOS AIRES, Oct. 2.-Presi-
dent Roosevelt promoted five United
States Army officers who are in the
wartime rank of lieutenant general
to the formal rank of major general
today and asked for the approval
of the Senate, according to Wash
ington reports.
Officers appointed major gen.
erals are:
Joseph w. Stilwell, commander
in chief of the United States forces
in India, Burma and China.
George S. Patton. jr., commander
of the United States forces in
Sicily.
"Brehon B. Somervell. chief of the
United States Army Services of Sup
ply.
Joseph T. McNarney, deputy
chief of staff of the United States
Army, and
Jonathan M. Wainwright, former
commander of the Filipino Amer
lean Army in the Philippines, who
succeeded Gen. Douglas Macarthur,
and who is now prisoner of the
Japanese forces"
Refused Writing Permit.
I was refused permission to write
to the War Department accepting
the new permanent rank. 1t would
have to be done, the Japs ruled,
through an individual in America.
So I wrote to my wife on Novem-
ber 80 to have her tell the adjutant
general of the Army that I accepted.
But there being no real assurance
that the letter would get through I
later wrote out a form addressed to
the adjutant general, and witnessed
by Gems. King and Moore. and in
it notation which read: 1T being
impracticable to deliver this &C
ceptance at this time, it has been
signed and the signature witnessed,
and is hereby retained for delivery
to the adjutant general at the ear
liest possible date"
AS for the earliest possible date"
I had long since had to revise my
old written prediction that we
would be liberated by December 81.
l943. Our removal to Formosa had
condemned all such possibility, I
felt, and now at Muksaq we were
swamped with so much Jap propa-
ganda about the successes of their
feet and army that I sometimes
found myself wondering If they
could possibly be telling the truth.
There was no way to check the as
sertions they presented as facts.
Japs Believed Themselves.
The junior officers who spouted
statistics at us did so with such en-
thusiasm that we were convinced
that-right or wrong, and probably
wrong-they beliesed every word
they said.
One such officer lined us up one
day before Christmas to tell us that
the United States had lost 16 bat
tleships and the British two battle
ships since the opening of the war.
The propaganda line was clever, for
We knew they were telling the truth
about the British battleships-the
Prince of Wales and the Repulse,
sunk of Singapore in the early days
Of the war.
But there was slipup right after
that in the Nippon Times. 1t quoted
Admiral King as saying that the
United States then had 20 service
able battleships. I knew therefore
that we could not have lost what
the Japs claimed.
We were constantly urged to write
personal letters to our homes or to
the War Department, telling how
well we were being treated. round
about effort on the part of the
Japs to cause the United States to
relax in its determination to pull
verize Japan.
Tomorrow: Christmas at
Muksaq and bouts with the Jan
propaganda machine.)
Copyright, 1915. King Features
Syndicate, Inc. Reproduction in
Dhole or in part strictly prohibited J