Wednesday, June 27, 1945

The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 27, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the organized resistance on Luzon was approaching an end as the guerillas and American soldiers converging in the Cagayan Valley in the north were but twenty miles apart above Tuguegarao. About half of the remaining 20,000 Japanese were heading into the Sierra Madre mountains where they would assuredly perish of starvation.

On Mindanao, Richard Bergholz reported that the enemy contingents to the west of Davao were also running out of fighting ability, as disorganization was beginning to become characteristic of the retreat, even as fighting persisted. The 24th Infantry Division was now moving so fast that they drove the enemy from Mount Manoy, one of the best remaining positions for a stand, then forged ahead toward Tamogan village. The Americans had fought their way out of the hemp groves of the Taloma plain into the mountainous areas and rain forests. Other Eighth Army contingents moved up the north coast to the mouth of the Agusan River, where many Japanese from the central section of the island were likely holed up.

On Borneo, Balikpapan, an important oil center, was subjected to one of the heaviest combined Allied air and sea assaults ever performed in daylight. After bombing the installation, leaflets were dropped for the Indonesian population.

Fifty B-29's struck the Utsube River oil refinery near Yokkaichi on Honshu before midnight the previous night.

The large 500 B-29 raid of fourteen hours earlier, as reported the previous day, had resulted in five lost planes, while more than 70 had to stop at Iwo Jima on the way back to Saipan to refuel because of heavy wind conditions.

On Okinawa, the bodies of the Japanese commander and his chief of staff were found on the southeastern tip of the island in shallow graves after they had slit their stomachs in hara kiri ceremonies.

Tokyo radio reported an unconfirmed invasion of Kume Island by Allied forces and that they were planning to land on the China coast, preparatory to a Japanese invasion.

Prime Minister Churchill expressed at a campaign stop in Bradford, England, disagreement with the statement reported the previous day by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery that Britain had almost been finished in 1941 when it started receiving Lend-Lease aid from America. The Prime Minister contended that the country had been getting stronger everyday.

The Prime Minister also made stops in Preston, Halifax, Burnley, and Blackburn.

At Halifax, he stated: "We are not [as powerful a nation as our Allies], but with the unified firmness of character, moderation of behavior in every way and with stable laws of policy, we have raised ourselves by the storm of war into the very van of the conquering nations. And by these qualities of British and Yorkshire character, we shall continue to march forward at the head of the nation."

By a one vote margin, the House Judiciary Committee approved the new plan of presidential succession proposed by President Truman, to have the Speaker of the House next in line after the Vice-President, in lieu of the Secretary of State as under the current 1886 Succession Act.

The new line of succession, however, would not become law until 1947.

In Detroit, some 50,000 workers were on strike, 12,000 at Ford, 22,000 at Packard, 7,500 at Budd Wheel Co., and 9,000 at Hudson, as the national strike total approached 90,000. Some 16,700 workers at Goodyear in Akron and 15,000 CIO glass workers in eleven other cities also remained on strike.

In Chicago, an eleven-day old strike of about 6,000 truck drivers appeared to have ended as 2,000 had voted to return to work, joining 8,000 Teamsters who had already resumed their jobs.

President Truman urged quick ratification of the U. N. Charter signed the day before in San Francisco. He was en route to Washington by way of his home in Independence, Mo., carrying the Charter with him to present to the Senate for its advice and consent.

The Associated Press polled 26 delegations of the 50 on hand in San Francisco and found that 20 expected their countries to ratify the Charter during 1945.

Whether, incidentally, as he stated in March he would, Congressman Sol Bloom, part of the American delegation to the conference, ever got back to the spot where, as a young man in the 1890's, he had sold flowers, nearby Lotta's Fountain, has never been indicated by Drew Pearson, who originally imparted the story, or by anyone else.

On the editorial page, "The Law at Work" looks at stupid, lax, and curious conduct of the law. It cites as police stupidity the case out of Aberdeen, N.C., where a policeman had fired a shot at a speeding motorist which pierced the window of a restaurant and killed a diner.

It cites for laxity the case of the Charlotte mother who was putting her six-year old to bed and discovered a black man hiding in the closet of the bedroom. She screamed and the man ran away. He was caught by the police, tried in Superior Court, and sentenced to six months in jail. After the woman protested the light sentence, it was increased to twelve months.

It offers as curious the case of nineteen black men charged in Superior Court for violating lottery laws, who entered a plea bargain whereby they pleaded guilty and received fines of $100 each plus court costs. Their attorney then paid the clerk of court, in $20 bills, the sum of $2,334.25. It gave the appearance that the attorney was as much a part of the lottery racket as his clients.

"A New Tune" contrasts the American Communist party which had returned to hue the old line of class warfare, workers versus industrialists, with the German Communists who were speaking of democracy and punishment of Nazi war criminals and industrialists as they rejected the Soviet version of Communism. The German Communists appeared to be promoting the same goals as the United Nations while the American Communists had returned to the pre-war form of their party.

"Too Many People" comments on social scientists and physicians meeting in San Francisco having predicted over-population of the earth within a half century, that the 2.2 billion people on the globe in 1945 might double by the year 2000, as population increases were occurring at 20 million people per year. The result would be, predicted the group, a devaluation of life, with the hungry, inarticulate masses ruled by tyranny and war.

Birth control, tightening of marriage requirements, and sterilization all presented answers to the problem.

The editorial finds this prediction to be nothing new and believed optimistically that the world would calculate a method by which its increased populations would receive provender.

The world population was estimated in 2000 to be 6.115 billion people, nearly two billion more than the estimate for that future date made in 1945. Today, in 2012, it has surpassed 7 billion, an increase of a billion in just over a decade, and is expected by 2050 to top 9 billion—more probably, at current rates of increase, substantially higher. Thus, the entire population of the earth in 1945 not only has more than trebled in the intervening 67 years but is expected to add itself again to current totals, and likely more, within the next 38 years.

Eventually, one must assume, something has to give.

Or shall we try for a trillion and just see what the hell happens? not only with the food supply but with the consumption of more and more petroleum resources until it all gives out, and, by that, we presume, some saving grace with respect to the environment at least.

Oh, Happy Day.

Cigarettes would be in short supply, too.

"Lend-Lease, East" remarks that the tshort Japanese, as they were termed disparagingly in Russia, would likely not be surprised to learn that Lend-Lease supplies were pouring into Siberia, had been since 1942, north of the Amur River where the Red Banner Armies had been encamped since 1939 with more than two million men. They had fought in the battles of Changkufeng and Nomonhan against the Japanese, in which a total of 60,000 men died.

Leo Crowley had announced the recent increases in Lend-Lease supplies flowing to Siberia from the West Coast, but indicated that they were not backed by any assurance that the Russians would enter the Pacific war, that they were, however, useful in pinning down Japanese defenders. The Japanese had amassed 55 divisions against the Siberian border and so were obviously not oblivious to these facts.

Such Lend-Lease portended further ill for Japan.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Clare Hoffman of Michigan commenting on the foolish bureaucracy of the Office of Price Administration. He owned a farm and had a steer. He asked OPA director Chester Bowles a year earlier whether he could kill the steer to feed his grandchildren whose father was in the Navy. Mr. Bowles said that, of course, he could. Mr. Hoffman wanted a letter to that effect. He then received a letter from Mr. Bowles indicating that regulations discouraged consumption of points-free foods, (not pointless), raised on the farms of consumers.

Mr. Hoffman concluded that Mr. Bowles did not understand the foolishness of his own agency's regulations. The Congressman refused to say what happened to the steer as he did not wish to confess his way into jail.

Of course, removing those regulations would have triggered runaway inflation in a bull market. Thus, we conclude, that Mr. Hoffman, per his usual practice, was long on cute anecdotes and short on any substantive logic in relating of his bum steer.

Drew Pearson makes note of an item in the Army appropriations bill for $1,430,000 for horses, despite the fact that not a single horse cavalry operation had taken place in World War II. Congressman Francis Case of Custer, S.D., had been persuaded by the Army to add $190,000 to the budget first approved, to result in the final total. The extra money allowed for a thousand new riding horses.

The Injuns would rue the day, this time.

General John Preston explained to Congressman Ross Collins of Mississippi that horses were required for the officers at San Antonio for airplane duty.

"They must be flying steeds," quipped Mr. Collins.

Meanwhile, the British and Russians were concentrating their future war experiments on rocket bombs which they believed eventually could reach the moon.

Nonsense.

Save the Pegasus horses.

Even the Germans were planning for such future advanced weaponry.

The Americans were not only budgeting for horses but asking for limited peacetime conscription similar to that of France before the Fall in spring, 1940.

Mr. Pearson hearkens back to a piece published April 2 in which he had stated that the Army intended to scale back the Air Force to 1936 levels, making it one of the smallest air forces in the world, about 18,000 men. General Hap Arnold had vigorously protested and the Army quickly revised its plans to increase by five times the Army air corps over its size in 1936, to about 100,000 men.

Still, however, the Army brass hats wanted a large infantry force.

President Truman had asked for separate reports from the Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces for invasion plans for Japan. The Army favored a land assault while generally the Air Force favored softening up of the Japanese cities by increased bombing, estimated likely to save 400,000 American lives in a land invasion.

General George C. Marshall, chief of staff, had asked General Ira Eaker, head of the Air Forces in the absence of General Arnold, visiting General MacArthur in the Philippines, not to submit a separate report for the Air Force. General Eaker complied and so President Truman would not be privy to the Air Force plan.

General Arnold had refused to go along with a land attack, as urged by General MacArthur, without first bringing forth all of the air capability possible. But, because of shipping shortages, it was not practicable to accomplish both a massive land assault and a massive air assault as well.

But, as far as President Truman knew, the Air Force concurred in the Army's plan.

Marquis Childs discusses the testimony uniformly before Congress of the military leaders of the country, professing the need for universal military service during peacetime to insure the peace. But, he notes, they had not mentioned the concomitant need for scientific and technical training in relation to maintenance of the peace by the armed forces. The Army had a sorry track record in using trained personnel with technical and scientific expertise.

A shortage of 19,000 doctors was expected in the post-war period at home, and unless the Army changed its policy with respect to refusing deferment of pre-medical students, it was anticipated that smaller medical schools would have to close their doors. The civilian ranks had been so depleted by the Army that fewer and fewer enrollees were coming into pre-medical college programs.

The Navy response had been that it would be discriminatory to defer pre-medical students because of the inability of many families to afford the cost of the education to obtain the deferment. Mr. Childs challenges this response, however, on the basis that thousands of servicemen were being educated in medical schools at government expense, as they had already entered medical school when they obtained their deferments.

The Council of Education proposed a program whereunder 8,000 high school graduates who excelled in science would be afforded deferments.

Better hit those microscopes and slide rules, boys, if you want to save a hitch in the Army.

Dorothy Thompson, writing from Paris, describes a vacuity of mind in the German nation, following twelve years of Nazi rule. The German emotions were mercurial, at one moment, submissive to the Allies, at another, potentially at their throats. No one really knew what to expect. With the German press prohibited from publishing, there was no way to gauge the German mindset at present.

The Bavarian Separatist Movement vied with the Free German Movement in Munich, but no one believed either amounted to much.

The Allied Military Government did not communicate with the people except to give orders, the non-fraternization rule being applied at every level, and the Germans were unable to communicate with each other. German officials were selected via questionnaire to comply with the non-fraternization rule. Appointed officials were warned of court martial for failure to perform their duties and so they simply followed orders, undertaking no tasks on their own or coming up with any ideas of their own.

The AMG published a newspaper for Bavaria but it contained no editorials and propounded no ideas. Theaters were verboten.

The problem thus far with the occupation was that the Germans had submitted to unconditional surrender but the Allies had demonstrated no will to set in place a cohesive policy of occupation.

Ms. Thompson asks, in conclusion, whether anyone had bothered to inquire as to what the Allies would do with Japan once it fell.

A letter writer extols the virtues of war savings stamps, "little baby bonds", as a cheap means to help finance the war.

One of the quotes of the day, from Kumataro Honda, former Japanese Ambassador to Germany: "If we defend our nation and continue resistance for five, ten or even twenty years on our soil, the enemy is certain to suffer an eventual breakdown."

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