No Casualty Lists

Except for a few officially accoladed heroes, the only casualties the U.S. heard about last week were false casualties.

At Pearl Harbor, 2,897 men had died, said Navy Secretary Frank Knox. In the Philippines, thousands more were killed, wounded or taken prisoners, as Douglas MacArthur's outnumbered forces fell back before a swarm of Jap invaders.

But their names were not published. The only news the U.S. had of its hard-pressed, hard-fighting sons and brothers, fathers, husbands, sweethearts came in sinister oblongs of yellow paper, sent by the War and Navy Departments to their nearest kin. Sometimes the message, like other "official" information, was just as wrong as wrong can be:

> Notified by the Navy that her brother was dead, Mrs. Eileen Peterson went to bed in Leominster, Mass., dreamed that she saw him wearing a bloody bandage on his head. On Christmas Day she heard from the Navy again: Curtis J. Farnsworth, seaman first class, "is now accounted for and will probably communicate with you. . . ."

> In Davenport, Iowa, eight days after their son was officially reported killed, Mr. & Mrs. F. H. Baxter got an airmail letter from Honolulu. Wrote Eldon Baxter: "I am alive and well. ..."

> In Fort Worth, Tex., Mrs. W. L. Stew art could not believe that her foster son was dead, refused to take the money from his insurance. Last week the Navy told her she was right: Carl Frank Stewart, badly wounded, will live.

> In The Bronx, the Navy notified Louise Clifton of her husband's death. She went to bed sobbing. Then a good German neighbor (a Mrs. Goering) advised her to eat a herring on New Year's Eve, make a wish. Louise did. At midnight a messenger boy knocked at her door. It was all a mistake: Coxswain Clarence Calvin Clifton is still alive. . . .

Still the War and Navy Departments insisted that it is necessary to withhold news of casualties, to conceal movements of troops and warships. They reminded the press that all warring governments now suppress casualty lists.

Nevertheless, many a U.S. citizen did not like this suppression. It was hard to convince the U.S. that its deaths must be kept muted, its wounds secret.

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