From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, 12/11/1941, p. 14, c. 1

Richmond and Defense

IS RICHMOND a defense area and should it be so designated by the Government? While Richmond has no desire to press a claim to which it is not fairly entitled, the entrance of the United States into the war as a belligerent, raises this question anew. The city is itself the center for important military activities. It has just been chosen for a $12,000,000 Army air base. It recently turned the Mosque, a municipally owned building, over to the War Department for use as headquarters for the Third Corps Area engineers. The presence of these engineers in Richmond is another indication of the importance of the area to defense.

The quartermaster depot which is being built at Bellwood may soon be serving approximately 200,000 troops in this area, including those at Camp Lee and the A. P. Hill Reservation. This important military facility will in turn be served by the Deep Water Terminal, which the city built with the aid of the Public Works Administration. The terminal may provide a service more vital to our defense as the war goes on. New York and other Northeastern ports became highly congested during the World War, and the point need not be labored that these ports are more vulnerable now than they were 20-odd years ago. The Deep Water Terminal is not only an important inland port for the receipt of supplies for camps and cantonments in this area, but may become a vitally important point from which supplies may be dispatched to our troops stationed at outposts in the hemisphere.

Then there are our defense industries. Certainly we can claim for these importance to our war program. The Tredegar Iron Works, the Reynolds Metals Company and the du Pont plant at Ampthill are, or probably soon will be, essential war industries.

The city is the center of vital arteries of communication that represent the jugular veins of the Eastern Seaboard. Sever these, and certainly a partial paralysis of our Eastern industrial structure would occur, for over railroads that converge here, goes the raw material manufactured in the North.

Richmond’s projected air base and its strategic position would seem to recommend it for inclusion in the critical defense circle, but it is quite willing to rest its case with those who determine the priorities of American cities.

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