The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 22, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General MacArthur had demanded an accounting of all Japanese financial dealings since December 7, 1941, including those of the Imperial household, banks, insurance companies, and all other financial institutions. Lists of heavy investors and the directors and high executives were also to be provided to the General.
It was thought that the Imperial family held the largest fortune of any family in the world, as it owned stock in every Japanese business to the extent of 30 to 40 percent.
And, yet, of course, the Emperor and the rest of the Imperial family could not prevent the warlords from setting forth on their hell-bound course of the Greater East Asia Prosperity Sphere. He was simply a White Horse riding honorable puppet, slave to the Zaibatsu and the Gumbatsu.
Russell Brines reports that Vice-Premier Prince Konoye had stated, in response to a Washington dispatch which quoted diplomatic sources hinting that the Emperor would abdicate, that there was nothing to the rumors and that should he do so, it would be disastrous to Japan as the Emperor was primarily responsible at present for holding the country together. Without him, the rival factions would create civil strife, according to the Prince. Moreover, under the existing Constitution, there was no provision for abdication, only for illness, and so the Diet would have to pass an amendment. A regent would be appointed in his stead should the Emperor become suddenly ill.
Perhaps, it would be something he et.
The Prince also stated that an election would take place probably by January, but that women's suffrage would likely not be implemented by that time.
Let us not forget, Cowboy, that the Americans have the atomic bomb and you will therefore do as we say, as will the little two-bit gunslinger named Hirohito and his little Empress, the poetaster.
Lt. General Kenji Doihara reported to work as usual at the Japanese War Ministry despite the publication the previous day of an order for his immediate arrest issued by General MacArthur. The order had not yet been transmitted to officers.
Another order was issued for the arrest of Nobuyuki Abe, former governor-general of Korea, while a third order demanded complete demobilization of the Japanese naval police prior to Halloween. The Japanese Government had intended to retain over eleven thousand of the police on duty until all arms were confiscated from the home armed forces.
Japanese Minister of Commerce and Industry Chikuhei Nakajima said that until trade with the United States was completely restored, Japan would struggle to have even the bare essentials for life—of course, according to the statements attributed to General MacArthur by Ted Dealey of the Dallas Morning News in the report of the previous day, that was the game plan of General MacArthur, to render Japan in such poverty that it would have to struggle to eat for the ensuing several years.
Then, along came the transistor radio plus the little beep-beep cars to interfere with this apparent long-range goal of General MacArthur to bring about slow genocide in Japan.
The Senate delayed action until Monday on confirmation of Dean Acheson as Undersecretary of State, based on the controversy which had arisen in the wake of his statements two days earlier that the State Department, not General MacArthur, was in charge of United States policy with regard to occupation of Japan. Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska wished to know from Mr. Acheson, by way of open letter, whether, in his view, General MacArthur was acting as a representative of the U.S. Government or the Allies as well, in implementing the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. Senator Wherry wanted to ascertain whether the story carried by the Associated Press had been correct in the statements attributed to Mr. Acheson.
General Patton, in the news for the first time since the end of the war in Europe and his reception at home, stated from Germany that the best thing the United States could do would be to have "the German people see what a great people we are by mixing with them". He stated that the German people were docile because their fangs had been drawn. He had dismissed from the start, he said, the reports of possible organized underground Werewolf action because he believed that the German, without his fangs, was "incapable of individual initiative action".
The primary goal of the Third Army, he said, was to restore normal communications and prevent suffering during the winter ahead, not "to rout out every single German who might be suspected of having a Nazi taint." He continued, "My opinion is that to create an anarchistic situation by not restoring normal communications and law and order is more dangerous than having some Nazis working for us." He added that he believed the Army had done a good job both in restoring order and in rooting out suspected Nazis.
General Patton would be killed in an automobile accident in Heidelberg just three months hence, on December 21.
Senator Walter George of Georgia proposed a bill whereby veterans would receive certain tax exemptions and credits for their time in service, perhaps also for their time in combat, to give veterans a start for the first year or two following discharge. His proposal would extend to all income, not just service pay.
The House Ways and Means Committee Democrats outvoted Republicans to allow A & P head John Hartford a $196,000 bad debt tax credit for his forgiveness of that amount on the $200,000 loan he had made in 1939 to Elliott Roosevelt for the purpose of establishing a Texas radio network. It also voted to make public all of the financial dealings of General Roosevelt. The committee, according to chair Bob Doughton of North Carolina, would shortly look into General Roosevelt's tax liability on that and other loans made to him in connection with the initiation of the business.
Congressional Republicans demanded that Congress ask Thomas Dewey to testify on whether the American command structure had advance knowledge of the intentions of Japan to attack Pearl Harbor at least fifteen hours before the attack.
Of course, had the Governor so testified, he would have been properly convicted of perjury. But, his best course, we would counsel, if subpoenaed, would be to plead the Fifth as he had obviously acquired any such information through illicit channels, knowingly, during a time of war and might therefore risk yet a trial for treason—especially, all things held equal, with the coming class in Congress of his own party in 1946.
Mr Dewey, journalists recalled who had traveled with him during the 1944 campaign, had intimated that he had such secret information on Pearl Harbor locked in a vault which he could not use because it might harm the war effort.
Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire told a correspondent that the Joint Committee, appointed to investigate Pearl Harbor for the third time, should study the letter from General Marshall to Governor Dewey, which Governor Dewey had stated warned him that disclosure of the information would compromise the lives of thousands of Americans. Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan also championed the idea of calling Governor Dewey before the committee.
The Republicans were basing their demands on the Life story, a complete fairy tale as to the speculated advance knowledge, which supposed that the President had knowledge of the attack 15 hours ahead of time but did nothing to alert commanders on Oahu. The story allowed that the supposed advance warning was interpreted as being likely an attack on the East Indies or the Philippines, but also engaged in pure speculation that the President figured out somehow that it would likely be at Pearl Harbor, a mere 4,000 miles from Tokyo.
This story, applying the old fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc, was merely taking to imagined limits facts disclosed by the Roberts Commission Report in early 1942, that there were some advance warnings which went unheeded because of slow deciphering at O.N.I. in Washington, and because of beliefs on the ground at Pearl Harbor that submarine sightings by the Ward and the radar readings by primitive radar equipment being broken in, were either ghost readings or, in the case of the radar, readings from a flight of expected B-17's from the West Coast, scheduled to arrive at about the same time the attack began, perhaps quite known to the Japanese through their West Coast and Honolulu spy networks, active and unchecked at the time, that which led to the displacement of all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast in early 1942.
There was no warning 15 hours in advance or fifteen minutes in advance of the attack, only the knowledge that diplomatic efforts at peaceful settlement were not going well and would likely fail, a fact communicated on November 27 to General Short by General Marshall.
The idea of some massive cover-up of Administration foreknowledge was simply made up poppycock being pushed by Henry and Clare, and the Republican National Committee.
—See, Bob, how they are? They did it to us. That was quite alright. But as soon as our people on the ground start in on them, oh, it's a different story.
—Yeah. See? Told you so.
—Yeah, I know. That McCarthy fellow has a lot on the ball, doesn't he? We'll ferret out these Pinks, get 'em all.
—Yeah. Team spirit, Bob. I like that.
A Marine major who had been in a Japanese prison camp for three and a half years told of the attack on Wake Island December 7, 1941. He had just flown in from Pearl Harbor with twelve planes when the news of the attack at Pearl came through, preceding the attack on Wake only by six hours, catching the Marines wholly off guard. They lost seven of eight planes still on the ground at the time of the initial wave. Four others were in the air.
He described his treatment as a prisoner as having been not as bad as expected, but not good.
Gloom prevailed over the Foreign Ministers Conference in London as, after eleven days, no major issue had been resolved. This date's session, scheduled to discuss a treaty with Hungary, was canceled without explanation
Idle workers from strikes rose to 230,000 with another 60,000 lumber mill workers of the Pacific Northwest threatening to walk off the job on Monday, as they demanded a $1.10 minimum wage, refused by the companies. The number of refinery workers off the job rose to 21,500 in more than twenty plants across six states from Texas to Ohio to West Virginia. The workers were asking for a 30 percent hike in wages, the same as that demanded by the striking auto workers at G.M., the upshot being to provide only parity with war wages, albeit based on an eight hour shorter work week, effectively, with overtime, twelve hours shorter.
In Columbia, S.C., a case involving Lt. Samuel Epes, accused of strangling his school teacher wife, in a triangle involving his love of another, a 19-year old Louisiana blonde, had been sent to the jury of farmers and business men.
They all did decide the fate, not yet reported, of the 27-year old son of a wealthy Virginia family.
The defense, conducted by a State Senator, had not put on any witnesses. The prosecution was seeking the death penalty, and urged that it should treat "rich and poor, black and white" alike.
But, sirrah, would not that mean he would go free, scot-free?
In any event, if the jury returned a verdict of guilty, they would, for him to avoid the death penalty, have to recommend mercy to the defendant under then extant South Carolina law.
Sirrahs, did not that unconstitutionally shift the burden to the accused?
The defendant had admitted to police burying his wife but claimed that he had not done the crime, had, upon discovering her body, hastily buried it while under the influence of whisky or suffering from a hangover. His defense attorney argued that the jury should not try him for drinking.
A Navy seaman in Miami described the last moments before two Navy planes crashed into a warehouse in the main business district of the city, killing both Navy pilots. One of the two planes, both joined together in a lock, had been flying without lights, while the other was racing its engine and blinking its lights to warn persons below of impending danger. The seaman had been thrown 40 feet when the explosion occurred.
In Bombay, Mohandas K. Gandhi was reported to be running a fever of 102 degrees, keeping him from attending the second session of the All-India Congress Party.
In Buffalo, the district OPA office received an irate letter asking where the author's fuel oil ration stamps were, that he had applied for them two months earlier and the weather was starting to become cool. He was concerned.
The piece points out that fuel oil had been off rationing since August 15.
On the editorial page, "Despot's Decline" suggests that there were signs in Spain of the decline in power of the Falangists and El Caudillo, Francisco Franco. Franco had ordered the abolition of the Fascist salute. Since Spain was not likely to obtain commercial agreements with other nations in the post-war world until Franco stepped aside, it was unlikely he would be retained in power much longer.
Well, thirty years isn't that long.
"Eric's Chance" remarks on Eric Johnston, the former president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, having become the movie industry's chief censor, succeeding Will Hays, that it presented an opportunity to him to improve American entertainment and, thereby, world relations.
It suggests that he might overcome Hollywood's penchant for the juvenile, that he might remove the stereotype of the country being one which worshiped gangsters and outlaws and had predilections for sex and the musical
He might lift the process of censorship from measuring the necklines of sweaters and the extent of details imparted cinematically of love triangles to make censorship a matter of national taste rather than enforced rules of morality, to encourage a new maturity in the nation, as a world citizen ought to have.
C'mon. First Franco and now that. You want miracles overnight. Most of them can't even read what you write, and when they do, comprehend only that which they think agrees with what they already thought before they learned to read.
"Still Kicking" finds that a report by General Iimura of the Japanese police, that he had checked all dissident attempts to overthrow the Emperor, betrayed the notion that the police maintained absolute power in the country, as tight as that exerted by the Gestapo in Germany during the war.
As long as such an organization existed, there could be no hope that democracy would thrive, that those who might wish to spawn movements would be chilled from doing so by the prospect of not being protected indefinitely by the Americans, of having their names included in a black book held by the police—not unlike the way it is in some localities in America.
If the agreement to retain the Emperor included retention of his police, then, it opines, America had been robbed.
"Too Much Money" comments that 140 billion dollars in circulation among citizens could bring on ruinous inflation overnight if spending were suddenly to flourish with the loosening of controls on production of formerly rationed goods and raw materials.
The banking term for the issue was "velocity", measuring the number of times demand deposits changed hands. In 1929, velocity was at 125 for New York City banks; it presently stood at 24. Outside New York, the rate had dropped from 70 in 1929 to 20 in 1945. The rate needed to remain low to stem inflation.
If money were spent too rapidly, the price of goods would rise commensurate with the dwindling available supply, creating a vicious upward spiral.
What was needed, to avoid a repeat of the First Roaring boom, apparently, was, as in other areas of the second coming of
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire criticizing meat rationing policy of the OPA.
Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa stated that he had received information that there was a surplus of meat on hand but that the point system was preventing its distribution. He adverts to a piece in the Washington Evening Star, titled: "Hula girls add 25 cents to cost of pictures in Hawaii, OPA rules."
Mr. Tobey appears baffled, says he was from New Hampshire, not Hawaii. "What are hula girls?"
Mr. Hickenlooper explained that he needed to read the article further to inform him. He then proceeds to read the remainder of the article aloud, beginning with, "OPA has put a ceiling on hula girls." The piece went on to quote the agency's definition of "hula girls" as "any female posing for compensation or profit for a direct positive photograph whether paid by the photographer or the subject of the photograph," that the order had placed a ceiling of 75 cents on such photos with hula girls, 50 cents without.
Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska then states, "I want to thank the distinguished Senator for his comment, but I should like to say to the Senator that I have been talking about a different type of livestock than that which he mentioned."
Whereupon, there was laughter.
But where is the hula girl, once defined? Could it be that Senator Hickenlooper was the only one who knew whereof he spoke?
Drew Pearson gives praise to retiring Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, credits him with achieving the final victory over Japan, a fight he had begun while Secretary of State under President Hoover, at the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.
Mr. Stimson had continued to consult with President Roosevelt on Japan through the thirties, and even though the two had not liked each other since 1910 when Mr. Stimson lost the gubernatorial race in New York and Mr. Roosevelt entered the New York State Senate. Mr. Stimson regarded Roosevelt as a "young whippersnapper" and considered him, striding into the chamber in his riding boots, a poor imitation of his cousin Teddy, admired by Mr. Stimson.
Nevertheless, he was pleased when he had first sat down with the new President and, after urging him not to recognize the Japanese conquest of Manchuria, the President had assured, "I won't even discuss it with the sons of bitches!"
Mr. Stimson had well understood that the skirmish on the Mukden railroad in late September, 1931 had been the beginning of Japan's territorial aggression in China. Many had not understood the fact. The Japanese Foreign Minister at the time, Baron Shidehara, disagreed with Mr. Stimson on this point and, says Mr. Pearson, given the Japanese diplomats' personae non gratae status in the inner circles of the High Command, probably believed it. The French foreign office, except for Aristide Briand, and the British foreign office, along with some in the State Department, also believed Mr. Stimson wrong on the point. Even President Hoover thought him unduly alarmed by the development in Manchuria.
He had gone to Europe and sought to warn the British and French, but was met with deaf ears.
When offered the chance from his old political nemesis in 1940 to complete the task he had started under Hoover, to defeat the Japanese, he accepted. Gradually, FDR and Mr. Stimson grew closer. They were men very much alike in background and in political spirit. Moreover, they agreed fundamentally on the importance of the war to preservation of democracy.
When news had reached him in April of the President's death, he sat with eyes full of tears and in stunned silence. When asked by President Truman to remain, he obliged. But now the job that he had started 14 years earlier was done, and Henry Stimson had retired.
Dorothy Thompson comments on the fact that the United States had become the world's banker. Russia was seeking a six billion dollar loan. France wanted money, as did China. Britain wanted between three and six million. Any such loans would not be considered charity. They were expected to be returned by way of increased international trade.
Prior to the war, the U.S. had been a debtor nation in international trade. After World War I, the nation had enjoyed a similar status as it presently had, but continued to push exports while restricting imports, with the consequence of upsetting the applecart internationally.
The question was whether the nation had learned its lesson. But, to the contrary, it appeared to Ms. Thompson that the country was again planning to stress exports without providing for other nations' ability to pay for them in balanced trade.
One of the key issues was the Sterling bloc, based on the British Pound Sterling, involving all nations of the British Empire, as well as the Near and Middle Eastern states from Egypt to India. All of these nations depended on the Bank of England for its exchange currency with which to engage in trade. The United States had argued against this restrictive policy and in favor of these nations being able to obtain dollars so that they could easily trade with the United States.
But Ms. Thompson opined that such a change of policy would not expand U.S. trade since Britain needed dollars to trade with the United States. It would only serve to dissolve the British system and thereby contribute to dissolution of the Empire, weakening Britain.
The second U.S. demand on Britain was that it scale down its debts owed to members of the Sterling bloc, to insure British solvency and because Britain could only repay its debt through British exports, curtailing thereby American trade with these countries.
She suggests that the United States had to consider whether it was prudent to weaken Great Britain's world influence with these demands, thereby weakening one of the primary trade partners with the U.S. and harming the ability of Britain to repay its debts to the United States, all so that the U.S. could engage in trade more readily with Middle Eastern and Near Eastern countries.
Marquis Childs urges the need for a civilian commission to analyze and make recommendations on the demobilization effort of the military. General Marshall had recommended such a commission, that it make recommendations to his likely successor,
The Army had developed a plan, but the Navy had been resistant, reflecting the Annapolis attitude that once in the Navy, everyone wanted to stay. But most of the war honors had gone to the tight ring of officers, and the enlisted men now in civilian life would not blink the fact. It was one reason why a large Navy could not be maintained in peacetime. Fewer than one percent of the reserve officers serving in the war indicated an intention to stay permanently in the Navy. The Navy reserve officers had recently responded in questionnaires negatively on the service.
The Navy wanted to maintain a force almost as large as its wartime force. It was likely that the new chief of staff of the Army would seek a large peacetime contingent, as would General Arnold's replacement as head of the Air Forces. But it was no way to obtain security. The taxpayers would be unwilling to support a huge peacetime military and so a compromise would be the result. And that would result in less security than a properly pared force, reduced to its necessary contingent by way of an efficient plan.
An impartial civilian commission would be more effective at making such recommendations than the services themselves, engaged in petty rivalries.
Incidentally, maybe it has something to do with the fact that, during freshman exams, we regularly partook of quick meals, not of Ratafia, at Hector's, diagonally across from Battle-Vance-Pettigrew, adorned with its gargoyles, enabling us momentary quiescent contemplation of things past and present, good when two of your exams involve philosophy and symbolic logic while a third involves zoology, a fourth, the politics of the South, and a fifth, of Maxim Gorky, or that, on the morning of our final examination in American history from 1932, albeit not in Battle-Vance-Pettigrew, there was a foot of snow on the ground from the night before, forcing us to walk miles and miles to class through the heavy snow of
A letter writer comments on the piece appearing a couple of days earlier, "3.2 Caliber", on the WCTU opposition to 3.2 beer as being as intoxicating as hard liquor. He felt the WCTU laughable and that it was one of the most derided outfits in the land for its lack of intelligence and reasoning. He offers that if a person is told not to do something, it was more likely that he would do it. Prohibition had reinforced that lesson.
He favored a law similar to that of Nevada. In Reno, liquor was sold across the bar until midnight.
Yeah, but, pal, they do a lot of things in Reno.
As things were, a "guy buys a whole pint to get himself a nip and then has to drink it all up to keep from throwing it away. As a result, he gets 'whisky-pated' and has to be poured into bed."
"A person can get stupid from drinking too much lemonade or cola drink. Pure apple juice will make a person woozy if you drink enough of it—say a couple of quarts."
Listen, pal, lay off nipping at the hard stuff and go to bed.
"So I'm all for encouraging them to take up raising hogs. Then they can encourage Pigs to be Pigs instead of human beings becoming pigs."
Okay, that's enough. You are obviously talking through your hat. Just go to bed. Things will look different in the morning, or some semblance of that.
"The sooner they (I'm still taking about the WCTU) sit back down in that rocking chair
The Editors add: "Please, Ladies, hold him responsible, not us," perhaps most critically in reference to the point where he bet that 90 percent of the WCTU membership lacked grammar school education—empty chairs folding the joint, too busy fusing to board the bus, imprisoned by suffocation, stifled, tuniclely, mulling 2-D dunes in runeless disgust.
Well, even if true, as it probably was, one must be polite
Apple juice? No wonder
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.