The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 7, 1945
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that an unidentified aircraft carrier of Task Force 58 of the Fifth Fleet had taken out what was thought to be the last major contingent of the Japanese Navy. Six warships plus the 45,000-ton super-battleship Yamato had been sunk in an action initiated by the Japanese in the East China Sea, operating from Japan's Inland Sea, the previous day, Friday night Washington time. Only about three destroyers escaped damage. Task Force 58 lost three destroyers and several others damaged, plus seven carrier planes.
The enemy task force had been headed toward Okinawa but was spotted by reconnaissance planes, then intercepted by the American Fleet, the carrier planes striking the enemy ships just 50 miles southwest of Kyushu.
The Yamato, damaged the previous month, was the sister ship of the Musashi, sunk in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea in Leyte Gulf the previous October. It was the fifth Japanese battleship sunk during the war.
Fully 391 planes, 245 on Thursday, had also been shot down during the prior two days, though no planes were left to cover the task force. Fully a quarter of the remaining major Japanese combat forces were destroyed.
On Okinawa, the 24th Corps of the Tenth Army, moving southward, occupied Tsuwa after advancing 2,000 yards against heavy resistance on Friday. The Third Marine Amphibious Corps, moving northward along the east coast, had moved across the Ichikawa Isthmus from Chuda.
The largest B-29 raid yet of the war took place on Tokyo and Nagoya, launched from Iwo Jima. More than 300 B-29's, now accompanied for the first time by Army P-51 Mustang fighters, hit two large aircraft factories, the Nakajima-Musashino engine plant in western Tokyo and the Mitsubishi plant at Nagoya. Two of the fighters were lost in the 1500-mile roundtrip mission. At least 21 Japanese planes were shot down and 10 others damaged.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, new Premier Suzuki formed his new Cabinet, with himself as Foreign Minister and Greater East Asia Minister, two of the most important posts. His retention of this power revived speculation that the Japanese might seek to negotiate favorable terms of surrender. Admiral Yonai was named Navy Minister and General Anami was appointed War Minister, both of whom had the imprimatur of the controlling military cliques of each respective service.
On the Western Front, the First Army had crossed the Weser River 12 miles northeast of captured Kassel, and tank columns advanced seven miles to Helmarshausen, 39 miles east of captured Paderborn.
The Seventh Armored Division of the British Second Army had advanced 35 miles, to within twelve miles southwest of Bremen, to within 60 miles of Hamburg.
The Canadian First Army was continuing its advance in Holland toward the Zuider Zee, 19 miles distant, moving to within nine miles of Snipping, the last point of German rail escape from western Holland.
The Ninth Army moved out of
According to the Germans, the Third Army was engaged in a fierce battle near Eisleben, east of Muehlhausen, as little as 90 miles from Berlin.
The Third Army had located some 190 tons of gold bullion, plus substantial cash and art treasures, stored in a salt mine in an undisclosed location in Germany.
More importantly, the Germans lost another 40,000 troops, surrendering to the Allied Armies the previous day.
Some 1,300 American heavy bombers, accompanied by 850 fighters, struck areas in support of the advancing Armies, concentrating within 50 miles of Hamburg. Objectives included four jet plane bases and three ordnance and ammunition storage depots, plus an oil storage dump at Hitzacker. Railyards were struck at Luneburg and Neumuenster. Other targets near Bremen and Homburg were also hit, primarily airfields. The American planes shot down 44 Luftwaffe planes.
On the Eastern Front, the Russians had captured the southern Vienna suburb of Moelding, following bitter house to house fighting. The Soviet troops had advanced a half mile to within four miles of the city center at St. Stephan's Church. The Germans reported that the spearhead from the west had reached St. Poelten along the road to Linz. The Russians were also trying to cross the Danube between Vienna and captured Hainburg, 25 miles to the east.
Actor
The coal operators were sending a letter to the War Labor Board expressing the belief that on Monday, a new contract could be concluded with the UMW, following five weeks of negotiation.
On the editorial page, "Stable Door" foretells a building boom in Charlotte following the war, one which would likely outrun the incipient Planning Board instituted the previous December. Much had to be done to meet the needs of the growing city, widening of streets and adopting new codes and zoning ordinances. It was, insists the piece, time to act in making these necessary accommodations to growth, before the boom would begin.
"Still Candidates" tells of the continued atrocities being committed by the SS, so closely identified with Hitler. The latest reported group of murders was of the American munitions company consisting entirely of African-American troops. After being captured, they had been systematically murdered by SS officers shooting each man once in the back of the head, one man having been shot after being ordered to run across a field from his captors. In another episode, as also reported Thursday on the inside page, the SS had opened fire on ambulances of a field hospital, killing a major and two medics.
Without exception, the piece contends, members of the SS should be treated as war criminals along with Hitler. They were not soldiers but "bestial criminals".
"A New Contract" gives praise to the appointments of Admiral Nimitz to lead the Naval assault on Japan and of General MacArthur to lead the land campaign. Both, it asserts, had proven themselves worthy in the Pacific, even if General MacArthur had taken some time to get organized in his new operations initially out of Australia in 1942.
With Okinawa seeming to be in hand, an ostensible appearance of which the American public was about to be disabused, the way appeared clear now for the assault on Japan. But, it cautions, there were five million Japanese troops estimated to be in China, and another half million cut off behind the present American lines. Thus, a huge effort had to be orchestrated both to achieve the final assault and keep these other enemy contingents pinned down.
"Crime by Degrees" again examines the cases coming out of the courtroom of Federal Judge E. Yates Webb. Twice during the week, it reports, he had defendants before him accused of cheating the Government, one a former local OPA official who was convicted of taking bribes from citizens to obtain exception from price controls. The official received a $500 fine and was ordered to repay the bribe money, otherwise got a suspended sentence. The other case involved seventeen men, truck drivers and service station operators, convicted of stealing gasoline from the Army and re-selling it. Seven received prison sentences of five and a half years, plus fines.
The piece finds the disparity in sentencing remarkable, as the OPA official, in a position of trust, undermined the entire Government price control structure locally, while the seventeen thieves simply put illegal fuel into the marketplace. The crimes were at least on par with one another and should have received like sentences.
"Heads and Tails" discusses the imbalance in the Government reaction to failure of agreements between labor and management during the war. The War Labor Board, if resolution could not be effected short of strike, would take over the company, regardless of whether labor or management was at fault. The piece opines that when labor was at fault, the Government should take over the union.
The case in point was the bituminous coal strike which had shut down operations at 200 mines, despite the WLB having extended the contract for a month beyond the April 1 deadline. But the UMW stubbornly struck anyway. Under such circumstances, the prime case for takeover of the union was presented. But, as in all such cases, Interior Secretary and Solid Fuels Administrator Harold Ickes had threatened to take over the mines.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Congressman William Burgin of North Carolina placing into the Record a letter from economists at Duke and U.N.C.
The letter urged ratification of the Bretton Woods agreement of the previous July, which had proposed the formation of a World Bank and International Monetary Fund to stabilize world trade, rebuild the war-torn countries, and
The Fund would, the economists asserted, curb the practices, as occurring after World War I, whereby nations unilaterally changed their exchange rates, engaged in bilateral bartering, and other devices which tended to undermine the stability of currencies and give rise to unstable economies worldwide. The Bank would facilitate international investment without repetition of the reckless lending which led to the Depression. Absent these devices, the gulf between have and have-not nations would widen.
The first professor who signed the letter was Dudley DeWitt Carroll, the founder and first dean of the U.N.C. School of Commerce, later the School of Business Administration. Carroll Hall on the campus, once the locus of the School of Business Administration,
In 1998, its front steps served as a set for a scene in a movie. Whether Dr. Carroll would have approved, we don't know. But we do have to wonder. Maybe it would have taken some
Actually, upon closer examination of the scene, we see that the steps in question were those of either Murphey Hall or Saunders, the orientation of the scene suggesting Murphey, in relation to Manning, opposite Carroll, across Polk Place, the building, however, appearing more resemblant to Saunders than Murphey, in which case, the scene's perspective was flipped. All those buildings look alike to us. We have been there a couple of times, though, walked around. Carroll was in the deep background of one scene.
President Ford attended classes for a summer at Manning, which, until 1968, housed the law school, at which point it became remote
So should the United States Supreme Court.
Drew Pearson writes an open letter to Josef Stalin, to inform him of the recrudescence of United States opinion which tended to disrupt the improved relations developed during the war with respect to the Soviet Union. Just in the last couple of weeks, he informs, the American people had begun to rekindle the old feelings of distrust, in large part because of the perception that the Yalta agreement was not being kept by the Soviets with respect to Poland and other smaller nations, such that Americans were suspecting that the Soviets were not sincere about wanting to maintain the peace after the war.
He states that America would not repeat its great mistake of 1919-20 and refuse to enter the League of Nations, letting down the nations of Europe. This time, however, Russia had its isolationists who were not trusting of the West. He implores that Russia not make the same mistake America had made and so complicate the machinery of the United Nations organization that it would be doomed from its inception, as had been the League.
Russian concern, as exhibited by the insistence on having three votes, appeared to be that the United States would be able to steer the votes of Latin America as it pleased, that there was thus a North-South American bloc which had to be counter-balanced.
Mr. Pearson counters that all Americans wanted out of the war was a "fair deal" for all nations, big and small, and permanent peace to go with it.
"The alternative is the biggest army the world has ever seen, the biggest navy, and rockets that will pulverize cities 5,000 miles away.
"That would mean the eventual end of civilization.
"I am sure your country will not make the same mistake we did after the last war. You cannot let us down."
Given that he made these statements over three months before the first successful test of the world's first atomic bomb, it was quite insightful augury at work, if a too accurate assessment of the emergent danger which the future world would hold for much of the next 45 years.
Marquis Childs discusses the feeling pervading new members of Congress, that they were merely spectators at a big parade. The freshmen had therefore begun to specialize in particular areas of legislation, having the drawback of being susceptible to lobbying by special interests.
The difficulty, he suggests, lay in the fact that the machinery of Congress was too mired in the past to accommodate Twentieth Century problems. A committee had been created under the leadership of Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, an expert on legislative process, to provide recommendations to update rules of both chambers. The Senator believed that the Congress was possessed of an inferiority complex.
Mr. Childs thought the remark apropos, recalling that shortly after Pearl Harbor, the Senate passed a Navy appropriation bill of several billion dollars after only an hour of debate, and then proceeded to argue for several hours anent a bill to provide each member with free long distance telephone service up to $1,000 per year, a total appropriation amounting to only $96,000.
Such gumming up of the machinery of government was characteristic of the Congress and had unduly hamstrung action on important matters.
Samuel Grafton again reprises his frustration with the attitudes of some American politicians, Senators Arthur Vandenburg of Michigan, a delegate to the San Francisco Conference, and Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska being cited as examples. Both had voiced disapproval of some of the tenets of the Yalta agreement
Increasingly, the American ploy appeared to be that if there were dissatisfaction with the behavior of other nations, the Americans would simply pick up their marbles and go home.
"That is one reason why a pause has come over the development of world unity; the world has stopped to look at us, and wonder; it has the oddest feeling that we are the big man
As this Sunday is Easter
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