Harris (APA 2) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 88 text:

And This Was The Enemy . . . Not the ludicrous, buck-toothed, bespectacled half-pint of the cartoonists, but a desperate foe who seriously believed in his mythological mission, that Japan must rule the world, who care- fully and ruthlessly intrigued, organized, planned and prepared for more than twenty years the carrying out of this fantastic scheme for world domination, inculcating every Japanese school- boy in the stern codes of Samuraii and Bushido, of w.ir .ind death. And when all was ready . . . Out of his little islands in t he East he poured, like a swarm of ants, into Manchuria, China, then Indonesia and the polyglot lands to the South, and then the Philippines and the islands of the Pacific. Oh, those of you who have seen the great numbers of old Ameri- can autos, the Fords and Chevies and Buicks, made in Detroit, on the streets of Yokohama and Otaru, the Nip Army trucks shod with Yokohama Goodyear Rubber Company tires, and have asked: With what did these people intend to defeat America. — with stolen brains and g(H)ds? And those of you who have seen the poverty and ignorance of the Jap peasant and fisherman, the feudal caste system, the bowing and scraping, the subservience of the female, the smiling and so-sorry face of the Jap in the face of Im conqueror, those of you who have laughed so humanly at the sight of the cute, red-cheeked Japan- ese children who pecked with fear and curiosity at you from

Page 87 text:

Errands of Mercy . . . One inevitable result of battle is casualties. The Harris was often used as a front line retreat; evacuated approximately one thousand injured men. After invasion, lights burned all night in sick bay as skilled Navy doc- tors and pharmacists mates worked over fallen fighters.

Page 89 text:

behind papered windows in Yokohama or extended their hungry hands to you for chewing gum in Sapporo, oh those of you who have asked . . . How could these harmless httle people attempt to wage world war? Oh remember . . . These are the people who tore alive the helpless body of Nanking, drew and quartered Shanghai, took Singapore, bombed Pearl Harbor and snuffed out the lives of three thousand American young on a sunny Sunday morning in December, destroyed the once beautiful Christian city of Manila, overran the countless islands of The Philippines, New Guinea and the Western Pacific. These are the soldiers whom we had to push back, island by island, across the vast sweep of the Pacific, from the hot steaming jungles of the Southwest, the desolate coral and lava isles of the Central, and the bleak, cold friendless isles of the North. These are the soldiers whom we had to blast and burn from the very earth they stole. These are the sailors whom we had to fight back across the years and miles of the empty Pacific spaces, from Midway, the Coral Sea, Savo Island, the Philippine Sea. This is the enemy whom we had to push back, back, back, back into his little islands in the East. This th is was tne enemy.