The Charlotte News
Wednesday, September 5, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that as the Congress returned to session after the summer recess, the first time it had assembled in a peacetime state since December 5, 1941, Representative Clarence Brown, a Republican from Ohio, had introduced a resolution in the House calling for another investigation into the attack on Pearl Harbor, contending that no one was satisfied with the report of the Army and Navy, the Pearl Harbor Board. Speaker Sam Rayburn informed President Truman that the general reaction to the Board report had been "bad" and so the whole matter could not simply be forgotten, as much as everyone would like to do so.
The President sent to Congress recommendations for budget cutbacks of 3.5 million dollars in appropriations for civilian agencies. He sent along a comprehensive message which would be read to the Congress the following day.
The State Department released a report, the story of which is continued on an inside page, that an American flier who had parachuted into the sea off New Guinea and was picked up by the Japanese, had been beaten with sticks through the night and into the day, then a Japanese soldier, as others screamed wildly, had slashed the man six times with his sword, slicing off his head.
Other such atrocities, including the deliberate burning and dynamiting to death of 150 American prisoners in the Philippines on December 14, 1944, were also made public for the first time in the report, withheld out of concern that, during the war, the Japanese would have increased such tactics had the brutality become public knowledge.
Of the 150 who were ultimately killed in the Philippines incident, 40 had originally escaped and jumped over a 50-foot shoreline cliff, only to be shot or captured and buried alive. One who had sought to swim out to sea was caught and prodded with bayonets, then his feet poured over with gasoline and set afire. They continued to mock and bayonet the man until he collapsed, then poured gasoline over his whole body and watched him burn to death.
The State Department, through Undersecretary Joseph Grew, had protested the treatment to Tokyo upon learning of it in March.
Domei reported that residents of Yokosuka were now receiving 36 truckloads of American food, including candy and chewing gum, tea, wheat, canned goods, and dried edible seaweed.
The new Premier of Japan, Naruhiko Higashi-Kuni, informed the Diet that the reasons for the surrender had been simple: too many losses and bad conditions at home. He stated that 2.2 million homes had been destroyed and that hundreds of thousands had been killed or wounded in the air raids, that ten million were "war sufferers". The American and British blockade had successfully cut off for the most part even China from communications after the fall of Okinawa in latter June. Fuel had also become scarce.
Starting with the loss in the summer of 1944 of the Marianas, Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, the American forces had moved steadily forward as the air raids on the home islands were intensified, especially after the beginning of the year.
Of special note, he said, was the absence of salt, which was imported, leaving the Japanese without sodium for explosives.
We like it on rice. Soy is okay, too, though.
The atomic bomb had been the last straw.
We don't care for them ourselves.
Then the Russians joined the fight against Japan, further complicating the odds.
It took awhile to sink in.
At Singapore, Indian troops landed to accept the surrender of the Japanese garrison there, maintained since February 15, 1942 when the British were forced to surrender the port city. In violation of the terms of surrender, the Japanese had set fire to the oil tank farm at Port Dickson.
On Wake Island, at 1:50 p.m. the previous afternoon, the American flag was raised for the first time since the island had fallen to the Japanese on December 23, 1941, 1,362 days earlier, held to the last against enormous odds by 379 "Devil Dogs" of the Marines who dispatched 500 Japanese during the ensuing 50 days, losing 50 of their own. The commander of the outfit, Major James P. S. Devereux, and several of his troops, had been reported as alive in prison camps in China.
The Japanese Rear Admiral, Shigematsu Sakaibara, and his staff, who had commanded the garrison on the island during its occupation, saluted the American flag. Admiral Sakaibara stated that during the occupation the Japanese had lost 3,000 men, 2,000 from malnutrition, the remainder either in the initial invasion or by subsequent American bombing raids. He had 1,200 troops at the end. The Japanese were humble and bowed in submission.
The occupation of Tokyo would begin Saturday, the first troops scheduled to enter being the First Cavalry, which had been the first to enter Manila in February. General MacArthur issued orders to the Japanese in preparation for the occupation.
In Rome, Italian youths took two Italian women from an American jeep and stripped them naked, setting off a mob scene of 2,000 Italians in the Plazza Collona, requiring intervention by the Allied military police using billyclubs and police dogs. The Rome press treated the incident humorously.
So, too, did Governor Wallace.
At least four American women, subsequently remarried, had found that their former husbands, presumed dead, were still alive, having been prisoners of the Japanese. Two of the women chose to return to their original husbands and two had yet to make up their minds. The women were being termed "Enoch Arden" brides, after the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
In Salt Lake City, a bride told a judge that, right after their wedding, the groom had kicked her, socked her in the nose, and twisted her arm, apparently believing that the marriage license was an invitation to a wrestling match. At least she kept both her arms intact, and obtained her divorce—or, was it an annulment on the basis of fraud in the inducement to marriage while maintaining as secret the intent to use her as a sparring partner and punching bag?
The answer unfortunately remains a
A house bomb full of DDT, developed during the war as an insect killer, would soon be marketed to consumers at an OPA ceiling price of $4. Get yours. Spray it all over, in the crib, in the kitchen cabinets, in the refrigerator and stove, a little up your nose. Get rid of the bugs.
Don't throw away your draft card yet, even if you are a registrant older than 25, or you will be in violation of the law and subject to prosecution. The draft police could blow through your door like a gale wind unannounced and demand to see your papers.
A Mecklenburg motorist tossed a cigarette out the window of his car, oblivious to the fact that he was passing a wagon-load of dry hay at the time. The cigarette caught the hay on fire and consumed it and the wagon, as well as burning the mules. The motorist apparently never realized the damage he had left in his wake.
—Look there, that guy's wagon just suddenly exploded spontaneously into flames. Gracious alive. You see something new everyday. You got another cigarette, babydoll?
As to "I See by the Papers", we are reminded how times do change.
Sometimes, it is best to defy
On the editorial page, "A Beginning" expresses satisfaction that, in the first round of named war criminals to stand trial at Nuremberg, there were only 24. That would suffice for starters. Each was guilty and each deserved swift justice by the executioner. Some were calling it a mass trial. With thousands of Germans guilty, it was no mass trial.
But the American attitude toward Germans had already swiftly changed such that vengeance no longer appeared desired. Once the first two dozen had been tried, then would come the determination as to how serious the resolve was to eliminate the seeds of the war, and potentially the next one, by reaching down into the ranks of the Nazi Party and ferreting out the culprits there as well, in the Gestapo and in the SS.
"All the swaggering and brutal little men who committed murder and even blacker crimes in the days of German glory must join these Nazis of the inner circle."
"We're Short" discusses the differential between the proposed Federal unemployment compensation of $25 per week for 26 weeks and that available in North Carolina of $20 per week for 16 weeks, with Secretary of Labor Schwellenbach suggesting, without explanation as to how it would be accomplished, that the States borrow the differential to repay the Federal Government.
The differential was $330 per worker. If a severe job crisis occurred and thousands of workers were off the job, then the State would have to find millions of dollars to make up the difference. Moreover, with average wages being lower than the sought Federal unemployment compensation, the Federal outlay would create a disincentive to find work.
Wethinks the editorial misinterpreted Secretary Schwellenbach's statement, made before a Congressional committee, that what he was suggesting was only that the States could reimburse the Federal Government to the extent of their existing unemployment outlays. The News, however, had also criticized the proposed Federal program for inducing the States to cut back on their unemployment compensation because of the Federal outlay.
"Cool Proposal" comments wryly on a proposition by the British to have America repay Britain all the money it spent in America during 1939-41, prior to the inception of Lend-Lease in March of 1941, that it had spent the money on munitions, keeping Germany off of American soil.
The piece then wonders whether America should charge Britain for the bumbling at Munich, for the ignoring and even supporting of Franco's Fascist Insurgents in Spain, for Ethiopia, for keeping the Japanese out of India, and for supplying the bulk of the invasion force on Normandy.
It suggests that the war debts would not be settled in this manner.
Parenthetically, it meant "cool proposal", not "cool proposal", in the 1950's colloquial sense of the then hipper term, now grown so very trite as to be so very uncool that we cringe whenever we hear it. Everything is not "cool". Ditto for "awesome" and, now of late, "iconic". Please stop using "iconic" to refer to everything, making most anything then less than iconic. We find even respected journalists overusing this word as a substitute for "awesome" and "cool". Try something else: "emblematic" or "exemplar" or "paradigmatic", "archetypical", or even "key referent on the tangent of essential accessibility in the modal range of esoterica".
"Little Theater" reports that memberships in the Charlotte Little Theater were such that it was thriving, indicative of a developing
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas discussing with Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska the renewal of the tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements. Senator Fulbright asserted that industry was a part of the picture, to which Senator Wherry disagreed, that American agriculture was more threatened and thus more important for preservation than a stimulus to industry. He cited the example of Argentine beef being cheaper to produce than Nebraskan beef.
Mr. Fulbright insisted that in Arkansas, beef could be produced in competition with Argentina. Mr. Wherry contested the Senator's claim to fact. Mr. Fulbright responded that it was because of Arkansan efficiency.
Senator George Aiken of Vermont interjected the question as to how many head of cattle were going to be imported from Argentina. Mr. Wherry switched the argument to Canada, from which, he said, 30,000 head per quarter were being imported. Mr. Aiken responded that the figure was small in comparison to the country's need for beef. Mr. Wherry then wonders why the farms had corn which it could not feed to the cattle when there were ten million more head than the country had previously. He wanted the corn fed to the cattle and the cattle sold in domestic markets.
Senator William Langer of North Dakota wanted Senator Wherry to switch to sugar, to which Senator Wherry responded that he had already spoken about sugar.
Anyway, the
Drew Pearson looks at Pearl Harbor, indicates that, according to testimony, Admiral Kimmel had possessed undeniable evidence on December 2, 1941 that the whereabouts of four Japanese carriers was unknown. They were headed to Pearl Harbor.
The Admiral had stated to an intelligence officer, Captain Edward Layton, that they might be within sight of Pearl Harbor, "rounding Diamond Head", and yet he did nothing about it, instead ordered shore leave on December 6.
It should be noted that the report overstates the case. The statement of Admiral Kimmel was stated as a "what if?" rather than a real possibility; as Mr. Pearson notes, the Captain had testified that the Admiral had stated these words with a "twinkle" in his eye. The Captain, however, had testified that he interpreted the Admiral's countenance to suggest that he had taken the lack of ascertainment of the position of the carriers quite seriously.
Captain Layton, Mr. Pearson further informs, had imparted to Admiral Kimmel the report on December 1 that the Japanese had changed all of their naval radio calls, in response to which the Admiral ordered Captain Layton to determine forthwith the whereabouts of the Japanese Fleet.
A day later, the Captain told the Admiral that he could not locate two Japanese carrier divisions. And the missing carriers remained missing through each day's check of radio traffic through the time of the attack. There were no calls coming from the carriers, as Captain Layton had informed the Admiral, indicative of radio silence, indicative, in turn, of their being on a mission.
Despite it, Admiral Kimmel did nothing, never dispatched so much as a single plane to reconnoiter off of Oahu.
Of course, again, it must be borne in mind that the assumption was that the missing task force was part of the one reported by ONI and G-2 as being headed southward, toward the Dutch East Indies or the Philippines, the task force deliberately designed as a decoy to that headed to Hawaii.
He next turns to Admiral Ernest King's newest determination to change Navy attire, the proposal to adopt a gray-green winter uniform for officers to replace Navy blues. The other Admirals were not so keen on the change. Admiral King had during the war sought a change of the summer uniform to gray, approved by FDR, nixed by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox on the ground of a scarcity of textiles.
Mr. Pearson then predicts that Admiral King and General Marshall would both resign before January, that General MacArthur, depending on how the occupation of Japan would go, would likely retire at around the same time.
He remarks that the fact that the Pearl Harbor Board had held General Marshall partially responsible for the lack of preparedness at Pearl Harbor had reminded of the fact that General Marshall, as much as he was generally respected for his conduct of the war, had been wrong on two other occasions, when he stated in June, 1941 that Moscow would fall to the Germans within a few weeks, and on August 7, 1945, when he told Congress that, despite the Hiroshima bomb of the previous day, a huge invasion force would still be necessary to defeat Japan.
Dorothy Thompson again examines the Potsdam Agreement of July and the concept coming from it of expropriation of industrial machinery from Germany by Russia for reparations. One primary rationale for stripping the industrialists of their property was that they had supported the Nazi regime in its war-making capability and so removing that capability from Germany was part of the de-Nazification program.
She suggests that the idea that Nazism was only opposed from the extreme left in Germany had been largely the result of propaganda, that it was a mass movement of the lower middle class workers, victims of inflation and depression, and the unemployed youth, and that only a small number of industrialists had aided Hitler's rise to power, primarily because they thought that they could control the Nazi movement and change its aims.
The movement against Hitler, especially as it manifested itself in the July 20 revolt, involved persons of all political background, including conservatives of the Junker military caste.
Studies by the British of German prisoners had found, through in-depth analysis of their beliefs, that the prisoners caught early in the war were almost all Nazis, divided into two sub-categories, those who merely parroted the slogans of Nazism and those who were true adherents to Nazi philosophy, that which had it that Western civilization was technologically advanced but spiritually bankrupt and decrepit, that the vitality of youthful adventure was only expressed either through the Nazi movement or through the Communists. Thus, to avoid dratted Communism, the only choice remaining was Nazism. These Nazi true believers stated that they would follow Communism, however, in preference to the West should Nazism be defeated.
The anti-Nazis followed the view that Nazism was destroying the roots of German and European culture, that justice and law had to be restored along with the end of the persecution.
Ms. Thompson therefore reasoned that the Nazi true believers would be absorbed into the Communist sphere in the post-war, to form what they considered to be the only true European revolutionary movement remaining.
Potsdam had effectively urged such gravitation by the fact of ceding Germany's eastern territory to Poland where a large portion of Germany's arable land was located, thus leaving the Germans to believe that only Russia could effect reunification. De-industrialization would destroy the remaining middle classes and resultant economic depression would inflame the working classes.
"And the German Nazis, after a few trips to Canossa, will probably recognize that they have an occupational interest in the next revolution. After all, conspiracy has been their job."
Marquis Childs examines the findings of the Pearl Harbor Board, finds that two things leaped out, that intelligence was inadequate for the Army, Navy, and State Department, and that no one at the top was putting the available intelligence together.
The persons making the most clamor about Pearl Harbor were the isolationists, looking for a scapegoat, seeking ultimately to pin the blame on Franklin Roosevelt. But it was they who had created the problem of paralyzing the pre-war national machinery, which had led to the unpreparedness for the attack.
He finds it hard to imagine how, in hindsight, the country could have been so confused and divided as it was during the summer and into the fall of 1941 regarding the decision to go to war.
During June, 1941, Mr. Childs and other journalists had been invited aboard the yacht Sequoia by Secretary of the Navy Knox, to be told that war with Japan across the vast expanse of the Pacific was impracticable and that Japan, likewise, could not attack the installations in Hawaii, such that it was imperative to concentrate efforts of the Navy on the Atlantic. Mr. Childs quotes himself as having come from that meeting echoing those sentiments, in a column just a few days prior to the July 22 attack by Germany on Russia.
At that latter time, the President and the men around him believed that Germany would immediately consolidate its gains by invading Britain and North Africa along the east coast at Dakar, a relatively short distance to the coast of Brazil.
That was the overriding concept: no one thought a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was possible, for the necessity of transporting a whole carrier task force and all its support vessels 4,000 miles across the ocean, undetected, to deliver the planes within range for such an attack.
"One lesson stands out above all others. We need a co-ordinated intelligence system that will take the scattered bits of information and put them together so that the meaning is clear for all who have responsibility."
Thus was born in 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency.
Samuel Grafton suggests, similarly to Mr. Childs, that the former isolationists took the most dedicated interest in the Pearl Harbor reports, because it was the singular event which had wrecked their movement. They needed therefore to fix responsibility and find the bogeyman behind it, not the Japanese, but the American responsible for it.
Look no further. It WAS W. J. Cash and The Charlotte News.
He overlooks that fact.
It had to be Mr. Hull, or General Short, or Admiral Kimmel, or even President Roosevelt, either omitting certain action or taking inappropriate action which caused the Japanese to be successful.
"The isolationists would be happiest of all, I think, if it could be shown that the Pearl Harbor tragedy took place because a small mouse had gnawed through a signal wire: the accidental character of the event would charm them, its meaninglessness and the 'irony of it all' would enchant them. The only possible improvement in the story would be to make it a
He counsels reading and being familair with the Pearl Harbor reports but also being chary about joining in the uproar being raised in their wake and in the desire to fix blame. He points out that had Pearl Harbor been prevented, then the Japanese likely would have struck elsewhere on some other date. The truth about Pearl Harbor was not to be found on Oahu, but anywhere. For the it was a national
Those trying to localize the problem to Pearl Harbor had been the very people who had created the national problem which led to it: isolation.
"Small wonder they shout out that some general must have slumbered, some errand boy must have slept!"
Framed Edition
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