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Michael's Modern Blog
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A breezy review of current events, updated twice weekly
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Tuesday, July 17, 1945
FORGET THOSE PEACE RUMORS. Call it the battle of the undersecrertaries. First, Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew said the Japanese are putting out "peace feelers", a statement bitterly mocked by Radio Tokyo. Well, it’s also being mocked by none other than Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson. I think Mr. Patterson has the better argument --
"We must prepare ourselves to win our war with Japan the hard way -- by killing Japanese soldiers right through the ruins of Tokyo and throughout the home islands. . . . [The Japanese army] will not surrender to an inference, the inference that it is beaten."
And yes, it’s true that Japan’s food shortage is getting critical, and the blasting or her oil refining centers at Tokyo Bay (not to mention the loss of Japan’s oil fields in faraway Borneo) will create an oil shortage that will be even more critical to the functioning of her military. But Japan’s growing disadvantages are partially offset by the fact that, as Mr. Patterson says, our enemy has learned to fight smarter --
"On Okinawa they did not attempt a defense of the beaches, where they would be under point-blank naval gunfire: they went back to prepared positions. In other words they picked their battlefield. Their artillery fire is far more effective than a year ago."
Remember this when the headlines announce we’ve invaded Kyushu, and the press is full of glowing accounts of how "amazingly light" Japanese resistance is right after our Marines hit the beaches. And in the meantime, let’s not clutch at any more straws about Japanese "peace feelers." It’s bad enough when the press circulates them -- must Truman administration officials spread them as well?
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WHAT IS "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER"? Should we demand the right to get rid of the Emperor, dismantle the Japanese dynasty, and eradicate Japan’s long-time political and religious system? Or should we simply boot out the militarists and leave everything else pretty much as is? This is the crux of the debate right now, and I think Walter Lippman’s latest New York Herald Tribune column provides a sharp answer --
"The question . . . is whether it is necessary to demand the liquidation of the Japanese social order, with its peculiar dynastic and religious domination. There is substantial reason for thinking that all Japanese interpret 'unconditional surrender' as meaning just that, and that this is the sticking point when they consider whether they should sue for peace. . . . My own view is that, in determining war aims, that is to say conditions for which we deem it necessary to fight , we should -- if there is a choice -- choose the minimum terms which are certainly necessary rather than maximum terms which may be desirable but are not clearly necessary. The burden of proof, in other words, is on those who wish to go beyond the Cairo terms, and to identify unconditional surrender with a forced internal revolution. In examining the argument, we are bound to ask ourselves whether the Japanese problem is the same as the German. It was certain that Hitler had to be destroyed, and since he had usurped all the powers of the German state, he could not have any legitimate successor. But the Japanese Emperor is not a usurper, and more often than not in Japanese history the Emperor has reigned but has not ruled. It is quite conceivable then that he might continue to reign, but that the country would be ruled by men who had surrendered the conquests and military power of Japan and had given guarantees. If this is the right course, and provided the Allies have reached a strategical and political agreement, it would be no sign of weakness to let it be known in Tokyo."
At the risk of belaboring the point, I don’t think we should get at all hopeful that we can persuade the enemy to "sue for peace" simply by defining surrender by some minimal standard. But a pronouncement of what "unconditional surrender" entails could be a meaningful weapon in the battles to come. If our offer to leave the Emperor in place were to simply reduce the willingness of Japanese civilians to fight to the death, or to erode the influence of fight-to-the-finish militarists, it can save U.S. soldiers’ lives in the weeks and months ahead. That alone makes Mr. Lippmann’s prescribed course desirable.
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WHERE’S HITLER? The Chicago Tribune says that he and Eva Braun have both made it to South America, via German submarine. From correspondent Vincent de Pascal --
"From information just received from Buenos Aires, I am virtually certain that Adolf Hitler and his 'wife,' Eva Braun, the latter dressed in masculine clothes, landed in Argentina and are on an immense German-owned estate in Patagonia."
The Tribune doesn’t explain how the submarine successfully ferried the Fuehrer and his gal out of battle-blasted Berlin, but I’m sure some creative wordsmith will soon enlighten us. Maybe the Tribune will want to play that up, too.
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I’LL PASS, THANKS. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Springfield, Ohio, hospital attendants reported Willie Martin’s condition as 'good' after he had been treated for absorption of a homemade punch made of iodine, turpentine, kerosene, rat poison, lighter fluid, shoe polish, and wine."
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Sunday, July 15, 1945
A CLEW THAT SOMETHING’S UP? Like an early invasion of Japan, maybe? The big news this morning is that President Truman has suddenly decided to cut short his European trip and will "hurry back" to the White House as soon as the Big Three conference at Potsdam is over. From Edward Foulliard in the Washington Post --
"The decision of the Chief Executive, reported by a correspondent who crossed the Atlantic with him on the cruiser Augusta, was believed in some quarters here to be linked with the war against Japan. That war is now mounting to a crescendo. American warships and planes are giving the Japanese homeland the most terrible pounding in history, and there is nothing the Japanese can do to stop it except to surrender. In the opinion of some high-ranking officers, the question of whether Japan is going to surrender or fight it out to a bloody and catastrophic finish will be answered soon, perhaps in the next six weeks. If this view is shared by President Truman, it would be explanation enough for his decision to cut short his trip . . . . Certainly he would want to be here if any great decisions had to be made. It is possible, of course, that the President was informed of some important development while he was out on the Atlantic. At any rate, something seems to have come up between the time he left here and the time the Augusta started through the English Channel. The day that President Truman left the White House and started for Newport News, there was no suggestion that he would be in a hurry to return."
It’s tempting, but way too optimistic, to speculate that the "important development" could be a signal from Tokyo that they’re willing to surrender. The Japanese have fought fanatically over scraps of land far from the home islands, and there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t fight twice as fanatically for their own territory. But it is interesting (and maybe not too optimistic) to consider the possibility that the blistering, ongoing assault from U.S. warplanes and naval guns, such as the latest attacks this week-end against the steel city of Muroran, have reduced Japanese defenses to the point that an invasion could be launched much earlier than previously thought. The earlier an invasion can begin, the less time Tokyo will have to coordinate an all-out civilian defense. And the less likely our ground forces will be sucked into fighting a new round of Aachens, Cassinos, and Stalingrads.
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POTSDAM WON’T SOLVE EVERYTHING. The upcoming Potsdam conference is being hailed in some quarters as critical, historic, determinative of the fate of the world for decades to come, etc. (Remember, they said the same thing about Yalta.) So it’s kind of refreshing to read Herbert L. Matthews in today’s New York Times, who seems to realize that, with all the problems facing the Big Three and the emerging United Nations, there’s only so much a conference can do. There’s the huge issue of how to govern Germany in the years ahead, of course, but there’s so much more. Mr. Matthews identifies some of what the Big Three will be concerned with --
"The problems of Turkey, for instance, directly involve the Balkans and that cockpit of Europe has never been more of a battleground than today. There is Greece frantically worried about her northern frontiers. There is Marshal Tito on something of a rampage, growling about the Greeks and clamoring for Trieste, Venezia, Giulia and Carinthia. And across the Adriatic is Italy threatening to become a major problem through her economic distress and demands for settlement of her status. There are minor questions like Iran, with her oil, her port of Basra and her occupation by armies of Russia and Britain. Just last week the Communist party newspaper Pravda attacked the Iranian government severely. There are the Polish elections. There is German and Polish coal. There are Spain and Generalissimo Francisco Franco. . . . And do not forget that the war is still on. Most people expect the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan and that is certainly something that the Big Three will discuss. And that brings up the vast problem of China and minor ones like Korea, Manchukuo, Hong Kong and foreign investments in the Far East."
It’s no wonder, as Mr. Matthews writes, that "those three master magicians in Potsdam are not going to wave their magic wands and quell the floods. The waters are too deep and turbulent. All they can hope to do is pour a little oil on them here and there, put up a dike at one point and a breakwater at another than then wait, hope and work for things to calm down. . . . One can plot roughly what they will aim at. In general the British must play for international setups, the Russians for as free a hand as possible, and the Americans for their long-term strategic considerations, their foreign trade and finances and their intense desire for a settlement that will safeguard the peace -- a desire shared by the other two."
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OTHERWISE, IT’S PERFECT. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Nora Springs, Iowa, town officials forked over $25 for running a truck with no headlights, no tail lights, no sidelights, no stoplights, no clearance lights, no identification lights, no flares, no red flags, no windshield wiper, no rear-view mirror, no license plates."
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Tuesday, July 3, 1945
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY. Starting tomorrow I’m taking off for a one-week vacation of reading and radio-listening. Alas, it’s likely this won’t be the last wartime Fourth, but we can always hope -- and pray. Regular blogging will resume July 15.
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TWO YEARS? TEN YEARS? ALWAYS? Here are three more sober (if not grim) predictions of what the future portends, for the war with Japan and beyond --
General Joseph Stilwell, in last week’s Time magazine -- "A lot of people have the idea that this is a pushover. . . . It will take a long time -- easily two years."
Willis Church Lamott, in the June issue of Harper’s -- "Our progress may become a succession of Japanese Aachens and we may face a decade of guerilla warfare."
General Patton, talking to a group of Sunday-school children, as quoted in Time: "In my opinion there will be another war because there have always been wars."
Patton probably has it right, but we can certainly hope for making this the last great war, and we have one good omen in that regard -- contrary to the developments of 1918 and thereafter, this time the United States will not be on the sidelines. The Truman administration and Congress have made it clear that this time around we will do everything we can to create a long-lasting postwar peace. And with America’s political and military power in the world now greater than ever, there is surely much we can do.
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THE U.N. CHARTER IS A SHOO-IN. The old America Firsters on their isolationist brethren probably can’t stand it, but this time the Congress isn’t going to stand in the way of America’s participation in a world league. Ever since President Truman joined representatives of forty-nine other countries last Tuesday in signing the United Nations Charter, the number of Senators who’ve pledged to vote "yea" on this historic agreement has been astoundingly high. The first estimates had only 53 Senate members definitely for approval, but the signs were there from the start that this wouldn’t be another 1919. Senator Burton K. Wheeler, once a lion of the isolationist faction, meekly listed himself as "unsure" on the Charter and said there would be no organized fight against ratification. Senator Hiram W. Johnson, who helped kill U.S. participation in the League a generation ago, says now of Charter proponents that "they’ve got the votes," and that they might get his as well.
Since then, the A.P. has finished its poll of the Senate on the Charter vote, which shows 65 Senators definitely voting yes, five more saying they would "probably" vote yes, 17 noncommital, and eight Senators unavailable for comment. Not one solon piped up to declare he would vote no.
That’s a testament partly to the power of polls, which have consistently shown over the last year that two-thirds of Americans want the U.S. to play a major role in an international peace-keeping body after the war. But it’s also a testament to the common sense of the Senate, whose members seem to realize that we face a historic opportunity for peace after the end of this war that we simply can’t shirk.
President Truman asked in his address yesterday that the Charter be ratified "swiftly." He should get his wish. The pundits say the Senate should approve it by August 1.
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MAKE $10 IN YOUR SPARE TIME. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Columbus, S.C., Dentist C.B. Draffin stepped out of his office and a stranger stepped in, collected $10 in advance for repairs on a patient’s plates, quickly stepped out again."
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Sunday, July 1, 1945
DESTROYING JAPAN, CITY BY CITY. Another week, another record air assault over the Japanese home islands. This time it was about 600 B-29 Superforts, raining over 4000 tons of fire bombs on four big industrial cities -- Kure, Shimonoseki, Ube, and Kumamoto. The targets included Japan’s biggest naval base, a number of heavy industrial plants, the empire’s coal mining facilities, and railway hubs. No one’s put an exact total on the number of bombs, but the United Press says it’s "almost certain" that Monday’s bombing beat the old record of 4,119 tons of bombs dropped on Tokyo in the May 24 fire raid.
So why are we bombing lesser-known cities, some in the range of 100,000-200,000 population? Because (1) regardless of their size, they’re still important military and economic centers, and (2) we’ve pretty much blasted most of the larger target cities to pieces. From the U.P. report --
"Gen. Henry H. Arnold last month predicted that the Superfortresses -- soon to be augmented by Gen. James H. Doolittle’s U.S. Eighth Air Force of European fame -- would destroy Japan industrially by fall. Already in the stepped-up campaign which started last March, they have burned and gutted huge sections of 22 Japanese cities, with Tokyo, Nagoya, Yokohama, Kobe, and Kawasaki written off as primary targets."
Another U.P. dispatch brings home just how devastating the air war has been over the last six months. Tokyo, the third largest city in the world with a population of seven million, has ordered all but 200,000 of its citizens to leave. A broadcast from Tokyo radio says that "every resident whose presence is not indispensable" must quit the capital. I’m not sure what they have to worry about -- the U.P. cites American air officers as saying Tokyo will no longer be a top priority target "until the Japanese rebuilt something worthwhile in the way of an objective." The same thing goes for five other major Japanese cities. We’d be wasting our time bombing ‘em until they put up something worth bombing.
One can wish that the devastatingly successful air war would make Hirohito and the Japanese militarists come to their senses and accept the Allies’ surrender terms. But surely that’s not in the cards. We saw how a successful air campaign against Hitler’s empire did little to make the Nazis more conciliatory. We can take the Japanese equally at their word when they proclaim their intention to fight to the last breath.
. . .
WE’RE JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY. It’s official -- President Truman is now more popular than President Roosevelt ever was. The newest survey by Dr. Gallup and his polling teams shows President Truman with an approval rating of 87 percent, a full three percent above F.D.R.’s post-Pearl Harbor rating. Democrats and Republicans equally love the Missourian, and Dr. Gallup points out one huge advantage the President has over his predecessor --
"While President Roosevelt enjoyed almost universal support for his foreign policy, there were always sharp differences of opinion among voters on the Roosevelt domestic policies. In Mr. Truman’s case, however, no such difference has apparently arisen as yet. It is clear from the survey figures that the new President has thus far not taken any stand which has dissatisfied any large number of voters."
But there’s more to President Truman’s popularity than his avoiding controversy, as Mark Sullivan points out in his latest column. It’s his steadfastness --
"When a public figure has made a certain kind of impression on the public, it is important that the impression remain constant. People like to think that the public figure they admire will remain always the same, for in remaining the same there is a kind of integrity of personality, equivalent to intellectual integrity, and this gives the public a sense of confidence. . . . There is very little likelihood of Mr. Truman changing. The very fact that simplicity is his most conspicuous characteristic makes change unlikely. Probably the only risk Mr. Truman runs, and in his case it is not much of a risk, is that someone may try to persuade him, on one occasion or another, to be different from what he is. . . . Anyone who would suggest to Mr. Truman that he put on a show probably would be moved by recalling President Roosevelt and the immense popularity he had. But to be dramatic was an essential part of Roosevelt’s personality and the public enjoyed the performances he gave, thought of him as a master showman and liked him for what he was."
Assuming President Truman stays the way he is, it probably wouldn’t be too early to call the 1948 presidential election for him -- assuming he wants a full term of his own.
. . .
TALK ABOUT A LOOOOOONG SHOT. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Stirling, Scotland, four bridge players were each simultaneously dealt the same 13 cards twice on the same night (2nd and 18th hands). Odds against it: 85,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to one."
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Tuesday, June 26, 1945
NO POLITICAL CAREER FOR IKE. The talk goes on about what General Eisenhower will do now that the war in Europe is won. President Truman is said to have told the General he could have any job he wanted. Well, "Ike" has now made it absolutely clear one thing he won’t do. And for anyone thinking that the General might make a swell candidate for elected office, and wanting to draft him for such, should forget about it. From the A.P. account of Eisenhower’s press conference last Friday --
"‘Look, . . . I’m in the Federal service and I take the orders of my Commander in Chief. All I want is to be a citizen of the United States, and when the War Department turns me out to pasture that’s all I want to be. I want nothing else. It is silly to talk about me in politics, and so for once I’ll talk about that, but only to settle this thing once and for all. I should like to make this as emphatic as possible. There’s no use me denying that I’ll fly to the moon because no one has suggested it and I couldn’t if I wanted to. The same goes for politics. I’m a soldier and no one thinks of me as a politician."
Conceivably, that could be read as something less than a complete denial that Ike would run for office under any circumstances. But he returned to the subject later, and shut the door to politics just as much as someone could shut it --
"In the strongest language you can command, . . . you can state that I have no political ambitions at all. Make it even stronger than that if you can. I’d like to go further even than Sherman did in expressing himself on this subject."
General Sherman is the one who said, when folks tried to draft him for the Presidency, "If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve." It’s hard to imagine how someone could "go further" than that, but it does sound pretty definitive. Whatever Eisenhower does, he won’t have a future in politics.
. . .
WILL THE "UNITED NATIONS" SUCCEED? As the U.N. Charter is prepared for signing later this week, Walter Lippmann’s column today in the New York Herald Tribune wisely rephrases the question, and pinpoints the most hopeful element of the new world league --
"The fair and accurate question to ask about the charter is not whether the international institution will work. The question is whether we can make it work. The difference between these two questions is all-important. If we stand around and ask whether it will work, we are really saying that we expect 'it', a piece of paper with words written on it, to be a kind of automatic robot and big tin god to keep the world at peace. But if we ask whether we, the American people acting through out government and using our power and influence wisely, can make it work, then we are asking the right question. When our own Constitution had been written and ratified, the question of whether it would work was answered by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Marshall, and the others who were determined to make it work, and knew how. What warrant have we for thinking that this charter can be made to promote and preserve peace? That it is the charter of a union or confederation which contains all the nations now capable of waging war; war can occur only if this union is dissolved. This distinguishes this new organization radically from the old one. The Geneva league never contained all the powers capable of waging war; Russia was not invited until long after the United States refused to join. Thus the Geneva league was never a union of the powers; this association will be a union of the powers. . . . The new organization is, therefore, properly and significantly designated the United Nations."
As Mr. Lippmann says, the United Nations is only a first step toward a peaceful, well-governed world. But he says, as others have pointed out, that it is the best we can do right now --
"In the international community the bonds of law are not nearly as firm as they are within the maturest states. But there is no substitute for the bonds of law if peace is to endure. In basing the new organization on the principle of union, rather than on the idea of all nations policing all nations, the San Francisco charter commits the United Nations to the development of an international society under the rule of law. The delegations at San Francisco have not created such a society. But they have designed institutions and laid down the commitments which, if we are wise and persevering, can be used to make the United Nations become an international society. More than that no one had the right to ask of the conference; to have done that much is to have done all that was possible, and to have earned in full measure the confidence and gratitude of mankind."
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NOT THE TYPE THEY’RE LOOKING FOR. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Ann Arbor, Mich., a Mrs. Hunt and a Mrs. Peck applied for jobs at the University of Michigan Personnel Office, were both turned down flat because they had flunked the preliminary typing test."
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Sunday, June 24, 1945
OKINAWA FALLS, JAPAN GETS MORE JITTERS. Finally, finally the press is reporting that U.S. soldiers and Marines have broken large-scale resistance on Okinawa. Stragglers are still firing at our troops, but yesterday’s A.P. dispatch says these remnants aren’t presenting much of a problem anymore, and enemy troops themselves know it --
"On Okinawa, there were still five machine-gun nests to be wiped out, but generally the mop-up drive was meeting only slight resistance. Observers watched 160 Japanese commit suicide with grenades rather than surrender. . . . Meanwhile, the Marines raised the Stars and Stripes over the island, formally ending the 82-day campaign which cost the United States more heavily than any Pacific battle."
But there are signs that the Japanese might not be as quick to fight to the death as they portray themselves to be. The A.P. also says we’ve probably now taken over 7,000 enemy prisoners on Okinawa -- an amazing number, and more than we’ve taken previously in the entire Pacific war. Broadcasts from Tokyo are also sounding a bit more panicky about an "impending" U.S. invasion of Kyushu, with Premier Suzuki himself joining in the invasion warnings.
And there’s been one intriguing development that might make the Tokyo government a lot more queasy -- the Truman administration has just now revealed that we’re shipping lend-lease supplies to the Russians in Siberia. As Leo Crowley, the Lend-Lease Administrator, told Congress last month, "The possibility of Russia’s entry into the war against Japan acts to pin down in northern Manchuria large numbers of Japanese troops which might otherwise be diverted against Allied forces in the Asiatic theater." Up until now, the administration has been absolutely mum on the possibility of the Russians joining in the Pacific war. If they did -- and if our lend-lease help is a quid pro quo to get Moscow to declare war -- it could notably speed up our timetable for invading the Japanese home islands by robbing Tokyo of desperately needed reinforcements. This certainly could be a factor in the latest round of Japanese jitters.
. . .
THE NEW, IMPROVED POLISH GOVERNMENT. Seeking to break the Big Three stalemate over the composition of the Polish government, the Soviets have moved to open it up to non-Communist membership -- at least a bit. The "reorganization" of Poland’s provisional government, announced yesterday from Moscow, brings in three former members of the non-Communist Polish government-in-exile, including its former head, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. Is it enough to gain American and British recognition of the provisional government. News reports tell us it doesn’t appear to have budged the Western allies that much, and Barnet Nover gives us some reasons why it shouldn’t --
"How really democratic is it? It is true that the Soviet-sponsored Warsaw regime has been enriched with new blood. But of the 21 members of the new government, 16 are holdovers and of the five new members of the cabinet, one, Wicenty Witos, Peasant Party leader, is an old and ailing man, another, Meczislaw Thugot, is without political experience and known only as the son of a distinguished democratic intellectual who died in exile two years ago. If Messrs. Mikolajczyk, Grabski and Stanczyk prove strong enough to make their influence felt in the new regime the hopes engendered by the Moscow settlement may be realized. At the moment the fact remains that they are outnumbered in the government by at least four to one, with most of the principal posts, including the administration of the police, in the hands of Lublinites, i.e., of Polish Communists. Of course, the composition of the new Polish regime is far less important, since it is admittedly a provisional government, than the policies it will pursue, particularly the manner in which it will prepare for and hold those 'free and unfettered elections . . . on the basis of universal and secret ballot' that are stipulated in the Yalta agreement."
Mr. Nover says that the U.S. and Britain should not recognize this provisional government until it gives "very explicit assurances" of its democratic nature and its intentions to hold fully free elections. The Polish exile government, on the other hand, has acidly described the new government as a Communist regime in disguise and an "unconditional surrender" to Russian demands, and asserts that any elections held under this government’s auspices will be a "sham."
I think the correct position is somewhere between these two -- the U.S. and Britain should applaud any effort to open up the Moscow-backed Polish government and make it more representative. But we should withhold recognition of a new Polish regime until after free elections have been held, with all democratic parties allowed to fairly participate. And in fact, according to an A.P. story this morning, this is what the Anglo-American position will be.
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KEEPING SECRETS FROM THE WIFE. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Bloomington, Ind., County Clerk Earl Baxter grew tired of $300 alimony gathering dust in his safe, advertised for the divorcee to come and pick it up. She came promptly, explained, 'I didn’t know I’d been divorced.'"
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Tuesday, June 19, 1945
HOW LONG BEFORE THE INVASION OF JAPAN? I’d love to believe that U.S. forces are getting ready right now to invade Kyshu, or any of the Japanese home islands, as Radio Tokyo proclaimed the other day. And maybe it could happen. Still, there’s plenty of smart money out there that says it isn’t possible, not now and not for a long time yet. If you want to know why this is so, look up the recent article in Collier’s, "Transfer to the East," by Quentin Reynolds. As he begins, Mr. Reynolds sums up the gulf between our V-E giddiness and the demands of the Pacific war in the months ahead --
"It’s all over in Europe, we shout; now mopping up the Japs will be easy. And say, what about a new car, a new radio? But, such optimism is founded only on a dream. The boys who beat Germany will have to join in the war against Japan. There’ll be no homecoming for them, no cars or electric iceboxes for civilians, for a long time to come. . . . To defeat Japan, we shall need 5,000,000 men in the Pacific."
Mr. Reynolds then follows a hypothetical Army division from Europe as it’s transferred to the Pacific to take part in the invasion --
"Nearly three months will have elapsed since D-Day. That is about as fast as a division can be rested, regrouped, re-equipped and loaded. It will take about 30 large ships to carry our division and its material. . . . Our division [will] go from Antwerp to Panama, and, perhaps, to Manila or Okinawa. It’s a long trip -- 14,000 miles to Manila -- and we’re not a fast convoy. That trip is going to take around seven weeks. So, by the time we land and our equipment is unloaded, some five months will have elapsed, since V-E Day. Those months are going to be rather trying for the folks at home. They may get impatient at the lack of invasion news. . . . After that we are put into training. We’ll grumble about this at first. We’ve fought for three years all over Europe. Why train now? Then we find out. For one thing, the terrain is a lot different. Here we’ll have to plow through rice fields and swamps. . . . Yeah, we reluctantly admit, we do need 45 days of additional training. Dozens and dozens of other divisions arrive at this and other staging areas and go through the same process . . . . Then we hear rumors. We are going 'up forward.' Where? Nobody knows. Maybe it’ll be Shikoku or Kyushu, or Taihoku on Formosa, or Nagasaki, or Saishu. These names are as familiar to us now as the names of Cologne and Aachen were nine months ago when our division was fighting in the Rhineland. Nine months? That’s right. It’s nine months after V-E Day, and our division hasn’t fired a shot."
Mr. Reynolds estimates it will take ten months, total, from V-E Day before we have the forces in place to invade any of Japan’s three main home islands. In other words, next March. And when we’re finally ready, our men will plunge into the fight of their lives --
"Let’s take a look at Japan’s strength. So far, we haven’t met her first-line troops, but only men placed on islands to fight a delaying action. They did so, and you know how costly they made our victories. When we go into Japan, and possibly China, we’ll find some 6,000,000 Japanese troops spoiling for a fight. Right now they have 4,000,000 men, but, in addition, they have one million Manchurian and Chinese puppets organized as auxiliary military units. And during the past few months the Japanese have accelerated conscription and are training an additional one million young men. They’ll be ready for us. And if you doubt the courage and aggressiveness of the Japanese soldier, ask any Marine who was at Tarawa or Iwo. . . . During her two and a half years of exploitation of East Asia, Japan has accumulated a huge stock pile of strategic materials. . . . It’s 6200 nautical miles from San Francisco to Manila, 1650 more to Tokyo. We’ll have to bring every weapon, every bit of blood plasma, every can of C rations along that route, or routes of similar distances. . . . We are going to have to overwhelm Japan with superior forces, and it will take ten months to get those superior forces ready to attack. Any attack on a smaller scale would be suicidal. We’d be fools if we didn’t face the realities of the picture and lock up our dreams for a while."
Tough words, and one can only hope the reality won’t be as hard as this. But there’s no known reason right now to think otherwise. Even if we are in a position right now to invade Kyshu, and even if Kyushu’s defenses are soft, we’ll still have to take the other home islands, and dislodge the Japanese from China. And there’s no reason at all to think any of that can be finished quickly, once we get started.
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MODERN ROMANCE. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Lincolnshire, England, the Chronicle ran the following advertisement: 'Owner of tractor wishes to correspond with widow who owns a modern Foster thrasher; object matrimony; send photograph of machine.'"
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Sunday, June 17, 1945
JAPAN SAYS INVASION IS NEAR. It’s hard to believe that we could be ready to land on any of the Japanese home islands so soon, but Radio Tokyo says the signs are there. From an A.P. story this morning --
"The Japanese, say Radio Tokyo, were getting set for an invasion which, it added, might be in the making at the present time. It reported an increase in American invasion ships around Okinawa; told of steps to make Kyushu Island a powerful fortress and said even women and the aged will be called upon to bear arms in defense of the empire. . . . With the Okinawa garrison on its last legs, Tokyo said Kyushu was being made into ‘one large fortress.’ Kyushu, southernmost of the main Japanese islands, is but 325 miles north of Okinawa. A sudden increase in the number of American cargo ships and landing craft around Okinawa was reported by the Agency Domei. It guessed this might mean ‘an enemy scheme to launch fresh operations near the Japanese homeland.’ Against this menace, Domei announced that ‘two-way and three-way defenses at all points possible’ had been erected on Kyushu."
This could be dismissed as propaganda to scare the home folks, but I recall Japan sounding similar alarms just before we landed on Iwo and Okinawa. Still, given the amount of time and careful preparation that went into D-Day, it’s hard to believe that we would rush pell-mell into invading Japan, as we’re only beginning the immense job of transferring some three million fighting men from Europe and re-training them to finish the Pacific war.
Then again...what if our intelligence has learned the Kyushu defenses are much softer than we previously believed? Wouldn’t it make sense to strike now, with what forces we have in place, rather than give Tokyo time to fortify the island into a large-scale Okinawa? Wouldn’t General MacArthur be inclined to strike rather than wait?
So, I’d say there’s a chance -- who knows how much or little of one -- that something big is about to happen.
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HERE’S A NEW JOB FOR EISENHOWER. As Washington, D.C. prepares for a mammoth celebration in honor General Eisenhower’s visit tomorrow, there’s been a wave of speculation in the press about what Ike should do next. George Connery speculates in today’s Washington Post that Eisenhower might be named to a Pacific command, or replace General Marshall as chief of staff. But I like the suggestion in Barnet Nover’s column better --
"It is not too much to say that the future of the world depends on whether Russia and the United States learn to get along. If they do, no problem in the realm of international relations will prove unsolvable. If they do not, even unimportant disputes involving remote nations might develop into festering sores plaguing the international body politic. . . . As supreme Allied commander in Europe, General Eisenhower not only displayed remarkable gifts as an organizer and strategist; he also proved himself to be, par excellence, a statesman in uniform. What he did in the way of combining British and American officers and units into a coherent and effective whole is unexampled in the history of coalition war. Now that his military task is finished, the talents he possesses could hardly be better employed than in making General Eisenhower our Ambassador to Russia. The greatest of our diplomatic friction points requires the presence of an American of his stature, his ability, his remarkable capacity to get along with people, his superlative common sense."
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A NEW DAD WITH REASON TO BE NERVOUS. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Stockholm, Sweden, a mother who had just given birth to her fifth child talked with two wardmates who had each had twins, discovered that all five children had the same father."
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Tuesday, June 12, 1945
THE WAR GOES ON -- WITH LESS NOTICE. The Allies are fighting on Okinawa, at Luzon, Mindanao, and Leyte in the Philippines, and now on Borneo, where Australian troops landed at four points on the north coast this past week-end. And it’s worth noting how little attention these ongoing fights are getting in the press. Yes, most of the time the daily war news still makes the front page, but the current Pacific battles aren’t getting anything like the attention that the fighting in Europe and Africa got over the last two-and-a-half years. No doubt it’s due in part to the fact that there’s not as much dramatic day-to-day news to come out of the Pacific -- the Okinawa fighting is described as being in its "final stages" for yet another week.
But I wonder if the press -- and the newspaper-reading public -- are feeling a form of battle fatigue right now? Following the euphoria of victory in Europe last month, it seems that we’re a little slow to realize that, as General Patton said at his homecoming last Friday, we still have "half a war to win." Look at any map showing all the territory still controlled by the Japanese -- in China, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, New Guinea, Formosa, plus Manchukuo and Korea, and above all the home islands -- and that should be enough visual aid to make it clear how much longer this war has to go.
The A.P. reports today that the Philippines campaign is about to heat up again, as U.S. troops on Luzon are about to launch "an all-out attack on the last major stronghold of the Japanese." I wonder whether that will bring that aspect of the war back to the front pages? Or, maybe our front-page diet for sometime will consist of alarmed reports on Europe’s latest crisis, while news of the real fighting languishes until our Marines begin the bitterly hard work of clearing out Honshu, Kyushu and the rest of it.
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A (HALTING) TRIBUTE TO THE U.N. CHARTER. Now that we’re only ten days or so away from the completion and signing of the United Nations Charter, it’s useful to remind ourselves, as Barnet Nover’s column does, that (1) it will be imperfect, and (2) it is still an important milestone. In Mr. Nover’s own words --
"The debate on the Charter has not ended. In a very real sense it will only have begun when the Charter has been signed and the delegates have scattered to the four corners of the earth. Then the parliaments of the nations, the press of the world, the courts of public opinion, will sit in judgment on the labors of the men and women who, during a period of close to three months, hammered out line by line, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, the document which is to occupy a central position in the affairs of nations in the years to come. It will be the easiest thing in the world to drive a coach and four through the Charter. Taken as a whole it will not satisfy everybody; in detail, it will satisfy nobody. It is full of imperfections as the delegates themselves would be the first to admit -- full of inadequacies. It suffers from poor draftsmanship and a split personality. It is not, as some critics are saying, a screen set up to cloak the domination of the world by a handful of powerful nations. Yet neither will it bring into being that ‘parliament of man, the federation of the world’ which many have dreamed about. The Charter is a compromise between hope and reality, between things as they are and things as they ought to be. Its weakness lies in the fact that the two are in eternal conflict. Its strength is the product of the circumstances that several hundred individuals of divergent races and peoples and historic backgrounds found it possible to agree at all and did so because agreement was preemptory. In other words, the most important fact about the Charter is not what it contains, but the fact that it came into being."
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MONEY TO BURN. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "Off the coast of New Hampshire, Matthew Betton drifted in a power-boat for five days, finally set fire to his last twelve dollars, was rescued by fisherman who saw the light."
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Sunday, June 10, 1945
WHY DID RUSSIA CAUSE THE VETO CRISIS? Yet another diplomatic crisis was put to rest Thursday when Soviet Russia gave up its bizarre insistence on hog-tying the United Nations Organization with an absolute veto. According to Moscow’s previous position, the great powers should have the right to use the veto to prevent any problem from even being discussed at the Security Council. Such an extreme use of the veto was unacceptable to the smaller nations, and very much against the principles of the U.S. and Britain, who sensibly believe that any of the smaller nations have a right to make their case.
It’s certainly good news that the Russians have had an attack of sanity on this issue. But why did they provoke this crisis in the first place? Arthur Krock writes in today’s New York Times defines the up-and-down pattern we’re seeing in U.S.-Russian relations, and points out one way this dispute was awfully disadvantageous to Stalin --
"Once again -- as at Moscow in 1943, Teheran, Dumbarton Oaks, and Yalta -- light has broken through the clouds that have gathered intermittently over Russo-American relations, and once again Washington is relieved and happy. American statesmanship has no doubt that one of its greatest tasks is to preserve good relations with Soviet Russia in the years to come, and the belief that this goal is as attainable as it is essential acquires renewed strength, of course, each time an impasse with Moscow is broken. This task is complicated by some well-meaning, some not so well-meaning and some irresponsible persons in both countries and elsewhere in the world. But Russian methods and what at times has seemed an ineradicable Soviet distrust of the West have often been the greatest complications. Take, as in illustration, the dispute over the application of the veto. After a period of insistence that many feared would break up the United Nations Conference on International Organization, or confine its results to a very incomplete product, the Russians accepted the principle of the right of petition of small nations to the Security Council, if a Council majority approved, and abandoned their long-sustained position that any permanent member’s veto should deny petitioners a hearing. . . . What were the general effects of the Russian record in this episode, insofar as they seem to have materialized? The long holdout, against this mild acceptance of a principle dear to the West, gave anti-Soviet propagandists, especially in this country, an opportunity to impress their view on many who are most reluctant to consider post-war Russia a menace to peace or foreign democracy and eager to believe that Washington and Moscow can work together to the ends of peace and justice."
So why did the Russians behave the way they did on the veto issue? Barnet Nover lists some reasons in his latest column --
"Just why Russia took this stand is anything but clear. Chronic suspicion of the outside world which has, justly or unjustly, colored so much of Russia’s thinking on international affairs was undoubtedly one factor. Fear that the right of discussion might be used to bring up matters embarrassing to the Soviet Union was probably another. But a contributory factor, without question, was the Russian government’s ignorance of the state of mind of the outside world and, therefore, its inability to gauge in advance the effect its attitudes and actions will have on other nations and peoples. There was never the slightest doubt among observers at the Conference that the American delegation would under no circumstances recede from its position. Nor can there be any doubt that, had the voting question been submitted to the steering committee, Russia would have been voted down overwhelmingly. Furthermore, it would have been a strange spectacle to see Russia, the fervent apostle of five-power unity, fighting to ditch a viewpoint so strongly opposed by the other members of the Big Five."
Mr. Nover hits upon the most troubling aspects of this affair. Is Soviet diplomacy, to put it bluntly, exceptionally suspicious and dim-witted? If, after almost four years of friendly relations with the U.S., the Russians can’t or won’t grasp the dangers of obstinacy on matters such as this, what will happen when the Big Five, and the U.N. organization, face a real crisis?
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PROTECTING THE NATION’S WEALTH. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Manhattan, Gristede Brothers, grocers, sent two boys with each pushcart load of orders -- the extra one to stand guard over the butter."
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