The Charlotte News
Tuesday, September 11, 1945
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that former Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo had shot himself with a pistol as he was about to be arrested by the American occupation forces as a war criminal. His condition was serious and he was given a 50-50 chance of survival. He was quoted through an interpreter at the hospital as saying that he had shot himself through the heart because he did not wish to mess up his head. He had not used a sword out of concern that he might fail. Two ceremonial swords and two pistols had been prepared for the occasion. He had come to a window at the knock of the troops who had come to arrest him, announced himself as Tojo, slammed the window hard, and then shot himself.
It had taken an hour and twenty minutes to reach the Tokyo hospital over rough roads from Tojo's residence twenty miles outside the capital.
He proclaimed that he would accept responsibility for the entire war, that which he called a "just war", and expressed sorrow for the Japanese people.
The arrest came pursuant to General MacArthur having interviewed the correspondents Russell Brines and Murlin Spencer, following their interview with Tojo, published the previous day.
The chief architect of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would survive his wound and, after conviction at trial, would be executed December 23, 1948.
Duane Hennessy reports that Saburu Kurusu, the special envoy to Washington who had been engaging in discussions with Secretary of State Hull at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, advised that Japan proceed toward democracy only at a slow pace as rushing, he opined, would be disastrous. He asserted that even if the Army of occupation would be removed on condition that Japan rid itself of the Emperor and establish a democratic government, he would continue to be opposed to it. The people, he believed, were not yet ready for democracy because of the long subjection to a feudalist-military dictatorship. If the change were too precipitous, he warned, the military dictators would again be able to seize control.
Mr. Kurusu was living a hundred miles northwest of Tokyo in a mountain resort. His home in Tokyo had been destroyed in the May 25 raid, the same raid which Tojo stated had nearly leveled his home.
In Northern Japan, 1,556 Allied prisoners were released from four prison camps in a soft coal mining district. The prisoners presumably had been used as forced labor in the mines.
As the first American ship tied up at dock in Tokyo, a crowd of Japanese waited to greet the Americans. One gentleman bowed so deeply that he fell off the dock into the water and had to be fished out by the Americans.
Lt. Col. James Devereaux, the heroic commander of the Marines on Wake Island in December, 1941, was reported to be alive and well as a prisoner in Bibai, at a camp on Hokkaido Island. Five men who had been imprisoned in the area reported that the colonel had lost weight but was healthy, that all the men had been mistreated in the camp and forced to work in the coal mines under unsafe conditions, prone to cave-ins.
The French press agency informed that 1,050 French re-occupation troops had left Marseilles the day before for Indo-China.
Ach-oh.
Secretary of State Byrnes told a press conference in London that the first topic on the agenda for the Foreign Ministers Conference of the Big Five, commencing this date, would be Italy, that Germany would not be discussed.
It was understood that the American position was to have Italy's colonies under a trusteeship of the United Nations. It was believed that the Dodecanese Islands would go to Greece. Pantelleria, in the vicinity of Malta, would likely go to Britain as a base or become internationalized. A part of Eritrea would be claimed by Ethiopia, the first victim of Mussolini's aggression. The British were expected to ask that a strip of Cyrenaica, an Italian colony populated by Arabs in Libya, be internationalized.
Representative Harold Knutson of Minnesota, senior Republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee, stated that he would not support financial aid to Britain so that the new British Labor Government could expropriate private property for the Government.
The speech was timed deliberately for the presence in the country of Lord Keynes and Lord Halifax, making an appeal to President Truman for such aid.
The Army informed Senators of the Military Committee that 661,000 men had been discharged between May 12 and September 1 and that the figure was now at 11,000 per day, set to rise to 22,000, the equivalent of eight million per year. Still, the Senators complained about the sloth in discharges.
The Interstate Commerce Committee of the House approved a measure to end War Time at 2:00 a.m. on September 30. The move was expected to receive House and Senate approval shortly.
Federal Court of Appeals Judge John J. Parker was being touted as a possible member of the Nuremberg Tribunal. President Truman planned to offer him the position, turned down by retiring Justice Owen Roberts.
Both North Carolina Senators, Clyde Hoey and Josiah W. Bailey, had urged the President to appoint Judge Parker to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy of Justice Roberts.
They had also urged that, if he decided to appoint a Democrat, he consider Lumberton native Chief Justice Walter Stacy of the North Carolina Supreme Court.
But that would have meant a change in robes to black.
It was believed at this juncture that the vacancy would instead go to Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson, a former Appeals Court judge.
It would go to Senator Harold Burton of Ohio, a Republican.
It was announced that the President would visit North Carolina in early November, with plans to spend a day in Statesville, to meet there with members of the State Senate, and then later in the day, travel to King's Mountain, south of Charlotte, to commemorate the 165th anniversary of the Battle of Kings Mountain fought during the Revolution, which would actually occur on October 7.
The President would also pay a visit to Senator Bailey at his cabin near Raleigh where the President could do some fishing if the fish were still biting by then.
In Britain, a re-broadcast of the V-E Day celebration set off rumors that another national holiday had been declared for this date. Thousands anxiously telephoned the BBC and newspapers.
Sorry. Report to work and school as usual tomorrow. Thank you.
Cheese will go off rationing on Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. To be clear, it will stay on the ration list but will have a value of zero. Restrictions on foreign-type cheeses to allow greater production of cheddar have been ended, along with a 40 percent military set-aside of cheddar for September. The military stocks of
Red stamps also will now buy more meat and butter.
" 'We mun thank Mr. Herries,' he said. 'When I was young, we did varra weel off labscourse en stirabout fur dinner and we'll do varra weel yet. But Mr. Herries has grudged neet.' He wandered off into disconnected reminiscence. 'Folks was harder lang sen.... When I was a lad wi' a bit of bluemilk cheese en breed I never ailt nowt.... In my opinion ther's nowt bangs good muck...good muck wi' plenty o' suction in't 'll bring a crop any time. Anyways it's nobbut dry work talking without summat to sup on, and ther's plenty to sup on here.... But cuntra's turned upside-down. It'll be lang afore they see any mair times like t'oad uns...any mair times like t'oad uns...afore t'Rebellion...afore t'Rebellion....' "
On the editorial page, "Jimison's Epitaph" laments the passing away of Tom Jimison, former Methodist minister, sometime reporter, and lawyer, who had entered a voluntary one-year commitment at the State Hospital in Morgantan in spring, 1940 and then put together his observations of the facility in an expose published first in The News and then statewide in January-February, 1942, leading directly to an overhaul of the State Hospital system throughout the state.
The piece offers as his epitaph his own lines from that series, titled "Out of the Night of Morganton":
"For these the days will continue to be gray
. The mornings will get up on muffled wings, and the hours will shuffle by on leaden feet until the pale stars appear in the evening sky: and men and women who were born for a better fate will continue— 'To breathe and sigh,
And live and die,
And pass to God—and then—
For all men die...'"But at Morganton hit don't make no difference: they air jes' patients!"
The piece goes on to heap praise on the humble man from the North Carolina hills with whose native population he maintained contacts through his latter days. He never accepted the ample praise provided him for his work in improving the mental institutions of the state. He had merely considered himself a "weaker vessel" being used by the Lord to do work on earth.
Mr. Jimison had occasionally contributed pieces to the News before and following the expose of Morganton, his last having been on July 14. He had been a reporter for the newspaper many years earlier, following his stint as a minister, causing him to be referred to affectionately as "the Bishop".
Cameron Shipp, in December, 1948, would write for the Sixtieth Anniversary Edition of The News:
"Once he was assigned to cover the Barnum & Bailey parade, which he did in great style, as all News reporters did everything then. Jimison, of course, rode ahead of the chief elephant, accepting the cheers of the crowd as his due. Late in the day—indeed, after all editions had gone to press—the Bishop found his way to his desk and began to compose, wearily. It took about an hour as the Bishop tapped out his yarn. He wrote:
'I seen the parade. It wasn't much.'
"For taut, accurate reporting, I challenge any writing-man to improve on that line, but Jimison was even better than that. I am convinced that Tom wrote the Southern language with more bounce and with a better ear than any man who ever attempted it; far, far better than the professional dialect stenographers who to this unhappy day make us sound like third-rate vaudevillians."
Cash's second biographer, Bruce Clayton, found a quote of Mr. Jimison on Charlotte, describing it as "the lowest-kneeling, loudest-praying, tightest-fisted, hardest-drinking clan of Scotch Presbyterians that ever staggered to the polls to vote dry... They'd crucify Christ again right in front of the First Presbyterian Church if ever he dared to show up here."
Thus far, so far as we know, He hasn't.
Republicans, incidentally, should not read into that an endorsement. We neither saw Him in Tampa two weeks ago.
"Byrnes at the Bar" comments on the Foreign Ministers Conference in London and the first major test of Secretary of State Byrnes. It would be up to him to implement the decisions reached at Potsdam and Yalta.
He was following in a line of many men who had gone overseas to match wits with leading foreign diplomats, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan, John Marshall, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, John Hay, Woodrow Wilson, Charles Evans Hughes, and Cordell Hull.
Whether he would join this illustrious group as a pathfinder and peacemaker would depend on his
"Down the Middle" finds the first assessment of President Truman's message to Congress to be mixed. Republicans saw it as a revival of the old "free-wheeling New Deal" which had gone by the boards at the start of the war, a decisive return to the left.
But, comments the piece, it was hardly surprising, given that Mr. Truman had been a candidate with FDR on a liberal platform just a year earlier during the campaign. It was not to be expected that he would relish any return to the pre-Roosevelt era of laissez-faire, that which had flourished under Mr. Hoover and his pair of Republican predecessors, Presidents Harding and Coolidge, to the great detriment of the country.
The News had assessed the President's message as moderate. So had Senator Walter George of Georgia, never a fan of the New Deal, and having been targeted for party purge by FDR in 1938. So, too, had Representative Edward Cox of Georgia. And the conservative press had not bitterly attacked the message as it would have had it been delivered by Franklin Roosevelt.
The President's message clearly had recognized the precept of progress only through compromise and did not take the tone of a President determined to have all particulars enacted or else. It marked a decided change in tone from that of the previous twelve years with President Roosevelt.
By the time the program would emerge from Congress, it would be moderated, and, finds the piece, that appeared quite acceptable to President Truman.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Jennings Randolph of West Virginia reading a letter which he was forwarding to President Truman, in which he advocated a tax policy with respect to industry developed out of scientific research, such as the proposed atomic energy industry, whereby all taxes from it would go to defray the national debt. Initially, such fledgling industries, he proposed, could be tax-free and gradually taxed as they were able to pay.
Drew Pearson comments on the continued labor shortages on the farm, that the problem lay as always in higher war factory wages in the city, those jobs having lured men from the farms where wages were substantially lower. Wages on the farm were now higher but still lagged behind industrial wages. For men to be provided with incentive to work on the farms required a drastic rise in farm wages which would also meant higher farm prices and a higher cost of living in consequence across the nation.
He then corrects a report he had published the previous week, that Mrs. Ed Pauley, wife of the U.S. reparations ambassador to Moscow, had in fact turned down the $25 per diem expenses for accompanying her husband to Russia. But, he states, the overall point which he had meant to make was still valid, that it was inherently unfair to servicemen to deny them the company of their spouses abroad when Mr. Pauley was permitted to take his wife to Russia, especially since he would only be gone a few weeks and the veteran would be gone for many months.
He next discusses a visit to Washington by Chinese Communist leader Tung Pi-Wu, who told those gathered at a social engagement, including Undersecretary of the Interior, and future Supreme Court Justice, Abe Fortas, that the Chinese Communists had only two principal goals: lower interest rates and lower land rents. Mr. Fortas quipped that such a program was "reactionary".
Dorothy Thompson indicates that the reports of William H. Davis, Director of Economic Stabilization, of Bernard Baruch to General Omar Bradley regarding veterans, and the President's 21-point message to Congress, all demonstrated the stress which American leaders were placing on post-war economic issues.
Mr. Davis urged a 40 to 50 percent rise in wages but also, to avoid inflation, a commensurate rise in production .
The targeted 60 million jobs to reach full employment was said by many economists to be over-employment and that the more realistic figure was 53 to 55 million jobs.
Veterans were concerned that, with their return, there would be a slump in wages with the cessation of lucrative war contracts and consequent high-wage employment during the war.
Ms. Thompson cautions that the original basis for Nazism and Fascism had been the failure of demobilization to provide adequate employment for soldiers in Germany and Italy, especially young officers, who then turned against democratic institutions, trade union bureaucracy, and pacifism.
If the country were free of labor-management strife, then the figures suggested by Mr. Davis for production were achievable. If consumption increased domestically in the United States, it would ease international economic strains.
America's international trade was out of balance between exports and necessary imports, and so needed adjustment through the tariff system.
Thus far, she believes, economic planning by America was inadequate, that there was not much imagination being shown in how to accomplish a higher standard of living, not only at home but also abroad, such that all boats would rise.
The key was to enable both higher production and higher consumption at home.
A perennial letter writer suggests that, rather than conscription, the country should see to it that soldiers were paid commensurately with big city police departments, for the purpose of policing the peace abroad, and thereby to attract volunteers in sufficient numbers to do the job without draftees.
Marquis Childs examines President Truman's message to Congress with its ambitious proposals. His tone was one of requesting and recommending, occasionally urging, but never demanding, and thereby placing on Congress the burden to act.
President Roosevelt, he remarks, early on in the New Deal period, had sent his surrogates to Capitol Hill effectively to bribe legislators with promises of public works for their districts or states.
President Truman, by contrast, bent over backwards to avoid any such appearances, almost to the point of appearing feckless.
He favored generally a resources planning board, but Congress had already defunded the National Resources Planning Board of the New Deal. He had also expressed hope that Congress would authorize regional development of natural resources, though leaving it unclear as to whether he was favoring more TVA-type organizations.
He favored full employment, a higher minimum wage, and unemployment compensation of $25 per week for up to 26 weeks.
On the whole, his message appeared as a test to representative government, with the President acting essentially as an advisory partner to Congress.
Framed Edition
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