The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 8, 1945
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General MacArthur, without pomp, had entered Tokyo with troops of the First Cavalry and his honor guard of the Seventh Regiment, and raised the American flag on the American Embassy grounds, the same flag which had flown over the Capitol in Washington on December 7, 1941. He stated sternly: "Have our country's flag unfurled and in Tokyo's sun let it wave in its full glory as a symbol of hope for the oppressed and as a harbinger of victory for the right." The same flag had been raised over the American sector of Berlin in July and over Rome in June, 1944.
General MacArthur had ordered that no signs or guidons on vehicles be displayed as the procession moved into Tokyo. He specifically ordered a group of Texas soldiers not to display a Texas flag they were preparing to raise. Tanks were left on the outskirts of the city to avoid damaging the streets.
Most residents did not realize the Americans had arrived until they saw the American flag. The Japanese showed little interest in the arrival and went about their business.
Russell Brines contrasted the sight with that of the entry of Manila on January 2, 1942 by the Japanese, which he had also witnessed, and finds it remarkable. The Japanese had encountered a largely undamaged open city with inhabitants remaining indoors, fearful of a repeat by the conquerors of the atrocities at Nanking. The Japanese troops had ridden in confiscated cars, shouting gleefully and loudly singing "The Pacific March". At sunset, they had raised the Rising Sun over the High Commissioner's residence and began an all-night drinking bout with confiscated liquor. The soldiers had entered homes and demanded jewelry and watches, kicked and beat the Filipino residents. Cars were either taken or smashed. Lists of persons had been arrested.
Tokyo, on the other hand, with all its war damage, was calm and accepting of its fate of occupation, showing no apparent fear of the Americans. The troops were quiet and somber, riding in proper military vehicles. The occupation was accomplished without fanfare and without confrontation.
Osaka radio urged the Japanese to keep the streets and their homes clean, as the Americans hated dirty people and would brand such persons inferior.
In Singapore, as the British took control, surrendered Japanese soldiers were ordered to take picks and shovels and begin to aid in cleaning up the city. The display was done deliberately to demonstrate to the Oriental world, conscious of saving face, that the Japanese were now subordinate to the occupying forces. Some Japanese still rode about in new cars and in possession of wartime loot. Authorities indicated that it would soon be confiscated. Looting was rampant in the city and Chinese were being jailed. American prisoners of war were rapidly being released from captivity.
The remnants of the Japanese Navy in the area of Singapore showed only 70 kamikaze speedboats.
In Berlin,
Britain was expected to make a plea for post-war lend-lease from the United States as Lord Keynes arrived the previous day in Washington. Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador, was due Sunday. The United States wanted assurances from the British that they would abandon the policy of trade based on the principle of expansion of commerce solely within the British Empire. They wanted Britain to liberalize its trade policy with respect to all countries. While recognizing that the United States must help Britain financially in its rebuilding process, most leaders were suggesting such aid only in the form of a loan, unpopular with the British, who explained that Britain was already overly indebted from the war.
A veteran had been arrested in Uniontown, Pa., for the brutal attempted rape, beating, and murder by strangulation of a popular young girl, age 17.
In Chattanooga, a funeral was held for a minister who had died from being bitten on the hand by one of the snakes he had been handling during a service. Poisonous snakes were going to be handled at his funeral.
Not the least of which... Never mind.
The Eastern Airlines DC-3 which had crashed the previous early morning near Florence, S.C., killing 22, was reported to have possibly been on fire when it went down into a cypress swamp. The belief was based on the fact that the stabilizer of the airplane was charred, but the tree branch across which it was laying was not. The pilot had radioed to Florence that he was having trouble and would attempt a landing at the airport there.
Congressional leaders promised that the nation would go off Federally ordered War Time by September 30, returning time to the states. The country had been on War Time, the equivalent of Daylight Savings Time, since May, 1942. War Time had been unpopular. Among the cited reasons was that it supposedly caused increased juvenile delinquency, forced children to have to start for school in darkness and farmers to go to the fields when dew was still on the crops.
Cotton production continued to be two million bales per month lower than the same month a year before, just as it had been the previous month, remaining at the same deficit as the 1934-43 average. Yield had slightly dropped per acre since the previous report.
On the editorial page, "Notion from Nevada" comments briefly on Senator Pat McCarran of the Silver State having proposed a thirty-hour work week for Federal employees, with overtime for anything beyond that.
While normally not getting worked up over mere introduction of bills, the editorial suggests that, in this instance, the bill was so bizarre as to merit "bewearin' McCarran".
"Paving Job" finds it questionable to follow the course set forth by Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson to spend the country out of its debt, risen to a projected 275 billion dollars by the following July, with an annual budget of 25 billion, 5.5 of which went to financing the nation's debt. Mr. Vinson had counseled high national product to assure adequate revenue to pay the debt down. Says the piece, "We have to be prosperous if it breaks us." And there was no sign that the Government intended to cut spending beyond war spending.
"Health Record" states again that more than half the draft registrants and volunteers from North Carolina had been rejected by the Army for mental or physical unfitness. The record was a poor one, underscoring the need for improved health facilities.
It was notable that orphanages had rejections of its charges only 1.4 percent of the time. The results showed that the medical treatment at the state's orphanages was exceptional. The State might study the example, therefore, and seek to apply some of the technique beyond orphanages.
"For Japs" suggests that the country look to the account of Maj. General Albert Jones, upon his return stateside after release from a Japanese prison camp, for counsel as to treatment of Japanese war criminals. He had seen his men die by the hundreds during the forced Bataan Death March of May, 1942. During that summer he was shipped to Formosa and "Camp Starvation", as the high ranking officers imprisoned there dubbed it. It was at this camp that he witnessed the constant beating of General Jonathan Wainwright, hero of Corregidor.
It recapitulates his statement, which was included a couple of days earlier on the front page.
Eventually, the Russians came to the last camp where he was imprisoned, at Mukden, and told the remaining prisoners there that they were free, then left them in charge of their former captors. General Jones stated that they had been kinder to them than the Japanese had been to the Americans.
Says the piece, "The so-and-sos don't deserve it, but that's what they ought to get: a little more decent treatment, but not so much more, than they
"Back Again" finds future Secretary of State to President Eisenhower John Foster Dulles back in the news. He was on his way to Washington, at the request of Secretary of State James Byrnes, to assist in the peace for Europe.
His stock had risen since the death of FDR. He had been derided during the 1944 campaign as the foreign policy adviser to Thomas Dewey, being, it was said, too much a representative of Wall Street interests and too supportive of German cartels, not to mention his 1939 speaking engagements in which he expressed the idea that Nazism was a necessary evil to combat Communism in Europe.
But now he was being called by Secretary Byrnes to perform in a non-partisan effort at rebuilding Europe, having been a central Republican adviser during the San Francisco Conference on the U.N. Charter, held between April 25 and June 26.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Congressman Joe Ervin of North Carolina comparing the bill to make permanent the Fair Employment Practices Commission, assuring the right of equal opportunity for employment and equal pay to all regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity, to an action by the Tories during the Revolutionary War. He thinks that—as with the story of an unforgiving Revolutionary War hero who once saw a Tory approaching his house after the war and reached for his musket, only to have his wife yell, "Ride, Tory, ride
Drew Pearson discusses the long withheld secrets of the Battle of Midway and why the Chicago Tribune, under the ownership of isolationist Robert McCormick, had not been prosecuted for revealing war secrets in relation to the battle. The Navy had been in possession of the Japanese secret code at the time and so could effectively listen to communications between Washington and Tokyo and the Japanese Fleet.
Secretary of State Hull had found out on Saturday, December 6 at 10:00 p.m. via this eavesdropping capability that the Japanese were busy decoding a lengthy note from Tokyo rejecting the Hull modus vivendi of November 26, demanding that the Japanese give up their occupation of China, Manchuria, and Indo-China in exchange for a return to free trade with the United States, terminated in late July in the wake of the complete occupation of Indo-China with the cooperation of Vichy.
The fact had resulted in the censure of General Marshall for his having gone horseback riding Sunday morning despite this availability of knowledge, such that the news of the Japanese rejection of the terms had only reached General Short in the afternoon, some eight hours after the attack had commenced at 7:50 a.m., over by 10:00.
We note parenthetically that the Japanese rejection of the terms did not necessarily mean an attack on Pearl Harbor. It more likely portended an attack in the Philippines, at Singapore, Hong Kong, or the Dutch East Indies. Those were the focal points of attention at the time. Even had General Marshall gotten word to General Short the night before, it would likely, therefore, have made no difference in terms of preparation.
As Mr. Pearson himself had noted a few days earlier, General Short and Admiral Kimmel had been warned on November 27 by Washington that it was unlikely that diplomatic efforts would succeed and that preparations should be made to secure all facilities. Both men on Oahu interpreted the messages to mean the likelihood of local sabotage from Japanese nationals in Honolulu or midget submarine attack. Because of the 4,000 miles of ocean intervening Hawaii and Japan, no one contemplated a mass air attack.
Mr. Pearson goes on to explain that two weeks before the Japanese attack on Midway, the Navy knew, right after the Battle of the Coral Sea, through intercepts of coded messages, that the attack was coming, and so was able to prevent a second disaster, as the Navy sent forth ships to Midway to lay a trap for the Japanese Fleet before it could deploy its full force of planes. Had Midway been successful, informs Mr. Pearson, the Japanese had planned a concerted attack on the Hawaiian Islands and the California coast.
Stanley Johnston, he says, of the Chicago Tribune, had revealed the Navy intercepts, nearly spoiling the plan and potentially causing major problems for the vulnerable areas on the West Coast which had been abandoned so that the ships could sail to Midway. Mr. Johnston had been a reporter aboard the carrier Lexington, sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea, and was taken aboard another ship to Midway, where he learned that the Japanese were preparing a strike on the crucial base. Mr. Johnston then flew back to the United States and sent the report to the Tribune.
Admiral Ernest King, after seeing the report, asked President Roosevelt to use his war powers to shut down the Tribune for reasons of national security, as revelation of the information would undoubtedly cause the enemy to change its code, realizing it had been deciphered. He also wanted Mr. Johnston prosecuted.
But FDR and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, owner of the Chicago Daily News, were both reluctant to suggest to Attorney General Biddle a prosecution, Secretary Knox wanting to avoid the perception of hitting his chief rival in private life and FDR similarly wishing to avoid being perceived as going after a very visible political opponent in Mr. McCormick. The Navy, however, insisted; William Mitchell, the Attorney General under President Hoover, was therefore named special prosecutor to present the matter to the Chicago Grand Jury. But in the middle of the proceeding, the Navy was still receiving Japanese messages in the same code and so, concerned about revealing further the information through leaks from the Grand Jury, determined to abandon the entire matter.
Mr. Pearson next imparts a story anent U.S. Ambassador to Russia Averill Harriman, having been highly critical of the Russian looting of machinery from plants in Berlin, including those in the American zone of occupation prior to the Americans coming into possession of it in July. Mr. Harriman was leading a tour of a plant in the American zone and noted again that it had been stripped of all machinery. Then he saw some fancy glasses on a workbench and took them as souvenirs, whereupon one member of his entourage looked at him in a reproving manner, to which Mr. Harriman responded with a laugh and agreed that it was he who had criticized the Russians for looting.
Finally, the column reports that when Assistant Secretary of State Nelson Rockefeller had been terminated following the appointment of James Byrnes as Secretary, workers in the building were startled to see a moving van removing all the furnishings, including chandeliers, from his office suite. It was, however, all his personal property, which he had brought with him to furnish his digs in the high style to which, imperiously, he was accustomed.
C'mon, Rocky, we're just joking. Stop pointing to heaven like that.
One line at a time, incidentally, to an empty chair is passable. A whole monologue, however...
Stick to Rawhide, Rowdy.
Marquis Childs examines the full employment bill, essentially a well-meaning gesture with little concrete machinery within to enable full employment to take place. Henry Wallace had just published a book titled Sixty Million Jobs, the number promised by FDR during the fall 1944 campaign and the number pledged by Mr. Wallace when he came to head the Department of Commerce. President Truman had also embraced the concept. So had Thomas Dewey during the fall campaign, as quoted by Mr. Wallace in his book.
Economists were predicting seven to eight million unemployed by January. A year earlier, a report by Bernard Baruch and John M. Hancock had suggested a coordinating director of all of the agencies in the reconversion effort. Often they worked at cross-purposes.
Should the country drift into unemployment during the ensuing year rather than moving toward full employment, then the Democrats would find the 1946 election tough sledding.
Samuel Grafton returns for the first time in awhile to an old topic, obscurantism, in relation to the return of Congress to session following the summer recess. He finds it to be obscurantism to vote to have another inquiry into Pearl Harbor while the pressing issues of reconversion still remained unaddressed. It was a way by which the Congress could prolong its vacation for a week, by looking rearward, in avoidance of dealing with the more difficult problems ahead for the country.
While the President had deserved credit for effecting great unity with Congress thus far in his Administration, there also came a point when unity for the sake of it only resulted in a lack of action. It was time for the President and his supporters in Congress to exert some pressure to pass his program. The opposition had only to prevent action, as war workers continued to stream out of war plants looking for employment and a means of sustaining themselves until they could find it. It would be a major defeat for the President to cooperate in such inaction merely for the sake of continuing to get along with the Congress.
That underlying "Spanner", incidentally, from February 13, 1943, was:
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking:
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
In our isle's enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Dream of fighting fields no more:
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armour's clang, or war-steed champing,
Trump nor pibroch summon here
Mustering clan, or squadron tramping.
Yet the lark's shrill fife may come
At the day-break from the fallow,
And the bittern sound his drum,
Booming from the sedgy shallow.
Ruder sounds shall none be near,
Guards nor warders challenge here,
Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing,
Shouting clans or squadrons stamping.Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done,
While our slumbrous spells assail ye,
Dream not, with the rising sun,
Bugles here shall sound reveillé.
Sleep! the deer is in his den;
Sleep! thy hounds are by thee lying;
Sleep! nor dream in yonder glen,
How thy gallant steed lay dying.
Huntsman, rest; thy chase is done,
Think not of the rising sun,
For at dawning to assail ye,
Here no bugles sound reveillé.
Dorothy Thompson discusses a protest launched by seventeen physicists who had worked on the development of the atomic bomb, including Enrico Fermi, who, along with Leo Szilard, had drafted the original letter submitted by Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt on August 2, 1939, urging research into such a weapon to compete with the German scientists who were known to be working on such a device.
The scientists, led by Dr. Samuel Allison of the University of Chicago, had complained that the bomb had been used on two cities rather than first being demonstrated for the Japanese.
"We will begin an elaborate study of the colors of
Ms. Thompson agrees with the scientists and offers that since science had always been an international field of study, unless the United States proposed to restrict the freedoms of these scientists in order to protect the shield of secrecy surrounding the bomb, the secret was going eventually to be shared with other nations.
Framed Edition
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