Monday, June 18, 1945

The Charlotte News

Monday, June 18, 1945

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General Eisenhower received a grand hero's welcome in Washington upon his return to the United States for the first time since V-E Day on May 8. The future President rode in a motorcade from National Airport to the Pentagon, then down Constitution Avenue to Pennsylvania and to the Capitol. He then addressed a joint session of Congress, urging the lawmakers to tackle with the same fervor and determination the issue of peace that they had put forth during the previous three years in the waging of the war.

On Okinawa, the remaining Japanese garrison in the south was cut in two as most enemy forces were retreating from the Yaeju Plateau, some having tried to reform their lines on the western side of the plateau near Makabe. More than half of the plateau was now in the hands of the Americans. The Marines struck south of Kunishi Ridge, scattering the enemy defenders on the plateau. The Sixth Marines finished mopping up on Oroku Peninsula. One enemy commander in this area, Admiral Minaru Ota, killed himself by slitting his throat.

The Japanese were dying at the rate of 1,500 per day, as 12,756 had been killed in eight days of fighting, increasing the number killed since April 1 to 80,459. Some 8,000 to 12,000 defenders remained in the fight.

Not yet reported, Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., commander of the Tenth Army forces on Okinawa, was mortally wounded this date while inspecting front line positions. He had worn his three-star helmet to the lines, was spotted by an enemy Howitzer and apparently deliberately targeted, struck in the chest. General Buckner, whose father had been a general in the Confederate Army, was 58 years old. His death came just three days before the victory on Okinawa. He would be promoted posthumously to a four-star general.

Admiral Nimitz responded to a story of June 4 published by columnist David Lawrence, criticizing the decision on Okinawa not to land additional Marines behind Japanese lines, presumably in reference to the original Shuri Line. The Admiral stated that he had made all decisions on tactics with General Buckner and that he stood by them. A new landing would have resulted in heavy casualties because of unsatisfactory beaches on which there were strong and alert enemy defenses. Moreover, the landings would have resulted in supply problems.

Some 450 B-29's attacked four Japanese cities, Kagoshima and Omuta on Kyushu, and Hamamatsu and Yokkaichi on Honshu. One plane was missing from the raid. All of the cities were left aflame and results were deemed good.

General Hap Arnold, commander of Army Air Forces, declared at a press conference in Manila that by the end of 1946, there would be nothing left to bomb in Japan, that three times the number of bombs dropped on Germany would be dropped on Japan in the ensuing 16 months. By the fall, he asserted, there would be twice the number of B-29's in operation in the Pacific as there had been in May. New 12,000-pound buster-bombs would be dropped in the coming raids on selected targets. The new airfields on Okinawa would now permit raids on the Japanese factories in Manchuria. Lighter fighter bombers could soon be placed in operation because of decreased distances to targets.

On Luzon, the Japanese were beginning to surrender in the Cagayan Valley to the 37th Infantry in the largest numbers of the Southwest Pacific campaign. In one day, 447 prisoners had been taken, and 609 in 36 hours. In eight months, the Japanese had suffered 402,363 casualties.

The 37th had gained up to 14 miles in a day in two parallel drives through the valley, reaching Cagayan and Cabatuan, advancing 40 miles in three days. Once into the open terrain of the valley floor, the 37th had advanced rapidly against unprotected enemy positions. The enemy had only the Cagayan River, 6.5 miles north, against which to make a last stand. Aparri at the northern tip still lay 130 miles ahead by road. Somewhere in that stretch would be thousands of Japanese who had fled Manila at the end of 1944.

A Japanese field officer on Guam who had continued with his 33 remaining men to resist for ten months after the fall of Guam the previous August, finally surrendered. His troops appeared well-fed. After months of trying to coax the men out by loudspeaker, the Americans arranged a meeting between the Japanese officer and a Marine colonel at which surrender was effected.

In Moscow, the court set to try the 16 Polish leaders was informed by prosecutors that twelve of them, including the four leaders, General Bronislaw Okulicki, Vice-Premier Jan Jankowski, former judge Adama Bien, and former member of Parliament Stanislaw Jashikowicz, had confessed to several serious charges, including the killing of 594 Russian officers, anti-Soviet espionage, and conferring with the Germans. Three others pleaded guilty to lesser offenses.

The United States Supreme Court upheld 5 to 3, in Associated Press v. U. S., 326 U.S. 1, an opinion delivered by Justice Hugo Black, the lower Federal Court decision finding the Associated Press in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by restraint of trade through its by-laws which allowed the 1,200 member newspapers to block membership to other newspapers and prevent member newspapers from selling news to non-members.

Justice Owen Roberts delivered a dissent joined by Chief Justice Harlan Stone, attacking the decision as an assault on freedom of the press, and Justice Frank Murphy wrote a separate dissenting opinion. The majority opinion had countered the First Amendment argument by stating that the decision worked as the precise opposite, that the Government was protecting free press by not allowing one organization to monopolize access to it.

Justice Robert Jackson was on leave to attend to his duties as chief American prosecutor for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

The Court also ruled 5 to 3, in Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, an opinion delivered by Justice William O. Douglas, that a deportation order of International Longshoremen's Union leader Harry Bridges was invalid, based on a misconstruction of the term "affiliated" with respect to the statute making it grounds for deportation that a person had been "affiliated" with an organization advocating the forceful overthrow of the United States Government, and because of an unfair hearing held to determine whether he had been a Communist. "Affiliation", said the Court, meant something less than membership but also more than mere sympathy with the organization; it required some effort to bring about the proscribed program of the proscribed organization, proof of which was lacking in the case.

Chief Justice Stone dissented, joined by Justice Roberts and Justice Felix Frankfurter.

This case was not the end of the matter. Mr. Bridges was successfully prosecuted for perjury in 1949 for stating at a hearing in September, 1945 on his application for citizenship that he was not a member of the Communist Party. The Supreme Court, however, would overturn the conviction in 1953 based on the prosecution having violated the three-year statute of limitations. One final attempt at deportation then failed in 1954.

Mr. Bridges, from Australia, after fighting the Government for two decades, was able to stay in the United States until his dying day in 1990.

President Truman was scheduled to leave Washington the following day for a pleasure trip to Olympia, Washington, before flying on to San Francisco on Friday, planning to address the United Nations Conference on Saturday, following adoption of the Charter.

On the editorial page, "Farm Miracles" finds it remarkable that for the fourth successive year the farms of North Carolina, despite low farm prices and scarce farm labor for the war, widespread illiteracy, and poor health, had broken production records. A large part of the credit was due the Agricultural Extension Service, in addition to the farmers themselves.

"A Question" discusses Charlotte's acceptance of a plan for veterans called "The Way Back", put forth by James T. Manchester of New York in a published booklet, suggesting the formation of a panel of experts, including ministers, doctors, guidance counselors, and so forth, with whom every returning veteran could meet and discuss his difficulties in readjusting to civilian life. The plan had been criticized by some psychiatrists, and few other cities had indicated any interest.

"Who's Guilty?" reacts to the theory of Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, that vengeance exacted against Germany and Japan would only corroborate the principles of hate set forth by Hitler, by finding it without sense. Dr. Hutchins said, in effect, that branding as bestial the acts of the Germans and Japanese would enable them in spirit to win, while embracing them after defeat would permit moral right to prevail.

Dr. Hutchins had made room for punishing individual war criminals, but not whole masses of the enemy, that Americans must not think of the Germans and Japanese as races of criminals, lest the mistakes of Hitler be repeated.

It finds the logic shallow, wondering from where all the masses of support for the war had come if not from the people and industrialists of each country, not only from the leaders. Who, it asks, kept the soldiers fighting so determinedly to the death?

It reminds that Japan had committed wanton aggression prior to Pearl Harbor, since the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, that Germany had been an aggressor also in World War I.

To accept the argument of Dr. Hutchins was to believe, contrary to human history, that whole masses of people could be forced to war and then to bestial deeds in the waging of it. "The argument, we believe, will not stick, and the people of Germany and Japan will bear guilt for this war as long as our memories endure."

It was not the way of it. Within a few years, the depredations of the war had, while not forgotten, been largely channeled into condemnation of warfare itself rather than condemnation of peoples.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds then Republican Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon supporting the continuation of the Office of Price Administration as a hedge against inflation. But he also refused to whitewash the agency's bungling, found it time for it to make clear what it would do to solve the nation's meat shortage, points out specifically problems with continued rationing of lamb with respect to his home state and the sheepmen's ability to earn a proper living out of controlled prices and rationed consumption.

Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky, the Majority Leader, responded that he was not attempting to whitewash anything—presumably not the lambs, but we cannot see all of what he may have said in that regard.

The editors present another table of North Carolina's standing among the states in certain economic and social indicia, this time stressing the health of its males. It found them faring poorly, with about half of the state's white males having been rejected from military service for being unable to meet physical requirements, and about 71 percent of its black males failing to meet the requisite standards. The tables covered the period February to August, 1943 and were skewed by changes subsequently in draft standards, as well as by the heavy black and rural populations of the state. It was also not clear whether some of the registrants were being rejected multiple times. Nevertheless, North Carolina was at the very bottom ranking among the states, and even marginal improvement based on adjustment of statistics would not make up enough ground to make the news bearable.

Drew Pearson discusses the saving of U.S.-Soviet relations by Harry Hopkins during his visit with Stalin in Moscow, resolving the impasse regarding veto of discussion of issues before the Security Council, as well as setting up the Moscow Conference of Polish leaders to structure a representative government in Poland. Before this rapprochement had been effected, relations had deteriorated quickly following President Roosevelt's death and an unbridgeable gulf appeared likely.

Prior to the talks, Secretary of State Stettinius and Undersecretary Joseph Grew had undertaken a note-writing effort to Stalin which had proved unworkable. Premier Stalin had refused to back down on Poland in the interests of Soviet security, stressing that he was willing only to compromise to put in place a government similar to that in Yugoslavia, which had already drawn heavy criticism from the State Department for being not enough representative of all factions per the agreement at Yalta in February. President Truman then decided to send Mr. Hopkins, who had accompanied President Roosevelt to Yalta, as his personal emissary.

The note-writing days had passed with the horse-and-buggy and the era of sailing ships; it was now the era of the airplane, and Mr. Stettinius relied too heavily on the old diplomats who still clung to the diplodocus methods.

Mr. Pearson notes, however, that there still lay ahead a showdown between the U.S. and the Soviets on Bulgaria.

He next relates of the report from Palmer Hoyt, editor of the Portland Oregonian, following his return from Okinawa and personally interviewing 200 captured Japanese Navy landing troops. He had found that the troops had been told by commanding officers that if they surrendered, they would be run over by American bulldozers.

But once they found that they were not going to be mistreated, their desire was to become United States citizens, as they knew they had no home to which to return in Japan. They were deemed dead by their fellow Japanese once captured. Thus, the solution to the problem of the Japanese fighting to the death was to convince them en masse somehow that they would not be treated badly upon surrender. Otherwise, it would be necessary to kill virtually all of them to achieve victory in any given campaign.

Finally, the column reports that the investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee into the original purchase of the Nashville Tennessean, against the poll tax and against Boss Ed Crump of Memphis, had run into some problems by having its budget reduced from $5,000 to $3,000 at the behest of Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois. The investigation was being pushed by Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee as a political vendetta against the newspaper for its stands.

Marquis Childs warns readers that they should brace themselves for a storm as the San Francisco Conference came to a close, that storm being in the United States Senate over ratification. Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana, leading isolationist before the war, was soon to return from a trip to Europe and the Middle East. Rumors had it that he had been collecting stories of atrocities against the French, British, and Russians to use as ammunition against ratification of the U. N. Charter.

One such story was that black French troops from North Africa had been encouraged to loot Stuttgart and assault its German citizens. Apparently, there was some truth to the story. He had also assembled facts with some truth behind them regarding Russian atrocities toward Germans in Eastern Europe.

Mr. Childs asserts the belief that Americans would, by and large, reject such stories of Senator Wheeler as impacting their belief in the necessity of a United Nations Organization, that in the nature of war against a cruel and ruthless enemy, cruel and ruthless acts would inevitably be perpetrated by the Allies.

Samuel Grafton finds in the new world organization out of the San Francisco Conference, set to conclude this week after nearly two months, greater hope than some who doubted the concept for the fact of the Security Council veto. Many naysayers were suggesting that the veto effectively nullified the interests of smaller nations and allowed the Big Five to control the post-war world, to lord over the smaller nations. The opinion to this effect had negatively impacted morale of the soldiers.

But the truth was that the smaller nations were voting within the conference on all issues and the fact of the veto was axiomatic to preservation of the peace. Otherwise, the new league would be no more than an organization of powers trying to resist war with one another rather than trying to establish a lasting peace. The fabric was built on a community of interests established during the war, an alliance which had set the smaller nations free. It was not built on mere words. It was not a league, as had been the old League of Nations, in search of a community of interests. The common ground had already been established during the war.

Moreover, it was nonsensical to assume that the Security Council majority will to use force against one of the Big Five, if the veto were not allowed to each of the Big Five, would mean that the major power against whom force was to be used would allow its own armed forces to participate in the use of force against itself. Yet, that was the logical consequence to the argument against the veto power.

So, for the sake of morale, Mr. Grafton believes it necessary to set the record straight on this critical issue. "It is an odd fact that the new world organization is a better kind of organization, morally, than some of our idealists will concede; and it is they, who pray for the moon with a fence around it, who turn out to be the men of little faith."

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>--</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.