The Charlotte News
Wednesday, June 13, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that simultaneous pre-dawn flanking attacks on the Japanese last stand position on Okinawa, along the Yaeju escarpment, had caught the enemy by surprise, as Marines and infantry troops climbed the cliffs by rope, carrying machineguns to the top. The Seventh Division captured the eastern anchor of the line while the First Division Marines were astride the ridge at the western anchor three miles away. Fighting remained fierce as one whole Marine company of 137 men were killed on a slope within 36 hours, as the Japanese rushed the Marine lines with satchel charges.
American tanks were fitted with 500-foot hoses to enable flame-throwing onto the escarpment. The hoses were also used to send fire into the Japanese cave positions.
The 24th Infantry Division captured Mandog on Mindanao, east of the Davao River. Fighting was especially intense in the hills near Davao.
On Luzon, the 37th Infantry Division advanced 9,500 yards closer to the Cagayan Valley.
On Borneo, the Japanese set fire to the Seria oil field storage tanks the previous night, something which the Allies had done as the Japanese had approached the facilities in 1942. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil went up in smoke just in one night.
On Labuan Island in Brunei Bay, the Australians drove two miles beyond the captured airstrip.
In China, the Chinese recaptured Juian, fifteen miles south of Wenchow, after winning Pingyang, ten miles further south. The Japanese had retaken Ishan, previously abandoned on June 11, the western bastion of Liuchow, locale of a former U.S. airbase. The Japanese had abandoned Foochow, leaving Amoy as the only place of continued enemy concentration within Fukien Province. In Kwangsi Province, the Chinese had on June 9 penetrated Japanese lines between Nakang and Sinfeng, cutting the Japanese escape route to the north.
Maj. General Claire Chennault announced that new American airfields would be established in China for the battles to come with Japan.
President Truman reported that the Big Three leaders had agreed to meet on a specific date at a specific place and that it appeared the issue with respect to the Polish government was proceeding toward resolution, with the Moscow meeting of the Polish leaders scheduled to start June 15. The conference, the details of which were not announced for reasons of security, would begin in Potsdam, Germany, on July 16, deliberately set to coincide with the test of the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico.
The President credited Harry Hopkins with having had a major role in effecting both the resolution of the Security Council veto issue and the Polish government issue, in his meetings with Premier Stalin in Moscow during the previous month. He also provided credit to former Ambassador to Russia Joseph Davies, in London, for aiding the process.
Secretary of State Stettinius, James Byrnes, Mr. Hopkins, and Mr. Davies, he further stated, would accompany him to the Big Three meeting, the latter two only if their health permitted.
The Senate was informed that the President intended to submit the treaty formed in San Francisco to the Senators for approval no later than June 25 and that he would request that it be ratified by July 15, a day before the scheduled start of the Potsdam Conference and the Trinity test. He posited the schedule on his assumption that the conference would conclude by June 20, a week from this date. The Senate leadership had approved the schedule.
—Now that we are a united world, Ka-boom. Give 'em hell, Harry.
At San Francisco, the Australian proposal, to limit Big Five power in the Security Council such that the veto would not have applied to making peaceful attempts at resolution of disputes and limiting the veto to use of force, was defeated 20 to 10, with fifteen nations abstaining and five others absent. There was, however, movement among the smaller nations to vote to revisit the veto issue in ten years, without the Big Five having the ability to veto any such amendment at that time. The Big Five opposed this proposal.
General Patton arrived in Washington after an overnight flight from
Brig. General Elliott Roosevelt in 1942 had discharged for $4,000 a loan of $200,000 made in 1939 by John Hartford, president of A & P, to the late President's son. The story was disclosed by columnist Westbrook Pegler, and was confirmed by Mr. Hartford, who stated that he would not have disclosed the matter himself. He said that there was more to the story than the simple discharge of the debt.
—You see, Bob? They all did it. And they all got away with it. But you let a little Howard Hughes loan come into the picture to your brother, and look what happens.
—Yeah. I know. Isn't that right? We do it and they want to get us. But they all did it and nobody said a word. Well, this time, we have the power, and we'll just screw 'em.
On the editorial page, "Veto for Peace" suggests that there was national disillusion regarding the San Francisco Conference. The general consensus was that there had been too much squabbling over matters such as the Polish government and admission of Argentina, the chairmanship of the conference, and the veto power of the Big Five, and not enough anent unity to prevent future warfare, boost reciprocal trade, and insure internationally a free press and free speech.
There was a weakness in the form of the organization as any one of the Big Five who would become an aggressor nation could and surely would veto any Security Council action, leaving the matter for regional blocs to resolve.
But, at least it was a start.
"Highest Bidder" reports of the trepidation of the State Unemployment Compensation Commission chairman regarding federalization of unemployment compensation. He did not like President Truman's proposal to equalize all payments at $25 per week.
The average North Carolina weekly wage in 1939 had been but $17.44. If the state should fall back to that wage after the war, it would mean the wage-earner would be receiving substantially less than the unemployed person, creating a disincentive to work.
The chairman contended that seasonal workers, as in the tobacco industry, would use the off-season to collect unemployment, in addition to working odd jobs and receiving $11.20 per week under the Wagner Act.
The Legislature, however, had not liberalized state compensation enough. So the matter was caught between a too skimpy state unemployment payment and a too liberal Federal proposal.
"Still Moderate" finds the moderate jump in the city tax rate of ten cents to $1.40 to be reasonable to support the city retirement system and the proposed civic improvement projects.
"U. S. Propaganda" reports on Representative Everett Dirksen of Illinois, future Senate Minority Leader for the Republicans, returning from a long trip abroad, to India and Turkey, finding that the Office of War Information had been doing a splendid job of promoting the country. Those he met in India were eager to know of TVA, for they had seen a film about it produced by OWI. More of the same came from Turkey, also based on OWI films.
Upon returning, according to Drew Pearson—albeit not in his regular column appearing on the editorial page—Mr. Dirksen had indicated to his Republican colleagues in the House that OWI should be maintained after the war. That from a former isolationist and obstructionist.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record continues the colloquy begun yesterday, sans California Congressman Jerry Voorhis and Congressman Brooks Hays of Arkansas in this part. Representative Howard Buffett of Nebraska continues discussing the Bretton Woods proposal for a World Bank and International Monetary Fund, now with Congressmen Jesse Wolcott and Fred Crawford, both of Michigan.
While too obscure again in its print to discern much from it, the mystery term clarified in yesterday's offering by Mr. Voorhis appears now alas to be elucidated as "fundamental disequilibrium"—a term which might have fairly ubiquitous application.
That it was Mr. Voorhis who gave it clarification perhaps is no small irony of history given his opponent in the fall of 1946—who, arguably, would ultimately bring forth more fundamental disequilibrium in the country than most of his predecessors in the office of the presidency, at least a contributing factor to his being given the axe a mere 21 months after winning one of the largest landslides in the history of the Republic, albeit not indicative of his personal popularity, at least no more so than were the landslides won in Germany by Hitler, following his initial victory in a splintered nation by a one-third plurality.
Drew Pearson reports that the black market in eggs was so bad that the War Food Administration was considering freezing all eggs in storage. Their owners were awaiting a price rise. Meanwhile, other eggs were being funneled into the black market. The FBI was investigating the poultry black market in the Delaware-Maryland area and there were suggestions of corruption in Delaware state government, corruption which might also extend into the WFA.
He next turns to a discussion of secret documents and the criticism of the State Department for marking everything "secret".
The Office of Strategic Services, nicknamed "Oh So Secret", was just as bad.
While, he remarks, the military members of the Office working in Europe and Asia had done a splendid job during the war, properly in secrecy, the stateside former diplomats and Wall Street brokers who played private dicks in the Office were mere dead weight. They sent messages saying little or nothing at taxpayer expense, often containing simple social chit-chat, marked "secret".
He provides an example.
Samuel Grafton discusses the reluctance on the part of some Americans to engage in prosecution of Nazis without insuring protections under the American Constitution, that doing so might damage respect for American institutions and undermine the chance for German democracy to thrive. Below the surface, this question of punishment of war criminals involved whether America and the Allies wanted to engage in rebuilding of German society, something which was not desired as a task, instead to be left to the Germans themselves.
It was good to air these differences of approach so that they might be examined in the light of day. It might be better, he concludes, for Americans to have the reputation before the world of not wanting to punish war criminals than to set up so many protections that the system would wind up granting habeas corpus to Hermann Goering.
A series of vignettes from Magazine Digest appear on the page. The first relates of two G.I.'s who stopped by a "Hall of Remembrance" in London. One walked in and saw some people standing around a pit from which flames were emanating. Just before he was thrown out, he asked, "What's cooking?"
It was a crematorium.
The other discernible one, about the WAC and her pajamas and her fiance's old-fashioned family and their elderly maid, is far too racy to recount. You will have to squint through it yourself.
A letter writer from Shelby provides a chronology of national depressions, predicting that the next one would occur post-war and last three years. The Federal Reserve would give the warning. Then, he counsels, would be the time to sell high and buy low. After the depression would come a
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