The Charlotte News
Thursday, July 12, 1945
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that between 500 and 550 B-29's had dropped 3,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Uwajima on the west coast of Shikoku, Ichinomiya, nine miles northwest of Nagoya, Tsuruga, on west central Honshu, and Utsunomiya, 60 miles north of Tokyo. Demolition bombs were also dropped on Kawasaki in Tokyo Bay.
Admiral Nimitz stated that Corsairs and Avenger torpedo bombers had struck Wednesday against Miyazaki airfield on Kyushu, Inujo airfield on Tanega Island to the south, and the Amami Group of the northern Ryukyus.
Fleet Air Wing One struck two convoys of transport ships seeking to supply from Shanghai the Japanese in the home islands. None of the ships was reported sunk but none either got through to the Sea of Japan. Instead, they had been driven into Tsingtao—probably stopping for a beer.
A leading journalist in Tokyo criticized the Suzuki Government for not doing enough to resist American attacks and warned that invasion was nigh.
A photograph appears on the page of Vice Admiral John S. McCain plotting strategy with Admiral Halsey.
On Borneo, the Australian Seventh Infantry and Dutch colonial troops had advanced at a slow pace toward the rich Sambodia oil fields, six miles north of Balikpapan, against a strong delaying action by the enemy. The Diggers were within a half mile of Mt. Batochampar, a 200-foot well-fortified enemy hill. A twelve-mile area had been hit with napalm by the 13th army Air Force to clear the way.
In the central sector, the Aussies repulsed several Japanese counter-attacks three miles inland from the Sepinggang Ketjil River, guarding the captured Sepinggang airfield, which was ten days from being placed into Allied operation. On the right flank, 5.5 miles northeast of Manggar airfield, troops had reached the Adajeranden River, with the aid of naval and aerial bombardment of Japanese mortar and artillery positions.
A report indicating that the British were preparing to invade Car Nicobar Island, 450 miles north of Sumatra, west of the Malay Peninsula, in preparation for invading Singapore, also circulated in Japan.
It was announced that the Big Three meeting at Potsdam would begin Monday or Tuesday—probably dependent on which day the scientists at Los Alamos, N.M., could arrange for the first atomic test, but the piece does not so indicate.
The Augusta, with President Truman onboard, sailed somewhere in the Atlantic, through showers for the first time since leaving port at Newport News, Va., on Saturday. The President kept abreast of developments in the Pacific war on an hourly basis while preparing with Admiral Leahy and Secretary of State James Byrnes for the upcoming meeting with Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin, at which Clement Atlee, soon to become Prime Minister after the British votes of July 5 could be fully counted, would also be in attendance. The length of the conference was not determined in advance and it was expected that it might exceed the eight days spent by FDR, Stalin, and Churchill at Yalta in February.
The Red Army had formally relinquished control to the Americans and British of 12 of Berlin's 29 boroughs. The Americans took over their designated zone at 9:00 a.m. and the British began their occupation at noon. The American zone contained 700,000 Berliners, the British, 900,000. The American authorities stated that they did not intend to change anything immediately from the mode of operation during the Russian occupation. The British were expected to do likewise. American counter-intelligence officers had been screening Soviet-appointed administrators and policemen to weed out Nazis, but had thus far found none.
Berlin continued as it had been for weeks, with Soviet-authorized schools operating, as bucket brigades of civilians were at the job clearing rubble stone by stone.
The fourth in the series of articles on Hermann Goering's notebook, appeared, with Herr Goering chronicling a meeting on October 12, 1938 with Frau von Essen, wife of the former Swedish Minister to Berlin. They engaged in chit-chat.
The following day, he met with Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi specialist in racial theories.
After chit-chat with Herr Rosenberg, he met with British Col. P. T. Etherton, organizer of an air expedition to Mt. Everest in 1933. Herr Goering thought that Col. Etherton was an M.P. when he was not. Goering found him "very pro-German" and desirous of giving lectures in England on the "new Germany". The Colonel also believed, according to Goering, that Czechoslovakia was none of Britain's business.
Colonel Etherton subsequently denied any such conversation, called Goering a liar and "jovial old murderer". In fact, he said, Goering had asked him to try to arrange a visit for him to Britain, to which Col. Etherton responded that he found it "quite impracticable". The Nazi had also boasted that no British aircraft could penetrate to Berlin, in response to which Col. Etherton quotes himself as having said that it remained to be seen.
The House limited the Fair Employment Practices Committee budget to $250,000 out of the $752,000 appropriated for war agencies, less than half of that which FEPC had indicated it would need just for liquidation activities. Southern Congressmen had sought to place restrictions on use of the money allotted, but failed.
Following several months of service in the Air Corps as a captain in the China-Burma-India theater, Buddy Lewis was about to return to his old jobs as third baseman and outfielder for the Washington Senators, thanks to owner Clark Griffith having made application to obtain Mr. Lewis's return to the active list. He had been out of uniform in baseball since 1941.
You can now buy new shoes with airplane stamp No. 4 in ration book No. 3. Check yours. You may be a winner.
Two cigar-shaped balloons, sighted in the vicinity of Mexico City, were believed possibly to be of Japanese origin.
Either that or
On the editorial page, "Let 'Em Earn It" states its lack of opposition to the day when national boundaries would pass away and the brotherhood of man would prevail over the earth, when the second Eden would come to be.
And, it assures, it had nothing against the Italians coming back into the fold of civilization.
But, it found too precipitous the move by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on the advice of Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew, to welcome Italy into the United Nations Organization.
The move would likely not be received well by the veterans of Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy, or by Americans generally.
With the former Fascist country of two decades torn asunder in factions, economically, politically, and socially, it was a poor prospect for the U. N. The editorial opposes the effort to bring it into the fold so quickly.
Mr. Grew also advocated kindness to Hirohito. It concludes, sarcastically: "What about Japan? She'd make a great little ally, hey?"
"All or Nothing" tells of the moves by some in the Senate to restrict the ability of the U. N. delegate of the United States to commit the nation's armed forces to being part of the military contingent to repulse aggressive action after a Security Council vote to use force. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio wanted to limit the delegate's power by amending the Charter; Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico wanted to pass legislation to the effect, to limit the delegate's power to that of the President, subject to Congress's war-making power.
But, the piece points out that the President had waged war in emergent situations without Congressional approval, President Wilson having committed troops to Vera Cruz in 1914, the Pershing punitive expedition to find Pancho Villa in 1916, the intervention in Russia in 1918, and the war against German U-boats in 1940.
To limit the delegate's power as suggested would dilute the power of the U. N. as a body and seriously debilitate its potential for maintaining world peace.
"An Overnight Job" suggests that the FEPC had so little impacted the South that most did not know what its initials stood for. Nor were they terribly concerned about its becoming permanent, did not view President Truman's exhortation to that end with very much seriousness, felt it only a tip of the hat to the memory of President Roosevelt who had given birth to the FEPC as an Executive Committee.
With all of that in mind, Congressman Joe Ervin was seeking to stir up antagonism against the bill by whipping the anti-bureaucratic sentiment abroad the country. He had urged that FEPC would require that not only private employment would need be provided without regard to race, creed, or color, but that public employment also would be so regulated, including schools—the placing of black teachers teaching white children in the white schools.
The piece says that it disliked having to report that North Carolina would not like having to employ black teachers for its white children. Black teachers were paid the same in the state as white teachers, but segregation had to be maintained. The black teachers, it suggests, would not like the prospect either.
The law, even if passed, it warns, would not cause the tradition of segregation from time immemorial to be abolished so quickly by the presence of mere ink on a page.
Well, it was quite astute in its studiousness of Southern tradition. It would take at least another twenty-five years before the old barriers would begin to break down and another twenty years beyond that before it would perish in all but the most stubborn quarters of the society. But had the workplace and the schools not been integrated, slowly and stubbornly as they were, during the 1950's and 1960's, the troubles would not have been ameliorated nearly so fast as they have been, though still by no means without occasional difficulty, mild, however, by comparison to former times. And still, of course, we have apartheid economically, and ghettoes in the larger cities throughout the country, if not as badly disparate in economic wherewithal as was the case forty and more years ago.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Congressman Edward Rees of Kansas objecting loudly to an article prepared by the Office of War Information for a Russian magazine submitted to 20,000 key Russians, describing the area west of the Mississippi, in the plains states, as almost wholly devoted to farming, raising little livestock, and having virtually no industry.
Mr. Rees takes considerable umbrage at the slight, states that 1.2 million Kansans were city dwellers, compared to the 600,000 farm residents, that there was ample livestock raising, and plenty of industry in Kansas, including three large airplane manufacturing plants, salt mines, and even an oil refinery at
Drew Pearson tells of one of the worst incidents of food waste in several months, occurring at Norfolk, involving potatoes earmarked for Belgium. Three shiploads had been promised to replace the potatoes which American soldiers had consumed during the Belgian campaign. The War Food Administration was to provide the replacements and the War Shipping Administration was to arrange their transport.
The WFA, however, had those
Moreover, the spuds were loaded aboard
The Belgians still awaited their
He next explains the efforts by Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes and President Truman to increase coal output, by increasing ceiling prices, seeking the release of 10,000 miners from the Army, banning the draft of young miners, and speedily turning out mining equipment. The shortage of men in the mine had caused the companies to hire men as old as 47 to work in the pits when prior to the war no one over 25 was assigned to these jobs.
The column next presents "Capital Chaff", including the presence in the House gallery of Marine Major Paul Douglas, the University of Chicago educator, husband to Congresswoman Emily Taft Douglas, and Army Major Melvyn Douglas, the actor and husband to Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. They were present to observe debate on the bill to make the Fair Employment Practices Committee permanent.
He also relates of Senator Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia having strolled into a hearing of the Senate Military Affairs Committee during the testimony of Bernard Baruch, having his picture taken by the press as he posed gaudily just before the hearing started, and then departing, leaving the public impression, from the flashy photographs, that he had dominated the hearing which he did not even attend.
Marquis Childs comments on the Office of Defense Transportation order to limit civilian travel on Pullmans to trips under 450 miles. As a practical matter, it meant that Pullmans would be uncoupled from civilian trains and would be put to use shuttling troops from coast to coast for redeployment to the Pacific. The move had come out of the complaints of veterans that they saw German prisoners-of-war riding in Pullmans as they traveled across the continent in day coaches, a claim which the War Department denied. The real problem of overcrowding had come from civilians, many of whom were simply on vacation.
The job of transportation was huge, with about 20 million men to be transferred to the West Coast. The railroads had performed their job well during the war and if they were to fail now in the task ahead, remarks Mr. Childs, all of that goodwill might be lost. He urges the public to help them out by staying off the transcontinental trains unless absolutely necessary.
Samuel Grafton explores the issue of the impact of returning veterans on labor in the country. A suggestion to effect full employment had been to allow the veterans to work in any factory they chose, regardless of union contracts. Such a policy seemed on its surface intrinsically fair. But digging deeper, one found flaws.
First, the proponents made no secret of being antagonistic to labor and desirous of a fight between returning veterans and labor for jobs, leading inexorably to a decline in the popularity of the union movement. So, the initial problem was that the proposal and ones like it were freighted with intentions of creating class war.
Second, the issue arose as to who would pay for the jobs for the veterans. The proposal left it to labor to pay for the program by putting some men in civilian life out of work. The distribution of responsibility for insuring the hiring of veterans needed to be spread more equitably.
He counsels returning veterans to be cautious about accepting the advice of these advocates, "prophets of a grade-B Gotterdammerung", who, dissatisfied with the unity of the war years, now wanted to sow the seeds of disunity in their aftermath.
Dorothy Thompson, back in New York after an extended trip through Europe, reports of the frustration of the American troops at being prohibited from any form of friendly contact with the Germans. It appeared in their minds to run counter to the idea embodied in the Atlantic Charter of spreading the Four Freedoms abroad.
She therefore asks rhetorically what track re-education of the Germans might take. She relates anecdotes representing two polar approaches to the matter, one from a sergeant who explained that he and his men had initially to stay with local people when they first moved into an unnamed German town. The woman of the house offered two rooms for two of the men and a third would have to sleep in the hall on a day-bed. The sergeant balked at this invitation and told the woman that they were the conquerors: she would sleep in the hall.
Another story showed a different attitude. A woman with a baby had arrived at an American patrol station but did not have the proper paperwork for the previous twelve miles of her journey. She had already walked 40 miles, 15 that day, and was exhausted. Nevertheless, initially, the G.I. strictly complied with regulations, telling her she would have to return to the previous patrol station. She began to cry and, eventually taking mercy on her plight, he obtained overnight lodging for her with a German woman. In the meantime, he fixed her pass by going to the previous station in a jeep. The next morning, he sent her own her way.
Ms. Thompson relates that she had been told of the latter story by three villagers, not by the Americans. The G.I. had spoken to the woman, not in German, but in her native Yiddish.
Ms. Thompson suggests that the latter attitude, not by the book, had accomplished re-education far more efficiently in human terms than the first attitude.
The non-fraternization rule had led to absurd situations. She relates of having seen four arrogant young Germans in Rosenheim approach two armed and husky G.I.'s on the sidewalk and practice the anthropologically atavistic act of displacement, that is confrontation in contest for space and insisting on not giving ground to the competitor for it. The G.I.'s gave way to the four youths, who nevertheless continued, without success in their monkey-shines, to provoke their ire by facing them off—precisely as Neanderthals typically do.
The non-fraternization rule was artificial, betrayed natural human sociability, and was not usually obeyed by the average G.I., anyway. A better policy was needed.
It is probably a good thing that General Patton had not been in Rosenheim at the time of the incident witnessed by Ms. Thompson. There likely would have been, in that event, four dead or seriously wounded German youths, from a pearl-handled revolver—and
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