Thursday, June 21, 1945

The Charlotte News

Thursday, June 21, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the 82-day campaign for Okinawa had just ended in victory, with two small pockets of Japanese still holed up in caves at the southern tip of the island.

The bloody battle had cost Americans the most casualties of any single campaign during the Pacific war, 35,000 up to the last four weeks, including 9,602 dead and 25,514 wounded. The final figures would be 12,000 dead and 40,000 casualties. The Japanese suffered 90,000 killed and under 3,000 captured, their costliest campaign of the war also.

By comparison, Iwo Jima had cost the Americans 4,630 killed and over 15,000 wounded against 23,000 Japanese killed and 1,000 taken prisoner. Saipan and Guam were next in order for the Americans and Japanese in numbers of casualties, followed by Palau and Tarawa. A table on the page provides the grim statistics for five of these six engagements.

The victory now gave the Americans a strategic foothold just 325 miles from southern Japan.

General Joseph Stilwell, until a year earlier, the commander of the American and Chinese forces fighting in Burma, called home for the rift which had developed with Chiang Kai-shek, was named the new commander of the Tenth Army to replace Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., killed on Monday by a fragment from an enemy mortar shell as he inspected front lines.

While it was the last of the major campaigns in the Pacific war, fighting nevertheless still continued on Luzon and Borneo, as well as on Mindanao. Thus, it is a misstatement of history, as is often made, to say that Okinawa was the last of the ground fighting in World War II. It was not.

On Luzon, the 37th Infantry Division pushed about 30,000 Japanese further north in the Cagayan Valley, seeking to trap them against the Ingorot guerillas, who had already accounted for 400,000 enemy casualties on Luzon. The Ingorots protected the Cordillera Mountains, to the west of the valley, against infiltration by escaping enemy troops. The enemy was being hounded by air support, flying as many as 300 sorties per day, some of them being flown by Mexican pilots.

On Borneo, the Australians had effected a new landing on the northern side of Brunei Bay, crossing the five-mile wide strait from Labuan Island to block any enemy attempt to attack from Jesselton, 60 miles to the north. Bombing raids continued on the oil center at Balikpapan.

It was announced that the Eighth Air Force, under the command Lt. General Jimmy Doolittle, would be transferred to the Pacific to complement the 20th Air Force under General Hap Arnold, a part of which was the 21st Bomber Command under General Curtis LeMay. The Eighth Air Force, which had been involved in the European theater, would first undergo training in Colorado Springs, to adapt to the B-29 Superfortresses and the longer flying distances in the Pacific campaign.

In India, Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of the Congress Party, stated that he believed that an upcoming meeting in Simla, arranged by the British Viceroy, Lord Wavell, would enable rapprochement between the Hindus and Moslems, to effect an interim government until free elections could be held. Mohandas Gandhi also arrived in Simla for the meeting.

In San Francisco, the 50 nations concluded their work on a Charter for the United Nations Organization, and were ready to sign the instrument on Monday. President Truman would arrive that day and address the gathering at the San Francisco Opera House on Tuesday.

The Charter was greeted with great expectations by the smaller nations. One of the final pieces of business transacted the previous evening had established the goal of self-governance and free political institutions for the colonial peoples and set forth the goal as a standard for the colonial powers to follow.

President Truman held a press conference from Olympia, Washington, in which he praised the completed work of the conference and also promised that soon the meat shortage in the country would be rectified. He denied reports that he intended to replace Interior Secretary Harold Ickes with J. A. Krug or that he intended to replace Secretary of State Stettinius.

In the latter case, it would shortly be announced that James Byrnes would become the new Secretary of State. But, until the work was completely finalized in San Francisco, the President had to maintain his cards close to his vest to avoid undermining confidence in the authority of Mr. Stettinius. Mr. Stettinius would become the first American representative to the United Nations.

Mr. Krug would in fact succeed Mr. Ickes, but not until February.

The President also gave praise to General Eisenhower and stated that, once he had completed his assignment in Europe, he could have whatever position he wanted, and the President would make sure that he received it.

Col. General Gustav Jodl, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring each confirmed during Allied interrogation that the German Army was under orders from July 2, 1940, following the fall of France, until October 6, 1940 to invade England. The order, however, was finally rescinded on the basis that weather conditions and lack of adequate air cover made the ten-division landing in ten days too hazardous. Jodl stated that he had always been against the invasion because he did not deem it capable of success given the lack of air strength. The Germans waited until after the defeat of France to order the invasion because they had hoped that Britain would not continue the fight.

It was also indicated that the North African invasion, November 8, 1942, had come as a complete surprise to the Germans who had no idea that it was being contemplated until they saw the Allied convoys passing by Gibraltar.

A letter to a New York Congressman appears from a private, complaining of being rousted violently from his bed by his corporal along with others in his outfit. The private wanted to know whether something could be done about this corporal. The Congressman, who had been a private during World War I, promised to look into the matter.

On the editorial page, "Timely Exit" favors the proposal by social workers to abandon the Mint Street juvenile detention facility, as it had become more costly to maintain than it was worth. Most of the youthful offenders were now being assigned to foster homes, and those who were not could be housed more efficiently in the old jail, usually empty.

"Now at Least" gives praise to the late statement of the 50 nations gathered at San Francisco condemning Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain and urging that the republic be restored. Mexico had led the charge and the other nations quickly followed.

Despite the token statement, Franco remained in power to his death in 1975.

"Somebody Tell 'Em" suggests that the Office of Defense Transportation ought inform the North Carolina Democratic Party, proceeding to hold first its Jefferson Day meeting in Raleigh, now planning a pair of post-session Senate meetings in Hendersonville and Statesville, that there was still a war on. It was not in keeping with other organizations which were complying with the ODT requests not to hold conventions so that rubber and gasoline would be conserved.

"Men of the Harder" relates the saga of the submarine Harder which had been lost the previous summer off Luzon after having sunk off the coast of Japan five Japanese destroyers. For every man lost on the sub, twelve Japanese had been taken down with their ships.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut speaking in favor of extension of reciprocal trade agreements, stating that a mere one cent per capita in increased spending power for everyone in China and India would mean a total increase of 3.5 billion dollars per year added to the world economy. To accomplish it, foreign loans had to be made to build industry. It was not charity but investment; it was not altruism but self-interest.

He then provides various comparative indicators between consumption in the United States and that which it would take to equal it abroad in certain categories. For instance, in 1941, there had been 33 million automobiles in use in the United States and 45 million outside the country. Had the rest of the world possessed the same proportion of cars to its population as the United States, there would have been 450 million additional automobiles in use, an amount which would have taken, at pre-war production levels, 75 years to achieve.

Drew Pearson remarks on the fortuitous circumstance which had led to General Eisenhower ultimately becoming Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. When he had been a colonel, he served as adjutant to General MacArthur when, in 1935, the latter began the reorganization of the Philippine Army. The two did not get along and, eventually, General MacArthur sent Colonel Eisenhower home. Had it been otherwise, assumes Mr. Pearson, then General Eisenhower might have been imprisoned with General Wainwright and sixteen other American generals at the fall of Bataan and Corregidor in spring 1942.

It had been by a similar dint of circumstance that General Pershing had become the commander of the AEF in 1917. At the time, a resolution had been introduced in Congress to have former President Theodore Roosevelt lead the AEF. But President Wilson had prevailed upon the father-in-law of General Pershing, Senator Francis Warren of Wyoming, to intervene on behalf of General Pershing as commander and head off the resolution on Roosevelt. The Republican leader in the Senate was successfully able to do so and General Pershing assumed his command.

Mr. Pearson next discusses the varied lobbying efforts of Elliott Roosevelt through the years, many of which had been contrary to Roosevelt Administration policies, for instance, on behalf of utilities in Texas and against extension of the Rural Electrification Administration into the area. It had not been shown that Mr. Roosevelt had engaged in any lobbying for A & P, to avoid its being investigated for monopolistic practices, in exchange for the forgiveness of the bulk of the 1939 $200,000 loan from the president of the company. But he had been involved in substantial lobbying efforts generally during the period.

Finally, the column relates of the benefit tennis match for the G.I.'s held on a hot Saturday afternoon at Camp Lee, Va., between tennis stars of the day Bill Tilden and Vincent Richards. To attract a crowd, the men were ordered to attend by their commanding officer. During the match, they hooted and hollered at the vying opponents. Finally, Mr. Tilden stopped playing, grabbed the microphone and asked the soldiers to desist, that it was hard enough playing tennis for free in the hot sun without being razzed. Their commanding officer then addressed them, explaining that they could not boo the opposing players of a tennis match in the same way they did a baseball game.

Mr. Pearson suggests that they had not meant to be rude, but were simply reacting to being compelled to attend the match on a hot Saturday afternoon. Blame it all on the weather.

Dorothy Thompson, now writing from Prague, finds Czechoslovakia more "awake and alive" than any of the other European countries she had visited thus far on her extended trip abroad. The Czech republic appeared grateful to all of the Allies and wished to cooperate with all of them. Thus, what was difficult to achieve thus far in Munich, a trip into the Russian occupation zone, had been arranged with little problem in Pilsen.

She was able to talk to many Czechs who had lived under Nazi occupation. The people appeared to desire a planned socialist economy and political freedom, represented by the provisional government under President Benes, until free elections could be held at the end of the summer. The citizenry had moved decidedly to the left during the course of the war, in reaction to the Nazis.

The Communists were in a leading role, encouraged by the popular Russian occupation. But Ms. Thompson believed that the Czech people would ultimately not willingly accept Communism as the model for their government, that it would take force or trickery to convert them to it. They favored socialism, but not totalitarianism. Political freedom remained important, along with the ability to maintain the peasant-holding land system.

Thus, Czechoslovakia could act as an important bridge between East and West, with Western-style political freedom and Eastern-type economic institutions. Ms. Thompson had observed the same attitude in Italy, and, as well, in Germany to the extent she had been able to find any constructive thinking ongoing in that torn and atomized country.

Samuel Grafton compares General Eisenhower to Benjamin Franklin, as a new type of citizen, in the case of General Eisenhower, a citizen of the United Nations. He had not differentiated among the soldiers, whether British or American, white or black. He had always referred to the "soldiers of the United Nations" and had meant it. Unity was not just good public relations but a method of operation for General Eisenhower. By melding air, naval, and ground forces, he believed, the sum was not just the addition of the parts but rather represented exponentially multiplied power. And he practiced the same philosophy with respect to the nations. The peace, he had said, belongs to the people of the world, not just to a transitory political leader.

"If it could be asked how much greatness could have come to a simple man of Kansas, the answer may be that to make oneself the clear channel for the ideas and aspirations of the bulk of the people is the most characteristic of all American roads to greatness; and in our day this has made the man of Kansas the man of the world."

Marquis Childs looks at the remaining war with Japan, finds the situation comparable to that in the summer of 1943 with respect to Germany when predictions ran that the Germans could not last through the winter.

General Stilwell had stated that to invade Tokyo would require an Army of 500,000 men and would be too costly to undertake, that it would require two years to accomplish. Even then, after victory on Honshu, another war might have to be waged in Manchuria against the Japanese forces there. That war, it was possible, could take decades to resolve.

But others saw the Japanese ready to collapse before the end of the year. William R. Matthews, editor of the Arizona Daily Star, had written that, whereas the Germans were ruled by one autocrat, Hitler, the Japanese were ruled by an aristocratic committee. It was harder during war to obtain compromise and consent within the context of a committee versus the rule of a single individual.

No one reckoned with the notion that the war would suddenly end in a mere 50 days. No one, not even the scientists working feverishly at Los Alamos or President Truman, could yet dare think it.

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