The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 2, 1945
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the largest B-29 raid yet of the war, 820 Superfortesses, had struck with 6,632 tons of bombs against five Japanese cities, the most tonnage ever dropped in a single raid in the history of the world. Fires from the raid were visible for 180 miles after a large oil refinery was hit at Kawasaki near Tokyo. Only one plane was lost in the raid as the Japanese, forewarned of the cities to be hit in the raid, took no counter-measures.
Other than Kawasaki, the other four cities were not indicated, but were presumably Mito, Hachioji, Nagaoka, and Toyama on Honshu, the cities listed the previous day, as this report appears to be Allied confirmation of that raid of August 1. It is, however, not clear whether this was another raid.
By comparison, 6,400 tons of bombs had been dropped on Normandy on D-Day.
Ships from Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet shelled O Island, 70 miles south of Tokyo in the Sagami Sea.
A piece by correspondent Morris Landsberg labels the previous month as "Red July" in the Pacific war, the period of greatest destruction for Japanese cities. No country had ever lost so much of its fleet, air force, and war production capacity during one month. B-29 raids had hit during thirteen days of the month. Seven of the missions exceeded 500 planes and 3,500 tons of bombs. Admiral Halsey had so much strength in the Third Fleet that he was able the previous day to dispatch carrier planes and a battleship to strike Wake Island—or Otori, Bird Island, as the Japanese had renamed it.
Becoming the first American President since Woodrow Wilson in 1919 to visit England, President Truman arrived in Plymouth from Potsdam and had lunch onboard the Renown with King George VI. Following lunch, the King wished Mr. Truman Godspeed and the President then departed for the United States aboard the cruiser Augusta.
The President had worn a light grey lounge suit with a red overcheck, brown shoes and light grey hat.
Hundreds of Britons had gathered on the docks of a bomb-scarred port to try to see the arriving plane of the President, scheduled to land at an airfield 40 miles west of Plymouth, but because of flying conditions, his plane had to be diverted to an RAF airfield at Harrowbeer, eight miles north of Plymouth. Nevertheless, many motorists in Yelverton, a village near Harrowbeer caught a glimpse of the President as his car rushed by them on the way to lunch with the King.
The joint statement of the Big Three from Potsdam was scheduled for release this night. A staff officer was quoted as saying that he believed the Germans would find the decisions reached much tougher than they had anticipated. There would be a ban imposed on anti-Nazi political activity in both the British and American zones, along with all other political activity. German labor was to be transported to any point in the world it was needed for purposes of post-war rebuilding.
It was anticipated that profits and incomes from war industry would be significantly reduced in the coming fiscal year because of a scheduled 20-billion dollar cut in Government war spending in the ensuing year. Some five million men and women in the armed forces or engaged in war production would no longer be so engaged within a year.
The Army announced that the point total necessary for discharge from the service would remain at 85 through the discharge of the first 800,000 troops, with the number to be changed afterward to allow another 700,000 to be discharged by the following June 1.
Pierre Laval was scheduled to be called the next day as a witness in the treason trial of Marshal Petain. In this day's proceedings, Marshal Petain and three of the jurors fell asleep during witness testimony presented in his defense, indicating his patriotism to France and anti-German attitude. The
M. Laval was reported to be weeping in Fresnes prison in Paris, to which he had been confined pending his own trial for treason after Spain had turned him over to American authorities who in turn delivered him to the French. He had undergone calmly the questioning by a French magistrate the previous night. His wife, however, had been weeping constantly, though not charged with any offense.
A British white paper revealed that in fall 1940, Laval had planned to use the French Fleet to recover French colonies which had declared loyalty to the Free French led by General De Gaulle. The action would undoubtedly have led to war between the British and Vichy. The British had stated at the time that they would not allow the French Navy to pass Gibraltar to reach the principal French colony in issue, French Equatorial Africa.
The crew of U-530, the German U-boat reputed to have landed Hitler and Eva Braun in Argentina on July 10, were in custody in Miami, having surrendered at Mar Del Plata in Argentina. The former Nazi chief of the U-boat forces, Admiral Eberhard Godt, denied that the sub had carried away the couple.
In Rome, Pietro Mascagni, composer of
The installment in the series on former North Carolina Senator Robert Rice Reynolds's efforts to establish a Nationalists Party based on race hatred, alien baiting, and support for dictatorships, which appeared only on the inside page, which we do not have, is nevertheless summarized in the upper right corner of the front page as being about the party's effort to organize mothers' groups under the moniker "Women's White House", using Detroit as center for their activities.
In Texas, the Texas Regulars, the party which had formed in 1944 as disgruntled and alienated Democrats against FDR, vowing, until the selection of Harry Truman as the vice-presidential nominee, to throw the Texas electoral votes to Senator Harry Flood Byrd or some other alternative regardless of the Texas popular vote for FDR, dissolved the previous day. A spokesman stated that the personalities within the party who had "created issues" had passed from the scene and the "extreme left wing" had been greatly reduced.
On the editorial page, "That British 'Revolution'" comments on the British Labor Party sweep in the election results announced the previous Thursday and the press reaction to it in America. The isolationist Chicago Tribune of Col. Bertie McCormick, along with the New York News and Washington Times-Herald, had found it difficult to rejoice at the news, even though the publications had, during the war, regularly excoriated Mr. Churchill. His defeat was overshadowed in their perceptions by his replacements, the radicals of the left.
The Times-Herald labeled the "revolution by consent" as sought by Labor to be a policy of "share the poverty". They warned of similar movements in America, led by Sidney Hillman's CIO PAC.
Most of the reaction was built on the statements of Labor Party executive committee chair, Professor Harold Laski, as carried on the page in a separate self-authored piece, but the fact remained that he was not a member of Parliament and had no political power within the party. His role was that of a philosopher and scholar. He wrote about government but did not take part in it.
Mr. Laski's views of the need for sweeping socialist change in Britain were not wholly shared by Prime Minister Clement Atlee, who favored a slow systemic change, in the traditional fabian process. As to nationalization, for instance, of the coal industry, Mr. Atlee had stated that the Government would compensate owners for their property and would undertake the role with the sole purpose of supplying the nation with coal, light and power.
Mr. Atlee at times sounded as prosaic as Herbert Hoover, as an engineer seeking merely to overhaul the inefficiency of the present economic and social system in Britian. His Cabinet appointees had been traditional bureaucrats, not ideologues. They likely did not believe that the mandate given them by the British electorate was quite so sweeping as suggested by Mr. Laski.
Americans could look upon the new Government as being more comparable in fact to the American Government than had been Churchill's Conservative Coalition Government. No one, it opined, should question the need for continued friendship between America and Britain and the vital necessity for post-war cooperation.
"County's Guest" reports that the County Commissioners had made their meeting room available to Representative Joe Ervin as an office while he was in Charlotte during the summer recess of the House. He was entitled to an office by law in the post office, provided there was room. But there was not.
Mr. Ervin had given up his law practice and so wrote the County Commissioners asking for a place to hang his hat. They obliged and provided him with their meeting room, only used Mondays.
The editorial liked the concept of Federal-County cooperation at work and that it had all been accomplished informally, without the need for a resolution. It also liked the concept of the Congressman at the head of the Commission meeting room, ready to receive constituents.
"Poor Cousins" comments on the continued surplus enjoyed by State Government in North Carolina, with a current five million dollar surplus despite the Legislature in the previous session during the winter months having retired the State's debt with the then extant 56-million dollar surplus. But, local governments still suffered from revenue shortfalls because of reliance on stable property taxes, not the income taxes which had risen substantially during the war with dramatically increased profits and income. Property taxes did not rise during the war as property values remained stable, and so provided no great boon to the local treasuries across the state.
The advantage of reliance on property taxes was that they were steady sources of revenue even in slack times for income, albeit hard to collect in those times; but the disadvantage was that they did not tend to increase substantially in boom times.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois discussing redeployment of the troops, stating that troops who had served in Europe ought be concerned with getting to their new assignments, not with the means of conveyance by which they did so, in comment upon the adverse reactions of soldiers recently publicized regarding the crowded rail cars and the relegation of the soldiers to day coaches rather than Pullmans as they made their way across country for redeployment to the Pacific theater.
Senator James Mead of New York stated that it would be better for the Office of Defense Transportation and the Navy and Army to cooperate in providing adequate transport for the soldiers and sailors. He stated that his committee was trying to effect such an arrangement.
Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana stated that it was his belief that the Interstate Commerce Committee, not the Mead Committee, had jurisdiction over such matters, but that he realized special committees were addressing transportation issues.
Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia interjected that the problem had arisen from bringing of soldiers back too quickly to the United States. The soldiers to whom he had talked in Europe while visiting recently had informed him that their first desire was to return to the United States and they were not terribly concerned with how they got around once back.
Senator Lucas added that the problem had been that the Mead Committee and Senator Kilgore had released to the public press information about the transportation problems, fueling the perception that the soldiers were widely upset regarding the issue and that the fault was in the Army in bringing back soldiers too quickly, clogging the rail facilities. He asked Senator Kilgore whether he would like the problem resolved by bringing back the soldiers more slowly.
Senator Kilgore responded in the negative.
Drew Pearson comments on the parsimony shown by Congressman Jed Johnson of Oklahoma when it came to overseeing Government bureaucracy. He had trimmed severely the Department of Interior budget from his position as chairman of the Sub-Appropriations Committee.
But, when it came to personal expenditure of taxpayer money, he was less given to niggardliness. He had gone on a junket to Alaska with other Congressmen, ostensibly on an inspection tour, in fact simply taking an extended summer fishing trip in the wilds.
Three Congressional committees were in Alaska on supposed official business. One Congressman, Hugh Peterson of Georgia, had taken along his wife, son, and niece on the trip. Some of the Congressmen were stopping along the way in Texas and California to do some inspecting.
Mr. Pearson next speculates that Los Angeles Daily News publisher Manchester Boddy would likely be the next Democratic senatorial candidate from California, to try to defeat Republican Hiram Johnson, aging and in ill health. But once, when Senator Johnson had been in Bethesda Naval Hospital ill, word had come that Governor Earl Warren was ready to appoint former President Hoover in his stead. Suddenly, Senator Johnson got well.
Finally, he discusses Jim Farley's luncheon with former fellow FDR brain-truster Tommy Corcoran at the invitation of Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina. They had primarily discussed the defeat of Prime Minister Churchill, blaming his chief campaign adviser, Lord Beaverbrook, and Churchill's age and lack of sensitivity to the temper of Britons, for the defeat, mainly the result of incompetent political advice. Mr. Farley deplored the defeat and warned that there would come now from Britain ideas quite as radical as those from the Soviet Union.
The former Postmaster General and political kingmaker of Franklin Roosevelt had also observed that it had been Churchill who saved England, to which Senator Happy Chandler of Kentucky sneered: "Nuts! Two hundred and fifty American divisions and the American people saved England."
Dorothy Thompson rates it as superficial to view the change in government in Britain as likely not to impact the world scene in foreign policy. While ostensibly the policy of the Atlee Labor Government would be essentially the same as that of the Churchill Coalition Government, she suggests that change in domestic policies bound to follow in Britain would have a dramatic impact on world economy and thus the world stage. Moreover, the trend of the vote in Britain would spread to other prospective elections to be held soon in Italy, Holland, Denmark, and perhaps even Spain.
Britain had inspired all of Europe under the Nazi yoke to rise up during its time as an "embattled little island". America had even overcome its traditional isolationist past to afford Lend-Lease.
The forces which had ultimately caused the war were economic and social impulsions all over Europe, finally obtaining outlet in Germany. The defeat of the Wehrmacht had not eliminated the socio-political problems in Europe. Everywhere one looked in the wake of the war, one saw socialist forces at work to harness the great yearning of the people for freedom. Ms. Thompson had witnessed the trends herself during her months abroad in the spring.
Great Britain might be able to synthesize socialism and civil freedom in a way which Soviet Russia had not. The underpinnings in Great Britain of freedom ran so deep as to assure its preservation under virtually any form of ideological or economic force. Its rejection of violence would deter any form of forceful revolution or totalitarian control by a police state.
Should the new Government meet the tremendous social and economic burdens facing it, then again Britain would be the beacon for Europe and all the world to follow.
Marquis Childs comments on Professor Harold Laski in the midst of the change of government in Britain. Mr. Laski had been made the bogeyman by Conservatives during the late campaign. He fit the part, looking professorial and being quite articulate, in contrast to Mr. Atlee. His forte was rhetoric, the turn of the phrase, even at the expense many times of substance.
His position as chair of the Labor Party executive committee was not comparable to that of Robert Hannegan, chair of the Democratic National Committee in the U.S. In Britain, the executive committee was a policy-making body, not, as with the DNC, a campaign organization charged with distributing patronage.
He was a bit of a prankster, had confided to Mr. Childs in 1937 that he had been responsible for the sending of numerous telegrams to Labor Party heads urging action on Spain to prevent Franco's Insurgents from coming to power. It had been believed by the recipients that the attitude formed from a groundswell of opinion of the people of Britain.
But his warnings of the dangers of Fascism, before most had sensed that danger, had proved correct. And so he had developed a popular following as a result. Starting with the German invasion of Russia in June, 1941, he had been instrumental in bringing about more friendly British relations with the Soviet Union.
Mr. Laski had never run for Parliament and his political influence within the Labor Party was only slight. His voice in the new Government would be heard mainly on foreign policy, especially with regard to Franco. The Churchill friendliness toward the Franco regime was going to be abruptly reversed.
The outcome of the election was unlikely to cause Mr. Laski to be lulled to complacency. Rather, according to Mr. Childs, he would continue to be a professional gadfly on the British landscape.
Harold Laski, himself, sets forth in a piece his first impressions of the landslide victory by his party. He speculates on why the Churchill Government had been so soundly defeated, finds that the answer lay in the fact that the wartime Prime Minister had in the previous two months underestimated both the intelligence and political maturity of the British people. He had sought to make the vote personal to him rather than about issues which mattered regarding the post-war reconstruction of the country. He had even miscalculated the mind of the British soldier who had fought in the war under his leadership.
Mr. Laski stated that he regarded Mr. Churchill as a great statesman, but no individual in a democracy was indispensable.
The task ahead for Labor would be tough, as they sought to form lasting bonds with both the United States and the Soviet Union. The policy would be against any longer bolstering monarchies and "decaying social systems", of which Mr. Churchill had been fond. At home, the task was going to be the transformation from a capitalist to a socialist system.
It would be a period of great experiment and Mr. Laski refuses to predict the outcome. Labor was seeking "revolution by consent", as it had the clear mandate to undertake.
This date, still of course not disclosed to the public at large, the men of the Indianapolis, the 321 initial survivors of the four-day ordeal at sea, 317 of whom finally lived, began to be lifted from their shark-infested nightmare following observation at 11:25 in the morning this date by a Navy plane conducting a search for enemy submarines. The plane's pilot, Lt. (j.g.) Wilbur Gwinn, then radioed Navy PBY's and ships to come to the area. Though it would still be another two days before all of the survivors, including the captain, were fished out of the sea, most of the men were removed during the 24 hours after first being spotted. Fifty-eight of them were loaded onto the first PBY on the scene at 5:05 p.m., though it was so badly damaged in landing that it could not take off, and the rescued eventually, after initial administration of first-aid aboard the PBY, were transferred to one of the ships.
On this 1,335th day since the attack on Pearl Harbor, six years to the day since Professor Albert Einstein had sent his letter to President Roosevelt warning that the Germans were hard at work on development of an atomic bomb and urging an American program to begin research into such a device, typhoon weather off the coast of Japan continued to delay delivery of the completed U-235 fission gadget, Little Boy, to its intended target, one of the four cities, Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki.
As we have commented since this site first went online in November, 1998, it was likely not coincidence that President Truman responded to the suggested draft of a statement prepared in the War Department, to be ascribed to the President after the dropping of the first atomic bomb, and sent to him at Potsdam by Secretary of War Henry Stimson on July 30 for his approval, with the handwritten advice:
"Release when ready but not sooner than August 2. HST"
While ostensibly referring to the press release, the President was actually referring obviously also to the bomb itself, for the press release dealt with its deployment, and assumed deployment, by its phraseology, which he approved, on the same day, within hours of its release to the press. Thus, saying that the statement should not be released before August 2 was tantamount to saying that the bomb should not be released before August 2.
Why? The bomb was ready by July 31, as told that same day to General Leslie Groves, military head of the Manhattan Project, who had then approved deployment as soon as the weather cleared, having initially stated that it should be deployed only after "about 3 August 1945", but tacitly at least finally approving deployment as early as August 1, pending clear weather. The typhoon delayed deployment until August 6, the following Monday.
Again, why this day as the delimiter in President Truman's reply when Secretary Stimson plainly had informed him on July 31 that the bomb would possibly be ready by August 1? The Big Three leaders, including Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek, had already given the joint ultimatum to the Japanese, signed and delivered July 26 from Potsdam. That statement, providing the terms of unconditional surrender to the Japanese, had been rejected by Premier Suzuki by Monday, rumored rejected as early as Friday. The other Big Three leaders were aware of the successful test of the bomb and its intended use on Japan and had approved it.
So, why the delay? Why not release it as soon as it was ready?
Well, again, we don't know. Perhaps, it is mysterious
But, as we have previously explained, one night in 1994, it came to us from out of the blue, that we should look at Jonah and Daniel in the Bible, and we did.
And then we were impelled, for unknown reasons, to do some counting of days, starting with December 7, 1941.
There is the "vehement east wind" of Jonah.
And there is Daniel, Chapter 12, and "The Pearl" from medieval literature, by an anonymous poet, anent the father who went to the side of the stream to bemoan the loss of his young daughter, and then, in a dream, saw a pearl on the other side which transformed into the shape of his daughter and then back to the pearl.
Daniel 12 reads:
1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
3 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
5 Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river.
6 And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?
7 And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished.
8 And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?
9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
10 Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.
12 Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.
13 But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.
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