June–September 1945
The months after the German defeat left the world in limbo, hoping to build a new order out of the ruins of the most damaging war in history but still waiting for the conflict raging in Asia and the Pacific to end. Following the United Nations’s founding conference in San Francisco in May, the participants moved toward full ratification. In Washington Congress approved the new structure on July 28 during the last of the major wartime summits between the three major Allies. It was held at Potsdam, just outside Berlin, from July 17 to August 2, 1945. Like the previous wartime summits, the Potsdam conference was conducted in complete secrecy, with no reporters present.
The Times speculated on the uncertainties now dividing the former wartime Allies over the future of Europe and Asia. The one certainty, The Times claimed, was Churchill’s imminent reelection as Britain went to the polls; there was “little doubt” about the British election’s outcome. When Churchill was defeated by Clement Attlee’s Labour Party, The Times conceded some “deep-seated forces” underlying Churchill’s ouster. With Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Stalin was the only head of state at Potsdam who had led his country through the whole war.
The principal concern at Potsdam was to finish the war. Despite Japanese peace feelers extended via Moscow (which the Soviets denied), those in Tokyo who favored surrender could not defy the die-hard militarists, and feared for the future of the emperor.
On August 6 the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese port of Hiroshima. The Times had been given exceptional access to the last stages of the bomb’s development. In April 1945 Times science correspondent William L. Laurence had been invited by Brig. General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project (the super-secret program to develop the bomb), to become the project historian. Laurence wrote plenty of newspaper copy, but it was locked in the safe at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee Air Force facility, where he was based. He watched the first atomic test at the Alamogordo, New Mexico airbase in July. On August 4 Groves told The Times that the paper would be given exclusive access when a special, but still secret, event took place. Thus when the first bomb was dropped Times War Department reporter Sidney Shallett beat the rest of the press with a story headlined “New Age Ushered” on August 7. Two days later, Laurence rode in the B-29 that dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.
Surrender followed quickly, though not only because of the atomic bombs. On September 2 aboard the battleship Missouri, Japanese representatives, some in tears, signed the surrender document. That same day the electric board on Times Square carried the message “Official * * * Truman Announces Japanese Surrender.” The Times later wrote, “This was the hour free men had dreamed of, and for which they had strained and died.”
Atomic weapons transformed the balance of power in America’s favor overnight. On August 18 The Times announced the issue was how to use that power in a world reduced in many places to a ruined chaos. In Germany a program of “de-Nazification” was established, though it made slow progress. France under Charles de Gaulle’s provisional rule moved toward a new democratic constitution.
But outside Europe, issues that had been suppressed by war blazed up again after 1945. In the Middle East Arab states sought complete independence and curbs on Jewish immigration; in India Gandhi called for Britain to honor its wartime pledges and grant the nation independence; in Indo-China (later known as Vietnam) nationalists and Communists resisted the return of French rule; China was faced with an incipient civil war once the Japanese Army left.
Relations between the Soviet Union and the West were still uncertain, but Stalin had ordered an immediate acceleration of the Soviet atomic program. On September 17 The Times reported that a B-29 bomber had been forced down by Soviet jets over Korea. Two days later Soviet ambitions for a controlling hand in North Africa were published. This was not yet the Cold War, but the new age of peace began in an atmosphere of distrust and crisis.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 26 (AP)—If given a quick start by the United States Senate, a sufficient number of the other United Nations might ratify the World Charter in time to put it into effect before the end of 1945.
This was the prospect shown today in a poll conducted at the Security Conference by The Associated Press. Out of the first twenty-six nations to reply to a questionnaire, twenty predicted ratification by their home Governments before the end of the year. None raised any bar to ratifications. Six declined to fix a probable date.
Assuming Senate approval, as indicated by Senators’ replies to another canvass by The Associated Press in Washington, the feeling expressed by delegates here was that a real landslide of favorable votes by small nations would follow.
All of the major powers, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France and China, plus twenty-three of the other forty-five members of the United Nations must ratify it before the Charter can become effective.
The United States, Britain and China, together with eighteen small nations replying to the current questionnaire, already have been placed on the line as probable signatories before Jan. 1, 1946.
If Russia and France completed the Big Five line-up quickly, the full force of the new world organization almost certainly would go into effect this year.
Ratification predictions ranged from a “few weeks” in the case of China to “the earliest practicable date” in the case of the Philippines.
In several instances, as in Britain, Norway, Belgium and Greece, the delegations said that pending elections would govern the date of ratification, but even in these instances a 1945 date usually was given.
The Australian delegation forecast, given as “unofficial,” was ten weeks. Peru’s prediction was “possibly August”; Cuba and Paraguay said approval would be “speedy”; Norway indicated November; Belgium, December; Honduras named this same month, as did South Africa, with a proviso that final action might go over to 1946; Bolivia said “August or September”; Haiti said “in the next three months”; Luxembourg said “autumn,” and the Dominican Republic said “without delay.”
JULY 2, 1945
By WARREN MOSCOW
By Wireless to The New York Times.
GUAM, July 2—In the pre-dawn darkness, American Superfortresses filled the air over Japan this morning, bringing destruction and ruin to four more Japanese cities. The greatest number of B-29’s ever put in the air, from 550 to 600, rained down approximately 4,000 tons of incendiaries on the industries of three cities on the main island of Honshu and one on Kyushu.
The targets were Kure, Shimonoseki and Ube on Honshu and Kumamoto on Kyushu, all tasting the incredible heat of the fire bombs for the first time as the B-29 high command went about its business of wrecking Japan’s industrial machine, city by city and factory by factory. Last night, from their bases on Guam, Tinian and Saipan, the planes that took off outnumbered those that took part in the fire bomb attack on Tokyo on May 24. There was little left of the Tokyo target when that raid was over, and the four secondary cities that received the heavier load early this morning were in line for a similar fate.
There has been a continual stepping up of the number of planes taking part in the attacks. Only a few months back 200 planes in the air set a record. Then came the 300-, 400- and 500-plane attacks. We have promised to the Japanese attacks by 1,000 planes, and once the new bases on Okinawa are in use those promises will become a reality.
This morning’s attacks bring to twenty-two the number of Japanese cities attacked by the incendiary method. There have been thirty-three incendiary missions, exclusive of pin-point bombing attacks and mining missions. Of the twenty-two cities fired by incendiaries, fifteen are on Honshu and the others on Kyushu.
U.S. soldiers examine the results of a B29 Superfortress bomb run on the streets of the Ginza district, Tokyo, July 1945.
JULY 17, 1945
Like all its predecessors, the conference of the Big Three at Potsdam is surrounded by secrecy and a strict censorship which bars the press and severely censors whatever press representatives may learn at its fringes. President Truman has expressed himself in favor of brief and generalized reports on the progress of the meeting, But it is evident that such reports will be issued only by common agreement and that they will tell little about the actual negotiations. Since the conference is expected to last three weeks, the world’s patience is likely to be tried as never before.
Yet, however much the world in general and the press representatives in particular may chafe under this secretiveness, it must be regarded as inevitable for this kind of meeting, and as part of the price for its success. For this is no San Francisco conference called upon to put the finishing touches to a blueprint already drafted. This conference, though it has a solid basis of commonly accepted principles to work upon, will involve some fundamental decisions out of which the blueprint for the new world is to emerge. These decisions will pertain to both war and peace.
They will pertain to war because it is now evident that the war against Japan will be one of the main topics on the agenda. The presence of President Truman’s and Prime Minister Churchill’s top military, naval and air advisers is proof of that. And any decision made regarding that war would automatically fall into the category of military secrets, to be disclosed only in future military action. Nobody except the enemy would want them announced in advance.
But to a large extent secrecy at this stage is also justified in respect to the decisions regarding the future peace. For these decisions, even if they involve nothing more than the practical application of principles previously agreed upon, involve all the many difficult problems which have set Europe aflame for centuries. They involve the issue of borders over which any nation is ready to fight at the drop of a hat; they involve the heartbreaking problems of restoration and reconstruction, of millions of displaced persons and projected new expulsions, of staving off hunger and disease which must lead to chaos and anarchy. It is inevitable that the three countries should have differing views on many of these problems. But it is also evident that if these differences are to be reconciled, as they must be, it is far better to talk them over first in a confidential exchange of views than to blare them forth in a public meeting where any nation, once it has proclaimed its stand, can change it only with great difficulty, if at all. And since the discussions are likely to affect the interests of many other nations, any premature publication would precipitate a storm of rival pressure propaganda which might make any agreement utterly impossible.
To some this will seem to smack of “secret diplomacy,” contrary to the “shirt-sleeve diplomacy” of President Wilson and its motto of “open covenants openly arrived at.” But even President Wilson never contemplated, as his own practice at Versailles showed, that every development at every phase of every conference should be immediately trumpeted to the world. Real secret diplomacy is based on secret agreements secretly arrived at and kept secret from the world. There is nothing secret about the fact that the Big Three are meeting to reach agreements, and President Truman has specifically announced that he will make no secret commitments and will report to Congress immediately upon his return. With that America will be satisfied.
JULY 19, 1945
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, July 18—Renewed reports of a Japanese peace offer met with denial today when a State Department spokesman declared that no official proposals of terms had been received from the Japanese Government.
When the spokesman was asked concerning reports that Marshal Stalin had gone to the Postdam Conference with terms that the Japanese were prepared to accept for the termination of the Pacific war, he indicated that the State Department had no knowledge of such an offer.
The statement issued by Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew on July 10, in which he said no peace proposals directly or indirectly had been received from the Japanese Government “still stands,” the spokesman said. On that occasion Mr. Grew declared that the United States would accept only unconditional surrender.
Advices from Germany reported that President Truman intended to return to this country almost immediately after the conclusion of the Potsdam conference, and that plans for extended trips to various European and Mediterraneon countries had been abandoned. Peace feelers by unauthenticated Japanese sources, mentioned by Mr. Grew in his previous statement, together with the expectation of Presiden Truman’s early return are believed to account for the speculation on the possibilities of an early end to the war with Japan.
JULY 22, 1945
By RAYMOND DANIELL
By Wireless to The New York Times.
BERLIN, July 21—The United States delegation at the tripartite conference let it be known today that Premier Stalin, Prime Minister Churchill and President Truman had made considerable progress toward agreement on how the peace of Europe, won at so great a cost to all three nations and many lesser ones, could be preserved.
Since the first formal session Tuesday the leaders of the three major powers have met every day, including today, notwithstanding a British victory parade, which Mr. Churchill reviewed this morning from a stand in the Charlottenburger Chaussee in the Tiergarten.
With the Prime Minister in the reviewing stand were Clement R. Attlee, Labor party chief; Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and most of Britain’s serving field marshals. Gen. George C. Marshall, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King and Gen. Henry H. Arnold were among the Americans who attended what was primarily a British show.
It is believed that one of the problems that have occupied considerable time of the Big Three conference is the question of how to integrate the economy of partitioned Germany, part of which has been opened to the Poles by the Russians without waiting for any clarification or implementation by the other Allies of the decision reached at Yalta to compensate Poland for the loss of her eastern marshes with territory in the West taken from Germany.
UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Harry Truman and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin at the Potsdam conference, July 1945.
As a result, it is reported, hundreds of thousands of Germans from Pomerania and the land east of the Oder River are being evicted by the Poles before the creation of any machinery for the transfer of the population and are beginning a migration westward. About 9,000,000 Germans are said to be affected.
It was explained today that a large part of the work of the conference is done by experts and members of subcommittees who toil far into the night and report on their progress at the daily conference of Foreign Secretaries. The latter, Vyacheslaff M. Molotoff, Mr. Eden and James F. Byrnes, decide then which subjects are ready for discussion by the Big Three and prepare the agenda for the next meeting of their leaders. In this much time is saved and the Prime Minister, Premier and President are spared the wasted effort of discussions that could lead nowhere for lack of some pertinent facts.
Observers speculated on the effect of the British elections on the timing of the conference.
There is little doubt among British political observers here that Mr. Churchill’s Conservative party will emerge from the election with a majority in the Commons. There is, however, some doubt among them whether British constitutional practice requires his presence in England the day election results are announced or immediately thereafter.
Of course, if Labor won the election, both he and Mr. Attlee would probably have to return to England, Mr. Churchill to hand in the seals of office as the King’s First Minister and Mr. Attlee to attempt to form a Government. There are some who hold that the Prime Minister will have to be back in London anyway to go through the formalities of re-forming his Government, and for that reason today’s statement that much of the serious business of the conference had already been done was noted with interest.
JULY 27, 1945
POTSDAM, Germany, July 27 (AP)—News of the British Labor party’s election triumph produced the political sensation of the year among delegations of the three great Allied powers in Potsdam today.
The defeat of Prime Minister Churchill’s Government apparently marks the second break in the original Big Three and leaves Premier Stalin as the only member of that triumvirate.
The first break was the death April 12 of President Roosevelt, whose place was filled by President Truman.
Clement R. Attlee has been attending the Potsdam conference with Mr. Churchill and thus is fully informed on the discussions.
The first impression here this afternoon was that Mr. Attlee would extend Mr. Churchill the courtesy of an invitation to return to Potsdam as a member of his delegation. But it was only a guess and few appeared to believe that Mr. Churchill would accept in view of the British voters’ verdict.
There was no authoritative information at once available to clarify the question as to how soon Mr. Attlee himself might be able to come back, but in most quarters it was believed that this would be within two or three days at most or the conference recess would become a formal adjournment.
There was no comment from President Truman and Premier Stalin.
The presumption was that plans were being made for continuance of the conferences here with Mr. Attlee.
By HERBERT L. MATTIEWS
By Cable to The New York Times
LONDON, July 26—In one of the most stunning election surprises in the history of democracy, Great Britain swung to the Left today in a landslide that smothered the Conservatives and put Labor into power with a great majority.
Winston Churchill has resigned as Prime Minister and Clement R. Attlee has accepted the King’s invitation to form a Laborite Government. The Liberals went down to an equally surprising defeat. The world, which looked to Britain for a guiding trend, has had its tremendous answer. Today and tomorrow and for months or years to come, the Left is the dominating power in global politics.
When the final result came in from the constituency of Hornchurch at 10:30 P. M., Labor had a staggering total of 390 scats out of a Parliament of 640, of which the holders of thirteen seats will not be known until early in August.
In the last Parliament, Labor had only 163 and in its greatest previous triumph, in 1929, it had 288.
The Conservatives had fallen from 358 seals to 195. The Liberals, too, lost seven seals and now have only eleven members in Parliament.
Adding fourteen Liberal Nationals and one National, the former Government is down to 210 seats, whereas if the Liberals, Independent Labor with three seats, the Commonwealth with one, the Communists with two and the Independents with ten are added to Labor, one gets a total of 417.
Such a tremendous majority means that the Labor party can confidently count on a full five year tenure of office, for it cannot be beaten on any vote of confidence.
Winston Churchill at the rear of Downing Street on his way to hand in his resignation to King George VI, July 26, 1945.
Out of nearly 25,000,000 votes, Labor alone won nearly 12,000,000. The Conservatives got a little more than 9,000,000 votes. The Labor party did not lose a single seat to the Conservatives, although it gained 130 from that party.
The results were a personal, decisive repudiation of Mr. Churchill as a peacetime leader. He himself personalized the election; he had asked that votes be cast for him so that he would be returned to power. The answer came not only in an overwhelming defeat for his party but even in his constituency of Woodford, where he was opposed only by a candidate whom he called “Tom-fool” Hancock, 10,500 persons out of 38,000 voted against him. His son, Maj. Randolph Churchill, and his son-in-law, Duncan Sandys were defeated.
JULY 29, 1945
By CLIFTON DANIEL
By Wireless to The New York Times.
LONDON, July 28—British voters had a choice between Churchill and change. When the ballot boxes were opened this week they had chosen change and Britain had joined the European swing to the Left. Britain had been in the swing all along, but during ten years without a general election no one had been able to gauge the extent of the fact.
If Americans now wish to understand why the British people with seemingingratitude turned Winston Churchill out of office, they must first appreciate the depth of the yearning here for a change in the conception, functions and performance of government. That urge overrode all other considerations.
To its own undoing the Conservative party underestimated the popular impulse. Beguiled by the personality of Mr. Churchill and deceived by the outward apathy of the voters, disinterested observers, including this writer, failed to perceive the irresistibility of that impulse in the English people.
But it is now apparent that by installing a Labor Government at Westminster the British people intended to make a clean break with the past the past of unemployment and doles, the past of appeasement and unpreparedness, the past of war and suffering, the past of unfulfilled promises and national frustration.
Whatever they may have gained or failed to gain by their votes, it is plain most of the British people were seeking somehow a guarantee for the future, a guarantee for the fulfillment of post-war hopes and schemes that have no relation to the muddling uncertainty that characterized years between the wars.
There is no question of the new Attlee Government’s repudiating any of the broad international agreements undertaken by Britain in the five war years under Mr. Churchill, for the leaders of the Labor party participated in them all, as they have participated in the San Francisco and Potsdam conferences.
The victorious Labor party, which its opponents try to stigmatize with the label of “socialist,” is by no means a party of working-class revolution. Its domestic and foreign policies are not so alien to the modern British mind as the Conservatives would have had the voters believe.
But the British vote for Labor does represent a profound and fundamental change in political trends. For the ballots cast have turned out of office not only a party but a class.
AUGUST 7, 1945
By SIDNEY SHALETT
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6—The White House and War Department announced today that an atomic bomb, possessing more power than 20,000 tons of TNT, a destructive force equal to the load of 2,000 B-29’s and more than 2,000 times the blast power of what previously was the world’s most devastating bomb, had been dropped on Japan
The announcement, first given to the world in utmost solemnity by President Truman, made it plain that one of the scientific landmarks of the century had been passed, and that the “age of atomic energy,” which can be a tremendous force for the advancement of civilization as well as for destruction, was at hand.
At 10:45 o’clock this morning, a statement by the President was issued at the White House that sixteen hours earlier—about the time that citizens on the Eastern seaboard were sitting down to their Sunday suppers—an American plane had dropped the single atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, an important army center.
What happened at Hiroshima is not yet known. The War Department said it “as yet was unable to make an accurate report” because “an impenetrable cloud of dust and smoke” masked the target area from reconnaissance planes. The Secretary of War will release the story “as soon as accurate details of the results of the bombing become available.”
But in a statement vividly describing the results of the first test of the atomic bomb in New Mexico, the War Department told how an immense steel tower had been “vaporized” by the tremendous explosion, how a 40,000-foot cloud rushed into the sky, and two observers were knocked down at a point 10,000 yards away. And President Truman solemnly warned:
“It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Postdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”
The President referred to the joint statement issued by the heads of the American, British and Chinese Governments, in which terms of surrender were outlined to the Japanese and warning given that rejection would mean complete destruction of Japan’s power to make war.
What is this terrible new weapon, which the War Department also calls the “Cosmic Bomb”? It is the harnessing of the energy of the atom, which is the basic power of the universe. As President Truman said, “The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.” “Atomic fission”—in other words, the scientists’ long-held dream of splitting the atom—is the secret of the atomic bomb. Uranium, a rare, heavy metallic element, which is radioactive and akin to radium, is the source essential to its production. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, in a statement closely following that of the President, promised that “steps have been taken, and continue to be taken, to assure us of adequate supplies of this mineral.”
The mushroom cloud at the time of the explosion, 1,640 feet above Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945.
The imagination-sweeping experiment in harnessing the power of the atom has been the most closely guarded secret of the war. America to date has spent nearly $2,000,000,000 in advancing its research. Since 1939, American, British and Canadian scientists have worked on it. The experiments have been conducted in the United States, both for reasons of achieving concentrated efficiency and for security; the consequences of having the material fall into the hands of the enemy, in case Great Britain should have been successfully invaded, were too awful for the Allies to risk.
All along, it has been a race with the enemy. Ironically enough, Germany started the experiments, but we finished them. Germany made the mistake of expelling, because she was a “non-Aryan,” a woman scientist who held one of the keys to the mystery, and she made her knowledge available to those who brought it to the United States. Germany never quite mastered the riddle, and the United States, Secretary Stimson declared, is “convinced that Japan will not be in a position to use an atomic bomb in this war.”
Not the slightest spirit of braggadocio is discernable either in the wording of the official announcements or in the mien of the officials who gave out the news. There was an element of elation in the realization that we had perfected this devastating weapon for employment against an enemy who started the war and has told us she would rather be destroyed than surrender, but it was grim elation. There was sobering awareness of the tremendous responsibility involved.
Secretary Stimson said that this new weapon “should prove a tremendous aid in the shortening of the war against Japan,” and there were other responsible officials who privately thought that this was an extreme understatement, and that Japan might find herself unable to stay in the war under the coming rain of atom bombs.
The first news came from President Truman’s office. Newsmen were summoned and the historic statement from the Chief Executive, who still is on the high seas, was given to them.
“That bomb,” Mr. Truman said, “had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than 2,000 times the blast power of the British ‘Grand Slam,’ which is the largest bomb (22,000 pounds) ever yet used in the history of warfare.”
No details were given on the plane that carried the bomb. Nor was it stated whether the bomb was large or small. The President, however, said the explosive charge was “exceedingly small.” It is known that tremendous force is packed into tiny quantities of the element that constitutes these bombs. Scientists, looking to the peacetime uses of atomic power, envisage submarines, ocean liners and planes traveling around the world on a few pounds of the element. Yet, for various reasons, the bomb used against Japan could have been extremely large.
Hiroshima, first city on earth to be the target of the “Cosmic Bomb,” is a city of 318,000, which is—or was—a major quartermaster depot and port of embarkation for the Japanese. In addition to large military supply depots, it manufactured ordnance, mainly large guns and tanks, and machine tools and aircraft-ordnance parts.
President Truman grimly told the Japanese that “the end is not yet.”
“In their present form these bombs are now in production,” he said, “and even more powerful forms are in development.”
He sketched the story of how the late President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill agreed that it was wise to concentrate research in America, and how great, secret cities sprang up in this country, where, at one time, 125,000 men and women labored to harness the atom. Even today more than 65,000 workers are employed.
“What has been done,” he said, “is the greatest achievement of organized science in history.
“We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.”
AUGUST 2, 1945
After three weeks of deliberations, the momentous Conference of Potsdam, which met to liquidate Hitler’s ghastly heritage and to lay the cornerstone for the new world of tomorrow, has come to its end. The Big Three, on whose shoulders rested perhaps greater responsibility this time than ever in the past because victory in Europe enlarged their freedom of choice, are homeward bound to put their decisions into effect.
Nearly three months have passed since V-E Day, and a distraught and devastated Europe looks with dread to the approaching winter, which promises to be the hardest in its history, but against which it can do little until peace succeeds war. And that peace, for the first time since Europe beat off the invasions from Asia and Africa, is now in the keeping of the three chiefly extra-European Powers which met in Potsdam. Time presses, therefore, and it is quite in order that President Truman should have declined the numerous invitations to visit other countries in favor of a brief visit to the King of England aboard a battle cruiser at Plymouth. It is a welcome and a graceful gesture which not only returns the King’s visit to the United States just prior to the war, but also demonstrates the enduring friendship between our two countries beyond all changes in national and international politics.
What decisions the Conference has made will not be revealed until its final communiqué is published. It would be useless to speculate on them. But one can take hope from the repeated interim reports that progress was being made. The alternative to agreement, in fact, would be too grim to contemplate. At the same time, the change in the personnel of the Big Three since their previous meetings, and even in the midst of this conference, has demonstrated that this was a meeting, not of three men, but of three nations with specific problems and interests to reconcile. And the further fact that the United States not only played the decisive role in the victory, but that its President also presided over the conference to gather its fruits, has put a particularly large share of responsibility on America.
In a sense, the Potsdam Conference was in the nature of a preliminary peace conference at which the Big Three sought to agree among themselves on the framework of a peace that will so much depend on their support. In such a preliminary gathering, secrecy is unavoidable if results are to be achieved. Not even the most enthusiastic exponents of open diplomacy will cavil as long as the full results are published at its conclusion. And it is inevitable that its decisions will go far to determine the shape of things to come. But it will be well to bear in mind that in the last analysis even its decisions can only be provisional—a basis of procedure, not a dictate to be blindly accepted by the rest of the world. They must still remain subject to ratification—by one or more peace conferences in which all affected nations must have a voice, by the individual Governments of the Big Three themselves, and in the end by the conscience of the world. For unless they are so ratified, they will not endure. The development of the United Nations Charter, from the Atlantic Charter, through Dumbarton Oaks, through the San Francisco Conference, to the final ratification by the United States Senate, with its successive stages of increasing publicity, debate and improvement, has set the precedent and the moral for the peace treaties to come.
AUGUST 10, 1945
By W. H. LAWRENCE
By Wireless to The New York Times.
GUAM, Aug. 9—Gen. Carl A. Spaatz announced today that a second atomic bomb had been dropped, this time on the city of Nagasaki, and that crew members reported “good results.”
The second use of the new and terrifying secret weapon which wiped out more than 60 per cent of the city of Hiroshima and, according to the Japanese radio, killed nearly every resident of that town, occurred at noon today, Japanese time. The target today was an important industrial and shipping area with a population of about 253,000.
The great bomb, which harnesses the power of the universe to destroy the enemy by concussion, blast and fire, was dropped on the second enemy city about seven hours after the Japanese had received a political “roundhouse punch” in the form of a declaration of war by the Soviet Union.
GUAM, Aug, 9 (AP)—Nagasaki is vitally important as a port for transshipment of military supplies and the embarkation of troops in support of Japan’s operations in China, Formosa, Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific. It was highly important as a major shipbuilding and repair center for both naval and merchantmen.
The city also included industrial suburbs of Inase and Akinoura on the western side of the harbor, and Urakami. The combined area is nearly double Hiroshima’s.
Nagasaki, although only two-thirds as large as Hiroshima in population, is considered more important industrially. With a population now estimated at 253,000, its twelve square miles are jam-packed with the eave-to-eave buildings that won it the name of “sea of roofs.”
General Spaatz’ communiqué reporting the bombing did not say whether one or more than one “mighty atom” was dropped.
The Tokyo radio yesterday described Hiroshima as a city of ruins and dead “too numerous to be counted,” and put forth the claim that the use of the atomic bomb was a violation of international law.
The broadcast, made in French and directed to Europe, came several hours after Tokyo had directed a report to the Western Hemisphere for consumption in America asserting that “practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death” Monday, when the single bomb was dropped on the southern Honshu city.
The two broadcasts, recorded by the Federal Communications Commission, stressed the terrible effect of the bomb on life and property.
European listeners were told that “as a consequence of the use of the new bomb against the town of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, most of the town has been completely destroyed and there are numerous dead and wounded among the population.”
[The United States Strategic Air Forces reported yesterday that 60 per cent of the city had been destroyed.]
“The destructive power of the bombs is indescribable,” the broadcast continued, “and the cruel sight resulting from the attack is so impressive that one cannot distinguish between men and women killed by the fire. The corpses are too numerous to be counted.
“The destructive power of this new bomb spreads over a large area. People who were outdoors at the time of the explosion were burned alive by high temperature while those who were indoors were crushed by falling buildings.”
Authorities still were “unable to obtain a definite check-up on the extent of the casualties” and “authorities were having their hands full in giving every available relief possible under the circumstances,” the broadcast continued.
In the destruction of property even emergency medical facilities were burned out, Tokyo said, and relief squads were rushed into the area from all surrounding districts.
The Tokyo radio also reported that the Asahi Shimbun had made “a strong editorial appeal” to the people of Japan to remain calm in facing the use of the new type bomb and renew pledges to continue to fight.
[A special meeting of the Japanese Cabinet was called at the residence of Premier Kantaro Suzuki to hear a preliminary report on the damage, The United Press said.]
By ARTHUR KROCK
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 14—Japan today unconditionally surrendered the hemispheric empire taken by force and held almost intact for more than two years against the rising power of the United States and its Allies in the Pacific war.
The bloody dream of the Japanese military caste vanished in the text of a note to the Four Powers accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945, which amplified the Cairo Declaration of 1943.
Like the previous items in the surrender correspondence, today’s Japanese document was forwarded through the Swiss Foreign Office at Berne and the Swiss Legation in Washington. The note of total capitulation was delivered to the State Department by the Legation Charge d’Affaires at 6:10 P.M., after the third and most anxious day of waiting on Tokyo, the anxiety intensified by several premature or false reports of the finale of World War II.
The Department responded with a note to Tokyo through the same channel, ordering the immediate end of hostilities by the Japanese, requiring that the Supreme Allied Commander—who, the President announced, will be Gen. Douglas MacArthur—be notified of the date and hour of the order, and instructing that emissaries of Japan be sent to him at once—at the time and place selected by him—with full information of the disposition of the Japanese forces and commanders.”
President Truman summoned a special press conference in the Executive offices at 7 P.M. He handed to the reporters three texts.
The first—the only one he read aloud—was that he had received the Japanese note and deemed it full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, containing no qualification whatsoever; that arrangements for the formal signing of the peace would be made for the “earliest possible moment”; that the Japanese surrender would be made to General MacArthur in his capacity as Supreme Allied Commander in Chief; that Allied military commanders had been instructed to cease hostilities, but that the formal proclamation of V-J Day must await the formal signing.
The text ended with the Japanese note, in which the Four Powers (the United States, Great Britain, China and Russia) were officially informed that the Emperor of Japan had issued an imperial rescript of surrender, was prepared to guarantee the necessary signatures to the terms as prescribed by the Allies, and had instructed all his commanders to cease active operations, to surrender all arms and to disband all forces under their control and within their reach.
After the press conference, while usually bored Washington launched upon a noisy victory demonstration, the President with Mrs. Truman walked out to the fountain in the White House grounds that face on Pennsylvania Avenue and made the V sign to the shouting crowds.
But this did not satisfy the growing assemblage, or probably the President either, for, in response to clamor, he came back and made a speech from the north portico, in which he said that the present emergency was as great as that of Pearl Harbor Day and must and would be met in the same spirit. Later in the evening he appeared to the crowds and spoke again.
He then returned to the executive mansion to begin work at once on problems of peace, including domestic ones affecting reconversion, unemployment, wage-and-hour scales and industrial cut-backs, which are more complex and difficult than any he has faced and call for plans and measures that were necessarily held in abeyance by the exacting fact of war.
But certain immediate steps to deal with these problems and restore peacetime conditions were taken or announced as follows:
1. The War Manpower Commission abolished all controls, effective immediately, creating a free labor market for the first time in three years. The commission also set up a plan to help displaced workers and veterans find jobs.
2. The Navy canceled nearly $6,000,000,000 of prime contracts.
The Japanese offer to surrender, confirmed by the note received through Switzerland today, came in the week after the United States Air Forces obliterated Hiroshima with the first atomic bomb in history and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics declared war on Japan. At the time the document was received in Washington Russian armies were pushing back the Japanese armies in Asia and on Sakhalin Island, and the Army and Navy of the United States with their air forces—aided by the British—were relentlessly bombarding the home islands.
When the President made his announcements tonight it was three years and 250 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which put the United States at war with Japan. This was followed immediately by the declarations of war on this country by Germany and Italy, the other Axis partners, which engaged the United States in the global conflict that now, in its military phases, is wholly won.
President Harry S. Truman announces the surrender of Japan to the White House Press Corps, August 15, 1945.
If the note had not come today the President was ready, though reluctant, to give the order that would have spread throughout Japan the hideous death and destruction that are the toll of the atomic bomb.
These are a few highlights in the violent chapter of unprecedented war that ended today with the receipt of the note from Tokyo. It is not strange that, remembering all these things, the President and high officials were under a strain as acute as any mother, father or wife of a man in the Pacific combat could have been while waiting for the words that would bring the chapter to a present close.
The alternative for the Japanese would, of course, have been national suicide. But there are many in Washington, students of this strange race or baffled by the ways of the Orient, who have predicted that such would be the decision of the Japanese military leaders to which the people would submit. The Japanese, they contended, would commit mass suicide before they would yield their god, the Emperor, to an alien enemy as his overlord.
But now this god, in the person of an ordinary human being, representative of other human beings who were vanquished with him, is to take his orders from a mortal man who, above all others, symbolizes the spirit of the alien enemy that was foremost in crushing the myth of divinity and shattering the imperial dream. And the Emperor, with his Ministers and commanders, has been obliged to accept the condition that disproves the fanatical concept used by the militarists of Japan to produce unquestioned obedience to orders issued in the Emperor’s name, however much or little he may have had to do with them.
AUGUST 19, 1945
The first eighteen days of August, 1945, can be set down as the most nerve-racking in modern history. Whether they are also the most auspicious depends on what we do with their results. So fast have events moved that the situation of three weeks ago seems like ancient history. First, on Aug. 2, we had the Potsdam communiqué, with its hopeful promise of the restoration of democracy and civil liberties in Europe and its practical economic and political proposals, not all of which could be accepted without reservations.
Second, on Aug. 6, we had the announcement of the first atomic bomb. One could accept this horrible weapon because it would shorten a bloody war and because the knowledge on which it was based might some day ease the burdens of all humanity. But the indiscriminate slaughter which it caused did not lie easily on American consciences, and the problem of its future control was, and is, appalling.
Third, on Aug. 8, Russia made her long-expected declaration of war and immediately moved into Manchuria. Her swift gains confirmed other evidences of Japanese weakness and the surrender offer of Aug. 10 was not a surprise. The surprise—and the nervous strain—lay in the arrogance, the defiant propaganda and the unaccountable delays which characterized the last days and hours of the Japanese Empire.
The jubilant and in some cities riotous celebrations of the coming of peace will cause Tuesday and Wednesday of last week to be long remembered. Less dramatic were the quiet people, probably all over the country, who came out to their front porches to breathe the air of peace again, or offered up prayers in their homes or in their churches, or felt in their hearts, as so many millions of wives and parents must have done, a thankfulness too deep for words. Not since the ending of the war of 1861–65 has this nation been through such a moving experience.
Yet there was evident, both in the noisy celebrations and in the quietness that followed. an element of apprehension as to the future. The goal toward which free humanity had been struggling for so long, at such terrible cost, had at last been attained, but with it there came a realization of the nature of victory in war. Victory is a negative thing at best. It merely ends the dangers and horrors of war. It does not give back the lives that were lost, or restore those that were broken, or reestablish the conditions that existed before war broke out. It does not, in itself, establish a lasting peace.
The morning after victory must, therefore, be sober indeed. New problems rise. In our own country we face immediately the tremendous task of turning our production from war to peace. No war worker could wish to keep his job at the expense of other people’s lives, yet he cannot help concern as to his personal future. Most soldiers, sailors and marines want their discharges at the earliest possible moment, but now they must ask themselves what are their opportunities in civilian life.
In the countries which have borne the brunt of battle, from Russia, France and the Balkans to China, the immediate outlook is worse. Security and prosperity are plants that grow very slowly amid the ruins. Liberty is sweet, but it is not food, clothing, fuel and shelter. It will in time produce them or all our hopes are vain, but the time is necessary and there are countless millions who will find it hard to wait.
Thus these days of new-born peace are also days of crisis. We have to see that relief goes swiftly to those who need it most, at home and abroad. We have to see that economic and political reconstruction is of such a sort as to perpetuate peace, in the light that glared over Hiroshima and Nagasaki we have to reconsider the obligations assumed under the United Nations Charter, and ask ourselves whether we have gone far enough in the new machinery for the amicable settlement of international disputes. Two atomic explosions have been sufficient to make peace more than a desirable objective. It is now a necessity to the survival of civilization.
Much of the burden of the new tasks imposed on humanity by these fateful days of August, 1945, rest upon the United States. We have become the most powerful nation in the world. Five years ago honest, if mistaken, Americans could talk of a policy of isolation. Now we are the center and focus of a new fear and a new hope. And a center cannot be isolated.
By FRANK L. KLUCKHOHN
By Wireless to The New York Times.
TOKYO, Aug. 31—This nation in defeat is bitter. Everyone is “so sorry.” The Japanese did not lose the war. That nasty contraption, the atomic bomb, did the job. They want to know why we ripped Tokyo to pieces. They even want to take us on sightseeing trips to show us how unsportsmanlike we are.
If you ask why they attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, they are embarrassed. If you answer, “Manila is worse,” to their queries as to why Tokyo is so severely mauled you have attacked Oriental “face.”
I found that out after being one of the first correspondents into Yokohoma and after riding in a packed train into Tokyo.
Riding from Atsugi Airdrome into Yokohama, we saw peasants turn their backs to ignore us. We saw a soldier chase three women who wanted to look at us and force them to hide. We saw the destruction that had been visited on Yokohama, one of Japan’s major ports and chief industrial centers, and saw people living in corrugated tin huts as a substitute for homes. We watched curiosity almost overcome discipline as children grinned at us before dodging into doorways.
We saw a badly beaten people.
With Gordon Walker of the American Broadcasting Company I made the trip into the capital of a defeated empire on an ordinary commuter train. It was a trip not without strain, but as it turned out nothing unfortunate happened.
All during the drive into Yokohama from Atsugi Airdrome we were struck by the unfriendly, even hostile, attitude of the populace. As we entered Yokohama, we again received stony stares that made it evident that this nation is suffering deeply under the lash of defeat.
At the railway station we encountered two nuns—one English and one French—who had just arrived together from the capital. They told us they did not know whether it was safe for us to travel in a United States uniform there. But when we insisted they helped us buy rail tickets.
We went out on to a wooden platform like that at Rye, N.Y., and boarded an all-third-class train. Aboard our car were mostly Japanese soldiers being dropped by the army, in full or part uniform, and a few women wearing trousers and shirts, which have been the wartime dress of the women, who used to wear kimonos.
Scorched ruins of Tokyo, a result of massive Allied air raid attacks in 1945.
The hostility was thick. It gave a peculiar feeling to be among people we had fought so long. As the train halted at each of the five or six stations on the fifty-minute trip, we both became more and more tense. The coach became as crowded as a New York subway coach at a rush hour.
We tried to break the tension by asking what time the train would arrive. We obtained curt answers. The first soldier we approached even refused to speak to us.
We gazed through the window at the completely destroyed factory area between the port and the capital. Once one of the most densely populated areas of the world, it is now a conglomerate of corrugated tin huts where people live in worse conditions than the Oakies in California at the depth of the depression in the Nineteen Thirties. Then we looked back at hostile eyes. Mr. Walker and I tried to talk with each other but this seemed to annoy the Japanese so we gave it up.
Finally we stepped out at an undestroyed station and walked past a thousand glaring soldiers by a subway onto the street. We tried to hail several cabs but were ignored. Finally we walked into a bank, where we asked if anyone spoke English. We received more glares and were ignored. We walked about a block and then saw a man just entering a small car with a chauffeur. We requested, with as much an air of authority as we could muster, that he drive us to the Imperial Hotel. He acceded but refused to talk with us.
The “cold treatment” thereafter alternated during the long day with complaints as to the way our bombers had acted.
Few we met failed to mention the complete destruction of the Yokohama-Tokyo industrial area by superfortresses. They wanted to know why we had bombed Tokyo and how we reconciled that with “civilization.”
They said that only Emperor Hirohito’s order had made them stop fighting and that if this had not been issued they could have resisted an invasion.
There were serious complaints over the fact that United States planes were still flying over the Imperial Palace—a practice characterized as a “direct insult” by those we met. We saw in the five-minute drive to the Imperial Hotel that many of Tokyo’s leading buildings were still standing, although we had observed that the factory and residential sections were largely destroyed. At the desk of the hotel we were greeted by an English-speaking Japanese, who said “How do you do, Mr. Kluckhohn?” as if there had never been a war. He pushed out the register, which I signed, and then he asked about Otto D. Tolischus, who was Tokyo correspondent of The New York Times at the outbreak of the war. The nuns in Yokohama had suggested that we ask for the Rev. Patrick Byrne of Washington, and we did so. He came down, shook hands delightedly and took us to his room, where he introduced us to a member of the secret police who had guarded him throughout the war.
Toshiyuki Myamoto, a reporter for the newspaper Asahi, was there and proceeded to try to interview us. He called the Asahi and within a few moments a photographer and a man whom we took to be of the secret police arrived. The unidentified arrival questioned us as, to the United States attitude toward Japan, why we had bombed Tokyo, what we thought of the effect of the bombing. We said it was “not so bad as Manila” as far as complete destruction went. He looked at us with pain and quickly left.
Although the Asahi man insisted that it was dangerous for us to be in the streets, we wandered through the park opposite the hotel. We again got cold glances.
By The Associated Press
ABOARD U.S.S. MISSOURI in Tokyo Bay, Sept. 2—The solemn surrender ceremony, on this battleship today, marking the first defeat in Japan’s 2,600-year-old semi-legendary history, required only a few minutes as twelve signatures were affixed to the articles.
Surrounded by the might of the United States Navy and Army, and under the eyes of the American and British commanders they so ruthlessly defeated in the Philippines and Malaya, the Japanese representatives quietly made the marks on paper that ended the bloody Pacific conflict.
The Japanese delegation came aboard at 8:55 A.M., 7:55 P.M. Saturday, E.W.T., as scheduled. They reached the Missouri in personnel speed boats flying the American flag.
Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu led the delegation. He climbed stiffly up the ladder and limped forward on his right leg, which is artificial. He was wounded by a bomb tossed by a Korean terrorist in Shanghai many years ago.
On behalf of Emperor Hirohito, Mr. Shigemitsu signed first for Japan. He doffed his top hat, tinkered with the pen and then firmly affixed his signature to the surrender document, a paper about twelve by eighteen inches. Mr. Shigemitsu carefully signed the American copy first, then affixed his name to a duplicate copy to be retained by Japan.
Following him, Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu, chief of the Imperial General Staff sat down resolutely and scrawled his name on the documents as if in a tremendous hurry. A Japanese colonel present was seen to wipe tears from his eyes as the general signed. All the Japanese looked tense and weary. Mr. Shigemitsu looked on anxiously as General Umezu signed.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur was next to sign, as Supreme Commander for the Allies, on behalf of all the victorious Allied Powers. General MacArthur immediately called for Lieut. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright of Bataan and Coregidor and Lieut. Gen. Arthur E. Percival of Singapore to step forward. These two defeated Allied commanders, now savoring their hour of triumph, stepped up, and General Wainwright helped General MacArthur to take his seat.
General MacArthur signed the documents with five pens. The first he handed immediately to General Wainwright, the second to General Percival. The third was an ordinary shipboard Navy issue pen.
General MacArthur then produced a fourth pen, presumably to be sent to President Truman. Then he completed his signatures with still a fifth, possibly a trophy to be retained by himself.
Generals Wainright and Percival, both obviously happy, saluted snappily. They were followed by serene-faced Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who signed on behalf of the United States. Next came China’s representative.
General MacArthur acted as a brisk master of ceremonies. He made a brief introductory statement before the Japanese signed, then called upon each nation’s signer in turn to step forward. The United Kingdom’s signature was followed by that of the Soviet Union.
The Russian staff officer signed quickly, scooting his chair into a more comfortable position even as he was signing. General MacArthur smiled approvingly as the Russian rose and saluted. Quickly in turn, Australian, Canadian, French, Netherlands and New Zealand representatives signed in that order. The Australian, Gen. Sir Thomas Blamey, happened to sign the Japanese copy first, with an expression that denoted that it did not make any difference.
Finally, after New Zealand’s signature, less than twenty minutes from the start of the ceremony, General Mac Arthur formally and in a firm voice declared the proceedings closed.
The Japanese prepared to depart immediately, their bitter chore accomplished.
The historic signing took place on a long table on the gallery deck. All Allied representatives were sober-faced, but obviously glad it was over. Soldiers, sailors and marines, some of whom had fought their way across the Pacific, hardly could hide a trace of exuberance on their serious faces.
Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mamoru Shigemitsu signing the surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. General Douglas MacArthur is at the microphone.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1945
By HENRY C. WOLFE
American occupation forces in Japan are seeing a land and a people very different from what the movies and popular fiction have led them to expect. They probably feel let down. Here is what they are finding:
Country and Climate—All four of Japan’s main islands together have an area smaller than the State of California. Nippon (Honshu), is the main island, with almost twice the area of the other three. Much of the land is mountainous. Only one-eighth is arable. Earthquakes are commonplace. The islands have a temperate climate, with rather extreme variations. Kyushu and Shikoku have mild winters. On the east coast of Honshu the winters are apt to be mild, but on its west coast there is deep snow and bitter cold. Hokkaido, the northern island, has a cold and inhospitable winter climate. On the whole, Japan has short, hot, humid summers and long, cold, clear winters.
Population—Japan’s 75,000,000 people are largely concentrated in the coastal areas, the Tokyo-Yokohama region, the Kobe-Osaka-Kyoto district, Nagoya and Nagasaki. About half of the Mikado’s subjects live in villages or on individual farms. There are, however, large tracts, especially in western Honshu and in Hokkaido, where there are no people at all, for the terrain is mountainous or the winters extremely cold.
Natural resources—One of the principal reasons for Japan’s drive to the South Seas was to obtain raw materials in which she was deficient. There are some natural resources in Nippon—coal, petroleum, sulphur, salt, iron, copper, lead, zinc, chromite, white arsenic, gold and silver. A few years ago Japan was almost self-sufficient in copper. With the rise of war industries, however, the exports required to pay for raw materials imports and the heavy drain of the long conflict in China made copper importation essential. In terms of yen value, gold was the second most valuable metal produced in Japan before the war. Japan is fairly well situated so far as coal is concerned, but she must import coking coal and anthracite.
Government—The Japanese Government has been representative only in theory. Actually it is an oligarchy. At the head is the Emperor, at least in name. Below him is the Imperial Diet, consisting of the House of Representatives and the House of Peers. But somewhere between the Emperor and the Diet come the Imperial Household Ministry, the Privy Council, the Genro (Elder Statesmen), the Prime Minister and the army and navy chiefs. This has made the real source of Japan’s governing power a kind of political shell game for foreigners.
Autocrats—Japan’s two greatest business houses are the Mitsui and the Mitsubishi interests. Their commercial ramifications were worldwide and brought vast wealth and power to their concerns. The house of Mitsui, for example, owns or controls banks, department stores, shipping, factories, international trading offices, newspapers and pulp paper companies. Because the little people had virtually no purchasing power in the Western sense, the Mitsuis and the Mitsubishis were dependent for profits on international trade.
Language—Spoken Japanese will not prove an insuperable difficulty, but it is to be doubted that many of our men will get far with the written language. Japanese words are not hard to pronounce. Moreover, they are rather easy to understand, with their generous use of vowels. But the written language, a language of ideographs, is extremely difficult. In the great coastal cities, especially the Tokyo-Yokohama area, Osaka and Kobe, many Japanese speak, or at any rate read, some English. English is the most widely understood foreign language in Japan; it is the great commercial speech of the Far East. Nearly all Japanese engaged in international trade understand it.
Amusement—Our service men in Japan will have to bring their own amusements with them. Their sight-seeing will, of course, include Mount Fuji and the Shinto shrines of Ise. The Japanese theatre—the serious No plays and the Kabuki farces—will be unintelligible to all but the few who may be interested in Japanese culture for its own sake. Dance halls and cabarets were closed before Pearl Harbor, when the empire began to feel the heavy economic and social pressures of the long-drawn-out “China incident.”
Food—Tokyo had plenty of small restaurants and tea rooms before the war. Today, quite aside from air raid damage, the food situation is undoubtedly very bad. Meat-eating Americans will probably not enthuse over Japanese cooking with its emphasis on rice and fish. But the newcomers may enjoy the experience of eating sukiyaki or tempura, with a glass of rice liquor called saki.
Sports—Baseball is the favorite sport of Japan, so much so that before the war American ball players were heroes of the Japanese fans. This is a far from insignificant fact in our relations with the Japanese. It helps explain the seemingly inexplicable spectacle of a banzai charge in which Nippon’s soldiers were shot down screaming “To hell with Babe Ruth!” Now that the war is over, baseball may actually prove a psychological factor with which to win Japanese youth over to our way of thinking.
The complete text of President Truman’s V-J Day speech, as recorded and transcribed in the recording room of The New York Times follows:
My Fellow Americans, Supreme Allied Commander General MacArthur and Allied representatives on the Battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay:
The thoughts and hopes of all America—indeed of all the civilized world—are centered tonight on the battleship Missouri. There on that small piece of American soil anchored in Tokyo harbor the Japanese have just officially laid down their arms. They have signed terms of unconditional surrender.
Four years ago the thoughts and fears of the whole civilized world were centered on another piece of American soil—Pearl Harbor. The mighty threat to civilization which began there is now laid at rest. It was a long road to Tokyo—and a bloody one.
We shall not forget Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese militarists will not forget the U.S.S. Missouri.
The evil done by the Japanese war lords can never be repaired or forgotten. But their power to destroy and kill has been taken from them. Their armies and what is left of their Navy are now impotent.
To all of us there comes first a sense of gratitude to Almighty God Who sustained us and our Allies in the dark days of grave danger, Who made us to grow from weakness into the strongest fighting force in history, and Who has now seen us overcome the forces of tyranny that sought to destroy His civilization
God grant that in our pride of this hour we may not forget the hard tasks that are still before us; that we may approach these with the same courage, zeal and patience with which we faced the trials and problems of the past four years.
Our first thoughts, of course—thoughts of gratefulness and deep obligation—go out to those of our loved ones who have been killed or maimed in this terrible war. On land and sea and in the air American men and women have given their lives so that this day of ultimate victory might come and assure the survival of a civilized world. No victory can make good their loss.
We think of those whom death in this war has hurt, taking from them fathers, husbands, sons, brothers and sisters whom they loved. No victory can bring back the faces they long to see.
Only the knowledge that the victory, which these sacrifices have made possible, will be wisely used, can give them any comfort. It is our responsibility—ours, the living—to see to it that this victory shall be a monument worthy of the dead who died to win it.
We think of all the millions of men and women in our armed forces and merchant marine all over the world who, after years of sacrifice and hardship and peril, have been spared by Providence from harm.
We think of all the men and women and children who during these years have carried on at home, in lonesomeness and anxiety and fear.
Our thoughts go out to the millions of American workers and business men, to our farmers and miners—to all those who have built up this country’s fighting strength and who have shipped to our Allies the means to resist and overcome the enemy.
Our thoughts go out to our civil servants and to the thousands of Americans who, at personal sacrifice, have come to serve in our Government during these trying years; to the members of the Selective Service Boards and ration boards; to the civilian defense and Red Cross workers; to the men and women in the USO and in the entertainment world—to all those who have helped in this cooperative struggle to preserve liberty and decency in the world.
We think of our departed gallant leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt, defender of democracy, architect of world peace and cooperation.
And our thoughts go out to our gallant Allies in this war; to those who resisted the invaders; to those who were not strong enough to hold out but who nevertheless kept the fires of resistance alive within the souls of their people; to those who stood up against great odds and held the line until the United Nations together were able to supply the arms and the men with which to overcome the forces of evil.
This is a victory of more than arms alone. This is a victory of liberty over tyranny.
From our war plants rolled the tanks and planes which blasted their way to the heart of our enemies; from our shipyards sprang the ships which bridged all the oceans of the world for our weapons and supplies; from our farms came the food and fiber for our armies and navies and for all our allies in all the corners of the earth; from our mines and factories came the raw materials and the finished products which gave us the equipment to overcome our enemies.
But back of it all were the will and spirit and determination of a free people—who know what freedom is, and who know that it is worth whatever price they had to pay to preserve it.
It was the spirit of liberty which gave us our armed strength and which made our men invincible in battle. We now know that that spirit of liberty, the freedom of the individual and the personal dignity of man are the strongest and toughest and most enduring forces in all the world.
And so on V-J Day, we take renewed faith and pride in our own way of life. We have had our day of rejoicing over this victory. We have had our day of prayer and devotion. Now let us set aside V-J Day as one of renewed consecration to the principles which have made us the strongest nation on earth and which, in this war, we have striven so mightily to preserve.
Those principles provide the faith, the hope and the opportunity which helped men to improve themselves and their lot. Liberty does not make all men perfect nor all society secure. But it has provided more solid progress and happiness and decency for more people than any other philosophy of government in history. And this day has shown again that it provides the greatest strength and the greatest power which man has ever reached.
We know that under it we can meet the hard problems of peace which have come upon us. A free people with free Allies, who can develop an atomic bomb, can use the same skill and energy and determination to overcome all the difficulties ahead.
Victory always has its burdens and its responsibilities as well as its rejoicing.
But we face the future and all its dangers with great confidence and great hope. America can build for itself a future of employment and security. Together with the United Nations it can build a world of peace founded on justice and fair dealing and tolerance.
As President of the United States I proclaim Sunday, Sept. 2, 1945, to be V-J Day—the day of the formal surrender of Japan. It is not yet the day for the formal proclamation of the end of the war nor of the cessation of hostilities. But it is a day which we Americans shall always remember as a day of retribution—as we remember that other day, the day of infamy.
From this day we move forward. We move toward a new era of security at home. With the other United Nations we move toward a new and better world of cooperation, of peace and international good-will.
God’s help has brought us to this day of victory. With His help we will attain that peace and prosperity for ourselves and all the world in the years ahead.
By HERBERT L. MATTHEWS
By Wireless to The New York Times
LONDON, Sept. 3—The British people heard some plain and courageous speaking tonight from the Prime Minister, Clement R. Attlee who told them in a broadcast the demobilization could not be speedy and that Britain’s responsibilities required the maintenance of great forces for some time to come.
It has fallen to the lot of the Labor Government to tell the people some unpleasant truths and to take unpopular measures, like further cuts in clothing and food rations just as everyone expected relief from the end of war. Now comes the bad news about demobilization.
Britain’s position as a world power, her duties in the future maintenance of world peace and her policy of fostering popular democratic governments in Europe all made demands of manpower that could not be shirked, Mr. Attlee declared. He had to tell this to the British people on the sixth anniversary of the day when the sirens first sounded in London, and his plea was for renewed patience.
The lesson that peace was indivisible, which should have been learned in 1918, must be learned today, he said, and there must be established “a world order in which war shall ever be banished.”
The development of the atomic bomb had made this “vital for the future of civilization,” Mr. Attlee continued.
“This is no time for relaxation, tempting as this is after years of strain,” he added.
So he went on to tell them of the responsibilities that Great Britain must shoulder and he recalled that he had never encouraged them to think that the war’s end would mean the immediate release of all the men and women in the armed forces.
Announcing that men between the ages of 18 and 30 would continue to be called up to meet the continuing needs of the services, he explained that large occupation forces would be required in Germany, southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East where they would have to carry out “the difficult and perhaps thankless task” of helping to establish “governments resting on popular consent.”
“Those of you who remember the disturbed period at the end of the last war,” Mr. Attlee said later, “will remember that one of the prime difficulties of the situation was the inability of the powers which had won the war to provide the necessary forces for the prevention of violent action by sectional interests pending completion of negotiations for world peace.”
Mr. Attlee showed the extent to which his Government is continuing traditional British foreign policy by discussing “the establishment of order in Burma” and the necessity for using large forces to maintain empire life lines. Aside from that, he called attention to the obvious need of men to help in the occupation of Japan.
The sum total of all this, he indicated, was that Britain, which mobilized literally all her manpower and which was desperately short of it for industrial labor, must still keep large forces under arms and away from home.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1945
By RUSSELL PORTER
Highly encouraging reports on the progress of reconversion have been received over the weekend from scattered industrial centers throughout the country by the Committee for Economic Development, an organization of business and industrial leaders who have been formulating plans during the last three years to stimulate postwar production and employment.
The reports indicate that industry is reconverting its plants from war to peace production much more quickly and easily, and that reconversion unemployment is much smaller than anticipated. Many industries have no problem at all, simply making the same goods in peace they did in war, and others require only a few weeks to reconvert.
Workers laid off by war plants are being absorbed rapidly in the plants that have already reconverted, in companies making new products developed by wartime research, or in other industries, considered unessential during the war, that have hitherto been short of labor. Agriculture, distribution, construction, transportation and communications, and services of all kinds that were curtailed or abandoned during the war are also offering many job opportunities. Some ex-war workers are opening small business ventures for themselves.
The situation is also being eased by the fact that many women and other workers, including the overage and the underage, who were employed in the war plants but normally would not have been considered part of the industrial labor force, are quitting for their homes, farms, schools or jobs outside industry.
So far war veterans have been absorbed by business and industry, in accordance with their veterans’ and seniority rights, and indications are that by the time they are discharged in large numbers reconversion will have progressed far enough to take care of them without serious difficulty.
The chief bottleneck seems to be delay in getting raw materials in some industries, notably in the textile and hosiery mills. Achievement of full employment in some other industries, including the printing and mechanical trades, has been slowed down by a shortage of skilled labor, and the need of long training periods for apprentices. A “back to normalcy” psychology on the part of some small employers has also been a brake on the movement for an expanding economy.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1945
By The United Press.
MOSCOW, Sept. 3—The magazine New Times assailed today some sections of the American press for allegedly advocating that the United States “secure world mastery by threatening use of the atomic bomb,” and warned that other nations would soon invent weapons equally potent.
The article, the first detailed analysis of the atomic bomb’s significance to appear thus far in the Soviet press, said that the missile’s development made lasting peace and security imperative. It urged international pooling of atomic knowledge as “the most effective method of mutual understanding of all freedom-loving nations.”
Characterizing the bomb as “one of the greatest inventions of modern science, fraught with enormous consequences in all fields of human life,” the article, by M. Rubinstein, said:
“At the same time, it is clear to all right-thinking men that the discovery does not solve any political problems internationally or inside individual countries. Those who cherish illusions in this respect will suffer inevitable disappointment.”
The article bitterly attacked the “Hearst-Patterson-McCormick press” for its alleged arguments that the United States use the threat of the atomic bomb to enforce its will in international affairs, and said:
“These flagrant imperialists forget history’s lessons. They ignore the collapse of Hitlerite plans for world hegemony, which were based on intended utilization of temporary superiority in technical development.”
The article said that “many other countries have scientists who studied the problem of splitting the atom and who will work with redoubled energy to invent weapons as good or better.” It approved suggestions to vest the control of atomic energy in an international body, “since the fundamental principles are well known and henceforth it is simply a question of time before any country will be able to produce atomic bombs.”
In addition to the gravest danger threatening humanity, “should aggressors seize control of this terrible weapon” Mr. Rubinstein said that unlimited economic abuses were possible by exploitation of atomic energy productively under conditions of “capitalist monopoly.”
He said that the latter would cause “monstrous mass unemployment and permanent elimination of millions of miners and other industrial workers and intensification of monopoly rule.”
SEPTEMBER 5, 1945
By G, H. ARCHAMBAULT
By Wireless to The New York Times.
PARIS, Sept. 4—Gen. Charles de Gaulle, President of the Provisional Government, indicated tonight in a broadcast marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the proclamation of the Third Republic, that he stood by the referendum that will accompany the elections next October.
In his address he emphasized the democratic principles—“liberty, justice and sovereignty of the people, without which there can be no lasting force, no solidity and no light.”
He pointed out, however, that the Third Republic had inherent defects that eventually brought about “conditions of permanent political crisis” resulting in twenty different Prime Ministers in the twenty-one-year period between the two world wars.
To avoid a recurrence of such conditions, General de Gaulle explained, he wished the nation itself to decide the character of the Fourth Republic.
“Through a capital innovation known as the referendum the French people, at the same time as they will elect their representatives, will indicate the nature of the institutions they have chosen for themselves. … I am convinced that the immense majority will receive these proposals with favor. … Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, you will soon launch the Fourth Republic.”
Thus it was revealed that General de Gaulle had not budged tonight from the stand taken yesterday when he refused to meet Leon Jouhaux, secretary general of General Labor Confederation, heading a delegation of Leftist parties desirous of obtaining modifications in the methods of voting to be applied next October.
Leftist newspapers this morning were very critical of General de Gaulle’s refusal to receive the delegation, and rumors spread of possible resignations among his Ministers. These rumors increased when it was learned that the regular Cabinet meeting scheduled for today would be postponed “to enable General de Gaulle to prepare his broadcast address.”
It was recalled that the President of the Provisional Government had said on several occasions that he was prepared to go should his task be deliberately complicated.
Various Leftist groups met during the day. The Central Council of French Renaissance, consisting of members of the National Resistance Council and of the departmental liberation committees, passed a resolution condemning the Government’s election plan as “not conforming with true proportional representation.”
The National Committee of the General Labor Confederation protested against what it described as General de Gaulle’s “authoritarian” refusal to receive the delegation and recalled the extent of the confederation’s participation in the resistance movement.
After Gen. Charles de Gaulle had seen Leon Blum, leader of the Socialist party, for three-quarters of an hour this evening the political storm that raged all day seemed ended. M. Blum was pledged to secrecy regarding the nature of the conversation, but it is understood that his part was that of a peacemaker.
General de Gaulle also received Dr. Pierre Maze, secretary general of the Radical party. He received no Communist.
With the national elections scarcely more than six weeks off, more storms of this nature may be expected and surprises are always possible.
Late tonight representatives of the five groups that had asked General de Gaulle to receive a deputation—the League of the Rights of Man, the Radical party, the Communist party, the Socialist party and the General Labor Confederation—met again and decided to send to the President of Provisional Government a memorandum in which they would outline criticism of his election plan, which he declined to discuss in conference with them.
The seventy-fifth anniversary of the proclamation of the Third Republic was marked by a parade of citizens organized by the Leftist parties. The paraders marched round a monument in the Place de la Republique, the base of which was heaped with flowers.
By GLADWIN HILL
By Wireless to The New York Times
BERLIN, Sept. 8—While the eyes of the world have been turned during the past month on the war’s finale in the East, the great practical experiment in international collaboration growing out of the war, the four-power occupation of Germany has been making laborious but tangible progress. The most significant progress has been made not with the Germans but among the Allies themselves in feeling out a technique of international management. Each day has brought forth new hitches and in advertent frictions in the joint effort, but each day also has brought broadening tolerance and patience to a remarkable degree.
The approaching winter, with its problems of food, fuel and shelter, is the prime concern at present of the occupation authorities and of all Germany. General Eisenhower has announced flatly that it will be “inescapable” to import food from the United States to feed the Germans, since our policy of just retribution to the Germans does not extend to killing them off by starvation or by the gunfire which unquestionably would be necessary if widespread starvation set in. With Germany’s main coal fields producing only 15 per cent of normal and most of that earmarked for the Army and public utilities, the fuel problem is not so easily solved and large numbers of Germans are going to suffer from exposure this winter.
In less urgent fields of rehabilitation Germany has made marked progress in the last few weeks. Eight thousand miles of railroad now are operating in the British zone and around 6,500 in the American zone. The latter is about 78 per cent of the normal trackage. Traffic amounts to 15 per cent of pre-war. The Rhine, one of Germany’s most important transport arteries, is scheduled to he cleared northward from the Ruhr to the coast this month and also upstream for an indefinite distance.
The Military Government reports that German civil administration in the American zone is about one-third recreated. Democratic elections of certain officials at the city and county level are planned for this winter.
Bucket brigades of mostly women working to clear rubble in Berlin, September 1945.
In Berlin, where the Russians reopened the schools before we arrived, 225,000 pupils—out of a 3,000,000 population—now are attending classes, 70,000 of them in the American sector.
In the rest of the American zone revival of education is being pursued more slowly on a local basis. Half of the 5,000,000 textbooks, which will be needed when the schools are reopened generally, have been printed.
Americans licensed the first private book publisher, a Heidelberg anti-Nazi who is going to print pocket classics, including Emerson and Poe. One hundred and fifty thousand copies of a new American literary review in Germany are being distributed in the American and British zones.
A number of American movies of the “Young Tom Edison” vintage with German dialogue are now being shown in the American zone.
Displaced persons, initially the Allies’ greatest problem, have been reduced by repatriations from 6,000,000 to a “hard core” of 1,748,000. About half those remaining are Poles. Other main groups are Russians, Italians and Hungarians. Most of them are settled in orderly camps managed by UNRRA.
Denazification is being pursued. Seventy-four Mayors in the Munich area were ousted recently along with 4,300 city employees, and Bavaria’s purge total was due to reach around 100,000 by the end of August. In Franconia 5,363 Nazis have been ousted. In Wiesbaden thirty-eight members of the police department and twenty-six banking and insurance officials were dismissed. The Bremen Burgomeister was fired for disobeying the Military Government.
The Allies’ major punitive effort, the international war criminal trials at Nuremberg of Goering and other members of the Hitler gang and the military leaders who for the first time in history will be called to account for promoting a war, has been put off to mid-October for the stated reason of the difficulty of arranging the court facilities. British trials of the Belsen concentration camp officials are scheduled to start in a few days at Luneberg.
The Allied Control Council, composed of General Eisenhower, Marshal Montgomery, Marshal Zhukoff, General Koenig and their assistants, which meets every ten days, has held its fourth meeting. While the sessions have been milestones in international harmony, they have not yet yielded much in tangible legislation because the council is just emerging from the organizational stage.
The council’s primary task is establishment of central German administrations of finance, transport, communications, industry and foreign trade as authorized in the Potsdam agreement. This will be a major step toward restoring Germany to a workable basis of self-support. After that is likely to come the matter of establishing a centralized administration in food and agriculture which was not specified in the Potsdam agreement but which American officials believe was not precluded and is desirable.
More and more American officials are coming to the view that we have been spending too much time juggling theories when we were confronted by conditions, and that we could use a little more Russian decisiveness. This is valuable because even within American councils there is a lot of bewilderment and disagreement about the practical application of broad directives. Even hard-peace exponents are realizing that many principles originally laid down on paper are in some applications merely unworkable rather than hard—that, to take a simple example, regardless of your desire to decentralize, you cannot run the railroads in a big country on a county basis, and that in carrying too far our basic policy of recreating Germany from the bottom up by local units we sometimes are hamstringing ourselves as much as the Germans.
When the Russians drew attention by installing twelve German subordinate officials in their zonal administrative sections while Americans still were working at local and county levels, a number of American officers opined that we might better be doing the same thing. The Russians are working on the principle that outward forms don’t mean so much when you have police power. Thus while the Americans were working out the fine points of a long-range program to provide Germans with non-Nazi movies, the Russians blandly authorized German movie houses to reopen, with the implicit warning for every German exhibitor that if he peddled any nazism he might turn up missing.
What it boils down to is that an authoritarian Government of the Russian sort is more suited to a lot of immediate problems of an occupation than a democratic regime, and in coping with immediate problems of a chaotic Germany Americans have been learning something from the Russians.
SEPTEMBER 12, 1945
By TILLMAN DURDIN
By Wireless to The New York Times.
CHUNGKING, China, Sept. 11—Talks for the settlement of Communist-Kuomintang differences are continuing here between Central Government representatives and the Communist leaders, Mao Tze-Tung, Gen. Chou En-lai and Wang Jo-fei.
Progress is reported to have been limited and there is less optimism over the outcome of the discussions although the spokesmen of both sides still maintain they are hopeful of agreement.
The Communists are said to be still holding out for extensive reforms in the Central Government and the formation of a coalition government of all parties before the Communists yield any degree of control over their armies.
The Communists are reported to be prepared to concede Kuomintang domination of the Yangtze valley but want predominance in the governments of the provinces in which their influence is greatest, such as Shantung, Hopei, Shanghai, Chahar and Shensi. The Central Government representatives are said to object to the Communists’ retaining any special area of influence as well as separate military forces on the grounds that this would not create real national unity.
The Communists fear eventual liquidation if their military and political strength is too widely dispersed.
CHUNGKING, Sept. 11 (AP)—The Chinese High Command announced today that troops had entered Hankow on the Yangtze; Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi Province; Kaifeng, capital of Hunan; Hingho, on the CharharSui-yuan border, and Suikai on the Luichow peninsula in South China.
Other forces assigned to occupation of northern Indo-China have entered Hanoi, an official announcement said.
An OWI correspondent reported that Hankow was economically dead after repeated air raids and Japanese looting. Only in the former French concession was business being transacted, he said.
Chinese who have flocked into the ruined city since the surrender were reported to have mobbed Japanese trucks that were making off with the last remaining supplies of soap, sugar, salt and other commodities.
SEPTEMBER 10, 1945
By Wireless to The New York Times.
CAIRO, Egypt, Sept. 9—Demands by the economic commission of the Arab League, including the prohibition of further sales of Arab lands to Palestine Jews, were disclosed here today, with proposed legislation, to take immediate effect, against further alleged illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine and a request for tariff protection of Arab products.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1945
POONA, India, Sept 15 (AP)—The Indian Congress party working committee informed the United Nations today that the people of India would not be bound by any international commitments made by India’s “present unrepresentative and irresponsible Government.”
The committee adopted a resolution, which said: “It appears to be the policy of the British Government to obstruct and delay formation of a people’s national government of India.”
Conceding that “it may take some time” for such a national government to function, the resolution said that in the intervening period “the present unrepresentative and irresponsible Government may enter into various kinds of commitments on behalf of the Indian people, which may create shackles preventing growth and development.”
By HARRY COLLINS
By Wireless to The New York Times.
LONDON, Sept. 15—The sigh of relief that echoed around the world with the report that the charred body of Adolf Hitler had been found by the Russians in the Berlin Chancellery may have been breathed too soon. The name of the man who hypnotized and blighted Europe for a decade is again in the headlines.
Is Hitler alive? The welter of speculation grows with each new “clue” and “disclosure.” The answer is simple—his conquerors do not know.
The Russians have never accepted as proved that the body they found in the Chancellery grounds was Hitler’s. The Chancellery is in the Russian-controlled section of Berlin, and with great thoroughness the Soviet authorities have pursued their investigation independently. Although the result of the Russian sleuthing is secret, it would seem the mystery is no nearer solution.
British Army authorities have declared that the latest rumor that Hitler was seen in Hamburg is “completely unfounded.” They also deny that British security police are searching for him. Yet it is known that British intelligence is far from convinced that Hitler is dead.
A Foreign Office spokesman pointed out that the omission of Hitler’s name from the war criminals’ list did not indicate that the British Government felt certain he was beyond earthly justice.
If Hitler could be brought to trial and dispassionately judged for his crime against humanity, there would be no Hitler legend to inspire the hard core of fanatical youth whose sole complaint against the Nazi regime is that it failed to win the world for Germany.
For years to come there will be Germans ready to obey to the death the “Fueher’s” commands. Any bogus message purporting to come from their leader, issued from an underground cell, could be one technique for stirring up trouble. Already Nazi underground radio broadcasts picked up in Sweden have said that Hitler is alive and in Germany. “Hitler will return” is the constant theme of these broadcasts.
It is not overstating matters to say that one of the greatest single factors in the regeneration of German youth is the solution of the Hitler mystery.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1945
By The United Press.
TOKYO, Sept. 16—Four Russian fighter planes shot down an American B-29 which was on a mercy mission over Korea on Aug. 29, it was disclosed today. The incident brought a “strong and vigorous” protest from Gen. Douglas MacArthur to the Soviet High Command.
Red Army officials promptly replied, regretting the “mistake.”
None of the thirteen Americans aboard the Superfortress was injured, although six bailed out into the sea after a burst from the Russian guns had set afire one of the bomber’s four engines. One airman reported that he was strafed by a Russian plane after he had hit the sea.
The incident occurred at 2:30 P.M. off the west coast of Korea. The B-29, loaded with food and medical supplies to be dropped at an Allied war prisoner camp in Konan, just inside Soviet-occupied Korea, was “boxed in” by four Yak fighter planes over the near-by Hammung airfield.
The Soviet planes indicated by “buzzing” the field and lowering their landing gear that the B-29 was to land there at once. Lieut. Joseph Queen of Ashland, Ky., refused to land the B-29 because the field was too small, and headed out to sea, intending to return to his Saipan base “until things got straightened out with the Russians.”
“About ten miles off the west coast of Korea the Yaks started making passes,” Lieutenant Queen told a United Press correspondent. “First they fired across our bow.
“Our guns were loaded and ready to talk, but I told the crew to hold fire.
“Then the Yaks made another pass and hit the No. 1 engine. It burst into flames and a few minutes later I gave the order to bail out. Six of the men jumped, but I got the fire under control and told the rest of the men to stay in the plane for a crash landing.”
Lieutenant Queen made a crash landing on the Hammung field. He and the crew removed all instruments and spent the night on the field with the Russians.
“The Russians told us they saw he American markings, but weren’t sure because sometimes the Germans used American markings and they thought the Japs might, too,” the pilot said.
The next morning Lieutenant Queen went to the prisoner camp. The six men who had bailed out were there. The plane’s radio operator, Douglas Arthur of Millersburg, Pa., who jumped, said that the men were in the sea a half hour to four hours before a Korean fishing boat picked them up.
Arthur said that it was he who was strafed.
“The Korean fishermen took us to a village where the head man prepared a big feast,” he continued. “The dancing girls were just about to appear when two Russian captains and a major showed up. We asked to be taken to the prison camp. They were nice about that and took us there.”
All twelve were taken to Seoul in a C-46 transport plane.
By C. L. SULZBERGER
By Council to The New York Times, LONDON, Sept. 18—The Soviet Union has formally advised the Big Five Council of Foreign Ministers that it considers that the former Italian domain of Trip-olitania should be administered under an individual trusteeship for the United Nations organization and that the U.S.S.R. would like to assume that role.
Foreign Commissar Vyacheslaft M. Molotoff in placing this suggestion before a slightly startled council, pointed out that the Soviet Union was extremely interested in the future development of the Mediterranean and Africa and believed that with the modernization of communications it was fully qualified to undertake this job.
This information was entirely confirmed today by responsible persons and even partly confirmed by Mr. Molotoff himself at a conference, where he said there was “a grain of truth” in reports of Russian interest in Tripolitania and. furthermore, that Moscow was directly interested in the future of Italy’s Red Sea colony Eritrea.
So far however, Mr. Molotoff has not yet informed the Big Five that the U.S.S.R. wants individual administrative rights in Eritrea. But from what the Foreign Commissar said today that cannot be far in the offing.
Soviet interest in the Mediterranean area is not limited to these two ideas on Tripolitania and Eritrea. The U.S.S.R. has made no request for any bases or administrative rights in the Dodecanese Islands. However, while admitting that these are colonies and, therefore, not subject to the trusteeeship formula and furthermore, that the islands should not be returned to Italy, the Russians have failed to agree with the other four powers in the Council that they should be awarded to Greece with the possible exception of Castclorixzo. which might be given to Turkey.
This has led some of the delegates to suspect—perhaps erroneously but nevertheless very earnestly—that Mr. Molotoff is preparing the background for a Soviet demand for a Dodecanese base. At San Francisco it was agreed that the Allied powers would not seek territorial gains in peace. However, when Secretary of State James F. Byrnes mentioned this casually in a reference to the Dodecanese Mr. Molotoff dodged the issue.
The British are worried about collective trusteeships, because they would put Russia into the Mediterranean. Now the individual trusteeship plan is equally disturbing to them because of Soviet interest in Tripolittania and Eritrea as wall as possibly, in the future, in the Dodecanese. They also are concerned about Cyprus and the status of Hong Kong, if the former is placed under the United Nations or given to Greece.
The Chinese favor collective trustee-ships but with a maximum time limitation of ten or fifteen years. The French want individual trusteeships—clearly thinking of Indo-china—with no time limitation at all.
The subject of Italian colonies was raised at Mr. Molotoff’s conference when he was asked what was the Soviet attitude on Eritrea. He replied:
“The question is under discussion. I shall not conceal that the Soviet Union has an interest in this question and can be helpful in deciding it.”
He was then asked whether there was any truth in newspaper reports concerning Soviet interest in Tripolitania. He replied:
“There is a grain of truth in this, but I shall defer my comments. The question has not yet been settled.”
SEPTEMBER 18, 1945
By The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17—The text of a statement by President Truman in connection with the European relief and rehabilitation program follows:
The United States Government is now in a position to fulfill the main requests of Europe—with the exception of sugar, fats and oils—from this date until Jan. 1 as these requests have been stated to it by the governments of the liberated countries and by UNRRA.
Provision of the supplies thus requested does not, however, mean that the civilian populations of Europe will reach even a minimum level of subsistence, and much suffering may be expected during the coming winter in certain areas of the Continent.
The limiting factor in meeting the minimum needs of the liberated peoples is no longer one of shipping. For the moment, in the case of most commodities, it is no longer a problem of supply. Today it is primarily a twofold financial problem; first, to work out credits or other financial arrangements with the European governments; second, to make additional funds available to UNRRA for emergency relief.
When I returned from Potsdam I said, “If we let Europe go cold and hungry, we may lose some of the foundations of order on which the hoped for worldwide peace must rest. We must help to the limits of our strength. And we will.” That pledge, made not only to our Allies but to the American people, must be kept. It should be made perfectly clear that, contrary to the belief of many, relaxation of rationing on the home front is not a factor in the allocation of relief supplies to Europe. The Department of Agriculture reports that, despite the release of cheese from rationing controls, and the possible relaxation of domestic meat rationing, we have sufficient quantities of meat and dairy products to fulfill the requirements placed upon us by UNRRA and the paying governments for the last quarter of the year.
The most desperate needs of the liberated people are for coal, transportation and food, in that order of priority. Other commodities urgently required include hides and leather, cotton, wool, textiles, soap, farm equipment, including fertilizer and seeds; repair parts and machinery, medical supplies, and a general list of raw materials. The items which are causing major concern because of worldwide shortages are coal, sugar and fats, hides and leather, textiles, and a few of the raw materials, in minor quantities. Locomotives constitute a special and acute problem because of the time factor involved in their manufacture.
Coal presents not only the most serious but the most complicated problem. Once self-sufficient in this commodity, Europe is now without the labor, the food, the transportation, the housing and the machinery needed to restore production quickly to its pre-war level. The Allied Control Commission is making every effort to speed the resumption of German production in order to supply the liberated areas, but despite considerable progress, the people of these areas face a winter of extreme hardship.
The United States is now shipping approximately 1,400,000 tons of coal to Europe a month. For the period ending Jan. 1 the goal is 8,000,000 tons, or slightly more than 1 per cent of our domestic production. The limiting factor is not primarily one of supply, but of inland transportation facilities both here and abroad.
The Department of Agriculture reports that shipments of food to the paying Governments and UNRRA during the last quarter of this year will include approximately these quantities:
One hundred and fifty million pounds of meat and meat products;
Seventy million bushels of wheat; Twenty-eight thousand short tons of raw sugar;
German housewives waiting in line for food in post-war Berlin, 1945.
Ninety million pounds of dried peas and beans;
Thirteen million pounds of lard.
In addition, the Department of Agriculture is prepared to ship the following supplies of dairy products, in at least these quantities, as soon as financial arrangements have been satisfactorily completed:
Sixty million pounds of cheese;
Two hundred million pounds of evaporated milk;
Twenty-five million pounds of dry whole milk powder;
Eighty million pounds of dry skim milk powder;
Fifteen million pounds of condensed milk.
It should be remembered that these supplies will serve not to improve, but only to sustain the diet of the liberated peoples, which remains below the minimum level of subsistence. In some cases the doubling of these food shipments waits only upon the conclusion of satisfactory financial arrangements.
This Government has abundant evidence that the American people are aware of the suffering among our Allies. They have also made plain their determination that this country shall do its full part, along with other supplying nations, in helping to restore health and strength to those who fought at our side both in Europe and in the Far East. It is an American responsibility not only to our friends, but to ourselves, to see that this job is done and done quickly.
SEPTEMBER 19, 1945
By SIDNEY M. SHALETT
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18—Secretary Stimson, who, since July, 1940, headed the War Department through the mobilization, war and victory years, resigned today, and President Truman nominated Robert P. Patterson, Under-Secretary of War, as his successor.
Mr. Truman hailed Mr. Stimson as one of the country’s truly great public servants and told his news conference that he accepted the resignation very reluctantly.
Mr. Stimson’s immediate plans were not disclosed. He will be 78 years old Friday. Mr. Stimson will hold his final news conference at 10:30 A.M. tomorrow, and the War Department will honor him at a reception from 5 to 7 P.M. at Dumbarton Oaks.
The Senate must confirm the nomination of Mr. Patterson, a Republican, who has supervised the Army’s $100,000,000,000 procurement program. Approval is expected, but not without some discussion, for Mr. Patterson’s out-spoken views frequently have brought him into sharp conflict with Congress.
It was recalled that he and Mr. Truman, when the latter headed the Senate War Investigating Committee, occasionally were at odds, but today Mr. Patterson also received the Distinguished Service Medal by direction of the President.
Mr. Truman disclosed that he also had received the resignation of John J. McCloy, assistant Secretary of War, and Robert A. Lovett, assistant Secretary of War for Air, but would not accept them at this time.
However, it is authoritatively reported that Mr. McCloy and Mr. Lovett wish to return to private life. Their present plans are to stay on so long as they can be useful to Mr. Patterson in setting up his departmental organization, then they would like to step out.
Harvey H. Bundy Sr., a special assistant to Mr. Stimson since he took office, also will retire. Mr. Bundy, who served under Mr. Stimson when he was Secretary of State from 1929 to 1933, will return to his law firm, Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston.
Mr. Patterson is a champion of the merger of the War and Navy Departments into a single Department of National Defense, a move which the President favors and for which there is considerable Congressional sentiment.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman with American diplomat Henry Stimson after Stimson received a Distinguished Service Medal.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1945
SEOUL, Korea, Sept. 19 (Delayed) (U.P.)—Korean leaders protested today that the division of Korea into a Russian-occupied industrial zone and an American-occupied agricultural zone had been made without consideration of Korea’s dove-tailed economy and said the existence of two separate occupation governments would hamper the establishment of an independent Korean government.
The Koreans pointed out that the arbitrary division line—the thirty-eighth parallel—which gave the Russians the northern half of the country was so shortsighted that it split three of Korea’s thirteen provinces and that the Governors of these provinces were under both Russian and American influence.
There is little similarity between the two occupation governments and virtually no liaison, they declared, adding that military government still continues in the Russian zone.
The Koreans said the Russian zone contained virtually all of Korea’s hydro-electric power and much of her heavy industry, while the southern zone largely supplied the north with rice, fish and other food. The economy of the country was established by the Japanese over a period of thirty years and was functioning efficiently when it was chopped in two, they said.
The Koreans asserted that the “crime of the occupation set-up” was that the Allies had “broken faith” with small countries in the Far East. They said President Truman, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had declared at Cairo that Korea would become free and independent in “due course.”
Korean nationalists said they could not see how bisecting the country could do anything but hinder Korean independence and some said they believed it was done deliberately to prevent Korea from becoming integrated.
The division of the country’s economy is the hardest blow, they said, for under Japan—as much as the Japanese rule was disliked—the country became nearly self-sufficient while the rich provinces in northeast Korea contained one of Japan’s heaviest concentrations of industry, including integrated iron and steel mills.
Government officials said the Japanese-built industrial empire should be turned over to them in payment for the years when the Japanese bled the country of its wealth, but said that first there must be a government by Koreans and asserted “when the Russians and the Americans leave—if you do leave”—Korea “will have two governments. It’s like drawing a line down the center of the United States with the western half a communistic government and the eastern half a democracy.”
SEPTEMBER 22, 1945
By Wireless to The New York Times.
PARIS, Sept 21—“Only France menaces the independence of Indo-China,” Prof. Tran Due Thao, vice president of the Indo-Chinese general delegation representing 25,000 Indo-Chinese laborers in France, told the press here today.
“Our object is to let the French people know what the effect of the arrival of the forces of General Leclerc [Maj. Gen. Jacques-Philippe Leclere de Hautecloque] is going to be,” he declared. “We will resist the French. Admiral d’Argen-lieu [Vice Admiral Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, High Commissioner in Indo-China] can expect to be shot at when he reaches Hanoi.”
The little Indo-Chinese professor had difficulty getting a word in during the ensuing hubbub among Frenchmen present, but he made his points.
Viet Nam, the Indo-Chinese resistance movement, already has set up a government in Hanoi, he said. It demands total independence, and the withdrawal of French troops and officials. A treaty might be made permitting French technicians, industrialists and others to work in Indo-China on the same basis as other foreigners. Since a Government already is established, he declared, there no longer is any question of granting Indo-China independence by stages, as in the Philippines.
“We do not fear the Chinese or the British because they intend to withdraw,” the professor explained, “but the French intend to stay.”
He denounced France’s record, alleging that old elite had been destroyed and replaced by servile nouveaux riches, that the old culture had been destroyed and replaced by an illiteracy rate of 89 per cent and that industry had been suppressed to safeguard French markets.
SAIGON, Indo-China, Sept. 20 (Delayed) (UP)—Reports from Tongking, in northeast Indo-China, said today that fighting had broken out there between the French and Annamite nationalists. Tension here was increased by an Annamite boycott against the French.
French representatives here indicated that the disturbances, which have been reported from all over Indo-China in recent weeks, may have been inspired by Germans as well as by Japanese. The Japanese last March proclaimed an independent puppet state of Viet Nam.
It was announced that a Dr. Nochte, leader of the German mission to Saigon, had been interned in his own house. He formerly was a specialist in espionage in Mexico and arrived here in 1942. Well-informed French quarters believed he was the leading brain behind the Anna-mite anti-French movement.
The Tongking reports—which did not indicate the scale of the disturbances—said fighting began when some of the 1,500 French troops interned with 3,500 other Europeans escaped to China and then came back.
Saigon remained tense and newspapers were suspended for printing false and alarmist news. Members of the Viet Nam [the Annamite nationalist party] began a policy of passive resistance following the establishment of virtual martial law here.
CHUNGKING, China, Sept. 21 (UP)—Dr. Sun Fo, President of the Legislative Yuan of China, said today the best disposition of the French Indo-Chinese protectorate of Annam would be to place it under the trusteeship of the United Nations. He foresaw perpetual internal strife if the French attempted to retain power. “Although the French pushed economic development, their rule was despotic and Indo-China was the worst government colony in the Far East,” he said.
SEPTEMBER 30, 1945
ROME, Sept. 29 (AP)—Rita Louisa Zucca, an “Axis Sally” broadcaster of Nazi radio propaganda to United States troops in the Mediterranean area, was sent to prison today by an Italian military tribunal for four years and five months.
The court required only fifteen minutes to convict the 33-year-old, American-born daughter of a New York restaurateur of a charge that she had intelligence with the enemy. However, it found “extenuating circumstances” and declined to impose the ten-year sentence asked by the prosecution.
Miss Zucca, who renounced her United States citizenship in 1941 because she “liked to live in Italy,” took her sentence calmly and with only a blinking of her eyes. Before she was led away by a British guard she smiled broadly at the German, Karl Goedel, who played “George” in the propaganda skit “Sally and George.”
“Sally” testified that she had taken the job with the German-controlled Rome radio only because she needed the money for her Italian lover; that she never organized or wrote the scripts for the propaganda programs but merely read prepared dialogues.
Just before the court returned its verdict her Italian attorney, Ottavio Libotte, received a cable from the United States asking postponement of the trial and saying the defendant’s mother, Mrs. Edvina Zucca, was sailing for Italy “with important documents.” It came too late, however.
Signor Libotte announced he would appeal the sentence to the Supreme Military Tribunal.
Three American soldiers testified briefly that they had heard “Sally’s” broadcasts. Statements of each of the three that the program was designed to demoralize American troops also were read.
“Axis Sally’s” father is Louis Zucca, owner of Zucca’s Italian Garden at 118 West Forty-ninth Street. At the restaurant last night it was said that Mr. and Mrs. Zucca were out of town.
A cousin, Tino Zucca, who acted as spokesman, said: “There is nothing that we can say. The whole thing has been a terrible shock to the family.”