The Charlotte News
Friday, September 14, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the hurricane, possibly the worst of the season, which had hit Turk's Island in the British West Indies, was now heading toward Florida with winds estimated at 150 mph. By 2:00 p.m., the storm remained 500 miles southeast of Miami. At its present speed, the storm would make landfall in Florida at around 7:00 p.m. Saturday.
The worst disaster for Florida to this point in time had been the 1926 hurricane which took 327 lives and injured more than 6,500, causing 50 million dollars worth of property damage. Many of the lives lost had occurred while motorists tried to escape via the causeway from Miami Beach during a perceived lull in the storm and were washed away. Bodies were fished out of Biscayne Bay for months afterward.
In Tokyo, General MacArthur ordered suspension of the Domei news agency, serving 65 newspapers in Japan, the propaganda arm of the Government during the war.
Maj. General Robert Eichelberger predicted that the occupation duties might be accomplished within a year in Japan should the Japanese continue to act as they had thus far, in obedience to American authority. The total occupation force, he indicated, would not exceed 400,000. The Eighth Army presently had 90,000 to 100,000 men in Japan.
The Japanese Government reported that most of the war criminals on the wanted list had been brought into custody. Lt. General Chikahiko Koizumi, Welfare Minister in the Imperial Cabinet at the time of Pearl Harbor, had committed hara kiri.
Released American prisoners from Japanese prison camps on their way home told correspondent Fred Hampson that they were dismayed by what appeared to them as "kid glove" treatment of the Japanese. General MacArthur issued a statement assuring that there would be no such soft treatment in implementing the terms of peace.
The new Premier of Japan, Prince Higashi-Kuni, asked that America forget about Pearl Harbor, in which event Japan would forget about the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He stated that the Japanese would now for the first time enjoy oppression of the military clique, and with it, freedom of speech and of the press would be gradually extended.
Meanwhile in Washington, Senator Alben Barkley, Majority Leader, was named by Senator Kenneth McKellar to head the list of five Senators, including Walter George of Georgia, Scott Lucas of Illinois, Owen Brewster of Maine, and Homer Ferguson of Michigan, on the bipartisan Congressional committee to re-investigate the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the House, Speaker Sam Rayburn appointed Representatives Jere Cooper of Tennessee, J. Bayard Clark of North Carolina, John Murphy of Pennsylvania, Frank Keefe of Wisconsin, and Bertrand Gearhart of California. The composition was thus six Democrats and four Republicans.
The Foreign Ministers Conference in London continued with the main subjects being the Balkans and drafting of a peace treaty for Italy. Egypt had put in a bid for the Italian colony of Cirenaica in Libya.
Reconversion was running two to three weeks ahead of schedule with all rationing set to end by the end of the year with the exception of sugar. It was predicted that there would be as many as 6.2 million unemployed by mid-December, with some 800,000 veterans also being discharged monthly into the marketplace. Many, but not all, of the workers would be in transition awaiting rehiring.
Camp Lee, Va., issued a warning to soldiers whistling at WAC's. Cpl. Paul Kelly was strolling along the Boule Miche in Paris when he saw a shapely
To his shock and probable slight horror, it was his
On the editorial page, "Not Guilty" cynically assesses the picture of Japan, with its war leaders professing lack of prior knowledge of the plan to attack Pearl Harbor, a position taken by Prince Konoye, Prime Minister until October, 1941, and by Saburo Kurusu, the special envoy sent to the United States by General Tojo to negotiate with Cordell Hull and assist Ambassador Nomura. It was the view of Paul Wenneker, the German naval attache to Tokyo since 1940, that the attack on Pearl Harbor had been a bad mistake, that without an invasion of Hawaii, it only provided the United States with a propaganda weapon.
The editorial predicts that, in the end, the American people would learn that no one was responsible for Pearl Harbor, that in fact it had not occurred, was simply a cheap trick by FDR to get the country into the war, just as former Congressman Ham Fish had always said it was, and that the Black Dragon society was responsible for the whole war, a society undoubtedly led by only a handful of men.
"Our 'Hospital'" discusses the fact that the Mecklenburg jail had served as an observation ward for 144 mental patients during the prior year when such initial intake observation was supposed to be taking place at a mental facility, an improvement implemented in the wake of Tom Jimison's report of 1942.
Guilford County had begun construction on a 20-room wing to its hospital to provide a place for these prisoners to be housed while being observed. Mecklenburg, it opines, might benefit from the same type of facility.
"The Embargo" finds that Representative Hatton Sumners of Texas had put forth a bill to make the giving away of the secret of the atomic bomb punishable by death—that which would lead in 1953 to the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
The piece finds the move to be one which ignored the reality that the country could not possibly hope to maintain the bomb as its own secret
It was neither realistic that the nations could agree to limit the weapon and abide by such an agreement. An aggressor in the future was likely to be tempted to use the bomb to plunge the world into nuclear war.
But the only thing which the proposal of Mr. Sumners was likely to accomplish, suggests the piece, was to isolate the American scientist from other scientists in the world and thus stultify American advancement in the sciences.
"Hangers-On" indicates that the Japanese Diet remained in business, in the same constituency as it had in April, 1942 in the final days of Bataan. Its House was comprised of 377 members of the Government Party, a reactionary, anti-American party which had supported the war. There were only 89 other members.
The Diet needed to be dissolved and a new one elected. But even that eventuality would not solve the problem, as the Emperor held all legislative power and merely delegated it at will to the Diet. And, though the House was elected by popular vote of males over 25, the House of Peers, with 400 members, was chosen by noble rank and by the Emperor.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August, 1943, had called the Government of Japan an "oligarchy of aristocrats".
The piece finds that chances were slim it would be undone anytime soon.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Joe Ervin of North Carolina discussing what he viewed as the worldwide trend toward socialism.
He mistakes Hitler's brand of National Sozialism for socialism, equating it with fascism, as it was. But it was certainly not socialism, any more than the Russian system, which gave the term its bad name. Both regimes were totalitarian, a very different animal.
Thus, having made that critical mistaken equation, he is led to be disturbed at the development in Britain with the Labor Party turning the Government toward socialism.
As The News had pointed out during August, the actual intended program was little different from the New Deal, the nationalization of the bank of England, little different from the Federal Reserve system.
Mr. Ervin was most disturbed about the reports that the Labor Party eventually intended to nationalize land.
He then turns the criticism to his pet peeve, the Fair Employment Practices Commission and the bill to make it permanent, finding this effort to be an attempt to nationalize all jobs in the country.
Of course, that was not the way of it. It was only providing Federal oversight to insure against discrimination in hiring and in wages. The only reason that became necessary was the atrocious record in the hiring of blacks and, sometimes, members of various other ethnic and racial groups, which had taken place throughout the country's history following the end of slavery.
Drew Pearson clarifies that Senator Tom Connally of Texas had not engaged in deliberately holding up the selection of a site for the Navy hospital to be built in his hometown of Marlin, with its curative springs, so that the Navy would agree to purchase his son's land. To the contrary, the Navy wanted the land as the most desirable site for the hospital and the Senator had delayed it only to avoid the appearance of using his political position to swing a land deal for a member of his family. Only after considerable cajoling from a Congressman had the Senator relented and allowed the land to be condemned for taking by the Navy.
Mr. Pearson next wonders why the Army was retaining doctors in service in Billings General Hospital who had accumulated 140 points and 37 months of overseas duty when the civilian market was wanting for doctors, and why these same doctors were being trained in weapons fire now that the war was over.
He reports of the many men in a training camp in Florida who complained that they had between 80 and 150 discharge points but were retained in service, picking up cigarette butts and polishing airplanes.
He also questions why it was necessary in Boise, Idaho to continue flight training of men, some entitled to discharge, such that 18 men had been killed in a crash after V-J Day.
The men in service were griping about several things: the decision to maintain an Army of two million and a Navy of 500,000, when prior to the war the Army numbered 120,000 and the Navy only 60,000; their incredulity as to whether the Army and Navy were doing everything possible to speed discharge; their refusal yet to be sold on the need for a peacetime draft; their need for jobs and the various G.I. benefits promised them on return; and their expectation of preference promised on Army-Navy surplus property, but thus far finding their applications in many instances to have been delayed.
They were becoming disillusioned with President Truman, having believed that he would stand up to the brass hats. Meanwhile, Republicans, looking to 1946, were licking their chops.
Marquis Childs indicates that the Japanese press was still behaving as if the Americans were in Japan by invitation, not as conquerors, that the surrender had come from the Emperor's noble desire to save Japanese lives, not the result of Allied strength.
He wrote this piece obviously before the news of the order of complete shut down of Domei issued this date, and so the notion of Japanese press propaganda suddenly had become moot.
Reports were coming from Japan that the militarists were going underground.
The result of the juxtaposition of these reports with the continuing accounts of horror experienced by the prisoners in the camps was to create enormous frustration among the men in service and the freed prisoners.
General MacArthur's personal view of the Pacific was that it was strategically of utmost importance to the future of the United States, more so than Europe, dead economically as a viable trade partner, and that raising the standards of living of all Asiatic peoples above the extant substandard level was crucial.
Mr. Childs opines that MacArthur's view had possibly been shaped by Homer Lea and his book The Valor of Ignorance, recently re-published with an introduction by Representative Clare Boothe Luce, one of the General's most ardent supporters.
But, Mr. Childs concludes, General MacArthur had to know that his goal of increasing the standard of living in Asia could not be accomplished with the old gang still in power in Japan.
Samuel Grafton indicates that America would soon have no friends in the world at all should policy continue on the present track, that relations had considerably soured with the Allies since the conclusion of the war. America was complaining about Russia for its ideological policies in the Balkans and about Britain for its economic policies, while having suddenly cut off Lend-Lease to Britain and demanding 2.38 percent interest on any aid to be loaned to it. Interest seemed counter-productive given that Britain had been a primary trade partner prior to the war. Not to have this renewed trade would only create unemployment in the United States, requiring relief payments by the Government.
Countries with whom America differed ideologically as well as those who would be competitors in trade in the post-war world were equally receiving the cold shoulder.
Only Chiang Kai-Shek's China was receiving approval, for its belief in private enterprise; but it was too weak and poor to be viable economically.
Relations with France and Belgium were also weak, countries which were in dire need while observing the plenty of the United States and its considerable planning for future production, creating increasing animosity among the French and Belgians.
"A new aloneness has come to America with the end of the war, and while it would be merely making a pretty pattern with words to say that it is isolation come back again, it has some such elements, in our inability to understand how important the world is to us, in our love for pampering our own passing feelings, and for avoiding these incidental costs and burdens which are an inseparable part of size and greatness"
Four editorials are re-printed, from the Concord Tribune, the High Point Enterprise, the Winston-Salem Journal, and the Goldsboro News-Argus, each lamenting the
Concord favored naming a new state hospital for Mr. Jimison for his series of articles in January-February, 1942 which had revealed the horrors of Morganton, lacking in trained personnel and inadequately staffed with
High Point
Parenthetically, the piece might have carped that many of the State's buildings are named for known drunkards, or worse, Klansmen or Red Shirts, and so it would have been of little change from the norm, save that Mr. Jimison was not so well-endowed financially as to maintain his peccadillos in the closet.
Anyway, the editorial hoped that the State board would so name a facility for him, and that the building might be one for the treatment of drunks.
It says that it could almost hear him say: "Well, fellows, I finally achieved fame. They've named a place for drunks and nuts after me."
Goldsboro
"The great work he so nobly started will go on for years yet.
"We have no doubt that Tom Jimison was received with great good will when he reported at the
Framed Edition
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