Articles from 1945
An anonymous Philadelphia journalist, dumbstruck by the sudden death of FDR, compared the fallen president to Abe Lincoln because both were successful military leaders. He goes a step further by insisting that Walt Whitman’s famous ode to Lincoln is equally applicable for FDR.
During the closing days of the war in Europe, U.S. Representative Clinton P. Anderson (D. NM. 1890 – 1975) adhered to the many cries of his constituents and looked into the possibility that the American military had abused the trust placed in them concerning allocation of meat.
War Correspondent Ernie Pyle (1900 – 1945) earned his fame by writing about the American Army in North Africa, Italy and France. In April of 1945 he was embedded with the Marines when they invaded Okinawa. To his surprise, sharing foxholes with Marines in Asia was no different from sharing foxholes with GIs in Europe.
“In December 1945, SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) issued a sweeping directive demanding that Japanese peasants be freed from the burden of absentee landlordism, oppressive debt, discriminatory taxation, usury and other evils that had plagued the Japanese peasants for centuries.”
In the wake of the SCOTUS opinion, Korematsu v. U.S., some talk could be heard about the return of the Japanese Americans to the previous homes. This article examines the anti-Nisei attitudes in two Western states, California and Oregon. It was the conclusion that the former had become a bit more tolerant and the later a bit worse (sadly the last paragraphs, printed on brittle brown paper, withered away in our hand.)
As the Allied Armies were nearing Berlin and Tokyo, U.S. magazines began running articles concerning the nation’s problems that had all been put on the back burner during the war years. Subjects of concern involved inflation, alcoholism, and juvenile delinquency. The article attached here concern America’s curse: racial and religious prejudice, and how to get rid of it.
“There are reports that these prisoners are often pampered, that they are getting cigarettes when Americans civilians cannot get them, that they are being served by American soldiers, that they are often not working at a time when war workers are scarce. The general complaint is that the 46,000 American prisoners in Germany are not faring as well as the 300,000 Germans in this country.”
An anonymous reporter relays all that came across his desk in the way of wild victory celebrations on VJ Day. Spread out over 14 paragraphs are eyewitness accounts of the pandemonium that spread across the nation when the news arrived that the war was over.
As if Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Nordhausen and Bergen-Belsen weren’t bad enough – in late April, 1945, advancing Soviet infantry reported that:
“The Red Army had found a concentration camp for children at Konstantinov, beyond Lodz in central Poland…There were 862 children in the camp, all Russian, White Russian and Ukrainian.”
Here is an eyewitness account of the daily life at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Ravensbrück was the largest concentration camp for women in Germany. The Germans gassed between 5,000 and 6,000 prisoners at Ravensbrück before Soviet troops liberated the camp in the April of 1945.
“It is in Palestine where the Jews are building a national home, that the Arab enjoys higher standards of living and of health than anywhere in the Middle East… The Arab population of Palestine has risen from 600,000 to 1,200,00.”
During the closing days of the Okinawa campaign, Japanese infantry decided to treat the much-ballyhooed Bushido warrior code as if it was a plate of week-old sushi.
“The mass-surrenders were a circus for our troops. It became a race to see which outfit could take the most prisoners. And Major General Lemuel C. Shepard’s Sixth Marine Division won the championship with 3,279 prisoners, while Major General Archibald V. Arnold’s 7th Army Division was runner-up with 2,627.”
More about the Battle of Okinawa can be read here.
Having surrendered to the Nazis during the closing weeks of the war, General Maurice Rose of the Third Armored Division, was shot dead by a German tank commander.
The U.S Marine Corps is not in the practice of sending their oldest members into harm’s way – they aren’t now, and they weren’t in 1942. But when they imparted this information to Gunnery Sergeant Lou Diamond (1890 – 1951), he would have none of it – the mere idea that the world was to be at war, and he would be excluded: not going to happen:
“Lou roared his way through the battles of Guadalcanal and Tulagi and did much to back up the Marine Corp’s contention that he is far and away the the most expert mortar sergeant in any branch of the service.”
