The Charlotte News
Monday, September 10, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General MacArthur had ordered the Japanese General Headquarters in Tokyo abolished as of September 13, and placed tight controls on the press and radio.
Controversy arose in Korea regarding the decision by General MacArthur to allow retention of Japanese officials. Koreans in Seoul demonstrated against the move, calling it a slap in the face. It was explained that the Japanese would be taking orders from American General John R. Hodge, commander of the 24th Army Corps, and would be given no independent authority.
The Americans would occupy the southern half of Korea and the Russians would occupy the northern half.
Ach-oh.
Russell Brines and Murlin Spencer provide a report of an interview with former Premier Hideki Tojo from his new home on the outskirts of Tokyo. He told of how he had narrowly escaped death in a bombing raid in the district in May, a bomb destroying an outbuilding only five feet from the main house.
A politician who had obtained a prior interview with the General told the reporters that Tojo had informed him that he expected to be tried as a war criminal and would accuse Franklin Roosevelt as being the number one war criminal who had started the war. He expected to be convicted, would then commit harakiri. Tojo refused, however, to speak to the reporters directly about these matters. The politician also told them that Tojo was thoroughly hated by the Japanese people, who believed that he should have already committed suicide.
His mood was vacillating between being annoyed at the intrusion of the reporters and engaging in repartee. He contended that he was now a farmer, no longer interested in politics. He was a diminutive but powerfully built man, standing only 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing 120 pounds. Tojo professed great respect for his opponent, General MacArthur.
The chief of the Japanese Air Force, General Shozo Kawabe, disclosed that Japan had been withholding the last of its available planes for the American invasion which never came. The Americans had been aware of this fact for many months. The Japanese had expected a landing on Kyushu, 350 miles north of Okinawa, in late October or early November of 1945. Japanese officers expressed surprise at the publication of photographs of American airmen being executed and denied that the airmen had been singled out for particularly harsh treatment.
In advance of the meeting in London of the Big Five Foreign Ministers, set to begin the following day, it was reported, based on an interview of General De Gaulle by The Times of London, that France was expected to insist on internationalization of the industry of the Ruhr and Rhineland and placement under the control of France of the entire west bank of the Rhine, from Switzerland to Cologne. The French contended that the economy of France and all of Western Europe depended on the annual output of coal from the Ruhr.
In Oslo, Vidkun Quisling was convicted and sentenced to death before a firing squad for treason in selling out Norway to the Nazis. He was also stripped of all of his wealth, estimated at $227,000 by 1940 valuations. Quisling showed no sign of emotion at the reading of the verdict, from a jury composed of four laymen and three judges.
It was hoped that meat rationing would end by October 1, but the fact that pastures had remained green longer than normal had allowed the ranchers to permit the cattle to graze longer, potentially delaying the marketing of beef.
Whether that meant that Arkansan beef would be available sooner than Nebraskan beef might wholly
Shoe
Rationing of
On the editorial page, "A Start" cautions that the process of eliminating slum conditions in Charlotte could not take place overnight. It predicted that it would take as long to eradicate them as it had to accumulate them. But two moves by the Planning Board, the provision of more habitable buildings presently and prevention of building any more slum dwellings, would have an ameliorative impact. It would at least constitute a starting point, if not a milestone.
"The Army Way" criticizes the inscrutable process undertaken by the Army in its method of discharge of men from service, such that President Truman and the country at large stood baffled and unable to penetrate the military method of operation. The President had stated nothing anent the issue in his 21-point program to Congress the previous week.
The fact that men were being retained in service with nothing more constructive to do than to pick up cigarette butts on bases did not in any manner deter the military brass from pursuing the policy which they had determined after long deliberation must be maintained.
The intransigence appeared to lend credence to Thomas Dewey's charge a year earlier during the election campaign that the Army was going to keep men in service because it was cheaper than discharging them.
"Same Old Georgia" finds that, despite the progress evidenced in Georgia under the leadership of Governor Ellis Arnall, with the new State Constitution in place, eliminating the poll tax, the shadows of old had nevertheless crept back in and reared their ugly heads.
In Atlanta, a black man, with all the requisite qualifications, had sought to register to vote in the Democratic primary but was denied. The case tended to undermine all of the high-sounding rhetoric of Governor Arnall.
The catch in the new Constitution was that it afforded the right to vote in "elections", but did not mention primaries, sponsored by the individual parties holding them, even if the Democratic primary was paid for by all of the taxpayers of the state.
With all of the ballyhoo and promotion by the Governor of a new era having been inaugurated in Georgia, it looked otherwise and the advances only as a bit of prestidigitation.
"The Way Out" finds encouragement in word coming from the Allied War Crimes Commission on Saturday that 400,000 Germans would eventually stand trial for war crimes, that the initial 24 men on the list constituted but a beginning of the process. Unofficial spokesmen for the Commission had stated that every member of the Gestapo and SS would ultimately be brought to the bar of justice and that the burden of proof would be shifted to the accused to prove their innocence, that each would have to show beyond a reasonable doubt that he was forced into the organization against his will.
While the editorial provides approbation to such a streamlined procedure for these masses of worthless human beings for its being the only method by which to eradicate the roots of Nazism, albeit expressing reservation at the prospect of execution on that basis of hundreds of thousands of persons, it would not turn out to be the case.
Only about 200 defendants were tried at Nuremberg and another 1,600 in military tribunals.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative William Colmer of
Inexplicably, Representative Edward Cox of Georgia then asks that the paragraph be stricken, as there was nothing in his own war record which should "ever bring shame to the [_____] of [his] children."
Just what the word is, resembling "ceeks", we could not say, and would dare not venture a guess. But it may be representative of a mountain dewy sort of an affair.
Drew Pearson comments on the move by the Army to deter complaints from servicemen being redeployed to the Pacific for participation in the occupation. The Army had issued a secret memorandum which called for severe disciplinary action for any concerted effort by soldiers to complain either to newspapers or politicians. Any commander of such troops would be summarily relieved from duty. The particular outfit targeted was likely the 95th Division stationed at Camp Shelby, Miss., which had protested its redeployment by issuing pleas to newspapers and radio. In their case, the redeployment order was rescinded.
He next turns to the decision just before V-J Day by the Department of Justice to crack down on black marketeers and violators of OPA ceilings, wondering whether the effort would continue now that the war was over.
The Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division was Theron Lamar Caudle of Wadesboro, N.C. During the previous fall, a lumber company in Wadesboro had been charged with OPA violations amounting to $450,000, treble the amount of actual overcharges. But Senator-elect Clyde R. Hoey took the case and, being a friend to Mr. Caudle, was able to prevail on behalf of his client to obtain dismissal of the charges. There was no evidence, however, that Mr. Caudle was involved, but shortly thereafter, Senator Hoey recommended him to become head of the Criminal Division. In that capacity, Mr. Caudle was in charge of enforcement of all OPA regulations throughout the country.
Mr. Pearson next discusses the angry reaction of Col. Richard Kight, commander of Morrison Field in Palm Beach, Fla., after he was informed that all men with 85 points would be discharged, complaining that he would not be able in that event to operate. But enlisted men claimed that Col. Kight's command was so disorganized that some of the planes had to be flown to Long Beach for repairs and that many of the men under his command remained idle much of the time.
Samuel Grafton comments on the fact that the United States had come out of the war decisively better off economically than the rest of the world. The British were in worse condition regarding food than during the war. The French, without renewed transportation links, remained dependent on an inflationary black market. For most of the world, conditions had become somewhat worse since the end of the war. But in America, things were quickly becoming better, with the end of gasoline rationing and other forms set to end soon.
With that superior position also came responsibility to provide for Britain and France. America, for example, had ten times the two million tons of shipping needed by France. It was a matter of statesmanship, to avoid jealousy and frustration erupting against the United States in other lands less fortunate.
A Committee of Servicemen address a letter to the editor which had been mailed to Senator Robert Taft of Ohio and Senator Forrest Donnell of Missouri, asking that married men with children in the Army be discharged, that it would be sound economy to alleviate the payments for dependents of the men in service.
Another letter indicates the unfairness of sending men into occupation forces after they had served in combat, advocates that the men who had not yet served be assigned to these duties.
Marquis Childs recalls that twelve years earlier, the late columnist Heywood Broun, who had passed away at age 51 of pneumonia in December, 1939, had written that the great pacifist of Japan, Yukio Ozaki, then 76, was going home "to show the warlike Japanese how a pacifist can die." Mr. Ozaki, former Cabinet minister and Mayor of Tokyo, had heard while in London of the assassination of the men with whom he had worked most closely in trying to effect peace. They had been killed by political terrorists acting at the behest of the military. Before leaving London, he had written in warning that if Japan persisted in its nationalist-expansionist tendencies, it would bring disaster upon itself.
After he returned to Japan, two attempts were made to assassinate him. He was charged with disloyalty to the Emperor in 1942 but also weathered that storm and was even re-elected to the Diet by a substantial margin. In June, 1944, the Japanese Supreme Court acquitted him of the charge of disloyalty and he retired from political life but remained a member of the Diet.
When the body had convened the previous week, Mr. Ozaki was in attendance. In an interview with a newspaper, he denounced the industrialists and the politicians who had plotted conquest through war.
At age 88 and nearly deaf, Mr. Ozaki could no longer aid in forming a new government in Japan. But younger men with the same views were being sought by General MacArthur to form that new Japan. By contrast, Hirohito and his new government appeared as the same crowd which had waged the war.
Mr. Childs concludes with the wish that somehow the spirit of Heywood Broun could be infused with the knowledge that Mr. Ozaki's wisdom had proved correct and, in the end, triumphant.
As to the
Framed Edition
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