Horror is spelled

AILY I listen in horror as
the radio repeats the Pen-
tagon communique: “350

sorties flown over South Viet-
nam; 500 buildings destroyed,
mainly peasant huts.” This past
week twice I have heard the
additional vile boast: “A hospi-
tal was discovered and destroy-
ed.” One of these had facilities
for 2,000 patients. The fate of
the patients was not mentioned.

The main instrument of this
genocidal warfare, that special
weapon for the mass immolation
of babies and their mothers, is
NAPALM.

It is logical that public opi-
nion in many countries regards
this as the most atrocious weap-
on in the U.S. counter-revolu-
tionary arsenal. It is used almost

By VICTOR PERLO

exclusively against villages and
civilians, having comparatively
little use in the combat opera-
tions of jungle war. As a wea-
pon of chemical warfare, it vio-
lates the Geneva Convention
against the use of chemical and
bacterial warfare, which the
U.S. signed but, unlike most sig-
natories, refused to ratify.

(It may also be consideted to
violate the anti-genocide con-
vention, which I believe the U.S.

did ratify.)

‘Napalm was developed by
U.S. scientists, on the instruc-
tions of the army’s Chemical
Warfare Service, specifically as

J.S. Wallace

They have a hunger
It is not for food

(The seas are scarlet
And the. skies run red)
They have a hunger
And a thirst for: good

And they’ll never settle
Till the dead are fed*

UJIKS ... knouts . . . nihilists . . . student strikes
succeeding or supporting factory strikes . . . This is
the kind of news I remember from Russia in my boy-

hood days. But the news from Canada? The only time you
heard of our students taking political action was when they
attacked Communist leaders or wrecked Commuynist offices.

But not any more. Now they are on the m&fch on both
sides of the border and not solely because they have been
aroused by an isolated outrage. No, they are fighting for
full education for all instead of only for the sons of the
affluent. Fighting for equal rights for Negroes, against the
vicious war on Vietnam, for peace everywhere. Finding
new forms of struggle as their horizons widen. The work-
ing class is equally militant but alas their $50,000-a-year
leaders have so-far channeled their demands, confined them
to wages, hours and fringe benefits. I predict that won’t
be for long: and then we'll be on our way.

* * *

*I have in mind our martyrs like Davis of Cape Breton,
Zenchuk of Montreal, the three murdered lumberworker
pickets, the organizer murdered in the Northern woods.
And our holy innocents. As representative of them through-
out the world take this diary of a 10-year-old during the
siege of Leningrad. Shorter than the diary of Anne Frank
but as heart-raking:

“Zhenya died on Dec. 28 at 12 in the morning, 1941...
Granny died on Jan. 25, 2 p-m., 1942 . . . Leka died on
March 17 at 5 a.m., 1962. Uncle Vasya died on April 13 at
2 am, 19422; Mother on May 13 at 7.30 in the morning,
1942 . . . The Sachveyevs died . . . Everybody died. Remain-
ed alone, Tanya.” :

Tanya Savichev likewise died of starvation, enroute
to an evacuation point.

And we are to train Hitler’s successors on our soil.

an anti-city weapon, in addition
to certain military uses, which
proved to be of secondary im-
portance.

Industrial and college experi-
menters built dummy urban set-

tlements, and strove, with ulti-.

mate success, to find a mixture
that would spread from house
to house, creating a fire-storm
which could. not be quenched
with any kind of equipment.
They even determined the neces-
sary density of housing for this
to work (25 percent of the space
covered by roofs).

The basic chemical is a mix-
ture of sodium and aluminum
napththenates and palmitates.
The word NAPALM combines
the beginnings of these last two
ingredients, derived originally
from petroleum and products
like coconut and palm oil. Com-
mercially these’ substances are
called metallic soaps. They are
thickeners, which with other
metals (e.g., copper) are used as
paint driers and for other pur-

poses.

In military use, as developed
during World War II, the appro-
priate mixture of metallic soaps
is dried into pellets. In the field,
these pellets are dissolved in
gasoline (aviation gas in World
War II), thickening it to stick
to its target, to burn hotter and
longer. Previous forms of fire
warfare had not been effective.
This was.

Maj. Gen. Alden H. Waitt,
World War II chief of the Che-
mical Warfare Service, wrote:

“The incendiary bomb, as de-
veloped and supplied by the
Chemical Warfare Service to the
Air Forces . . . was one of the
most effective and spectacular
munitions of World Wartll. As
the war came to a close, incen-
diaries led explosives in amounts
rained on Japan, and today the
fire bomb is recognized as an
outstanding weapon.”

The U.S. manufactured 250,-
000,000 of these bombs, of which
50,000,000 were dropped:

“Sixty-six of Nippon’s war
centres with . . . 20,000,000 pop-
ulation received more than 100,-
000 tons of ‘incendiaries in
15,000 sorties. More than 100

‘square miles were burned out in

five major cities, while incen-
diary destruction amounted to
about 40 percent in the urban
areas involved .... In Europe
. .. fires started by our incen-
diaries did more damage to the
Reich’s major municipalities
than did high explosives.”

In Japan “Thickened gasoline
(was) so highly effective that
the enemy made peace over-
tures even before the first ato-
mic bomb was used.”

Against the 14,000,000 popula-
tion of South Vietnam, the U.S.
flies as many sorties every six
weeks as the 15,000 mentioned

in this book, and a large propor-
tion of these drop napalm incen-
diaries on the people and their
villages.

Who is responsible for the use
of this genocidal weapon? Of
course, the military people, from
the Commander-in-Chief who
approves its use down to the
airmen who drop the bombs, are
responsible.

So are the manufacturers who
profit from making napalm.

Big business men guiding the
U.S. occupation determined the
lenient policy which saved the
Nazi industrialists who made
gas. chambers and Cyclone gas
from the full punishment they
deserved. Perhaps they feared
they might be in a similar spot
later.

Who makes napalm? The Pen-
tagon will not tell. Manufactur-
ers of airplanes, submarines,
missiles, highly sophisticated
electronic devices, boast through
every channel of publicity of
each contract received. But the
napalm makers keep quiet about
their orders. Not that there is
any military secret about it. The
formula finally adopted in
World War II was described in
detail in the August, 1946 issue
of the journal Industrial and
Engineering Chemistry.

Nor do the makers keep quiet
because the item is unimpor-
tant.

I think the makers’ names
are kept secret to protect them
politically.

I have come across only one
company name, as a maker of.
the bombs to contain the na-
palm, not the napalm itself.
That is a small Alabama firm,
Reimers Missile Components,
Inc., which raised its labor force
from 50 to 110 between August
1964 and August 1965.

Companies were not always
so reticent about their part in
napalm manufacture.|

Sir Donald Banks, in his book
on the development and use of
petroleum warfare, describes
the big role played by oil and
aluminum companies in the
joint Anglo-American work in
England which accompanied the
efforts in the U.S.

Ww

The development of the pro-
cess in the U.S. was described in
detail by six Harvard scientists
who headed the wartime work
at Gibbs Laboratory.

The Harvard scientists’ article
listed the following companies
that supplied samples, provided
technical information, or con-

‘ducted early manufacturing

trials:
American Cyanamid.
Armour & Co.
California Ink.

Commercial Solvents.
Harshaw Chemicals.
McGean Chemical (now pat!
of Chemetron) . Be
Metasap Chemical Co.
Nuodex Products Co. (noW
part of Tennessee Gas Trans
mission Co.).
Shepherd Chemical Co.
Werner G. Smith Co.
Standard Oil of California.
Standard Oil Development ©% —
(now Esso Research & Engi —
eering, a Standard of New Je
sey subsidiary) . 4

ee

Some of these companies, Jik@
Armour, simply supplied aux!”
iary materials for the expe!
mental work. Nuodex, on
other hand, made the first me
ufacturing runs. Standard be
Development apparently play®
a major role. It supplied for the
articles pictures of field trials,
including one of a life-size dues
my of a Japanese worker’s hom
burning after an experiment?
napalm attack. Socony-Vacuum”
issued in 1942 a booklet, whe
a Fire Bomb Strikes, a detaile’.
description of how they wo"
and how to fight them.

Several companies,
listed above, are currentl ;
in trade directories as make”
of the aluminum soaps chara
teristic of napalm:

Americans have not been kept
in ignorance of the use of et
palm, nor can they wholly aV
responsibility for tolerating i
People should demand that i
government stop using or m4 of
ing this weapon, which violat®
international law and the ©
science of mankind.

Workers in factories maine
the stuff should consider W
they are doing.

7

8
November 12, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Pag®