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Perhaps one of the clearest examples of the strategic communications role played by Americanchaplains even before the attack on Pearl Harbor can be seen in a speech on “Tolerance and NationalDefense” by Lt. Commander Maurice S. Sheehy, chaplain of the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville,Florida, and a professor of religious education at The Catholic University of America, transmittedby Columbia Broadcasting System radio on August 9, 1941. “The present world conflict is a warnot only of Force but of Ideas,” Sheehy declared, in a statement that foreshadowed the “war ofideas” paradigm of the current war on violent extremism worldwide. “Ours is one of the few decentgovernments left in the world.True, in our past history there have been some ugly pages, our treatment of the Indian andthe Negro, our seizure of territory by force almost a century ago, our hasty involvement inthe Spanish-American War. But today this country has no plan of territorial thievery, no lustfor conquest, no desire to execute the suggestion made recently that we ape Hitler in settingup puppet governments. … We make no pretense of neutrality. … Our youth will give morethan years if necessary to protect those freedoms which are dearer than life. … (T)he rank andfile of both the leadership and the followership of the Catholic Church is solidly behind ourgovernment in its effort to stop the onrushing tide of Nazi tyranny. 60During the war, stories of heroism by Catholic chaplains helped provide the military serviceswith inspirational material both for the troops as well as for the people back home. (When a Catholicchaplain who ministered to sailors during the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor was mistakenlyidentified as the author of a popular expression, “Praise the lord, and Pass the Ammunition,” aPresbyterian chaplain quickly acknowledged that he coined the phrase while standing on the deckof a heavy cruiser. As the sailors passed ammunition along a line due the fact a powder hoist lackedpower, he said, he went along the line encouraging the men with the phrase, although he emphasizedhe did not touch the artillery piece.) Cardinal Spellman himself became “a familiar figure during hisfrequent visits to military bases around the world … endearing him to the hearts of American servicepersonnel everywhere.” During the course of the war, he penned two volumes, Action this Day;Letters from the Fighting Fronts and No Greater Love; The Story of Our Soldiers, books of greathumanity that chronicled his travels; the latter work completed the day Franklin Roosevelt died. 61According to Donald F. Crosby, S.J., one of the most poignant gestures made by Allied troopsduring World War II was conceived in the shipboard cabin of a Jesuit, Fr. Charles F. Suver, who wasone of the 19 Catholic chaplains who formed part of the 58-man chaplains corps that attended to theneeds of the three U.S. Marine Corps divisions that took Iwo Jima from the Japanese in the war’sbloodiest battle in the Pacific. When the idea to plant the flag atop Mt. Suribachi was offered by ayoung officer who was one of several colleagues gathered in the room, Suver promised that, “You getit up there and I’ll say Mass under it,” which he did, within earshot of the Japanese. 62The Catholic chaplains’ alignment with Allied war objectives, reflecting the general tenor ofthe armed forces’ chaplaincy, was also evidenced by the handful of objections the chaplains raisedto racist depictions of Japanese soldiers, the firebombing of German cities, or the use of nuclearweapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war. (One powerful voice for caution was thatof Cardinal Spellman, who wrote in Action this Day that “Now that the Allies have the preponderanceof air power, there may be retribution and retaliation. … But if we use Nazi tactics in their full malicewith the full power that we are mustering by indiscriminately obliterating everything in every city,60Press release, “Chaplain Sheehy Speaks over CBS on “Tolerance and National Defense,’ Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains 1940-1941”;National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA.61News clippings, “Navy Chaplain Denies He Said ‘—and Pass the Ammunition,” New York World-Telegram (undated) and “Origin of a FightingSong Clarified,” November 2, 1942, (provenance unknown), Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains 1941-1945”; National Catholic WelfareCouncil General Administration Series, ACUA.; Rev. Daniel Mode, The Grunt Padre, Father Vincent Robert Capodanno Vietnam 1966-1967, (OakPark, Ill.: CMJ Marion Publishers, 2000), p. 62; Action this Day (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943); No Greater Love (New York: CharlesScribner’s Sons, 1945).62Crosby, Battlefield Chaplains: Catholic Priests in World War II, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994).128Security and Defense Studies Review 2009/Edición 2009/ Edicão 2009/ Volume 9, Issues 1 & 2