Occupation Day

Governor Blanton Winship of Puerto Rico went to Ponce last week with 100,000 other visitors to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the U. S. Occupation. With native officials, members of the Insular National Guard, officers from the U.S.S. Enterprise and a U. S. destroyer, he mounted a stand to review a gala parade.

Ponce is the place where 21 persons were killed, over 100 injured on Palm Sunday 1937, when the anti-U. S. Nationalists (a terrorist minority) started shooting at police who had forbidden a parade. Last week, crashing over the heads of paraders and onlookers, a burst of gunfire suddenly ripped into the reviewing stand. A Puerto Rican Senator and 30 others dropped. A National Guard officer fell, fatally wounded. The shooters were Nationalist agitators who had denounced the celebration as a "shameless disgrace" to Puerto Rico. When police had restored order, killing one Nationalist, Governor Winship, unhurt, congratulated the excited crowd on "standing firm," called it "a most convincing proof that American institutions are understood here."

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