The Charlotte News
Friday, June 29, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that another large raid of 500 B-29's had attacked Japan, hitting Sasebo, a shipbuilding center, with 3,000 tons of incendiary bombs. Shimonoseki on southern Honshu and Kanoya on southern Kyushu were also hit.
Another force of 150 Superfortresses hit an oil company facility at Fukuyama on Honshu this day, striking less than 24 hours after three ports on Kyushu and Okayama on Honshu had been hit.
The latest raids added to the 115 square miles already destroyed in the Japanese home islands.
Bee Ko.
The American Seventh Fleet had entered the Makassar Straits east of Borneo ten days earlier, the first time American ships had entered the straits since the battle in that area in January, 1942. A naval bombardment was ongoing.
Balikpapan had been hit with 2,300 tons of bombs during the previous two weeks, concentrating on enemy gun positions on Tokong Hill, overlooking Balikpapan Bay.
On Borneo, the Australian Ninth Army had advanced without opposition fifteen miles northeast up the coast toward Jesselton. Other Diggers moving southwest along the coast had joined with the contingent which had landed the previous week in the area of the Miri oilfields. Oil production on Tarakan Island was reported meanwhile to have resumed.
On Mindanao, the 24th Division captured ground near the head of the Davao River, taking some large enemy supply dumps.
Japan announced that it was planning to transfer its primary industries to Manchuria to avoid bombing raids.
On Luzon, some fighting continued as the Sixth Division advanced 400 yards toward a heavily defended Japanese base. The guerillas advanced also after resisting three Japanese banzai charges.
President Truman congratulated the troops on the victory on Luzon announced the previous day by General MacArthur.
The War Department announced that 4,000 soldiers would be furloughed for thirty days to work on American railroads, to enable their smooth functioning during redeployment of soldiers from the East Coast to the West Coast for transfer to the Pacific theater.
In Rheinbach, Germany, three German civilians were hanged at dawn by American Army executioners for killing an American airman after he had parachuted from his burning bomber on August 15, 1944. A fourth defendant was sentenced to death, but his sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment. The unknown airman had been shot, clubbed, and hammered to death. It was the first war crimes trial of any German civilians on German soil since the end of the war. Twenty hangings of Germans had already been carried out for war crimes.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Republican Senate representative to the American delegation in San Francisco, told the Senate that they must ratify the U. N. Charter as the "only collective chance" for peace into the future. While admitting that the document was not perfect, he had no hesitation in expressing his decision to vote in favor of it.
In New York, a 79-year old woman who had stabbed to death her 79-year old husband of 55 years was allowed to attend his funeral in the custody of her attorney.
A series of photographs on the page shows the type of leaflets being dropped over the Japanese positions in the islands, prepared by the Army Psychological Warfare Branch and the Office of War Information, urging surrender and assuring safe conduct and humane treatment in that event.
On the editorial page, "A New Tack" remarks that the country likely had breathed a sigh of relief at the news that Secretary of State Stettinius was being replaced. He had been heavily criticized since FDR had appointed him in November to succeed Cordell Hull.
But, the country also owed Mr. Stettinius a debt of gratitude for his performance at San Francisco in ironing out the many problems and achieving a Charter for the U.N. Shortcomings of the Charter were not his fault, as he steered the course under the direction of others. He had also bridged the gap between President Roosevelt and President Truman.
His likely successor, James Byrnes, had plenty of Washington experience and respect. Yet, he had not extensively handled foreign affairs and so would have to prove his capabilities in that realm. He had already, however, proved himself as an aide to President Roosevelt at Yalta in talking to both Churchill and Stalin.
Mr. Byrnes would likely have full authority over the Department whereas Mr. Stettinius gratefully took advice and orders.
The change signaled that President Truman did not wish to be his own Secretary of State as had his predecessor.
"An Obliging Man", for the second day in a row, examines Solicitor John Carpenter and his lack of suitability to his longstanding role as prosecutor in the judicial district. He was, says the piece, too kind hearted, more kind than just. He had responded to recent Grand Jury criticism of his not prosecuting drunk driving cases with sufficient diligence by being affable and then by increasing his tenacity in prosecution of those cases.
"Baffled Science" presents the stumpers to the Army, which had performed so well during the war in invention and creativity in weaponry and supply of soldiers.
A pigeon fancier had inquired whether the Army had developed a tube to hold in front of the
Another citizen proposed that different colored
In both cases, the Army scratched its head and confessed its lack of capability yet to develop these technological advances.
"Running Out" indicates that it was easy to assume that labor was always responsible for strikes when the truth was otherwise, especially in time of war. But when 100,000 workers across the nation were on strike at such a critical time, the justness of some of the strikes had to be questioned.
Yet, the War Labor Board had stated that the spate of strikes had come from victory in Europe, union rivalry, long-festering grievances being aired, and the consequently revived struggle for local union leadership.
The editorial asserts that these were not proper reasons, not relating to wages or working conditions, as long as the war against Japan remained to be won. The reasons were jurisdictional in nature and such complaints should await the end of the war.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois correcting Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming regarding his statement that Cordell Hull had been opposed to delegation of authority to the President to negotiate foreign trade treaties, saying that Mr. Hull had later changed his mind. Senator O'Mahoney agreed and asserted that Mr. Hull was a good man and a good Democrat. He then proceeded to quote Mr. Hull's statements to the Senate of 1932 when he was, himself, a Senator, opposing the Republican plan to allow the President to change tariffs.
Drew Pearson tells of the disclosure to a Senate committee by Assistant Secretary of State Will Clayton that some German companies were still operating in South America. The story left out the additional fact that some American businessmen were seeking to restore relations with German businesses through surreptitious contacts in Spain and Argentina. Their meetings were being tracked.
King Leopold of Belgium was seeking American and British aid to return home from Salzburg to resume his throne. The Belgians had threatened a general strike if Leopold returned and so the British had turned him down, explaining that all planes were under the control of Supreme Allied Headquarters. The British and American commanders at SHAEF, in the absence of General Eisenhower, across the Pond, then arranged to provide transportation to him as far as the Belgian border.
Finally, the column reports of Judge Roy Hofheinz of Houston having brought a wire-recorder, the new device for recording conversations, to the San Francisco Conference to take down everything verbatim. Many of the meetings he attended were supposed to be off the record and so he had been told by Michael McDermott not to use the recorder unless he had the permission of the participants. Mr. McDermott then found him recording Foreign Commissar Molotov during a meeting, approached and asked that Judge Hofheinz cease, at which point the Judge escorted Mr. McDermott to an aide of Commissar Molotov, who explained that the Commissar had provided his permission, was so taken with the new device that he had ordered one for himself.
Perhaps, can be used with rocket bomb.
Dorothy Thompson reports that within a few days, Supreme Allied Headquarters at Frankfurt would pass its authority to the Allied occupation government comprised of Big Four representatives, each operating in separate zones of Germany. Those zones had been fixed the previous Monday. The American zone would be headed by General Lucius Clay. The most immediate problems were transportation, communications, and food. No one was interested at present in preventing war industries because there was simply no capability for building any for months or years ahead. All materials and energy would go into the three immediate tasks at hand, on which basic survival depended.
The four military governors of the occupation zones had a formidable task ahead. It was hoped that they would each face it with the same resolve as General Clay.
Samuel Grafton discusses the emerging
In the British and American zones, by contrast, the policies were more one-dimensional, not permitting political activity or a German press, and prohibiting fraternization. Life in the West was at a standstill compared with the relative dynamism in the East.
"It is possible," he continues with foresight, "that the Russians intend to liquidate the German problem forever, merely by capitalizing on these differences, in a way which will split Germany, and keep it split."
The difference between the two Germanys could become manifested in hate and fear for each other because of the differences between the sectors.
Democratic alternatives to the Russian methods were necessary to avoid such results. Political activity should be allowed, to afford development, while ridding Germany of the old leadership under fascism. For the present, the Western sector of Germany was being frozen, not allowed to stew and develop, as in the East.
Marquis Childs tells of the V-weapons which Germany had on the drawing board at the end of the war, almost coming to be, weapons worthy of H. G. Wells. One was a stratospheric robot bomb which by November, 1945 could have reached New York and Washington with pinpoint accuracy—however doubtful that report actually was.
A British reporter informed that within a few years, robot bombs could be launched from Britain and reach Tokyo, 15,000 miles away.
American and British scientists were contending that had the Germans developed the V-2 with five times more thrust, it could have launched 200 miles into space and then obtain earth orbit to be directed downward via electronics to a chosen target.
Yet, that necessary additional thrust would not easily be achieved, either by the Americans or the Russians, finally taking until 1957 to achieve lower earth orbit.
The Germans had also boasted of atomic weapons, a claim which was not dismissed by Allied commanders as merely propaganda. The RAF had hit the experimental facility at Peenemunde, where these secret weapons were in development. Some 800 Nazi scientists were killed in the raids, setting back the V-bomb program by months. Had British intelligence not become aware of Peenemunde, Mr. Childs suggests, the outcome of the war might have been
A few more months of war, and atomic weaponry might have been within the grasp of Hitler to mount upon either an airplane or on a V-2. But, it inevitably would have come after the development of atomic weapons by the United States. What the outcome would have been no one may say, but it would have been anything but pleasant to begin exchanging atomic bombs with Nazi Germany.
"Sometimes, it seems, that the end of one war is a rehearsal for the next one. There was a little sporadic bombing against London and Paris in 1918. But the public and the professional soldiers did not take this air weapon seriously."
Even as General Hap Arnold had informed Congress that two million tons of bombs would be dropped on Japan within the coming year, many professional soldiers did not believe it, that is, until it was proved by cases.
Still, while man had been making weapons, according to Egyptologist James Breasted, for two million years, man's conscience had only been developing for about 5,000 years. Mr. Childs urges that man had to make up for that extensive gap quickly in this new age of rocket bombs, and atomic bombs to go with them.
"This, as has been said so often, may be our last chance."
And, the Reader's Digest provides a trio of vignettes:
A Cape Cod villager charged $1.50 for garbage collection for a month and a quarter for a week, explaining the differential, "The extra is fer bein' tied down."
A visitor to West Point inquired of the memorial to the Union dead of the Civil War, was told by a drawling cadet that it was not a slight to the Confederate dead but a tribute to Southern marksmanship.
A Pennsylvanian was entertaining Quaker neighbors at a
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