The Charlotte News
Thursday, July 5, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 800 planes, including 500 B-29's, struck four cities in Japan on July Fourth, delivering 3,000 tons of incendiary bombs. Two Japanese destroyers were hit in the Yellow Sea and six Tokyo airfields were battered, including Imha and Nobara in Tokyo and, to the northeast, Kashiwa, Tsukuba, Konoike, and Kasumigaura. Chisan and Kanoya airfields on Kyushu were also struck. B-29's hit Tokushima, Takamatsu, and Kochi on Shikuku Island, and Himeli on Honshu.
Another 500 planes struck this date, hitting Nagasaki and Omura.
The Japanese braced themselves for the possibility of 1,000-B-29 raids becoming soon the norm.
The Australians moved against the last Japanese positions at Balikpapan on Borneo.
General MacArthur proclaimed that all of the Philippine Islands had been won following 250 days of fighting, defeating 23 Japanese divisions with superior numbers to those of the Allies. About 420,000 Japanese soldiers had been killed, including the 16th Imperial Division which had been identified as one which had tortured American and Filipino prisoners during the May, 1942 Bataan Death March. Approximately 30,000 Japanese still were holed up in mountain regions of the archipelagos.
American ground and air casualties through July 1 in the campaign had amounted to 11,921 killed, 410 missing, and 42,569 wounded.
The operation had established several airbases for attacking the mainland of Japan and had collapsed the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere which Japan had created in the six months following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Empire had been cut in half to enable attack on each part, north and south, as a Naval blockade prevented delivery of supplies and reinforcements.
General Carl Spaatz was named to head the Army air forces in the Pacific, just as he had over Europe. The Eighth Air Force, under General Jimmy Doolittle, and the 20th Air Force, under Maj. General Curtis LeMay, would be the two principal airwings in the remaining war. The Thirteenth, the Fifth and the Seventh Air Forces might also be involved in tactical raids.
By a vote of 16 to 1, with five abstaining, the House Post-War Military Policy Committee approved the broad principle of universal military training in peacetime. The measure being considered would require every able-bodied man to engage in one year of compulsory military training between his 17th and 21st birthdays, then to enter the reserves.
Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson stated that the claim of soldiers who had been forced to ride crammed day coaches from Boston to San Francisco, that they had seen along the way German prisoners riding in Pullman cars, was incorrect. The soldiers had posted a sign in chalk on their train to that effect, as it pulled into Marysville, California.
Britain went to the polls this date for the first time in ten years to conduct a general election. Because of the absentee ballots of soldiers, the results would not be known for three weeks. The Conservative Party had campaigned on free enterprise while Labor was demanding nationalization of four basic industries.
Prime Minister Churchill expressed confidence that the Conservatives would win. He felt it in his bones. Conservative newspapers predicted a 100-seat majority in Commons for the Conservatives. The Tories had maintained a 52-seat majority for the previous decade.
The Labor newspaper, The Daily Herald, however, dismissed this confidence with a wave of the hand and predicted a sweep by Labor. The independent Manchester Guardian suggested that a combined Liberal and Labor majority could form a Coalition Government of the left.
Milan went on general strike in protest of high prices and the need for higher wages.
Thirty-seven Governors, including Governor Gregg Cherry of North Carolina, sent a petition to the White House asking President Truman to take up the issue of Jewish settlement of Palestine when he met with Premier Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill at Potsdam.
The Navy seized five Goodyear plants at Akron pursuant to President Truman's directive, ordering 16,700 CIO workers to return to their jobs by the following day.
On the editorial page, "Nothing Done" relates of the concern of the State Mental Hygiene Society with regard to the 56.8 percent of rejected draft registrants in the state as being unfit for duty. A good many, about 32 percent of all registrants, had been rejected for
But the State had done nearly nothing to make up for this glaring deficiency. In 1936, a report had suggested a training school for such persons in addition to Caswell, already operating. A psychologist, social worker, and psychiatrist were recommended for the staff of Caswell. It also recommended more sterilization. Delinquent children needed to be classified and trained as well.
Yet, none of the recommendations had been implemented.
"The army of the
You can say that again.
"100 Billions" expresses relief at the news that the Government had spent more than a hundred billion dollars during the previous fiscal year. The total national debt was now at 259 billion. The editorial says that another sense of relief would come when that amount surpassed the 300-billion mark. Ninety billion of the prior year's spending had gone to the war effort, with the Army getting 50 billion, the Navy, 30, and war agencies, 10. No price could be placed on victory in Europe or the necessity to defeat Japan.
And, there had also been record revenues at 46 billion and record income taxes at 35 billion.
"A Waiting List" discusses the second case of substantial loan forgiveness to Elliott Roosevelt, as reported earlier in the week. Unlike the first case of A & P president John Hartford, the payoff on the second loan had been more substantial and there appeared no knowledge or influence exerted by President Roosevelt.
The piece asserts that more such dealings would likely be uncovered by the Congressional investigation.
"The Go-Between" expects no national mourning for the retirement of Harry Hopkins from government service. From the time he became head of WPA in 1935, he had been viewed with disfavor by the public. He was perceived as holding too much influence over President Roosevelt as a non-elected official.
Most of his critics were the opponents of the New Deal and Roosevelt.
But Mr. Hopkins, behind the scenes, had encouraged amicable relations with America's allies during the war and deserved great credit for this feat. He had also been a troubleshooter within the Administration in determining where the war effort was letting down at any given time.
He had briefed President Truman during his first weeks after the death of President Roosevelt and had gone to Moscow as his personal emissary to work out the ragged details following Yalta, getting Stalin to maintain his commitments to representative government in Poland and the Balkans.
Mr. Hopkins, concludes the piece, was a public servant who deserved his rest.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator William Langer of North Dakota commenting on the sabotage and shoddy construction of planes within many of the aircraft plants of the country. Some 17,500 pilots had been lost during training stateside while 5,500 had been lost in combat, according to reports reaching the Senator. Many of the pilots who had lost their lives did so from the fact of bad workmanship on the planes.
Drew Pearson covers this and that, beginning with the report that Harry Hopkins would not accompany the President to Potsdam because of his health, but also because he did not get along well with new Secretary of State James Byrnes. Mr. Hopkins had persuaded President Roosevelt to appoint Edward Stettinius in November instead of Mr. Byrnes in direct response to this mutual enmity.
Mr. Pearson observes that Mr. Hopkins was now being held in high regard for his adept handling of the Polish problem in Moscow. Previously, he had been looked upon as a pol, a close political adviser to FDR of whom many were jealous. But with Truman, he was known to be an adviser but not close personally.
He next reviews the new Western bent to the Cabinet, displacing many of the Northeasterners appointed by Roosevelt.
Pressure was increasing for President Truman's Executive Order No. 1067, establishing a hard peace for Germany, to be published. Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy wired General Eisenhower asking him if he wanted it published and he answered in the negative. Publishing the order would make it less likely that soldiers and junior officers in charge of occupation would not allow soft-peace policies to be implemented. Some of those who wanted a soft peace remained, desirous of Germany acting as a bulwark against Russia.
He relates of the praise given Harold Ickes and to replaced Postmaster General
When Tom Clark was sworn in as Attorney General, he introduced his 78-year old mother, his wife, and his sixteen-year old son, Ramsey, taller than his father. "Mama produces 'em big," said the new Attorney General of the future Attorney General.
William Paley, former and future head of CBS, now deputy head of the Army psychological warfare office, had submitted a secret memo asking that a German radio network run by Germans be established.
Dorothy Thompson, writing from Paris, comments on the San Francisco U. N. Charter reading as a document written on another planet. For there to be internationalism, she posits, there first had to be internationalists. Paper treaties had never stopped war. Prejudices and passions fueled it.
The post-war devices in Europe trying to establish the peace had thus far managed only to alienate the Allies and stimulate enemy morale. Nowhere had Ms. Thompson found any authority which was seeking to enable the Allies to understand one another better.
The non-fraternization rule with the Germans seemed, de facto, also applicable among the Allies. Their was no social interaction or effort to establish it. The American soldiers, by dint of their experience, were being turned into isolationists while being stationed in foreign countries. They were becoming increasingly anti-British, anti-French, and xenophobic to all things not American. Likewise, the Allies were becoming hostile to Americans.
Marquis Childs tells of Josephus Daniels, former Secretary of the Navy in World War I, having written an editorial in the Raleigh News and Observer in which he had suggested that the Senate quickly ratify the U. N. Charter on July Fourth and thus create it as a worldwide holiday, not just one for the United States.
It seemed overly idealistic but then so had the Declaration of Independence in the courts of Europe as well among the Tories at home, a document of hollow words set down by provincials. There remained sharp divisions among the colonists who had drafted the instrument and who finally drafted the Constitution, but only after the intervening years under the Articles of Confederation.
Despite the urging of quick ratification, the Foreign Relations Committee would not begin hearings until Monday, July 9. Mr. Childs thinks that the country would be lucky to obtain ratification by July 4, 1946.
Senator Tom Connally of Texas, delegate to San Francisco, had warned of "honeyswoggling" by Senators over the Charter, that is honey-dipped rhetoric to appeal to the folks back home, both pro and con on the document, delaying ratification. Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, also a delegate, likewise urged quick ratification.
Delay had been the undoing of the approval of the League of Nations in 1919-20. Mr. Daniels understood that all to well and so his warnings against a repetition were worth heeding. Any incident which might complicate the peace could serve to undermine confidence in the Charter and act as a lightning rod for isolationist opposition to rise up where, at present, little was observed.
Harry Golden, offering another by-lined piece for the page, writes of the solar eclipse to take place the following Monday. It would be visible between Cascade, Idaho and Butte, Montana, for 50 seconds as a total eclipse. From Raleigh to Atlanta, only a partial eclipse would be visible in the early morning.
A total eclipse visible in the southeast was anticipated in 1950.
Ancient tribesmen believed that the small notch appearing at the beginning of an eclipse represented a dragon devouring the sun. An eclipse remained portentous into relatively recent history, usually signifying the start of revolutions, the apocalypse, or mass suicides.
In literature, Mark Twain had used it as a figure in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. H. Rider Haggard had referred to it in King Solomon's Mines, wherein the protagonist, beset by native warriors, finds fortuitously an almanac in a cave which predicted for the ensuing day a solar eclipse, which he then predicted accurately to the natives, who then bestowed upon him their idolatry. Homer had it as an ominous sign upon the return after 20 years of Odysseus to wreak vengeance on Penelope's suitors, that day in Ithaca being pinned by the eclipse as April 16, 1178 B. C.
It had also been used to signal peace, as in the account by Herodotus of the battle between the Lydians and the Medes, where an eclipse harbingered the armistice between them.
Amos 8:9, he further instructs, also stated it as foreshadowing the day of reckoning:
And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.
Well, it would come, this total eclipse of the sun, 31 days in 1945 before the second atomic bomb would blast away most of Nagasaki.
Ominous or self-fulfilling prophecy? Or was it the
Framed Edition
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