 The Cavalcade of America sponsored by Dupont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry presents shortcut to Tokyo starring Ralph Bellamy. Before we tell you about tonight's play, here is another example of chemistry at work helping to win the war. A finely woven bit of nylon cloth with 30,000 holes to the square inch now filters blood plasma for the Army and Navy. Nylon filters have been successfully employed in more than a thousand blood transfusions. Tonight Cavalcade presents shortcut to Tokyo adapted by Isabelle Layton from Corey Ford's bestseller of the same title. It is an eyewitness report of the progress of the battle of the illusions that we bring you tonight in Mr. Ford's own words. Starred in this evening's performance is Ralph Bellamy playing the role of Corey Ford. There are no trees in the illusions. For a thousand miles west of Dutch harbor there isn't a solitary bush or shrub higher than your knee. It's a region as remote as Mars and almost as barren of life. The wind howls day and night with a steady banshee wail, driving the scudding rain before it. Unreal it seems, but cold is real and wet feet are real. Not getting any mail from home is real. No women for company for a thousand miles, that's real. So's the waiting. Waiting for the weather, waiting for a chance to run another bombing mission over the enemy target. Waiting for your wings to ice up, or for your plane to smash against an uncharted mountainside in the fog. Every pilot who flies in the islands carries an undated death warrant. Sooner or later he knows he may not get back. Hey Wally, I can't see the wing tips. Listen pal, up in this neck of the woods it's never too thick to fly unless you can't see your copilot. This is the unknown front, the illusions. The men who fly here fight an unseen foe, and they fly and die alone. Their enemy is the fog. Their battlefield is a boulder-strewn beach scattered with telltale bits of twisted metal, or a snow-covered peak where the broken wing of a plane flaps tinnily in the wind. An icy channel into which a flaming bomber hisses into silence like an extinguished cigarette. They don't parachute to safety in the hero's metal. Their citation when they go reads missing. In other days, nobody ever gave a thought to the value of the illusions because they were believed to have none. But we were wrong. The Japs knew the value of the illusions, and so luckily for us did Major General Simon Bolliver Buckner, Chief of the Alaska Defense Command. He begged for arms and equipment on the grounds that the much publicized naval stronghold at Dutch Harbor had no protecting airfield for a thousand miles. Immediately after Pearl Harbor he besieged Washington for permission and funds. Is Alaska to become another Guam because you gentlemen refused to vote funds to fortify it properly? Are we to be denied the airfields without which we haven't a prayer merely because you won't vote the money to build them? General, it makes more sense to spend our money closer to home. We've got no stake in the illusions. Nobody has. A handful of fly specs on the map abandoned by God and forgotten by everybody else. Not by everybody, Senator. Not by the Japs. Let me tell you something. Not more than three years ago a Jap destroyer dropped anchor off the island of Attu and some fancy dress admiral came ashore. Big pardon, please. Is this intrusion? Yes. What is it? You were granted. We visit your island one hour only. We wish to place a tablet over a grave of long departed Japanese prince. When did he live here? A long time ago. He lived here. But he died high up under here. You permit that we mark his grave? He was a most honored Japanese prince. Go ahead. Help yourself. But when the Jap man of war got underway hours later the natives did a little investigating on his own. A search of the hilltop revealed what he'd suspected from the first. No grave. No honored Japanese prince. Only a marker planted where it would do the most good when they are struck. General Buckner got the money. And within a month packing cases and crates began piling up on a wharf in Seattle. Men worked fast in the raw March wind. Loading the crates on ships bound for somewhere in the north. Even the dock workers were not sure where. Give me a hand, Gus. I can't handle this box alone. What do you figure is in it? What do you catch of seven? Tomestown's more like the feel of it. Hey, who in funders the Blair packing company? I never heard of him. Never heard of Sexton and Company either. But that's the name. Heavy as lead. That's right. It was lead. Lead-nosed bullets, machine guns, anti-aircraft cannon. All headed for our new Aleutian bases. Who and what were the Blair and Sexton companies? Two mythical packing concerns. Dummies for proposed airfields. Blair was a blind for our new base on Umnak Island. 60 miles west of Dutch Harbor. Sexton was Cold Bay, 120 miles east. Within two months, steel landing mats had been installed. And only just in time. The bases were still brand new when the Jap struck, as General Buckner had predicted they would at Dutch Harbor. Bandit. Number two gun reporting ready. Here we go, Ben. Set your seat. Right, sir. Hold your hats, boys. Enemy plane. They're going away, Ben. Yeah, but look what they did to the warehouse. They bought groceries. The oil tanks are gone, too. Hey, look. They're coming back. Oh, we fixed ammunition, Ben. It'll last longer than we will. Looks like this is the last roundup. It was a well-planned attack. No question about it. For now, a new sweep of Jap planes, dwarfing the surprise attack from the north, came in from the west. Pandemonium raged in that little harbor. Black smoke shrouded the Holocaust, but the Japs found their targets. And then the miracle happened. American warbirds that were not supposed to have been killed from the secretly built air bases at Umnak and Cold Harbor. Blair and Saxton had paid off. Jap espionage had promised a free hand, but honorable intelligence was cock-eyed. Honorable intelligence had led them smack into a trap. In a few moments, more than 30 planes were smashed. Abruptly, the entire invasion force ran off so fast that many of their carrier-based ships were left circling in the fog. A radio operator at Dutch Harbor claims he could hear the abandoned Jap pilots calling their flattop in vain. Whereabouts, please? Gas, very low. Only 10 minutes gas. Then, a few seconds later... Whereabouts, please? Only 5 minutes gas. Then it was only 3 minutes. And then he could almost hear them plumping into the water one by one as they hunted for that landing deck that wasn't there. The carrier that had fled. Plop. Plop. Plop. 15, 20, maybe more, I don't know. Goodbye, please. So sorry. Plop. The Jap Expeditionary Force, thwarted in its attempt to occupy Dutch Harbor, settled instead in Kisker and Attu. And the second phase of the battle of the Aleutians began. From now on, the battle settled down into a long, grueling grind. Now and then Alaska's unpredictable hurricane, the dreaded Willowar, would pour down the steep sides of a volcano like a snow slide, obliterating everything in its path. I didn't rate the distinguished flying cross for that sub. I sure wanted a thousand times running our routine patrols. Me, I'd rather face a zero in the air any day than there's zero, zero on the ground. Every morning after breakfast, the combat crews gathered in the alert hut to hear the day's mission briefed. The squadron commander stood before a chart and the fellows lounged around. The pilots, the navigators, the bombardiers. Now, man, start your bombing run about here. First element will take the hangers, second the sub base. In case a P-shooter has any trouble, you, Jim, will lead it back to the base. Contain radio silence on the way out, standard frequency. Any question? Will we have much zero opposition, Colonel? I think so, yes. Anti-aircraft? The Navy communique will state as usual there was no anti-aircraft fire, but look out for those gremlins. Now everybody synchronize their watches. We ought to hear about the weather in an hour or so. The group relaxes. Now there's nothing to do but wait. How about some cribbage, Jim? Is there anybody check the weather yet? Six no, Trump. I bet I've logged more hours in this hut than I have in the air. Hey, say, Sammy, tell Port here about the jeweler back home. Will you hear this for him? Oh, I don't bring that up. I'm trying to forget it. Come on, Sammy, tell him. Well, all right. Why don't you see, after I got my Bombardier's wings, I get myself engaged to a girl back home down on Delancey Street. Then I go to buy her an engagement ring. 500 smackers, of course, me. But when the jeweler sees I'm a Bombardier, he claps me on the back and says, my boy, I'll knock off 100 bucks for every bomb you dump on Germany. So what happens? So I get sent to Alaska. Oh, sure. I was on the line waiting for the bunch to land that day. They were late and I, for one, was uneasy. The last guy out finally straggled back. He'd mixed with trouble. His crew chief counted 64 holes in the plane. I didn't do your plane much good, Sergeant. Bangled with a few suns, I haven't. You sure come back with less than you left with? While they were talking, another waiter to be waved in. He'd seen trouble, too. Plenty of it. When they were crippled, they couldn't land. But they did. Hank crawled out of the cockpit. His flying pants sticky with blood. Just a scratch for him. Probably a piece of the 6,000-yell we sold him. Listen, Wisecracker, I suppose you took a sulfur pill when you were hit. A matter of fact, there were only a few pills and you know how it is. I didn't know how bad off the pilot was. I don't know, get that foot fixed. Yeah, skip it. Here's somebody may need patching up more than I do. Gosh, look at that shit. Everything under control? Now, what gives, Wally? Why are you so clumped? Hey, what's the matter with Sammy? Sammy's... dead. Don't call them heroes, they don't want that. They're not intrepid birdmen or rover boys of the year or supermen. They're ordinary guys doing a job, getting cold and wet and lonely and not liking it any better than you would. Over and over, I've heard these pilots say... When you write about us, Ford, don't make us heroes. Maybe they felt the folks back home would put them up on heroes pedestals and forget them. They don't want to be forgotten any more than they themselves forgot Sammy. When word got round that a large-scale raid was in the offing, the biggest ever briefed up here, Sammy was in all their minds. Kiska was to be the target and the boys were itching to go. At last, those sons of heaven were filled with Uncle Sam and Sammy. The morning of the raid, a light mist was falling in the field. Above this, the stars still shone as the pilots gathered. The crews checked the planes. Colonel Erickson, the group commander, came up while he spoke to him feeling the need to talk. Sir, can you advise me the best place for our top turret to concentrate its fire? Where are you going? We break to the right of the harbor, Colonel. Our objective is to camp. Good. Have your gunners, train their fire on North Head. They can't miss it. Give them every piece of lead you got and remember to fly under it. Keep low, stick together. That's your only salvation. Yes, sir. Good luck, boys. Give them the works. You are listening to the Cavalcade of America sponsored by Dupont. This evening's play stars Ralph Bellamy and Corey Ford's new war book, Short Cut to Tokyo, the story of the war on the Aleutian Front. In two places, army engineers have constructed airfields which are now vindicating the Aleutians title to Short Cut to Tokyo. As our play continues, Ralph Bellamy in the role of Corey Ford gives an eyewitness account of an early bombing raid on the Jap-held island of Kiska. One by one, the largest array of heavy bombers assembled in the Aleutian war to date, loaded to the gunnels with TNT, roared down the map, brought their noses up, and found masses of pursuit ships. The silence of the men over the hum of the bombers was oppressive. Would the little japs be taken completely by surprise or were they even now fingering their triggers, smiling, waiting for the kill? A target-hove insight. Okay, boy, there it is. Give me some more RPM. We're going to your battle stations. We have to bail out to be catalyzed to pick us up. The shore batteries of the enemy were like sudden stabs of sunlight and the windshields of oncoming cars, only more, hundreds more, all along the shoreline. As if by magic, the area below became a sea of deep orange flame. Wooden barracks blew out their sides. Even gunners on a nearby hill were flattened and became one with the ground. The planes flew on and came to the sea, rejoined in formation and counted heads. Present fires. Sammy. Listen, Sammy, wherever you are, kid, this party was thrown for you. Christmas, 1942. We even had a tree, not much of a tree. Just a few armloads of tundra moss fastened together with bailing wire to look like the tree back home. Shavings from a bar of soap made it seem snow-tipped and we hung it with cornucopia made out of red paper backs of films and shells. A Canadian, no more than a baby, balanced himself on a chair back to fit a star of Bethlehem at the top. He'd made it by folding the red cellophane cover of a gas mask. It was the night before Kiska. Somebody take a swipe at him. Blanky kids crowded the mess hall, shaggy, unshaven, their rain-soaked parkas dripping. The nervous chaplain kept winking into his glasses and finally got up enough gumption around the slips of paper he'd written out. Make the announcement he hoped he wouldn't have to make. Fellows, about presents. I'm afraid there aren't any. Mail hasn't come. However, we've dug up what we could of the PX. I'm afraid there aren't enough to go around, so we'll have to draw numbers out of the hack. It's all right. Good luck to everybody. Merry Christmas. It didn't take long. There weren't many numbers. Hey, look what you got, Wally. What I've always wanted. Not very much. Chocolate bar. Nuts in it, too. Hey, have a hearty one bite, will ya? An address book. Can you beat that? No woman for a thousand miles, so I get an address. What do you suppose we got? Turkey, maybe? It wasn't turkey, nor was there any plum pudding that day. We sat down to bean soup, stewed tomatoes, potatoes that had been frozen till we couldn't eat them, bread without butter, and Vienna sausage. But I was sitting elbow to elbow with our Air Force Combat Crews, and it was the finest Christmas dinner I ever tasted in my life. A few weeks later, while we were trying to keep warm in the quantset hut, Wally beckoned me to one side rather sheepishly, I thought, though I couldn't figure out why. But you're going back to the states next month, and I kind of thought I'd like to, well, make a record. Yeah, have you taken home with a wife and kid? Today's his first birthday. Pretty sappy thing to do, maybe, but there's a recording machine in Joe's place, and look, if you haven't anything to do, would you mind going along with me and maybe hold my hand? I was glad to go along. I'd heard Wally speak of that son of his he'd never seen. In Joe's place, Wally began speaking into the machine, awkward as a schoolboy, while I pretended to look the other way. Well, son, you're growing up pretty fast. You'd be a man before your mother. So I thought on your birthday today, we ought to have this little talk. A few days after Wally made that record, it took everything I had to force myself into Joe's place to pick it up. Wally wasn't around, you see, to get it himself. I brought the record back to Bridgeport, all right. Wally's wife was working in a war plant there. She had to, I guess. The day I went to Bridgeport to bring Wally's record home, I rented a Joe Broler, who had this much in common with Wally. He had a little kid he loved, too. I hadn't seen Joe and his wife since he'd sold the garage where I used to keep my car. We were in my room at the hotel. You're looking pretty prosperous, Joe. Doing well, aren't you? Pretty good. No more than you're worth, Joe. How many men know what you know about machines? I always said, Mr. Ford, once he got out of that old garage... You're working the night shift, Joe? I'm taking a day off. It's a kid's birthday. We're gonna drive him up the country to his grandmother. Won't they say anything? You're not coming in today? Oh, what? Everybody else takes a couple of days off now and then to sober up or go to a ball game. I guess Joe's got a right to take a day off to be with his own child on his birthday. Only comes once a year. Quite a kid, ain't he? Joe, I've been with another guy up in the Aleutians who wanted to celebrate his kid's birthday too. But he only had enough time off from his work to make a record to send home. I'd like you to hear it. Well, we don't have an awful lot of time. We still gotta pick up Joseph. Won't take a minute. Here, I'll just put on a new needle. Well, son, you're growing up pretty fast. You'll be a man before your mother. So I thought on your birthday today we ought to have this little talk together. Yes, you'll be growing up, son. Maybe you'll have a son of your own. I hope he means as much to you as my son means to me. And I hope when you grow up there it won't be a war and you can be with your son instead of way off here in Alaska somewhere. I've never seen your son. You were born after I came up here. But I hope I'll get home someday. Be a good boy, son. Take care of mama. Look, I thought we were going to take a drive, Joe. Shut up, Rosie. What about this guy? What happened to him? We never did find out what happened to Wally, Joe. His plane crashed in the fog somewhere. He was a good pilot, but he was flying an old plane that should have been sent back and overhauled long ago. You see, Joe, there weren't enough reports about this. You see, Joe, there weren't enough replacement planes. Production back home had been a little slow. Since then, Atu was ours. Slowly but surely the tempo of events is stepping up in the islands. We're on the march toward the final offensive that will drive the invaders from our shores. What has been till now a one-way route may be turned into a two-way street and the pilots who fly these sullen skies today are blazing tomorrow's shortcut to Tokyo. Thank you, Ralph Bellamy. Before we announce next week's cavalcade, we'd like to tell you about a new organization for women taking its place proudly beside the wax and the waves, the spars, and the marines. Here are Evelyn Richmond and George Alby. Mr. Alby has just visited a DuPont plant in Virginia, making rayon yarn to bring you this report. Evelyn Richmond is chairman of the WIPPS, W-I-P-S, at the plant. Mrs. Richmond, I'm going to ask you to tell our listeners some of the interesting things about the WIPPS you told me when I visited the Spruant plant. First of all, the letters W-I-P-S stand for Women in Production Service. Is that correct? Yes, Women in Production Service. Start at the beginning. Tell me how you girls down there got the WIPPS going and why? Well, we decided to form an organization that would help us to do our jobs better. All of us wanted to do everything we could to help win the war, and we thought an organization would unify our effort, help us to pull together. How did you set it up? We have a Spruant's rayon war production committee, a joint labor management committee. The idea of the WIPPS originated with this committee. Ten women were chosen to organize the WIPPS, five management representatives, and five labor representatives. From there on it was a matter of planning exactly the kind of organization about half the work at Spruant's today is done by women. We make Cordura rayon yarn that goes into fabrics for bomber and army truck tires, and cargo parachutes. We make rayon yarn for combat and field jackets. More than half of our production goes directly into the war. And the first announcement of the WIPPS was made I think you told me about five months ago? Yes, on March 1st. Do you wear uniforms? No. I wear uniforms to advance to senior grade, junior lieutenant, senior lieutenant, captain or major. For instance, what does she have to do to be a captain? We don't make it easy. To be a captain, you have to put at least 10% of your wages into war bonds, not have even a minor injury or an absence for six months, turning three suggestions for increasing production, take part in some civilian defense activity, and earn the approval of your supervisor for sincere effort on your job. That sounds tough enough. Your suggestions are running 700% higher than last year. Injuries are down by nearly half. Days lost due to absence are down, in spite of the fact that the number of women employees is up from 1100 to 1400 since March. The number of girls buying war bonds through payroll deductions has risen from 91 to 98%, and the WIPPS have won a special citation from the Treasury Department for their investments in bonds. That is a record to be proud of, Mrs. Richman. We think so. We're proud of the WIPPS broadcast, and I know they're as proud as I am. The WIPPS are growing, too. Last week, a WIPPS chapter was installed at the DePont Nylon plant at Seaford, Delaware. We welcome the Seaford women into the WIPPS. We also invite women in American industry everywhere who'd like to consider organizing chapters of the WIPPS to get in touch with us. We have a booklet that tells how we went about it. It will be sent free of charge to those who are interested, just right to the radio section at Seaford, Delaware. Next Monday, the Cavalcade of America will present Warren Williams in The Major and the Mules, a comedy drama telling for the first time the true story of an unusual and exciting reconnaissance operation on one of the Pacific Islands. The story of the WIPPS organization which was started by women workers manufacturing for wartime uses the high-strength Cordura rayon yarn that will return again when the war is won as one of the DuPont better things for better living Remember, we invite you to join Cavalcade's audience again next week when DuPont presents Warren Williams in The Major and the Mules, a robust comedy drama of life and action with our fliers in the Pacific on the Cavalcade of America. The orchestra and musical score tonight were under the direction of Donald Boris. This is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from Cavalcade's sponsor The DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. This program came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.