The Charlotte News
Saturday, June 9, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the First Marines had driven 1,600 yards the previous day to the west coast of Okinawa to seal off the only possible means of escape for the enemy in the vicinity of Naha Airfield on Oroku Peninsula. The Sixth Marines also continued pressure on the three-square mile trap.
The 84th Regiment of the Seventh Infantry Division advanced southwest toward Hanagusuku. The 184th Regiment overran a stone fortification in a parallel flanking maneuver utilizing grenades and flamethrowers. The Japanese were pinned along the 450-foot Yaeju-Dake escarpment and were in an apparently hopeless position.
Admiral Nimitz reported that the Japanese had resumed their kamikaze raids on American shipping on Wednesday and Thursday, damaging two small ships. Sixty-seven Japanese planes were shot down.
A map on the inside page shows the potential for bombing initiated from the newly acquired Naha Airfield on Okinawa, allowing for much shorter runs to Japan, eastern China and Formosa, as well as Korea.
About 100 to 150 B-29's attacked Akashi, Naruo, Nagoya, and the Kobe-Osaka area of Japan this date, followed on by a raid of about 50 Mustangs.
Tokyo radio indicated that Allied troops had landed Friday on Labuan, an island off the coast of Borneo.
On Mindanao, the 24th Infantry Division drove to within 4,200 yards of Baguio. The 31st Division fought to within two miles of Silac, east of Malaybalay, where other troops expanded their bridgehead across the Pulangi River.
The Diet in Japan conveyed virtually all of its powers to Premier Suzuki, who assured them that Japan had no choice but to fight to the end; for unconditional surrender meant the death of all of Japan's 100 million people at the hands of the enemy.
In China, the Chinese had captured Szelo, 22 miles northeast of the Indo-China frontier and 120 miles from Hanoi, as well as another town on the border, Chungchingfu, in Kwangsi Province. The Chinese also threatened Mingkian, 30 miles from the border, and local militia troops had attacked Lungchow, 12 miles from the border. Other contingents repulsed four Japanese counter-attacks from Ishan on the Kwangsi-Kweichow railroad, 43 miles west of Liuchow, along the main escape route for the enemy forces at Ishan.
No sooner than Hitler had been confirmed dead by the putative finding of his corpse identified by teeth, as reported earlier in the week, correspondent Eddie Gilmore reports that Marshal Gregory Zhukov had announced lack of confirmation of the death of Hitler and that it was possible he and Eva Braun had fled, shortly after their marriage on April 30, in an airplane via an airfield at their disposal in northwest Berlin, two days before the city had fallen. Even the death of Herr Doktor Goebbels had not been confirmed, he said, the Russians not being certain that the bodies they had found beneath the Propaganda Ministry were those of Goebbels and his wife, Magda. The story had been circulated that they had shot themselves after poisoning their children, but Zhukov would not confirm the account.
Eddie Gilmore also reports as one of the first American correspondents allowed to view the ruins of Berlin, finds it in worse condition than London after the Blitz, Warsaw, or even Stalingrad, each of which cities he had seen after their ruinous battles.
Fully 45 percent of the buildings in the capital were damaged beyond repair. Yet, Berliners sang in the cabarets and nightclubs a song titled, "Berlin Will Rise Again".
For now, after 65,000 tons of Allied bombing during the war and another 40,000 tons of Russian artillery shells lobbed at it in eight days, Berlin was recognizable only as a heap of twisted and battered ruins, with the heavy hanging stench of death still pervading its air.
The Army announced its intention to retain as laborers 600,000 of the 2.8 million German prisoners of war held by the Americans. Some 200,000 prisoners would be transferred to France for labor details.
Pending a peace conference, Marshal Tito agreed with the United States and Britain to withdraw his troops from the Adriatic-Austria occupation zone. Control of the Venezia Gotha Province was provided to Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander.
Ambassador Ed Pauley, the American representative on the Allied Reparations Commission, announced that Germany should be stripped of any capability to make war. All equipment and industry capable of being so utilized had to be removed from the country. It sounded as a somewhat modified version of the so-called Morgenthau Plan, put forth during the previous fall by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, labeled by some as a Carthaginian Peace, a plan said to have been initially favored by President Roosevelt, somewhat modified in consultation with the new State Department, and now being once again favored by President Truman.
In San Francisco, the U. N. Charter Conference moved closer to conclusion, setting June 20 as the goal for completing business, as the issue of trusteeships was practically resolved the night before. The only exception had been one raised by the Philippines, that the goal of independence be stated for all colonial peoples rather than for just those living under trusteeships. The British and French, however, opposed this formula, desiring instead "self-government" as a goal for colonial peoples. The other Big Five members had voiced support for this latter position.
The new plan adopted would apply to the old League of Nations mandates as well as those territories captured from the Axis in the present war.
Whether an island or territory would become trusteed would be voluntary on the part of the nation to become the trustee. A council, consisting of the nations holding trusteeships plus an equal number of nations who would not, would be formed to oversee the trusteeships. All members of the Big Five would be on the council, regardless of whether they were trustee nations.
There would be two types of trusteeships, strategic and non-strategic, the former allowed to have military bases established by the trustee nation.
Whether the goal of each trusteed territory would be self-government or independence would depend on the particular territory and its circumstances, as well as the desires of its people.
On the editorial page, "Veteran's Man" discusses the appointment of General Omar Bradley to head the Veterans Administration. The example of U. S. Grant came to mind as the bungling, inept former general stepping out of his accustomed military element to try to become an administrator and miserably failing the task.
But in the case of General Bradley, there was no cause to believe that he would follow in that dismal lineage of plentiful such examples. General Bradley had the reputation of being the G.I.'s general, someone close to the fighting men he had commanded. It was reassuring that he would now lead the V. A.
General Bradley, in 1949, would be appointed by President Truman to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"The Price Tag" tells of Senator Millard Tydings having visited the Philippines and brought back a report of its sorry state after three years of Japanese occupation. It was economically depressed and physically wrecked, would need considerable American aid to get back onto its feet. But many Americans would, no doubt, resist providing such aid.
The grant of independence, to become final in October, had not been performed altruistically but rather out of economic concerns by the sugar industry of the country, alarmed at the 36% portion of the American sugar production which came from the Philippines duty-free. When the islands would become independent of the United States, they would have to pay duties as all other importing nations, and thus would become less competitive with other American sugar production.
There had also been concern in the West regarding cheap Filipino labor. For this concern, Filipinos had been declared aliens since 1934. Independence meant the necessity of immigration.
"Meet the UDC" remarks on the United Democrats Club of Mecklenburg County, an organization presumably formed, says the piece, to unite politics among Democrats, locally, statewide, and nationally, to provide a conservative to moderate force on Democratic policies, and to take an active role in county politics.
The piece finds it wholly acceptable that a group would so form to shape policy without an axe to grind, but finds also that it usually was the case that such a group would not for long remain together.
"An Epidemic" explains that the War Labor Board directive establishing higher minimum wages for 23 textile mills had spread to other mills throughout the South, volunteering to be included in the wage increase. It was good to see improvement of an industry whose wages were notoriously low. The manner in which it was accomplished was not so important as the fact of its being so.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator William Langer of North Dakota questioning why it was that the Government had entered into a contract with a private sanitarium in Portland, Oregon, to care for the insane of Alaska.
Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona answers that the reason was that the cost of transportation to Oregon was less than the cost of care in Alaska, given the expense of shipping supplies and furnishing doctors so far to the north.
Senator Langer asked the Senator whether he knew how the Federal criminal inmates of Alaska were being housed, to which Senator Hayden expressed the belief that they were being sent to McNeil Island in Washington. Senator Langer responded that it was not the case, that such prisoners also were being shipped to Oregon.
Senator Guy Cordon of Oregon asked Senator Langer whether he meant to imply that Oregon specialized in such housing of mental patients and convicted criminals from Alaska, and then informed him that Oregon did not have a Federal penitentiary.
Drew Pearson devotes most of his column to Col. Jock Whitney, the husband of the former wife of James Roosevelt, son of the late President. Col. Whitney, while in a German prisoner of war camp, was quoted by a Nazi propaganda radio broadcast as having criticized FDR to a German posing as a British officer, ostensibly imprisoned with Col. Whitney.
Eventually, Col. Whitney had escaped the prison camp and had written Mr. Pearson explaining that he had not criticized the President, that the entire matter had been manufactured as a propaganda stunt by the Nazis.
Mr. Pearson reprints the whole of the letter and the transcript of the Nazi broadcast of November 3, 1944, which had sought to use the incident to show that politics permeated the United States Army. It claimed the conversation had been recorded on August 13.
The colonel denied providing his identity to the Germans for fear that they would exploit his connection to the Roosevelt family, and also denied that he could have been recorded, as the Germans kept on the move throughout his detention.
The report contended that he had criticized the President for ordering a change in strategy on August 20, directing that the First Army not continue as planned to cross the Seine from Vernon in France, in the expectation of cutting off nine German divisions, a maneuver which was supposed to have caused German resistance on the northern flank to collapse, opening the way through Belgium into Holland.
Instead, continued the report, the President, according to Colonel Whitney, had ordered that the focal point of the thrust be changed to the right flank so as to encircle Paris from the south, causing a costly ten-day delay.
The broadcast contended that the colonel had claimed that the change had been ordered for political reasons, implying that it was deliberately to prolong the war through the election.
Mr. Pearson next turns to a few odds and ends, stating, among other things, that the veterans had not forgotten how Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi had sought to quiet the investigation into the Veterans Administration. Resentment was increasing against him even in Mississippi. Mr. Rankin had criticized an article which had appeared in Cosmopolitan by Albert Maisel, revealing problems in the V.A., by informing his fellow Congressmen that the article's author was Jewish.
The column also relates that the fighting men back from the Pacific had stated that after word had reached them of the death of the President on April 12, they had not been able to fight for a couple of days. The spirit had left them.
Samuel Grafton states that the San Francisco Conference had dashed the naive belief held by Americans that the new world organization would be able to replace all traditional means of foreign policy of individual nations and afford quick and easy solutions to achieve peace. That hope had been thoroughly knocked down by the various wrangling at the conference.
It was now plain that the world would have to muddle through each situation on an ad hoc basis, with nearly as much difficulty as it ever had. That was not to suggest that the world organization would not be effective or that the charter being formed was not a good one. It was only to say that the world was too complex for any single organization to be able to create all of the machinery necessary to maintain the peace. Foreign ministries and diplomats would still have their roles as before.
Dorothy Thompson, writing from somewhere in Bavaria, continues to explain the lack of cohesive economic and political administration operating within occupied Germany. There were an estimated ten million displaced persons who were loosely under the control of self-appointed leaders of makeshift camps or as voluntary slave laborers. Many were living as gypsies, certain of bed and board, but wandering about, killing game and living off the land.
It was forbidden to engage in any political activity in Germany, even that which would denounce Nazis. The reason for the suppression was the fear of Communist activity. But both the Nazis and the Communists knew how to organize despite such tactics. Priests had reported to Ms. Thompson that the Nazis continued to hold secret meetings with impunity. These groups would eventually emerge under some new banner and form.
Nazi-appointed police officials were being maintained in their positions. The former local Nazi officials, Landrats, were being ousted but without any systematic procedure for their replacement, usually reliant for replacement on the recommendations of former Nazis or collaborators.
The problem with the disorganization in the military governments lay in the top ranks, not in the majors and captains below, who were merely executing orders.
Marquis Childs discusses the terrible cost of the war in lives and injuries. In addition to those killed in combat in the Army, 55,000 had been killed in non-combat related incidents, either from training accidents or disease. The number amounted to the equivalent of nearly a third of the total Army combat deaths, 178,000. Those hospitalized for disease had been estimated at 825,000. In the Navy, 10,667 had died in non-combat related incidents, equivalent to nearly a quarter of the 43,000 Navy dead from combat.
A young Marine lieutenant, Cord Meyer, Jr., had fought in all the major Pacific battles, receiving severe wounds, had recently spoken in Washington anent the courage shown by his fellow troops in combat situations, many continuing to fight though wounded. Mr. Childs quotes Lieutenant Meyer at some length on the topic:
"For a generation brought up in the moral and intellectual confusion of the 20's and 30's, the men who have defended us and brought us so far on the road to victory have performed what is almost a miracle. With no clear idea of why they fight beyond the negative necessity of defense, with little hope or belief in the future because they have been given none, they have been willing to endure extreme hardships for years on end, and have proved themselves as brave and steadfast in the face of death as their religiously fanatical opponents.
"I wish I could make clear to you the quality of their courage. Again and again they have assaulted beaches where each time they knew that more than half of their number would become casualties, and from which they knew that more than half of their number would never return. I have seen men really seriously wounded who have refused to leave the fight when it was possible. I had a sergeant shot through the arm and stomach who continued to lead his squad until he could no longer stand from loss of blood. Others never told me of their wounds until it was over, fearing that they would be ordered to the rear. One could not have asked for braver, better men, and indeed they had to be, for they often achieved the seemingly impossible."
Because of his wounds, Lieutenant Meyer was restricted to limited duty and was serving now as an aide to Commander Harold Stassen, former Minnesota Governor and Republican hopeful for the 1948 presidential nomination, as Commander Stassen participated as a delegate at the San Francisco Conference. Lieutenant Meyer wanted to devote all of his time and energy in prevention of the future recurrence of any world war.
Mr. Childs concludes that the war must not seem to have been easily won. It had not been. The cost had been high and the consequences tragic, something which must not be lost to memory.
As to Lieutenant Meyer, who had lost an eye in combat, he would go on to become an agent for the CIA, beginning in 1951, eventually, from 1954 to 1962, becoming head of the Agency's International Orgnizations Division and then head of the Covert Action Staff within the Directorate of Plans until 1967, then, through 1973, Assistant Deputy Director of Plans, finally becoming station chief in London, retiring from the Agency in 1977.
Mr. Meyer was implicated by Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt in 2005 as having been the ringleader of the plot to assassinate President Kennedy, a plot in which, stated Mr. Hunt, he, himself, had been sought for participation, but wound up only a "bench-warmer". Mr. Hunt contended that the plot originated with Vice-President Johnson and involved the omnipresent fellow Watergate burglar Frank
Cord Meyer's former wife, whom he had married April 19, 1945 and from whom he had been divorced since 1959, was murdered in 1964 in Washington. Because she had supposedly had an affair with President Kennedy, Mr. Meyer, in 2001, not long before his own death, stated that he believed the same people who killed his wife had killed the President.
Whether any of Mr. Hunt's imputations of criminal conspiracy or infidelity, beyond the basic facts of death and suspicion, have any grain of truth is left to the reader to descry.
But anyone who thinks Lyndon Johnson had President Kennedy killed needs to think that premise through very carefully before latching onto it.
The other key fellow in Dallas that day, however, is not such a far-fetched candidate as an unindicted co-conspirator.
A lot of it may read as fiction, but then, step back from it a moment and pretend you never heard it, and so, too, does the official version of the story.
It had been, incidentally, just one week earlier, on June 2, that Special Agent Guy Banister of the FBI had dated a memo sent to Director J. Edgar Hoover regarding a report that President Roosevelt had been diagnosed in the fall with prostate cancer and would not live more than a year, as well as indicating rumors that the President's mind was so impacted by his illness that commitments made at Yalta had become confused, resulting in the problems occurring with the Russians since the President's death, presumably referring primarily to the issues arising at the San Francisco Conference, now resolved during the prior week, and the lingering issue of how Poland would be governed, as well as the initially restricted access to Berlin, Vienna, and other Soviet occupation zones, also gradually becoming resolved—principally, it would appear, by means of the experienced guiding hands of former Ambassador to Russia Joseph Davies in London and former Roosevelt surrogate Harry Hopkins in Moscow.
As we commented in May, the Kentucky Derby was postponed until this date because of the cancellation of the winter horse racing season to conserve gas and rubber, performed in January at the request of former War Mobilizer James Byrnes. When finally run, the event was won by Hoop, Jr.
The 2012 Derby and Preakness were won by I'll Have Another. The horse unfortunately had to scratch for todays's running of the Belmont, won by
As to the latter, once again, had we followed our own train of thought from May, we might be rich today. We hope you benefited from it. We did not.
The 1945 Preakness and Belmont Stakes would be run on the next two successive Saturdays in June. Place your bets, while there is still time
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