The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 1, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the formal surrender
General MacArthur would sign as Supreme Commander for the United Nations. Admiral Nimitz would sign on behalf of the United States.
General Carl Spaatz warned that at the sign of any trouble, such as a lone kamikaze pilot seeking to get in a last lick, his planes were at the ready and prepared to drop 8,000 tons of bombs on Japan.
—Don't mess with us. We've been here awhile, can see in the dark. There is no empty chair, sonny, not in 400 years as a country—wait, 223. In any event, a person has to know his or her limitations, including the Rule Against Perpetuities, having to do with Perpetual Ownership of Property by Progeny of Yore, Indefinitely.
The surrender was carried by radio. President Truman was scheduled to deliver an address
The President would deliver another short address on Sunday night.
A little piece reminds that the surrender came six years after the panzers of Hitler had rolled over the German border into Poland to begin the war. That coincidence was occasioned by a typhoon hitting Tokyo, delaying the planned ceremony by two days.
The American occupation troops had moved to the southern edge of Tokyo, but Tokyo remained off limits to troops and to correspondents alike because of an undescribed incident.
Correspondent Richard Cushing reported that for two days following the Emperor's proclamation to the people that the war was over, suicide pilots flew over Japanese cities dropping leaflets urging the people to continue the fight. No one, however, appeared desirous of disobedience to the Emperor—indicative of his power from start to finish of the war. It was believed that the pilot, if caught, would be executed by the Japanese for his disobedience.
He also reported that the Japanese black market had sent prices soaring, 7.5 pounds of sugar which had cost less three yen before the war, now went for 1,500 yen. Shoes which cost 13 to 15 yen prior to the war now ran 1,000 yen. Imported Scotch whisky, at seven yen before the war, now ran 1,000 yen.
Barter was common, with a K-ration chocolate bar or a pack of cigarettes, gum, or matches being the best form of exchange.
The present rate of exchange was about 15 yen per American dollar.
A Tokyo newspaper urged modern society be built in Japan with training of the people in the democratic spirit, with a proactive democratic government in the country. That development would speed the end of occupation. Radio broadcasts urged reformation of agriculture, creating farming villages, and reconstruction of the railway system, about a thousand miles of which had been destroyed in the war, along with 900 locomotives and 10,000 freight and passenger cars. The food shortage was one of the most pressing problems.
Ninety-five Americans and eight British who had been liberated from a hidden Japanese camp told of vicious treatment at the hands of their captors. One man had been beaten to death and seven had died of malnutrition. Others were spat upon as they were forced to march through the streets. Some were compelled to wear metal bits in their mouths for fourteen hours at a stretch to prevent them from talking, as others were left for an entire day with their hands tied behind them. Some of the men explained that they had wanted to die.
A pilot who had been shot down and parachuted to the ground was told to lie down at the camp and, already shot, was too numb to feel the first of two more shots which he heard, that entering his arm, but did feel the next, entering his chest. Another Japanese soldier made a practice swing at his neck with a sword, and yet another Formosan hit him in the back with his bayonet for not moving fast enough.
The British Foreign Office sent out a questionnaire to the United Nations formerly occupied by the Germans and from which had been taken slave laborers, asking that they calculate the number of man-hours lost by taking of this labor force from their countries. The implication was that Germany might be forced to repay in kind with German forced labor as part of reparations.
Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach urged Congress to pass the unemployment compensation bill, stating that many states placed limits on the compensation to be paid to those who needed it the most, and that the states, which paid between $15 and $25 per week in unemployment compensation, could reimburse the Federal Government for a portion of the contribution.
Secretary of State James Byrnes stated that the nations which had received Lend-Lease were not going to be excused from the bill, that despite the President having urged to Congress the previous day that the Lend-Lease repayments be canceled as being offset by the fighting in the war by the Allies. Mr. Byrnes said, however, that the nations would not be asked to repay in dollars but would be expected to make some form of settlement, such as with lowered trade restrictions.
A report states that 78 days after the attack at Pearl Harbor, a Japanese submarine surfaced off the coast of California and sent 25 5.5 shells into the oil field at Goleta, as the first enemy strike on the U.S. mainland. It represented one of 169 confirmed attacks, 166 of which were from balloons. Another submarine had shelled Fort Stevens in Oregon on June 21, 1942, albeit without effect. On September 9, 1942, a float plane had flown over Mt. Emily in Oregon and dropped an incendiary bomb starting a fire which was quickly extinguished.
The Germans sent saboteurs to the East Coast and torpedoed many vessels just off the coast, but, while engaging in attacks on the islands of the Caribbean, the submarines never made a direct attack on the U.S. mainland.
A woman in Kansas City had 13 days earlier married the uncle of her former husband, believed killed in the war, only to find out that her husband had been in a prisoner-of-war camp in Japan. She would seek annulment of the second marriage.
She had sent a telegram to her husband explaining the complication regarding his uncle.
She was mixed up and tired, she said.
On the editorial page, "Take Care" advises motorists to take it easy during the Labor Day weekend, that there would be more cars on the roads than the previous year when seven had died in North Carolina accidents, that the cars were older, had thinner tires, but would be going further with gas rationing ended. Still, the 35 mph speed limit prevailed, but, the piece suggests, it would likely do little good to prevent the inevitable death statistics from being compiled on Tuesday.
"A Little Choice" comments on the Hobson's Choice presented to taxpayers, whether to take quick flat-rate reductions across the board, in which case the wealthy would benefit more than the lower brackets, or to wait a good long until a graduated tax decrease could be passed.
The national debt stood at 263 billion dollars, however, and the present debt ceiling was set at 300 billion.
So, it concludes, choices were limited.
"No Questions" brushes aside the Republicans and unreformed isolationists of the country who questioned why America should not demand repayment for Lend-Lease, especially from Britain and Russia. The fighting resolve of both countries, however, said the piece, told the story.
It asks, in conclusion, "Was it a more precious commodity than the lives we gave on the self-same cause?"
"The Long Road" lists the many points on the "long, hard road" of which General MacArthur had spoken when he first set foot during the week on Japanese soil.
From Manila and Corregidor to Melbourne and Brisbane, to Port Moresby in New Guinea, Hollandia, Leyte, Lingayen Gulf on Luzon, San Miguel on Luzon, Manila, and finally Yokohama and Tokyo Bay, he had stepped onto the soil of each place, all in war, until the last locale.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative William Pittenger of Minnesota remarking of the many duties of the average member of Congress, from perusing correspondence from constituents to attending daily committee meetings for two hours, to being on the floor or being available in the office for votes on legislation until the day's program was complete.
Bart Crum, former West Coast campaign manager for Wendell Willkie, substitutes for Drew Pearson, writes that he wished that Mr. Willkie, who had died in October, 1944, were still alive to see his "one world" becoming a reality. Mr. Crum then provides his memories of the time he had spent traveling with the presidential candidate, the nominee of the Republicans in 1940, but rejected in the spring of 1944 in favor of Thomas Dewey.
Mr. Crum was a great admirer of Mr. Willkie and praises him without reservation as a man of integrity and resolve in his stands, even though sometimes they had been unpopular. He had used his lawyering skills in 1943, for instance, to defend Schneiderman, the Communist, and had done so without pay.
He gave a radio address on the Detroit riots of the summer of 1943, spoke out against anti-Semitism, and gave praise to the Soviet Union, campaigned for a spirit of economic unity between the United States and Russia. He believed that the Russian people were looking to the West for guidance.
With Mr. Willkie gone from the landscape, Mr. Crum wonders what had happened to the Republican Party, as hundreds of thousands had defected to the Democrats, choosing the lesser of what they considered two evils. Many could no longer support a party which had provided 14 of the 16 votes against the Bretton Woods proposal to establish the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, for the purpose of stabilizing world currencies. Former President Hoover had recently attacked the British Labor Party, further alienating many Republicans.
"The dinosaurs have left us only the skeletons as mute reminders of total defeat. The Republican Party is in dire danger of sharing their fate.
"Unless it views its failures in honest and soul-searching humility, which seems most unlikely, it will forfeit this heritage, and it can hope for no better epitaph than, 'Slain by the futile obduracy of meager minds and shallow souls.' "
The piece was polar opposite to the rosy picture painted for the Republicans the previous week by Thomas Dewey's former campaign manager and the Republican National Committee chairman, future Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, who had predicted, accurately, a sweeping sea change in Congress for the Republicans in 1946.
In 1948, however, the sweeping would be completely unswept.
Marquis Childs stated that the first sign of normalcy had arrived after the war, with a Congressman visiting the Pentagon to lobby for maintaining three large military cantonments in his Southern district, that they had been a boon to business. Across the country, there had arisen 3,000 military installations from Maine to California, enough for one per county for every county in the country. It provided a huge base of power for the military. Should the complex be closed down, so, too, would that power rapidly evaporate.
The military camps were not planned strategically. "Like Topsy," he says, "they just growed
But now, with the atomic bomb on the landscape, this willy-nilly approach would no longer suffice. It was hoped by many that the President would name a civilian commission to review the entire military situation and make recommendations to Congress. Otherwise, there would be endless chaos with so many Congressional districts affected by these military bases, and therefore tending toward profligate special interests.
In 1903, such a commission had been appointed by President Roosevelt, headed by Elhiu Root, Secretary of War. Mr. Root recommended creation of the general staff of the military to direct military operations, theretofore under the control of the War Department.
Mr. Childs suggest that only through such a commission could the wartime growth of the military establishment be brought into line without compromising its effectiveness and enabling it to exist without placing a stranglehold on American pocketbooks. It was the only path, he says, to international control of atomic power.
The editors compile a report on what Japan was going to lose in the wake of surrender, based on the Cairo Declaration of December 1, 1943, issued by FDR, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-Shek. It provided that all island possessions which Japan had acquired since the start of World War I in 1914 would be stripped away, along with all territories taken from the Chinese, including Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, as well as all other territories taken by force. It also provided that Korea, in due course, would be granted independence.
Loss of Formosa would be tough for Japan to accept as it was ceded to them in 1895 by the Chinese after losing a war with Japan. Furthermore, Formosa had been settled by the Chinese only 250 years earlier. The Pescadores were an unimportant group of islands between China and Formosa.
President Theodore Roosevelt had provided approval to Japan in the wake of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War to settle Korea to avoid the prospect of the Russians taking it over. Japan annexed Korea in 1910.
The Ryukyus, including Okinawa, had long been claimed by both China and Japan. China had to surrender all rights in the group, however, in the wake of the 1895 war. Chiang now wanted the islands back.
The United States might want Japan to forfeit the Kuriles because of their being within 600 miles of the Aleutians. The Kuriles had long been the subject of dispute between Russia and Japan but Russia had surrendered all rights to them in 1875 as a quid pro quo for Japan surrendering all rights in Sakhalin Island. But Russia had to cede the southern half of the latter island to Japan following the Russo-Japanese War. Russia might want to get that back.
Dorothy Thompson asserts that President Truman was onboard in principle with ending universal selective service in peacetime, while expressing the concern that there would be inadequate numbers of volunteers to maintain occupation forces, so had asked Congress to extend the draft bill beyond its current termination point of six months following the end of hostilities.
There were arguments for and against the draft. In its corner was allowing the fighting men to come home. Against it was the notion that it would deplete the armed services of the most qualified men and populate them with younger, inexperienced men.
But, fewer numbers of occupation forces than anticipated were likely to be needed, both for Germany and Japan. The people of Germany had shown themselves to be unexpectedly docile, quieted even more by the advent of the atomic bomb. The same was proving true in Japan.
While doubt had been expressed over the ability to recruit volunteers in great enough numbers with the war over, the unemployment rate would likely make military service attractive.
The main point, she ventures, was rather whether the country could afford to reduce the pool of trained fighting men for the world ahead as it was, not as the country hoped it would be.
The atomic bomb, she suggests, had knocked the United Nations Charter into a cocked hat. It was estimated that within two to five years, other nations would have it.
While many believed the next war, predicted within five years, would be fought with the new Buck Rogers weaponry, not conventional arms, that was not a certainty. New agreements might come to limit the production of these new weapons and such agreements might be kept. Poison gas had been useable by all of the nations in World War II, but was not utilized, save by Mussolini in Ethiopia, for the threat of reprisal from enemy nations.
The question of the draft, she asserts, would not be settled by the presence of the atomic bomb. The need for well-trained conventional fighting forces would remain. And it was not wise, she believed, to allow the pool of the trained fighting men to wither with abolition of the draft.
She favored an open national discussion on the matter rather than the Government seeking to sneak something by the public.
And, we would be remiss, we suppose, if we failed to remark that today, the Spartans won their opening contest in blent middlesharp, by a score of 62-0, remarkable for the fact that it was the first opening shutout by a new coach of the Spartans since 1945, when Carl Snavely, wearing his fedora, accomplished against Camp Lee the feat, 6-0, albeit in his second filling of that seat in the box of Pandora. It turned out, however, not so propitious, as the final record that year would be 5 and 5, Coach Snavely's worst prior to the cycle vicious, beginning in 1950, when the prospects would suddenly become less than gifted, as justice disappeared into the mists of sifted time, from Bynum across that fiery expanse, to the Bard where shards fell in rounded bells weathering the storm of discontent flagrant, spent, thus went the choir of heavenly sent phants, scents of toasted leaves bettering the chance which beset the fallen grief, gravely.
We can find poetry in just about anything, even in the many snares, snags, tumbles, ups, downs, sideways, and occasional flickers of Spartan football.
Anyway, all the best to the new coach in the new hat. Let us make it 75-0 next week. We like it like that.
Framed Edition
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