Wednesday, August 8, 1945

The Charlotte News

Wednesday, August 8, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman had announced that Russia had declared war on Japan, as he had been assured by Stalin at Potsdam would occur by August 15, though this fact was not disclosed. The terse one sentence announcement was the only thing the President had said at the hastily arranged news conference. Despite the fact that the news had been expected for months, many of the reporters gasped in amazement—or, perhaps they were expecting more momentous news and were simply disappointed that it was not the news of surrender.

The President wore a light gray tropical suit and blue and white four-in-hand necktie.

The President was scheduled to deliver a radio address at 10:00 p.m. the next night.

Secretary of War Stimson met with the President to discuss strategy.

By the end of this day, Washington time, though the news would not be released until the following morning, the B-29 "Bockscar" had released Fat Man over Nagasaki at 11:01 a.m. the next day, local time, 10:01 p.m. this date, Eastern War Time. On this historic raid, dropping the second implosion-type atomic bomb ever detonated, the first having been at Trinity on July 16, were the Enola Gay, Laggin' Dragon, the Great Artiste, Big Stink, and Full House, accompanying Bockscar, piloted by Captain Fred Bock. Fat Man was based on plutonium rather than Uranium-235.

But we shall leave the primary report on that for tomorrow.

Reconnaissance over Hiroshima showed that 60 percent of the city had been destroyed by the single atomic bomb dropped by the Enola Gay. Five military targets had been destroyed and 4.4 square miles of the city's 69 square miles had been wiped out. The harbor had been hardly touched by the blast.

Tokyo reports stated that everyone outdoors in the area had burned to death while those indoors were killed by the high pressure wave and heat.

A Japanese newspaper again referred to the bombing as "inhuman".

About 375 B-29's again struck Japanese targets, Yawata, the Nakajima aircraft factory just outside Tokyo, and Fukuyama.

The Department of Agriculture forecasted a cotton crop for 1945 of 10.134 million bales, 17 percent less than for the previous year.

Hal Boyle, in Indianapolis, reports that Indianans were Hoosiers to the core, stubborn and patriotic, thrifty, but owned their own homes and cars. State pride was of major importance, each native believing that there was no place like Indiana on God's green earth.

They had numerous newspapermen and many well known authors, Lew Wallace, James Whitcomb Riley, Booth Tarkington, among others.

Poet Riley had penned a bit of doggerel verse titled "Contentment", which every Indianan knew by heart, but which was not printable, says Mr. Boyle, in a family newspaper.

On the editorial page, "Cute Like a Bronco" could verily not realize how far-sighted it was, even as to its title, in setting forth the love affair which had been acquired by the American public for the Jeep, the General Purpose Truck, ¼-ton 4x4, the most uncomfortable vehicle, according to the average Joe, which had ever rolled off an assembly operation in Detroit. It was a truck, springless, without giving an inch, designed to get the soldiers and orders and supplies to and fro along the battle front. It was definitely not "cute", as many stateside female admirers of the vehicle thought it from a distance or based on a friendly spin around the block.

Regardless, Willys Overland was developing a commercial version for farm and city. The piece suggests, however, that the Jeep would be reserved for the hard-tack work, and would not become "cute" to spite the soldiers' wish to preserve its tough aura as a Fighting Man of the Front.

"A Mild Judgment" finds too lenient a prayer for judgment provided in Superior Court as a modification of judgment for a defendant who had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, when he had fired a shotgun out the door of his laundry business toward a crowd of striking laundry workers picketing the plant. He had wounded three of the workers, albeit none seriously.

The man was being sued for the conduct, but most of the suits had been settled. So it was customary in such cases to provide lenience in the criminal prosecution. But providing the defendant a prayer for judgment, the equivalent of absolution, was, it finds, not consistent with justice.

Some few of the striking laundry workers had committed simple assaults, but generally their conduct had been exemplary. The half dozen who had been found guilty of assaults had been fined and judgment entered. So, it stood in contrast to this more serious offense which had wound up going unpunished.

"Yesterday's Idol" discusses the dying bill to have compulsory military training in peacetime. It had gotten out of a special House committee with 16 of 22 Congressmen approving it, finding it in the best traditions of America.

The piece suggests that the effort had been to portray it as a peace-keeping method, not war-mongering. The great fear was that the Army, in consequence of a peacetime service, would enjoy inordinate power in the society, contrary to the Constitution.

The whole matter simply conveyed the notion which was foundational in the mindset of Americans, that the military was not to be trusted, and that it was preferable to a standing Army to place faith in God and a few Marines and the fact that the country had never lost a war, and could, if needed, exert itself to quick preparedness.

"Policies and Pettiness" finds two apparently disparate incidents involving Government refusal of aid under existing rules to be related. In one, a 13-year old girl had been bitten by a rattlesnake and was refused care at an Army hospital on the basis that her parents might have sued the Government should she have died in the Army's care. In the other, a veteran of 25 months in service had sought permission of the OPA to purchase an oil stove and was denied, on the basis that the rule allowed such a purchase only if oil had been used by the purchaser for heating purposes for the previous six months. The veteran did not qualify.

Sometimes, the editorial concludes, the Government, for all its good intentions, played the fool by too strict adherence to rules, to the detriment of the public it was supposed to serve.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire expressing to Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin that his pronunciation of Bretton as "Brayton" grated on his nerves, and instructed the Senator to pronounce the name correctly, with a short "e", as in breathless, not break.

Senator Wiley thanked him but suggested that he was not so sure that Senator Tobey was correct. It depended on whether one was from New Hampshire or Wisconsin, on the high seas, in Britain, Brittany, or elsewhere. He apologized for offending the tender sensitivities of Senator Tobey.

Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon chimed in to suggest that saying "Brayton Woods" in New Hampshire might lead to Senator Wiley's death.

Well, there he goes again, threatening. First it was the lambs, if he did not get his say about them before the evening adjournment, now the death in New Hampshire of Senator Wiley merely over his "Brayton".

Senator Wiley expressed that he did not wish to participate in such discussion any further, as it served to distract from more serious matters.

In a statement, apparently separate in time from the above discourse, again anent the lambs of Senator Morse's home state of Oregon, Senator William Langer of North Dakota states his continuing lack of understanding of the difference between Oregon lambs and other kinds of lambs, as they both eat grass and grow in the same manner. So, he wonders, why should OPA treat them differently?

Senator Morse responds that he was eager to aid the Senator's understanding of the issue, explaining that the lambs of Oregon, northern California, and southern Washington were soft lambs, in consequence of the early grass and the high moisture of the region. These lambs were milk-fed, and when placed in boxcars and shipped from Portland to San Francisco, there was apt to be great loss in shrinkage of the lambs and even high mortality, making the lamb trade unprofitable under such circumstances, mandating travel of the lambs to distant market places.

Well, all we know is that little lambs eat ivies, we suppose.

Drew Pearson comments on the set of rules for occupation of Germany, drawn up by President Truman's advisers just after V-E Day. After being approved by the President, General Eisenhower, and the State Department, the rules had been approved by the President for publication. But then, after further consultation between Supreme Headquarters in Europe and Washington, it was withheld.

Many thought that industrialists who had friends in the War Department favoring a soft peace, that Germany should be used as a buffer to Russia, had been responsible for the withholding.

Unless the Joint Chiefs Order were published, then there would be no blueprint available as a basis for understanding official policy on governance of Germany. So, Mr. Pearson, stating his belief that the manner in which Germany would be treated in the post-war would govern the prospects for peace into the future, elects to publish the essential provisions of this Order, JCS 1067.

As it has been largely covered elsewhere, you may peruse it on your own.

If Mr. Pearson is going to take the day off, then we shall take a little bit off also.

Marquis Childs suggests that sometimes a small Government mistake could cause more problems than a big one. It had happened when the United States Employment Service had issued a memo instructing its regional offices to canvass jobs for discharged military officers. When the Associated Press got the story, it reported that top positions were being sought for the officers, with the implication that the average G.I. would be cut out of the search.

It had resulted in many G.I. complaints that the stratification of the military between officers and enlisted personnel would be carried over into civilian life.

The Manpower Commission, which oversaw the Employment Service, clarified that the memo had been poorly worded, that it was not intended to suggest reservation of top positions for officers. The Service was simply trying to enable veterans to obtain the employment which best fit the skills acquired in service.

But what most G.I.'s had learned was how to kill, and in civilian life, they felt it the better part of valor to forget that training. Many had acquired technical skills, such as repair of tanks and planes, but that would not necessarily mean that the soldiers would wish to work in factories or as mechanics. Mr. Childs comments that the jeep drivers who escorted him around the front during the previous January and February when he was in Europe had told him that after their discharge, they wanted as far away as possible from the motor pool.

Soon, General Omar Bradley would take over the Veterans Administration and many feared that he might militarize the organization. But that was not in the cards.

Mr. Childs proposes that Government should make special efforts to avoid any suggestion of discrimination in civilian life with respect to veterans and their rank while in the military.

Burke Davis, Associate Editor, provides a by-lined piece regarding jobs for returning veterans. Many who had been denied their old jobs were suing to get them back, denied by union seniority rules. Most unions allowed seniority based on time in uniform, but were also nonsensically requiring that first the veteran obtain a job without seniority, at which point he would acquire the credit for the time in uniform.

Some veterans, some of whom were decorated for their combat service, had been laid off from jobs at Ford Motor Company because of cutbacks in government orders, while non-veterans with greater seniority retained their positions.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars wanted to establish a rule whereby veterans would receive their seniority ab initio. The CIO had a model contract clause which provided for seniority only after the veteran obtained his job, but also protected against layoffs. It had been accepted by most automotive companies in Detroit, with the exception of the Big Three, Ford, Chrysler, and G.M. The model provided also that the veteran would not be hired to displace an existing worker.

Laid-off workers from the automobile plants which had undergone cuts in war contracts retained their seniority for two years and thus created a backlog of labor awaiting rehiring ahead of the veterans without work experience, making the situation even worse.

The system was creating bitterness within the veterans who had believed when they returned from service, having fought for their country and risked their lives, that there would be jobs waiting for them with good pay, as in the automobile industry. It had proved not the case.

A piece compiled by the editors comments on Winston Churchill's retention of his seat in Commons and his having positioned himself to be leader of the Opposition. He could have accepted an earldom or dukedom, or the Order of the Garter offered him recently, and retired to the House of Lords. But, instead, he had chosen to continue the fight in Commons.

Honi soit qui mal y pense, translation of which is: "Those which be bad and think this be honey bees."

William Gladstone had not reached the heights of his career until his 70's, was Prime Minister four times over the course of 26 years, the second time after reaching age 70, the third after his 76th birthday, and the fourth when he was 82. So, there was precedent for Mr. Churchill to make a return to power in Britain.

And, of course, in 1951, he would—as he sat in his back yard pondering his masonry with his dog, or was it a small lion? sitting to his rear. (Bet you never noticed that before. The picture was so small that we didn't.)

The piece continues by speculating that, as leader of the Opposition, he might find the fight tougher sport than in debating the leaders of the old Labor Party who had been for the most part trade union leaders, not debaters. The new Labor leaders were highly educated men who had been trained in dialectic, some being lawyers. Few would be awed by Mr. Churchill's oratory.

It concludes by setting forth the meager salaries paid to members of Commons, 600 pounds, the equivalent of $2,400. The Prime Minister got 10,000 pounds and the Leader of the Opposition, 2,000. Prime Ministers received a pension of 2,000 pounds.

The United States at the time paid no pension, or attention, to former Presidents. Congressman Joe Martin of Massachusetts, the Minority Leader in the House, had proposed such a pension and attention, such that former Presidents would be given a seat in Congress. Most people in the country, however, as a recent poll had demonstrated, were opposed to the notion.

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