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Longshoreman's Union of the West Coast. The fight was about the control of the southern ports. Joe Ryan had all of them on the East Coast. Bridges' union had all of them on the West Coast. The Gulf ports and the southern Atlantic ports were not perfectly solid with one union or the other in the longshoring work. What the sailors would cooperate with was important.
I've gone into great length on this, because I don't think Joe Curran ever was a Communist. I think he was instructed by the Communists. I think he was built up by the Communists, and I think he let them down.
Then we had another streak of having contact with Commies. One day Admiral Jerry (Emery) Land, who was in charge of some very important maritime operation in the government in the early days of the war, came breathing fire to me to say, “We think that there are some dirty Reds (using some very profane language) mixed up in some of this communication stuff. We think that some of the radio operators being shipped out on American merchant ships are dirty Reds. It's the most sensitive part of a ship. You know, these radio operators talk to each other. Nobody knows what they're doing. They've got control of
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