From the Archives of The Benicia Herald

Compiled by Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Letter from the Publisher, Arthur W. Gluckman

SHARE YOUR BOOKS

Go through your home library now and see what books you can share with a soldier or sailor. January 12th is the opening date for a national campaign to provide books for the armed forces, sponsored by the American Library Association, the Red Cross and the USO.

Libraries and other places will serve as depositories in every town, and every good book that can be spared will be found useful. Don’t use this merely as an opportunity to be rid of trash. Dig up some books; the kind that you think you might like.

Even your spare books can help win the war!

STRUCK YOUR BLOW YET?

Have you bought your bond for victory?

This has ceased to be the “other fellow’s” war, ceased to be just the “other fellow’s” duty to make the sacrifices. Today the war is America’s battle, and the cause of victory is something to which all Americans pledge allegiance – not only with words but deeds. On the home front, government defense bonds enable all of us to strike a blow for freedom and, in a very practical way, safeguard the country’s future and our own.

We can, in proportion, show the same awareness of this high responsibility as those institutions who, with no penny of gain to themselves, have given liberally of funds to publicize and make available government defense bonds. On a statewide scale by press, billboard and poster, and through branches of 307 communities, California’s top-ranking branch banking house has carried the message far and wide, “Buy defense bonds!” This, the spirit that generously gives, is the spirit that’s going to win!

U.S. to Spend 77 Billion Dollars; Big Tax Increase Looms

President Roosevelt submitted to Congress last Wednesday the biggest budget, tax and deficit program of all time, calling for expenditures of 77 billion dollars within the next 18 months, largely for arms and munitions to smash Axis militarism.

Taxes are to be raised to increase treasury revenue by 50 per cent in the 1943 fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

During that 12 months period, Mr. Roosevelt proposed in his budget message presented to Congress today to spend approximately 59 billion dollars, to collect 27 billion dollars in taxes and to raise the national debt to 110 billion dollars. Of the budgeted expenditures 53 billion dollars would be for war in that one year. That includes $7,500,000,000 for lend-lease aid to the united nations.

Non-war expenditures were budgeted at more than 6 billion dollars – 437,000,000 less than this year.

In addition to the 53 billion dollars budgeted for war, government corporations will spend a non-budgeted three billion dollars in the next fiscal year, bringing the overall 1943 war cost to 56 billion.

His proposals for new revenue levies aggregated nine billion dollars, including an intimation of temporary resort to a general excise or sales tax. The President told questioners that he still was opposed to sales taxation and that “selective excise taxes” were as far in that direction as he would be prepared to go. Corporate and individual income taxes and estated and gift levies on wealth apparently will be increased steeply.

Benicia Girl Home From Honolulu; Tells of Jap Treachery

This community’s first Honolulu evacuee has reached the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lon Thomas, 529 East L Street. She is Julia McCarthy, 27, wife of Quartermaster Arthur J. McCarthy.

In a statement Mrs. McCarthy said:

“I was too mad to be scared, once I got over the first spine-chills.”

“With other Navy wives, living in the government homes subdivision across the road from Hickman Field, I watched what we thought were maneuvers, for day after day we had watched planes drop sand bags upon imaginary objectives. Many of us gathered in our front yards at a quarter of eight and even when we were told that the planes were Jap planes we stood there arguing, until a little Polish girl nearby saw a machine gun bullet rip squarely through the door of her refrigerator.”

SAVES CHILDREN

“After that we didn’t argue. I grabbed my two little boys and we ran to the sugar cane fields – they come right down to the edge of the government homes. We had grandstand seats. The air was full of them – horrible buzzards with a red sun emblem on their tails, dropping their eggs of death. We crouched, frozen. Again and again they swooped over the field and over the bay, almost seeming to collide with our ships, they swooped so low. It was terrible, like standing helplessly by and watching someone you love being beaten to death.

“Finally there was a lull, and a neighbor took us out of there in a hurry. The irony of it was that I spent the first night in the home of a Japanese.

“Yes, there really are good, loyal American-born Japanese, believe it or not. It is the treacherous ones who have done this to us.”

Mrs. McCarthy’s little boys are Dennis, two and a half years, and Kal, one and a half, whose name in Hawaiian means “the sea.” He was born in the islands and has made three ocean trips.

Dennis is well known to many Benicians having made his home with his grandmother for several months last year. Mrs. McCarthy was also a visitor at parent’s home, prior to going to the islands.

Mrs. McCarthy told of the valiant donations of blood by citizens to Queen’s Hospital, by which many lives were saved after the wounded were brought in. She described the reaction of her husband and the other enlisted men aboard ship when the planes flew so low that the boys tried to brain the aviators with spikes, hooks, or any weapon handy.

She said that damaged planes sent in from Wake and Midway for repairs bore such messages as “Fix these up and send ’em right back.”

Mr. McCarthy is still in the Pacific, aboard his ship, doing his part towards repaying the Japs for their treachery.

The young mother, whose father Lon Thomas is employed in contracting work on Mare Island, arrived home just in time for the wedding of her brother, Robert Thomas, also an enlisted man in the Naval Reserves, stationed at San Francisco, where he and his bride the former Lois Stanley of Oakland, will make their home. Young Mr. Thomas lived at the home of his parents and was employed at Mare Island before joining the reserves.

Vacaville Boy Safe At Pearl Harbor

Mrs. Mary Jane Huggard, Vacaville, received a short note from her grandson, Douglas Huggard, who was stationed at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked by the Japanese, stating that he is well and uninjured.

Solano Assessed Value at $808 a Person

The average per capita assessed value of property in Solano County this year is $808, a study of assessed valuations in California counties, just completed by California Taxpayers association, shows.

Total assessed value of property in the county amount to $44,089,576, the study discloses. Of this $18,606,790 is for land, $14,914,745 for improvements, $3,280,906 is personal property and money and $8,836,950 operative property assessed by the state board of equalization. Exemptions amount to $1,549,815.

Average per capita assessed value of property throughout California is $1,039, the association stated.

Physical Ed Class For Women Starts

According to Miss Violet Molfino, the Physical Education class for Women will start Thursday evening, January 8, at 7:30 at the Benicia High School Gym.

These classes have been conducted by Miss Molfino for the past three years. All women of the community are invited to come.

Literary Club to Resume Meetings

The first meeting of the year of the Benicia Women’s Literary Club will be held at the home of Mrs. S. Beetem on Friday afternoon, January 16th at 2:30.
All members are cordially invited.