Tuesday, August 28, 1945

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 28, 1945

NO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the first foreign conquerors ever to enter Japan, American airborne troops, landed at Atsugi airfield as advance operations to set up communications and prepare runways for the general landing to take place Thursday. The advance Third Fleet squadron also entered Tokyo Bay and anchored at Yokosuka after staying overnight in Sagami Bay.

Ultimately, all four Pacific fleets and three amphibious forces would be employed to land occupation troops and control the coastal waters of Japan. The fleets, the Third, Fifth, Seventh, and North Pacific forces, would be under the general command of Admiral Richmond K. Turner. The Seventh Fleet and Seventh Amphibious Force would land troops in Korea and control the waters off the coast of China. The Fifth Fleet would control the seas of Southern Japan.

Commander Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, and Commander Douglas Moulton, both of Admiral Halsey's staff, accompanied the airborne troops. The Americans, dressed in work clothes, were greeted by Japanese generals in full dress uniforms.

Correspondent Richard O'Malley described Atsugi as appearing from the air only as wreckage with wrecked planes and hangars strewn about. Lt. Commander Don Thorburn had told him that the Japanese had sought to present a "garden party" atmosphere, providing the Navy envoys and Army representatives with orangeade served by orderlies, printed instructions with the names of the reception committee, and a press relations officer, a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles and Stanford.

A Japanese general saluted the Navy officers, but, because they had removed their hats, they did not reciprocate.

The Americans were met initially by a little truck with a sign on it reading, "follow me". The Americans went in the opposite direction toward their own people, as the truck was heading for the Japanese—perhaps driven by one of the Jo-I's.

Correspondent Al Dopking, with the Third Fleet squadron, told of the sight of Yokohama as a bombed-out skeleton, appearing "ghostly gray" in what remained of the city which had been laid to ruin by repeated B-29 attacks. The super-battleship Nagato was visible a few miles offshore from Yokosuka where it had been hit by American planes earlier. The Nagato, incidentally, would be used as one of three large ships in the 1946 atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.

Of Japan's 55 remaining warships, 28 were arranged for surrender at Sasebo on Kyushu.

Twenty American troops had been killed during an errant takeoff from Okinawa.

Japanese radio informed that Japanese residents of Korea were in imminent danger of harm to life and property as conditions had suddenly taken a turn for the worse since August 23. The problems might spread to southern Korea causing local Japanese officials to be placed in an "awkward position" in maintaining peace and order. The report stated that the Japanese eagerly awaited the arrival of Allied occupation forces to quell disturbances.

Lt. General Jonathan Wainwright arrived in Chungking, with eight other American generals and seven British generals, after having been rescued the previous week from captivity in a prisoner of war camp in Manchuria. General Wainwright was smiling broadly as he was presented a photograph of his wife with a note to him.

The Army announced its plan to reduce the points needed for discharge from active military duty and avoidance of further overseas duty, to be implemented as soon as General MacArthur provided the green light. By the ensuing July 1, the Army intended to reduce the present six million men in uniform to 2.5 million and would reduce thereafter depending on needs for occupation. Of the 2.5 million, 1.315 million would be deployed overseas. The Navy planned to discharge 2.8 million men and women during the following year.

Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace testified before the Senate Banking Committee on the full employment bill, saying it was a conservative approach to achieving the goal and that any alternative would constitute totalitarian control of the economy. He favored intelligent planning but not a planned economy. The bill allowed for stopgap measures, such as the creation of Government public works programs, to provide jobs to meet a job shortage.

Spokesmen for the nation's retailers made clear their displeasure with the OPA policy decision to maintain prices on goods despite rises in costs of labor and materials since May 1, 1942 when the price controls had gone into effect. The policy prohibited any such higher costs being passed to the consumer.

Congressmen were studying a proposal by Representative Harold Knutson of Minnesota to cut income taxes across the board by 20 percent.

In Stuart, Fla., 2,200 black farm laborers, imported from the Bahamas and Jamaica and awaiting transport home, had rioted at Camp Murphy, requiring law enforcement to re-establish order. Twenty-seven of the men had to be hospitalized. The cause of the riot had not been ascertained, but trouble had been foreseen for several days.

The powerful hurricane which had hit 400 miles of the Texas coast was diminishing, having caused three deaths and possibly two others. Winds had died down to no more than 50 mph. Its center was between Sealy and Columbus, Texas, about 40 miles from Houston.

There is no editorial page available this date. There aren't even any pictures on the front page. So, we declare it a half holiday.

Ten years following this date, fourteen-year old Emmett Till would be brutally murdered for his having whistled at a white woman near Money, Mississippi, the incident which motivated Rosa Parks the following December 1 to refuse to surrender her seat to a white passenger and move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, resulting in the bus boycott and the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King as a national civil rights leader, constituting the first major organizing effort of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

Eighteen years from this date, Dr. King would deliver his momentous address to the nation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It is always worthy of a new hearing. It touched and motivated all people of good will and good conscience who heard it at the time, a speech for and to every citizen of the United States, then and for as long as the Constitution shall endure.

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