Saturday, July 7, 1945

The Charlotte News

Saturday, July 7, 1945

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 600 B-29's had struck five Japanese cities with 4,000 tons of incendiary bombs in night raids, striking a major oil refinery, an aluminum center, and an engineering works. The cities struck were Shimizu, site of an aluminum plant, Shimotsu, site of the Maruzen oil refinery, Akashi, site of the home factory for Kawasaki Aircraft, Kofu, and Chiba. No planes failed to return from the mission, as Japanese opposition was light with no fighter resistance. In the space of six days, four raids had dropped 11,000 tons of bombs.

The bombing raids had destroyed 126 square miles of territory within Japanese cities, an increase of nine square miles since the last statement, including five square miles in recent raids on Kure, Himeji, Kumamoto, and Ube on Honshu, as well as Kochi on Shikoku.

Lt. General Roy Geiger, newly appointed commander of the Marines in the Pacific, stated that the Japanese home islands were ripe for the taking and that American troops could land at will with little resistance. He asserted that only such an invasion by land could lead to victory. He declared that the Japanese fighting soldier was at heart a coward with an inferiority complex. They had not either the stamina or the brains of the American soldier, he further explained. They simply committed suicide whenever the going got tough.

General Joseph Stilwell, newly appointed commander of the Tenth Army, replacing General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., killed June 18 on Okinawa, stated that the invasion of Japan would be long and hard, just as it had been on Okinawa, taking three months to achieve victory. He pointed out that the terrain of Japan was similar to that of Okinawa. Even after victory in the home islands, a Japanese Army of four million men remained in Manchuria to be defeated.

The Australians moved toward the richest oilfields on Borneo following a five-day campaign which ended in the capture of Balikpapan on Thursday. Retreating Japanese faced headhunters and venomous snakes in the jungle interior.

During the entire Borneo campaign, Australian losses thus far were 214 killed, 420 wounded, and 22 missing. The Japanese had suffered 3,031 killed and 274 captured.

The Soviets maintained tight control over Berlin as the Allies sought to work out boundary issues and food distribution. No occupation district had yet been taken over from the Russians by any of the other Big Four Allies. Supposedly, the Americans and British had occupied their zones on July 4, but the occupation thus far was only pro forma. American officers wondered aloud as to how the division of Berlin could have been so haphazardly arranged.

Lt. General Alexander Patch, commander of the Seventh Army after the invasion of France, had been reassigned to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to take over the Fourth Army for training purposes.

Prime Minister Churchill and Mrs. Churchill departed London, following the end of the political campaign and the election on Thursday, headed for southern France. He planned to spend a few days there before heading to the Potsdam Conference, slated to begin July 16.

Fred Vinson was designated by President Truman to succeed Henry Morgenthau as Secretary of the Treasury, though his formal appointment would be delayed until after Potsdam. It was uncertain who would succeed Judge Vinson as War Mobilizer. Judge Vinson had been Economic Stabilizer and Federal Loan Administrator before becoming War Mobilizer, a post he had held only since April 7, shortly after James Byrnes had resigned from the post, and five days before the death of President Roosevelt.

The White House announced that President Truman and new Secretary of State James Byrnes would go to Potsdam in separate planes because Mr. Byrnes was the present immediate successor to the presidency should anything happen to Mr. Truman.

Beginning Monday, reports the page, The News would publish a series of articles based on the personal notebook of Hermann Goering, covering the years 1938-42. The notebook was found among Goering's personal effects, was in his handwriting, relating of personal impressions of meetings with the highest ranking personnel of the German military and political apparati.

He wrote of aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War, from 1936-39, of Germany's unpreparedness for war following Munich in September, 1938, the plight of Czechoslovakia after Munich, relations with Britain, Poland, and other countries, problems with the Jews caused by the Nuernberg laws, negotiations with Russia in December, 1939 when Germany already had plans to attack the Soviet Union, plans to enable Germans to fight after the war, decline of the Luftwaffe, and the development of ersatz materials to substitute for shortages.

That a substantial portion of the front page was taken up with a preview of this series suggests the lull before the final storm in war news in these days following the San Francisco Conference.

The Office of Defense Transportation transferred 895 sleeping cars from civilian to military use to accommodate the vast number of soldiers being redeployed from the East Coast to the West Coast for transfer to the Pacific. The soldiers had complained of poor and overcrowded conditions on the trains.

A photograph appears of a chalk-written sign on the side of a railroad car: "Germans ride in class." The other part is not discernible, maybe something about the Americans riding in the bus.

On the editorial page, "A New Government" looks at the new Cabinet shaping up under President Truman. He was not surrounding himself with new faces, having replaced Edward Stettinius with James Byrnes and Henry Morgenthau with Fred Vinson. But it was a new Cabinet, with the exceptions of Harold Ickes and Henry Wallace—both of whom would leave the following year.

The resignation of Justice Owen Roberts from the Supreme Court was also noteworthy. Justice Roberts had been increasingly a dissenter, having aligned himself, albeit not uniformly, with the anti-New Deal part of the Court in the early years of the Roosevelt Administration. President Truman, by selecting as his replacement a jurist friendly to the New Deal, could considerably alter the balance of the Court.

Should, as rumored, Chief Justice Stone resign as well, it would permit the President to pack the Court ideologically. As indicated, the Chief Justice would not resign but would die the ensuing April 22.

The piece concludes that the new President was following his own course and had staked out territory indicating him as able and resourceful.

"To the Very End" predicts that, based on prior experience with the Japanese, they would fight to the bitter end, preferring death by banzai and kamikaze methods to surrender. They had fought thusly on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And so it was fairly predictive of the rest of the war, that they would fight on even in the face of American invasion until Japan was wholly destroyed.

It would not take the invasion. Thirty days from this date, the first of the two atomic bombs to be dropped would hit Hiroshima, following the successful test of the device in the New Mexico desert just nine days hence.

The atmosphere did not explode, as the physicists thought it theoretically possible after a chain reaction would be established. Or, did it? Are we all living in some other realm of existence? One never knows.

"Choice of Weapons" finds some level of agreement with Congressman Joe Ervin, Sam Ervin's brother, regarding his dedicated opposition to the bill to make permanent the Fair Employment Practices Committee, devoted to equal opportunity and equal pay regardless of race, color, or religion. He had taken the tack of labeling the bill conducive to Communists and aliens who would claim discrimination in employment, and that it would bolster the power of bureaucrats in Washington, appeals which had gained favor in the rural North and West. He refused to make argument on color lines.

The editorial again, as the column had the previous week, finds the method of argument by Mr. Ervin wanting, but agrees insofar as the notion that the FEPC would not accomplish its enunciated goals and would inevitably make matters worse in the South. Mr. Ervin, it comments, was, however, consistent in his insistence on fiscal responsibility, having also voted against the $2,500 expense allowance for Congressmen and the $750,000,000 salary increase for Federal employees.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Clare Hoffman of Michigan wondering whether the Office of Price Administration would be altered in any manner which would alleviate the strict price controls which had made the cultivation and marketing of berries and fruits in his home state nearly pointless for the low profits achievable, sometimes as low as 6 cents per pound on fruit.

Congressman John McCormack of Massachusetts took exception to Mr. Hoffman's earlier remark, that the people in the cities were living the life of Riley. After some testy exchange, Mr. McCormack continued that he thought it regrettable that anyone from the country would attack those in the city or that anyone in the city would attack those from the country.

Drew Pearson reports that Secretary of State James Byrnes would not make any changes within the State Department until after the Potsdam Conference.

One of the issues to be resolved at Potsdam was the treatment of Franco in Spain. The State Department had previously shown tenderness toward Franco, even going so far as to convince Latin American countries, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Costa Rica, that they should refrain from their determinations to break relations with Franco and Spain. At San Francisco, however, the anti-Franco sentiment had grown so great that a declaration was made renouncing Franco to his fate—to continue to be El Caudillo until his death in 1975.

Mr. Pearson next turns to the chicken black market, leaving such a shortage of poultry in the country in regular channels of commerce that hospitals were going without more than small amounts of chicken. Chickens had become a racket, the new bootlegging.

—Hey, Mack. I'll trade you three thousand Rhode Island Reds for a thousand Wyandottes and two thousand Rocks. What d'ye say? Prime breeders, the lot of 'em.

Dorothy Thompson, writing from Paris, suggests that if psychological factors were more important than charters for peace organizations within the liberated countries, then the United States was heading for worse relations with the French than before liberation. Most of the French regarded the Americans as conquerors, even herrenvolk. The French were hungry, had been for five straight winters, four of them under Nazi occupation. Transportation was scarce. In Paris, the Americans and British forces had all of the taxis.

All of the indicators pointed to a mass uprising of the hungry. The people had plentiful weapons and the great problems beset even the salaried middle class, sine qua non for a successful revolution.

The Americans were not interacting with the French and the result was a sense of mutual distrust. Even the American officers did not fraternize with the French officers. Recently, an American sergeant kicked three French officers out of a bar in a hotel requisitioned by the Americans, as only British and American officers were admitted. The incident underscored the stupidity with which Allied relations were being conducted. The French were being treated as the Germans within their own capital city.

American officers frequented the black market restaurants, to the consternation of the left-wing French, who were seeking to curb the black market and its tendency to encourage inflation and shortage.

The occupation forces appeared to the French to have plentiful supplies. The Americans had requisitioned hotels, villas, and apartments as living quarters.

Marquis Childs discusses the determination of a special committee on April 26 formed in the Executive Branch to study the form which post-war Germany would take. They had adopted many of the measures recommended by Henry Morgenthau, advocating complete de-industrialization, but recommended leaving in place the chemical cartels while the heavy industry, such as steel, would be broken apart.

Thus far, the report itself remained hidden from public view. The Army wished it to be made public to obviate the criticism that the Government had no policy in place with respect to Germany and thus intended to allow the large industrialists again to take over Germany. But the report had been maintained in secret because the Big Four had not yet agreed on a policy. It was due to be worked out at the Potsdam Conference.

The coordination of the four zones of occupation would be difficult because of the scattered resources between the zones. Most of the food was in the Russian sector; most of the industry and shipping, in the British and American zones; and most of the coal and iron, in the French zone. The Russians were being more lenient toward the Germans in their zone than were the British and Americans.

Many Americans believed that by splitting Germany into four zones, it was being made more difficult to achieve a sensibly coordinated approach to governance. Others believed that the Big Four could discuss their differences and achieve an amicable resolution.

If a central approach could not be agreed upon, then President Truman most likely would implement American policy in the American zone and proceed. But it would not portend a good result for the future of Europe or the world.

Samuel Grafton discusses President Truman being a party man—no, not that kind—and not an ideologue, that his appointments had been strictly on a partisan basis, something which actually appealed to Republicans for its predictability. They did not appreciate having a President who appointed some of their party on an ideological basis while leaving others aside.

Of course, President Truman would shortly foil this notion by appointing Republican Senator Harold Burton of Ohio to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Owen Roberts who had announced his resignation the previous day.

Conservatives were resigned to the fact that President Truman was not going to try to repeal any New Deal legislation. He was not the easy personal target that President Roosevelt had been. The Conservatives had dreamed that a neutral administration following Roosevelt would engage in renewed wholesale slaughter of chickens, that is, revision of the laws to eliminate the New Deal. It was not going to be and the Conservatives did not quite know how to respond.

Indeed, the Truman Administration embodied a new type of American conservatism, embracing the New Deal, then moving on. It was a synthesis which made the older conservatism appear narrow and ancient.

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