Thursday, May 31, 1945

The Charlotte News

Thursday, May 31, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that on Okinawa, First Division Marines, who had the previous day raised the flag on Shuri Castle, pressed a flank attack against the town of Shuri. The Fifth Regiment met only slight opposition. Fresh downpours made progress slow.

At the time of occupation of the castle, the Marines found but 50 Japanese inside, all of whom were killed.

Initially, the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy were raised over the castle, the company's victory flag; 25 hours later, the United States flag was raised, at 1:45 p.m. the previous day.

The town, nearly surrounded, still contained fanatical resistance. The 77th Infantry encountered particularly strong, suicidal resistance.

Naha was now completely under American control, save for isolated pockets on the south shore of the harbor.

The Sixth Division advanced 100 to 300 yards toward the Kobakura Hills, east of Naha, encountering an estimated 350 troops, mostly Korean.

On Luzon, mopping up operations were taking place in the hills around Santa Fe, as patrols moved into the Cagayan Valley to the north.

On Mindanao, action was on the wane even as close-quarters fighting erupted north of Davao.

The Japanese press contended that the kamikaze raids on American shipping were causing "appalling losses", but that it was not sufficient "to sever completely enemy supply lines to his ground forces."

The Chinese recaptured Ishan on the Kwangsi-Keichow railway, 43 miles west of Liuchow, while another column moving from the northeast was within 55 miles of the Japanese road and rail hub in Southern China. Fighting was in progress at Chienkiang, 25 miles beyond Nanning, captured Sunday. Another column was attacking Pinyang. The southern bank of the Yung River opposite Yungning had been completely cleared of the enemy since Monday.

Following withdrawal of enemy troops in Fukien Province to the northeast, the Chinese had advanced, heading for Siapu, 75 miles northeast of captured Foochow. The Chinese also advanced 45 miles north of Foochow, beyond Ningteh, to the south bank of the Kino River.

Following the loss of Nanning, it appeared that the Japanese were preparing to abandon Liuchow, as well as all of Indo-China, Thailand, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. The supply lines were afforded through Southern China by land and along the sea lanes, now imperiled by the American Fleet. The retreat from Yungning was the first sign of a general retreat perhaps from Southern China, and the general abandonment of the Japanese to the south.

Chiang Kai-shek, to spend more time on the war, had stepped down as Premier in China and turned the duties over to Acting Premier T. V. Soong, the Foreign Minister and brother of Madame Chiang. Chiang was still President of China and the Generalissimo. Soong had been Acting Premier since December. He had a moderate attitude toward the Communists in the north and was generally popular throughout China.

Prime Minister Churchill asked General De Gaulle to withdraw deployed French troops from Syria to their barracks. Foreign Minister Anthony Eden announced that Britain had instructed British troops in the Middle East to intervene in the action to avoid further bloodshed. The French Government was said to have been surprised at the statements.

President Truman approved the British statements and the United States sent to France a note urging it to review its policy toward Syria and Lebanon. The note adverted to the need to avoid suspicion among the nations at the very time when the San Francisco Conference was taking place, that the apparent threat of force was being used by France to coerce concessions in the countries, both of which Great Britain and the United States recognized as independent.

In response to questioning, Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew stated that no equipment sent to France under Lend-Lease was supposed to be utilized for any purpose than the defense of France against the Axis, and, to his knowledge, none was being used in Syria.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in Damascus as the death toll had risen to 300. The heaviest shellfire yet was being directed to the center of the city by the French. The French had bombed the city from the air as well.

While the events in Syria were being felt, especially by the smaller nations, in San Francisco, Secretary of State Stettinius was seeking to allay the fears of the delegates on the premise that were the United Nations Organization already in place, such an outbreak of violence as in Syria could more easily and quickly be quelled.

But Drew Pearson would point out that the prospect had arisen, with the veto power reserved for the Big Five, including France, that a situation such as in Syria could not be controlled at all by the proposed United Nations organization.

Lord Wright informed the War Crimes Commission in London that 2,657 individuals had been charged with war crimes by various Allied nations, including three by the commission itself. Most of them, 2,524, were Germans, 110 Italians, and seventeen Bulgarians, plus a few from Hungary, Rumania, and Albania. France had listed 1,116 Germans, more than any other nation. Poland had named 544 Germans. Britain charged 127 Germans, 27 Italians, and two Rumanians. The list did not include those charged by the Russians.

American casualties in the war had surpassed a million. The Army casualties numbered 890,019 and the Navy, 112,868, an increase of 6,798 since the report of the previous week. The figures included 183,563 killed from the Army, an increase of 1,800, 553,088 wounded, an increase of 2,500, 52,748 missing, a decrease of 5,000, and 100,622 captured, an increase of 4,200 (most of whom were likely shifted from the missing category). The Navy had 49,534 killed, 54,380 wounded, 10,709 missing, and 4,245 captured.

The hardest hit divisions had been the Third, 45th, 36th, Ninth, and Fourth Infantry, each of which, except the Fourth, had fought in North Africa, Sicily, or Italy, before serving in France and Germany. The Third Division, based on reports received through April 30, had suffered 6,240 killed, 24,793 wounded, and 3,191 missing. The figures for the other listed divisions are provided in a table.

The Office of Price Administration announced that rationing points would be higher on canned tomatoes and spinach, but lower on tomato and vegetable juice.

You can have your V-8, but no tomato with it.

On the editorial page, "Tower View" takes in the measure, from the perspective of the Ivory Tower, as to what had occurred to cause the Charlotte Planning Commission to resign, pointing an accusatory finger in the direction of Mayor Baxter and politics. The Mayor had been the chief proponent and promoter of certain projects, the War Memorial, the expansion of parks, and a new library. Whether his personal interest in these projects and his consequent view of the Board as the mere implementer of these projects had clashed with their own sense of independence, was not yet clear, but probable. In any event, it says, there had been a collision.

"No Gas, Yet" remarks on Germany not resorting to gas attacks during the war, despite the predictions of American experts that they would when the going got tough.

In all probability, they had refrained because they were increasingly vulnerable themselves within smaller and smaller pockets, the more the lines were pushed back from both sides.

There had been some limited use of gas reported on the Russian front, in China by the Japanese, and by the Italians in Ethiopia, but little was known about the advances in militaristic use of lethal gas since World War I, as it had been maintained by all sides under strict secrecy.

American air superiority at this juncture, it predicts, would likely frustrate any attempted use by the Japanese in the last stages of the war in the Pacific, especially as Japan was a confined set of islands and so more vulnerable than Germany.

It bespoke the effectiveness, said the piece, of preparedness: the enemy feared retaliatory attacks and so did not resort to the use of this deadly and especially barbaric method of warfare, banned by the Geneva Convention after World War I.

It does not get into the napalm being dropped at will on Japanese cities at this point. But, of course, that was not gas, rather gasoline.

We do not, however, make judgments on it. Two words of the Japanese would have ended the horrors which the Japanese had brought strictly upon themselves by waging this cruel war in the first instance.

What about the innocents? the insistent might ask. Ask Hirohito.

"Cause & Effect" discusses the 12-cent tax recently defeated in neighboring Gastonia to provide for local schools. The previous Tuesday, it had been reported that two classrooms at a junior high school had to be dismissed for want of any teachers. It appeared to have been planned by the teachers to demonstrate the problem, as, mysteriously, none of the fifteen substitute teachers was available.

Only two teachers had signed up for the coming school year. They were not to be criticized for so doing, urges the piece, for urban areas with higher living standards ought be paying what the market demanded.

"$56 Question" recounts the practice of the New York Teamsters in charging all non-union trucks a $56 fee before they could unload their hauls of fruit or produce in New York markets.

A few months earlier, businessmen and farmers all over the Eastern seaboard had raised loud objection to the racket. The case had gone to the Supreme Court, which held that the Anti-Racketeering Act did not apply to unions.

The situation had been somewhat ameliorated after the New York Journal American had reported on the story and aroused the interest of Mayor La Guardia who got the police involved and enabled the independent truckers to unload without interference by the goons of the Teamsters.

The editorial urges a new law to cover this sort of activity. The Teamsters could impose fees and dues on their own membership, but had no conceivable right to impose the fees on independent truckers.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Bertrand Gearhart of California speaking against the reciprocal trade agreements bill on the theory that foreign countries had not granted anything in exchange for foreign trade under the old agreements.

Representative Joseph Baldwin of New York found Mr. Gearhart's statement confusing on the basis that the foreign nations could not be failing in their agreements if they had not granted anything in the first instance.

Mr. Gearhart clarified that there had been 29 nations with which the country had formed trade agreements, and that each one had then systematically gone about trying to defeat the concessions granted to the United States. He cited France as example. Immediately after signing the trade agreement, France had devalued its currency by 66 percent. Belgium had devalued likewise its currency by 29 percent, and on down the list he provides. The effects had been to wipe out the concessions obtained by the United States in these countries under the signed agreements. So, the countries maintained the concessions in American markets granted them, but had dissolved the concessions in their own markets granted America.

Drew Pearson reports that Attorney General Francis Biddle had been informed only by press secretary Steve Early of the acceptance of his resignation tendered, along with all other Cabinet members, at the death of President Roosevelt. Mr. Biddle insisted on seeing President Truman and when he did, told him that he thought that the President should inform him personally of this decision, which President Truman, embarrassed, then did.

The French-Syrian situation had caused the diplomats at San Francisco to realize that the unilateral veto provision on the Security Council, applicable to France as one of the Big Five, would prevent the U. N. from taking any action in the matter or even investigation or discussion of it, unless France were to submit to such action and investigation by withholding its veto.

While the State Department was now sending its notes of protest, once the U. N. would be established, State would have little standing to follow such a procedure.

The debate among the smaller nations on the issue of the veto was heated. Their general consensus, led by Australia and New Zealand, appeared to be that they did not mind the veto on the subject of taking action to thwart aggression but did on the issue of investigation or even discussion of such claims. Chile had agreed with the position being advanced by Australia, to allow at least discussion without interruption by veto.

Ambassador Andrei Gromyko of Russia urged the smaller nations to trust the Big Five, that if the Big Five could not get along, there would be no peace in any event.

Then Canada, Belgium, Peru, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Greece, and Norway joined the position enunciated by Australia and New Zealand. Only South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the Ukraine, and White Russia, joined the Big Five at the veto table.

Australia proposed that the smaller nations be allowed to submit their objections and questions to a conference subcommittee composed of four major powers and five smaller nations. Senator Tom Connally proposed that France be added, meaning that the Big Five could not be outvoted. Reluctantly, the smaller nations acceded, but indicated afterwards frustration at the procedure.

Dorothy Thompson, writing from Salzburg, reports that Allied military policy was working well but the absence of a political policy threatened to undermine the good work. There was little or no integration between the two.

The condition was especially notable in the American sectors around Salzburg. Austrian pride had arisen in the city at the fall of the Nazis and the Austrian underground had welcomed the conquering Americans as liberators. Instead of embracing this initial enthusiasm, the military gave orders to treat the Austrians as part of conquered Germany with all directives in Germany applicable. Austrian flags were ordered removed and replaced with white flags or none at all. Non-fraternization with Austrians was the rule for the American liberators.

There had been no proclamations declaring Austria free and no newspapers were yet being published. The Austrians had heard news only by word of mouth. Their only radio came from Russian-occupied Graz and Vienna.

The military was ordered to track down war criminals and disarm all Germans, a procedure taking place efficiently.

While the Russians had set up a provisional government in Vienna consisting of Christian Socialists, the citizens of Salzburg had no idea even who their new mayor was.

Should the Russian influence trump that of the Americans in Austria, it should not be blamed on the Russians, offers Ms. Thompson, but rather on this absence of a coordinated American political policy.

An American Army major of the 313th Infantry Division in Unna, Germany, provides a transcript of an interrogation interview with one Hilda Martin, age 24, a German woman, whose opinions, says the major, were representative of the German people.

She had been an employee of the Luftwaffe in Eastern Germany until she became ill. Her brother had been in the SS.

She believed that there would be another war in which Germany would fight. She had rejoiced at the sight of the German soldiers crossing the Rhine at the beginning of the war. Germans, she insisted, were a "Spartan race" who thrived on war. Nazism was just one manifestation of that continuing characteristic.

If schools were to try to change German views, she said, she would re-instruct her children on the ways of war, based on how their father and grandfather had fought so bravely for the honor of Germany. All of her friends, she said, felt likewise. They loved Germany, not the Nazis, but they had firmly believed in the concept of Lebensraum and thus the Nazi policy of empire-building. She insisted that the entire German race would have to be destroyed before there would be peace on earth.

Harry Golden writes a letter to the editor in which he lauds a story by Thoburn Wiant appearing on the front page May 28, the report of the 25 sick, undernourished and homeless babies left with the Third Army's 134th Medical Group in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. Mr. Golden finds it a telling example of America's place in the world as seen from the perspective of Europeans.

Somewhere in the wilderness, some wandering, homeless women apparently had decided to give up their babies to avoid their starvation. They chose American headquarters as the place of safe harbor at which to leave them. They had to pass through dangerous zones of Hungarians, Rumanians, and Czechs to get to the American position, but it had been worth it to them.

Many Europeans had long complained of the lack of culture in America. Mr. Golden recalls the opera singer Beniamino Gigli leaving the country upset for its lack of understanding of art and returning home to Fascist Italy where he sang instead for Mussolini.

But to these women, there was no higher art or culture than the ability to care for a child. And it was America to which they turned for the practice of this art.

"With the wisdom that comes with such desperation they knew that if their babies were to live another week; that if civilization itself were destined to live another few years, only America could give it its one last chance for survival."

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