Friday, June 1, 1945

The Charlotte News

Friday, June 1, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that organized resistance on Okinawa appeared to have ended. Marines on the west and infantry on the east had broken through both flanks to isolate the town of Shuri in the center of the defensive line, against retreating Japanese, unable to set up new defensive positions.

Sixth Division Marines completed mop-up operations in Naha to the west. Other units of the division were pursuing the fleeing enemy southward toward the mouth of the Kokuba River and the east-west Naha-Yonabaru Road to the south of Shuri.

President Truman announced that the Army in the Pacific would eventually be twice the size of the Army in Europe, would be at a strength of seven million men within a year, double the size of the current Army in the Pacific.

He thanked the submariners and other Navy and air personnel for reducing the size of the Japanese merchant marine to a quarter of its pre-war size.

The President warned that as the forces approached nearer the Japanese home islands, enemy air resistance would grow greater. He further stated that every physically fit man in service who had not yet seen overseas duty would be transferred to the Pacific upon completion of training.

At Seventh Fleet Headquarters, Vice Admiral Daniel Barbey stated that Japan would face complete annihilation at home unless it sued soon for peace, that the American landing force and air strength would visit upon the Japanese cities far greater destruction than that in Germany, a statement confirmed by Undersecretary of War William Patterson.

It was announced that the B-29's would become part of General Jimmy Doolittle's Eighth Air Force in the Pacific War.

In the war itself, 450 B-29's, accompanied by 150 Mustangs, struck Osaka for the second time, dropping 3,900 tons of incendiary bombs. Only light enemy opposition was encountered.

The 21st Bomber Command announced that the raid on Yokohama Tuesday had destroyed 6.9 square miles. A total of 86 square miles of Japanese cities had been destroyed by B-29's.

In China, the Chinese High Command announced that the Japanese were pressing southward along the East China Sea coast in Chekiang Province, possibly seeking to set up anti-invasion defense positions. Enemy troops advanced ten miles toward Pingyang on Sunday, but Pingyang was retaken by the Chinese on Wednesday. The Chinese advanced 25 miles beyond Pingyang to the vicinity of Tsinkong.

The Chinese continued to pursue retreating Japanese troops, heading toward Siapu. Other troops gained in both Kwangsi and Hunan Provinces. The High Command stated that the Chinese had driven to positions 9.5 miles west of Shaoyang.

Suilo, on the highway to Indo-China, had been recaptured following a day-long battle on Wednesday.

During the 50-day period through May 28, the Chinese had killed or wounded 28,000 Japanese troops.

In Syria, the French had refused compliance with Prime Minister Churchill's request that the troops be returned to their barracks, but had ordered a cease fire. All was reported quiet in both Syria and Lebanon after the French had stopped shelling and bombing Damascus. At least 400 had been killed and another 500 wounded in the violence.

British troops and tanks moved along the main roads toward Damascus pursuant to the Prime Minister's order of intervention.

The United States had agreed to act with other powers as mediator of the dispute. France had been invited to London to meet with the British and Americans to resolve their contentions.

French newspapers generally expressed feelings of hurt pride more than concern over the situation.

Correspondent Edward Ball writes of a field of red poppies growing in the location where the village of Lidice in Czechoslovakia once stood, before it had been razed by the Nazis on June 9-10, 1942 and its inhabitants either murdered, as in the case all of the adult male residents who were present in the town, or sent to concentration camps, in the case of the women and children. The Gestapo, acting under orders of Heinrich Himmler, had even leveled the cemetery and carted off the tombstones.

Of the 867 residents, only two were known still to be alive, both women in a hospital.

The pretext for the murders had been the claim by the Gestapo that the citizens were complicit in giving shelter to the conspirators who had killed Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, ambushing his car on May 27 at the bottom of a long, downhill U-curve.

Senator Owen Brewster of Maine reported that he had heard that the Russians were "liquidating" professional people in Berlin and other occupied German areas. He had learned the information while part of the Mead Committee touring the European front. The professionals, he stated, included lawyers and businessmen. The Russians had refused the Senators access to the areas from which the reports originated. The Russians also were reported to be fraternizing with the proletariat and encouraging them, in violation of the Allied policy of non-fraternization with Germans.

At San Francisco, as the delegates were said to be growing restive at the lagging conference, the Big Five were beginning to assert control of issues and seek resolution quickly on a variety of remaining matters, central among which were the veto on the Security Council and the Polish question.

Reports stated that American-Soviet relations had improved suddenly in the wake of successful negotiations of Harry Hopkins in Moscow with Josef Stalin and other Soviet leaders. One predicted result would be to hasten joint Allied occupation of Berlin and Austria in accord with the Yalta agreement.

News of resolution of the Syrian crisis and restoral of order in Damascus had been greeted by the delegates as further good news.

On the editorial page, "Achtung! Minen!" discusses the Allied move to have former German soldiers employed in the removal of mines throughout the battle zones. The mines had been left behind by the Germans in fields, on hillsides, along roads, where for 20 to 25 years hence the unsuspecting might stumble on one and be killed or maimed. They were sometimes buried several layers deep so that uncovering the top layer could trip the underlayers.

It was fitting, says the piece, that the Germans who had planted them be the ones who would be required to locate and remove them, and they should be kept at it, for years if necessary, until the land was clear.

The piece suggests that the column had recommended the use of the Germans for this purpose more than a year earlier; it probably seemed like it had been that long, given the momentous events which had occurred in the interim, but in fact it had only been about eight months earlier, in late September.

"Soaring Costs" mentions the fact that on June 15, the last of the World War I bonus payments for veterans would come due, 275 million dollars worth, of which 58 million was accumulated interest.

These payments would be dwarfed by those, it predicts, for the veterans of World War II and for decades hence.

"The 'Reactionary'" comments on a report by Representative John Rankin of Mississippi that there was a propaganda move afoot in the country to discredit Claude Wickard, until recently Secretary of Agriculture, as a tool of the big power interests to undermine his nomination as head of the Rural Electrification Administration.

Regardless of the propaganda, the piece cites a quote from Mr. Wickard in which he favors the private companies, if they would, providing electricity to farmers at a reasonable cost, and allowing the Government to step aside. The piece finds that policy wholly appropriate and votes for Mr. Wickard's confirmation on that basis. The purpose of the agency was to provide electricity to farmers, not to set up the Government as a competing business to private companies.

"They'll Get By" finds the Democrats of North Carolina meeting in Raleigh on Saturday for their Jefferson Day dinner in a sold out affaire d'honneur, greeting people from all over the state, notwithstanding Government regulations prohibiting conventions.

The piece gripes that the Democrats had found exception in the Office of Defense Transportation rules by the convenient device of not having "invited" anyone to the event. The attendees were just going to show up spontaneously on their own and thus were not running afoul of ODT regulations. And if it just so happened that on hand to greet them were Democratic National Committee chair Robert Hannegan and Senators Hoey and Bailey, why it would just be that, a fortuitous coincidence.

The editorial thinks the ODT ought be renamed the Office of Indefensible Transportation.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record is too fuzzy to make out today, which is probably just as well, as it finds Representative Howard Buffett of Nebraska discussing with Representative Fred Crawford of Michigan sugar prices during World War I.

Congressman George Rogers of New York interrupts to explain that he had been in the food business during World War I, still was, and that he had been able to obtain sugar for $28 per hundred-pound bag. Mr. Crawford appeared incredulous.

It was an exciting colloquy. We are apologetic that we could not impart more of it for your mind to be further illuminated.

Drew Pearson comments on the April 13 pause by the Ninth Army at the suburbs of Berlin and their pulling back, at the demand of the Russians, to the Elbe so that the Russians could take the capital. And still, no Allied mission had been allowed into the city, despite Yalta having called for a joint American, British, and Russian mission to occupy the capital. The Russian capture of Berlin had likewise been agreed at Yalta.

While the delay had generally been laid to the Russians, in fact, it was the fault of Americans for not forming a mission to send into the city. The reasons appeared to be that if an Allied mission were formed in Berlin, it would require the dissolution of Supreme Allied Headquarters, and General Eisenhower in consequence would have to step down as commander of the French and British. In an Allied mission, each of the four powers would be on equal footing. On that basis, it was feared that cooperation with the Russians in Berlin would be more difficult. The present structure, with a neat line drawn between East and West and little intercommunication was working better, the commanders thought, than would an Allied mission in Berlin, at least for the time being.

The British also favored the present arrangement because they received their supplies through the United States for their occupation zone in the northwest of Germany, an arrangement which would end if they entered Berlin.

Also, if the French were independent, it was feared that their ideas on governing Germany might be as distinct as were those of Russia.

The final decision on when to enter Berlin would be made in all probability by President Truman.

Marquis Childs reports on the last act of Francis Biddle as Attorney General, filing suit to test the right of the Federal Government to offshore oil. The suit tested both states' rights and the challenge from private oil companies. For 40 years private firms had been drilling off the coast of California, since 1921 under leasing arrangements with the State of California, pursuant to which the State received royalties from the profits of the drilling.

Texas also had a similar arrangement with drillers.

The Federal Government was seeking to establish rights from the low-water line to the three-mile international limit. Doing so would deprive the states of the royalties they were obtaining.

Members of Congress had introduced several resolutions seeking to make the offshore oil rights the exclusive property of the states.

The issue was important because the nation's oil reserves had been seriously depleted by the war.

A resolution in 1937, passed by the Senate, had declared offshore oil lands to be the property of the United States, a resolution supported by the Navy. The present action by the Justice Department had the support of Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes.

It was also significant in defining a growing rift within the Democratic Party between the New Dealers and those who wanted to return to a more laissez-faire status for business. Ed Pauley, former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and now on the Reparations Commission, had made his fortune in oil. Thus, this issue in part was being formed along lines within the party.

Another major lawsuit undertaken by the Justice Department, scheduled to be heard in October, was whether the Hollywood studios would be required to divest theater ownership to avoid monopolistic practices.

The editors present a piece, based on a report in the June issue of Better Homes & Gardens, on the return of 5,000 British children to their homes in Britain from America, to which they had been sent during the 1940-41 Blitz for safety. They had returned with what was described as "abnormal poise" and a fondness for Americans. They had enjoyed the freedom of American schools but had dropped behind British standards, requiring private tutoring for months to catch up. Some of the parents did not recognize their own children, so much had they changed, both in appearance and fashion.

The newly acquired American accent was pleasing to the parents but some of the children found the British accent now sounding affected.

The young girls had become physically fit, usually not encouraged in England until the latter teens, and had begun to wear make-up and acquire a social ease not usually the case in England until the early twenties.

The overall difference appeared to be that in Britain emphasis was placed on scholarship while in America it was on sociability.

The boys of Britain gazed wistfully at the checked shirts, lumber jackets, and topcoats worn by the returning British boys, clothing nowhere to be found in England during wartime rationing. The returnees did not wear the American garb among their uniformly dressed peers for fear of derision.

Mothers were hearing of American appliances, central heating, and washing machines. The American family tended more toward joining clubs and activities outside the home, whereas the British family acted more as a home unit.

Life on the whole seemed to the youngsters a bit flat back on their home turf by comparison to America.

Never fear, boys and girls. Had the opposite been the case, the opposite result would have, no doubt, held true, as all young people find the temporary visit to other digs new, exciting, and different—until you have to live there indefinitely, at which point it quickly becomes as customary, mundane, and unexciting as home.

Samuel Grafton speaks to our own times from 1945, citing a conservative American commentator who warned that if the British Labor Party were to win the July election, then their friendship toward Russia would lead to socialism in Britain. The commentator then warned that the socialist tide could then begin to take hold in America.

"Alack-a-day," expresses Mr. Grafton several times in the piece. First, the commentator warned of the Kremlin, then of the Labor Party, then of Americans.

The prospect was for a hundred years of staring matches between East and West which, in the end, would only find Americans afraid of each other, he predicts. It would not set the West against Russia so much as it would the West against the West.

And he was dead-on accurate, of course.

He counsels setting up a stable relationship with Russia, lest by default, the place won in the war would be lost out of fear of losing by competition.

"The doleful opposite approach means not only that we would spend the next hundred years staring eastward in fear, it means that we would be afraid of what was behind us, too; we would walk through time, wrapped in fear, like a fog, boasting about our stability, but leaving the lights to burn all night."

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