The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 25, 1945
SIX EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the occupation troops, the first wave of which would number 17,500, would be delayed for a typhoon by two days, until Thursday. The first transport plane of advance troops would thus not land at Atsugi airfield until Tuesday instead of Sunday. The Third and Fifth Fleets were already in the vicinity of Japan, ready to land an additional 10,000 American and British Marines and sailors at Yokosuki in Tokyo Bay, while 7,500 airborne troops would be deployed at Atsugi. The Third Fleet consisted now of a thousand ships ready to enter Tokyo Bay.
The articles of surrender were now to be signed September 2 onboard the U.S.S. Missouri, also postponed two days.
Both forces were armed and ready to meet any contingency. Japanese broadcasts reported unrest and widespread hara-kiri taking place in front of the Imperial Palace at the prospect of occupation. According to the broadcast, the atmosphere was "dark and gloomy", with the Japanese people unable to accept defeat. Homes were leaking with rain, no baths were available, and transportation was in a confused state.
The typhoon had hit in two waves, one on Wednesday, which hit the area of Tokyo including Atsugi, and the second in the area of Okinawa. Another typhoon was reported in the South China Sea, 90 miles southeast of Hong Kong.
The Tokyo broadcast stated that the typhoon had devastated the Japanese gardens.
A rumor was broadcast by NBC radio that Emperor Hirohito had committed hara-kiri. The rumor had come from an irregular source.
Admiral Halsey had his silver-trimmed saddle which he had received from citizens of Reno, that he might use it to ride the Emperor's White Horse, brought aboard the Missouri. Admiral Halsey had stated his hope to ride the horse through the streets of Tokyo.
Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of the Fifth Fleet, held a press conference at which he questioned the retention by America of the Ryukyus, including Okinawa, that it promised to be a source of irritation to the Japanese, as it blockaded the Japanese coast. America already, he said, had otherwise an adequate arc of island bases, including Iwo Jima, and Okinawa was therefore not essential.
In China, Central Government troops had crossed the Yangtze and entered Nanking, where the formal surrender of Japanese forces in China would take place. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek intended to re-establish the capital at Nanking, 750 miles from the provisional capital at Chungking. A puppet government under the control of the Japanese had been set up in Nanking during the war.
Nanking, along with Shanghai, were the primary goals for the competing forces of Chiang and Mao Tse Tung in the race to obtain Japanese surrender and control of munitions. General Chu Teh stated that his Red Chinese troops were making day and night forced marches to get to Shanghai ahead of the forces of Chiang.
Three of the airmen who had participated in the raid on Tokyo, led by Jimmy Doolittle on April 18, 1942, and had been subsequently caught and interned by the Japanese, returned to Peiping. Each expressed thanks for American food. The fliers were Lt. Chase Nielsen of Hyrum, Utah; Lt. Robert Hite of Earth, Texas; and Sgt. Jacob Deshazer, formerly of Madras, Oregon. Another flier, Lt. George Barr, formerly of Queens, N.Y., was found with the men but had been left behind in the care of the rescue team as he suffered from beri-beri.
Two of the crewmen served on one of the two planes, and had bailed over free China after running out of fuel, were captured by Japanese troops disguised as Chinese. Lt. Nielsen's plane had crash-landed at sea. After the life raft failed to work, he and the other survivors swam four hours to land, staggered onto shore and collapsed, awoke to find vultures peering down from a rock overhead.
Vice-Admiral Willis Lee, Jr., who had commanded a 1942 Navy task force which sunk a Japanese battleship and three cruisers, died in Portland, Maine, of heart disease at age 57. At the time, he was on a special assignment, the nature of which was maintained as secret. He had served in the Pacific through the summer of 1944 and was involved in the First Battle of the Philippine Sea in June.
The Federal Housing Administration announced that it was ready to resume its pre-war mortgage insurance program, suspended for the duration.
The OPA announced that washing machines were starting to be produced, but manufacturers were seeking 15 percent more than in May, 1942. OPA wanted prices maintained at no more than 5.2% above the former price at time of suspension of manufacture.
A hurricane moving ten to twelve miles per hour, with winds up to 90 mph, was expected to strike the Texas coast between Port O'Connor and Freeport sometime Sunday morning. The storm would likely impact the coasts of both Texas and Louisiana.
Batten the hatches.
Just south of Aberdeen, N.C., 25 persons were injured when the Robert E. Lee, a fast train
We caution again: be careful how they run
On the editorial page, "Survivor" permits us to quote, verbatim, an entire editorial for once: "Ickes stickes."
Somebody may have been into the sourmash now that the war was over
"Whitewash?" comments on the new session beginning of the State Board of Elections during which it intended to investigate further the charges of fraud and forgery at the ballot boxes of Davidson County in the previous fall election. The matter had been investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation which supported the original findings of the Board. Then the matter was handed to the Grand Jury by the Governor without recommendation, and the Grand Jury quickly determined that there was no evidence warranting charges.
The matter smacked of a whitewashing, says the piece, and it trusted that the Board of Elections would get to the bottom of it.
"A Question" again addresses, as earlier in the week, the case of a black man who had been arrested for breaking into a black home and assaulting an eight-year old girl before being chased away by her mother wielding a hammer.
After hearing the evidence of the prosecution, the court had reduced the sexual assault charge to assault with intent to commit rape. The more serious charge had carried the death penalty.
The case was tried within four days of the commission of the crime on the previous Sunday—for which the criminal defense attorney probably should have received the death penalty. But we shall let that pass.
The defendant was convicted and sentenced to 14 to 15 years.
The law appeared to have worked as well as with a white defendant or victim. The piece wonders, however, whether the reduction of the charge resulted from the prosecution or police being inept.
It may have been just the rush to judgment. No one can obtain a fair hearing, neither the state nor the defendant, within four days after a crime has been committed, even a minor crime, let alone a serious felony.
"Sweet Talker" discusses Sir Oliver Lyttleton of Great Britain, former head of the Board of Trade, who had told Commons that Britain could not endure economically without the aid from the United States, Lend-Lease having been abruptly stopped during the week. He had, however, cautioned the House about loose talk critical of the American system.
The editorial has some fun mocking the gesture.
"Hospital Room" recommends to the State Hospitals Board of Control that it take charge of abandoned Camp Sutton as a place for housing some of the feeble-minded children of the state, unable to get into the overcrowded institutions, such as the Caswell Training School.
"The Gamblers" comments on the practice of betting openly at American Legion baseball games, despite the fact that the players were amateur youngsters.
When the Junior World Series would be held, however, at Griffith Park the following week, the police chief and a coterie of officers would be on hand to keep watch on the practice. The editorial suggests that such surveillance might at least drive some of the gambling underground.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire urging that there be no delay of the vote on the proposed ratification of the International Monetary Fund. He argues that only one of twelve Federal Reserve Banks in the country, that in New York, had expressed a desire for the delay.
He then lists several banking associations and other groups who had urged that the vote be taken forthwith. "Do it now," was the collective sentiment.
Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox Studios, substitutes for vacationing Drew Pearson, discusses Germany, based on observations he had made during a recent visit at the invitation of the Psychological Warfare Section of the War Department, found it a nation lacking a conscience. He had been sent, along with other film studio executives, to study what the war had done psychologically, physically, and spiritually to the German people. They had talked to many, found none who expressed any shame or guilt about the war.
Mr. Zanuck had spoken in Frankfurt with Pastor Martin Niemoeller, who had been imprisoned by the Nazis during the war, and with Max Schmeling, the heavyweight boxer who had lost to Joe Louis in 1938 and was now tending a tavern in Hamburg.
Pastor Niemoeller, though he had been a bitter opponent of Nazism from his pulpit, had, at the start of the war, offered his services as a U-boat commander, having been one in World War I. Mr. Zanuck had questioned how he could have reconciled that position with his anti-Nazi feeling. He explained that he served two masters, his conscience in having been a part of a country which permitted Hitler to come to power, but also his country to which he felt intense loyalty. His guilt went no further than allowing Hitler to come to power. He remained anti-Nazi but firmly German in his patriotism.
Mr. Zanuck wondered whether it was not this attitude which permitted a Hitler or a Kaiser or a Bismarck to come to power.
Max Schmeling had told him that he, too, despised the Nazis and Hitler and had been induced to join the paratroops by deceit, the Nazis having told him that it would be a good recruiting device, that he was too old to be used in battle. Nevertheless, he was quickly deployed to Crete where he broke his leg and injured his back, ending his combat service. He appeared oblivious to the atrocities but blamed the Nazis and Hitler for all of it.
Mr. Zanuck describes having gone to Dachau and several other liberated concentration camps and seen the suffocation chambers and incinerators. The grisliest sight he had seen was a long row of large boxes, each marked with the stamp of the Reichsbank, containing nothing but gold fillings extracted from the dead.
Germany had come out of the war, he said, in much better condition than people thought. They were better fed and clothed, were healthier than any in Europe, including England. There was no malnutrition evident. The factories were being restored and the heavily industrialized Ruhr was operating at 30 percent capacity.
He believed that the greatest task ahead for the Allies was to restore conscience to the Germans, a process in which films which frankly would reveal the horrors of Nazi Germany, could play a major role. The military was attempting it through booklets being distributed to the Germans, but, he believed, films
"The fundamentals of justice, fair play, honor and mercy can be slowly re-established in Germany. Unless this is done, I am afraid for the future. We have won a military victory. It remains to be seen whether we can gain a moral ascendency."
Dorothy Thompson addresses the statement by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin to Commons, outlining British foreign policy as essentially the same as that which had been followed by the Churchill Coalition Government. In Greece, the present Government was to be maintained only provisionally until free elections could be held, and he suggested amnesty for the EAM leaders who had started the revolt during the fall after the liberation of Greece from the Germans. Britain would remain adamantly opposed to any totalitarian regimes in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Spain. And in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Far East, Britain would continue to maintain its Empire possessions, though methods might be modified.
The statement had been made in response to Winston Churchill's challenge of remarks made in Paris by Harold Laski, chair of the Executive Committee of the Labor Party, suggesting that Britain's relationship with Russia was stronger than with the United States, that the new Labor Government might effect a French-British socialist combine, and implied, insofar as Mr. Churchill interpreted his words, that Britain would contemplate intervention in Spain, possibly, suggested Mr. Churchill, re-igniting the Spanish civil war.
He took issue with Mr. Laski trying to suggest that the change in party majority in Commons would lead to a union of interest with France, when Mr. Churchill had always supported such a union. He further took issue with the criticism Mr. Laski had hurled at the former Government policy with respect to Greece, stating that his Government's policy had been approved by a coalition in the Government and by the trade unions.
Mr. Churchill wondered aloud as to what role Mr. Laski had in the Government and whether he was making policy. Mr. Attlee had responded that Mr. Laski spoke only for himself. Mr. Bevin then followed with his prepared written statement of policy.
A letter writer states that her son had not come home with the 30th "Old Hickory" Division a few days earlier, but had been assigned to another division in Germany, as was the case with many other soldiers of the 30th. She stated that these troops felt hurt that they had to stay and could not come home with their fellow soldiers, despite many having served for several years. Her own son had served for five years.
Marquis Childs muses that, with the war over, the age of the machine nevertheless forged ahead. The thought had come to him as he listened to a Senate committee debate the full employment bill.
In Memphis, International Harvester was building a new plant to manufacture a mechanical cotton picker to perform the work of 35 to 50 manual laborers. It would take a year or two to begin to produce the harvester. One other firm was preparing to produce such a machine.
The cost at present for a cotton picker was $3,700; mass production would lower that price considerably. When in full production mode, the cotton picker would replace between an estimated 1.5 million and five million workers within five to ten years.
In the State of
The cotton picker had a device to dry the cotton and so could operate at night when the dew was on the cotton.
Economists for the firm of Clayton, Anderson estimated that the cost per bale for mechanically picked cotton would be $5.26, including $2.04 depreciation on the machine. Hand-picked cotton cost $35 per bale at current labor rates. Prior to the war, the cost had been $14 per bale.
Mr. Childs remarks, "We had forgotten the
The farms, after the Okies had left during the dustbowl era and during the war, had become factories. That prospect now lay ahead for the entire South. The share-cropping system would die out. The workers would need to find jobs in industry, necessitating an expansion of industry by as much as two-thirds in the South.
Yet, industry, through adopting more efficient machinery, would eliminate the need for about a third of its work force by 1950.
So, Mr. Childs wonders, having heard Senators promoting the free enterprise system, how long these displaced workers would continue to believe in free enterprise once they were consigned
He counsels that the Senate committee consider this prospect before it would be too late
As to the "Side Glances", we suggest that there may be some optical illusion
Framed Edition
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