Replies

http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/7/31.htm

August 31st, 1945 (FRIDAY)

UNITED KINGDOM: Minesweepers HMS Graylag and Harlequin commissioned.

GERMANY: Allied troops arrest Field Marshal von Brauchitsch and von Manstein.

Europe is full of the flotsam of war, millions of people without food, homes or countries, migrating in search of safety. Some are trying to get back to villages from which they were transported thousands of miles. Others are fleeing from countries overrun by conquering armies.

There are Germans driven out of Poland and Silesia. There are five million Russian prisoners of war and forced labourers making their way home to an uncertain reception. There are eastern Europeans fleeing from the Red Army. There are Jews who, somehow, survived the death camps making their way to ports in the hope of reaching Palestine.

Germans who fled the bombing of their cities are going home to stake their claims in the rubble of their homes. One person in five in the western zone of Germany is a refugee. There are even leftovers from a previous conflict: 200,000 refugees from the Spanish civil war living in southern France.

It is estimated that there are as many as 20 million people on the move in Europe. The care of these “displaced persons” has fallen primarily to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), first set up in 1943 to help refugees from the nations fighting the Axis powers. Financed in the main by the United States, it is trying to bring order to the chaos left behind by the war.

Some, mistrustful of all authority, are making their own way across Europe, begging in a ravaged countryside and risking violence as old scores are settled; retribution is rampant and often brutally indiscriminate. Others have settled into camp life, unwilling to forgo their tents and regular rations. Meagre as they are, these comforts are all-important in a world where a woman can be bought for a bar of soap.

U.S.S.R.: Moscow: The USSR restores diplomatic relations with Finland.

ITALY: HQ US Twelfth Air Force is inactivated.

HONG KONG: The RCN armed merchant cruiser HMCS Prince Robert enters the Crown Colony where her commanding officer represents Canada at the surrender ceremonies of Japanese forces.

JAPAN: In the Kurile Islands, Soviet forces occupy Utruppu Island after fierce fighting with Japanese troops.

Marines of Company “L,” Third Battalion, Fourth Marines, land at Tateyama Naval Base, Honshu, on the northeast shore of Sagami Wan, and accept its surrender. They will reconnoitre the beach approaches and cover the landing of Army’s 112th Cavalry Regiment.

Meanwhile, the Japanese submarine HIJMS I 401 surrenders to submarine USN submarine USS Segundo (SS-398) at the entrance to Tokyo Bay.

Tokyo: The greatest and most destructive conflict that the Pacific has known is now ended. Fanatical resistance by the Japanese military had not availed. Japan is to be occupied, disarmed and treated as a potentially dangerous enemy. The victors are making sure that there will be no repetition of the mistakes which in Germany after the First World War allowed a revival of militarism under Hitler. A great victory has been won, but suppressed antagonisms are now emerging among the Allies. China will succeed Japan as the dominant east Asian nation, and the struggle for control is escalating with the USSR backing the Communist Chinese of Mao Tse-tung against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. In Korea only the USSR and the US have troops available to disarm the Japanese. By agreement, the Russians will occupy the north and the Americans the south.

In the Dutch East Indies a revolutionary Indonesian nationalist movement is preparing for independence, and British troops could be caught up in the inevitable disorders. And in French Indochina the revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh plans to declare independence.

Japan: Harrowing tales of cruelty, filth and malnutrition are being told by Allied PoWs who have just been released from Japanese camps following the surrender. An official report on the main camp in the Tokyo Bay area states: “There has never been such a hell-hole.”

Commodore Joe Boone, a doctor who has been involved in the evacuation of PoWs from the camp and the nearby Shinagawa hospital said: “Our prisoners were ill from having to eat rice and grass. Many of the men had dysentery as a result of the filthy conditions in which they were housed.”

Major Maurice Ditton told of his slave labour in Thailand where prisoners were forced to work building the Bangkok to Moulmein railway: “Many men died daily ... The survivors, working in the steaming jungle, became weak. Brutal Korean guards kept the sick working for 18 hours a day.”

So far only 1,000 Allied PoWs have been evacuated to freedom. At least another 36,000 are believed to be awaiting liberation from camps across Japan.

Yokohama: General MacArthur today established supreme Allied command in Yokohama, Tokyo’s main port, as the first foreigner to take charge of Japan in 1,000 years.

Mac Arthur is working on Japan’s formal surrender, which will be signed in two days’ time aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. He said “The surrender plan has been going splendidly. There is every indication that the occupation will continue without bloodshed or friction.” In Tokyo quiet has returned, although the corpses of 30 civilians who committed hara-kiri after the initial surrender still lie outside the palace. Since the first wave of 7,500 US airborne troops landed three days ago, the US occupation has continued at a rate of 300 troop planes a day. Yokosuka, on Tokyo Bay, has become Pacific Fleet HQ after its surrender by two Japanese admirals to Admiral Halsey. The main landings at Yokohama and on the southern island of Kyushu will begin after the formal surrender.

MacArthur will accept Japan’s surrender with the foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, and the army chief of staff, Yoshijiro Umezu, signing for Japan’s new caretaker government. Representatives of each of the 12 Allied nations will sign the surrender. Britain will be represented by General Percival, the former commander of Singapore, who spent the war in captivity after its fall.

Tokyo: Horrific details of atrocities carried out by Japanese doctors are emerging as Allied PoWs are released. Prisoners have been subjected to vivisection. Others have been used as human guinea-pigs and injected with acid, inoculated with fatal diseases or frozen at -20°C.

Eight US airmen shot down after B-29 raids in May died in vivisection experiments carried out by Professor Fukujiro at Kyushu university. One PoW’s stomach was removed, and an artery cut to see how long before he died.

Many of the atrocities have been at Japan’s top-secret bacteriological warfare Unit 731 at Harbin, in Manchuria. Prisoners were inoculated with anthrax, typhoid and cholera to test germ potency. Others have been boiled or dehydrated to death. Experiments included prolonged exposure to X-rays and prisoners subjected to a pressure chamber where the blood was forced out of their skin as they died in agony.

PoWs fear that 731’s commander, Shiro Ishii, will escape prosecution in return for turning over germ warfare data to the US. Two released US doctors also revealed today how they were made to prepare lethal acid-based solutions for Japanese doctors to inject into US PoWs at a Tokyo hospital.

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Manila: Japanese troops in the Philippines formally surrender.

PACIFIC OCEAN: The Japanese garrison on Marcus Island surrenders to the US.

CANADA: Minesweepers HMCS Suderoy IV and Suderoy VI (ex Norwegian whalers) paid off.

U.S.A.: In baseball, the Washington Senators again muff a chance to go into first place, dropping a pair to the New York Yankees, 3–2 and 3–1, in Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. In between games, Washington pitcher Bert Shepard receives the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in WWII. When Bert Shepard, a journeyman minor league pitcher, had his right leg amputated after his fighter plane crashed in Germany, he was the only person that believed he would ever play professional baseball again. But through sheer self-belief and determination, the gutsy left-hander from Dana, Indiana, taught himself to walk and then to pitch with an artificial leg — all within the confines of a POW camp in Germany. By February 1945, Shepard was back in the U.S. and determined to pitch in organized baseball. Senators’ owner Clark Griffith took a look at the amputee’s pitching form in spring training and offered Shepard a job as a pitching coach. On 4 August 1945, Shepard became an inspiration to all wartime amputees when he pitched five innings for the Senators against the Boston Red Sox, fulfilling a dream that few could have imagined possible. That was the only major league game he pitched in. Shepard continued playing in the minor leagues until 1954 and later worked for IBM and Hughes Aircraft as a safety engineer.

USAAF”>USAAF 477th Bombardment Group (Medium) is designated combat ready. It will be the first bomber group manned entirely by African-Americans.

Destroyer USS Wiltsie launched.

The story on page 8..left hand side..”Hiroshima gone, Newsman finds..” is a must read

bookmark

Tokyo: Horrific details of atrocities carried out by Japanese doctors are emerging as Allied PoWs are released. Prisoners have been subjected to vivisection. Others have been used as human guinea-pigs and injected with acid, inoculated with fatal diseases or frozen at -20°C.

Eight US airmen shot down after B-29 raids in May died in vivisection experiments carried out by Professor Fukujiro at Kyushu university. One PoW’s stomach was removed, and an artery cut to see how long before he died.

Many of the atrocities have been at Japan’s top-secret bacteriological warfare Unit 731 at Harbin, in Manchuria. Prisoners were inoculated with anthrax, typhoid and cholera to test germ potency. Others have been boiled or dehydrated to death. Experiments included prolonged exposure to X-rays and prisoners subjected to a pressure chamber where the blood was forced out of their skin as they died in agony.

PoWs fear that 731’s commander, Shiro Ishii, will escape prosecution in return for turning over germ warfare data to the US. Two released US doctors also revealed today how they were made to prepare lethal acid-based solutions for Japanese doctors to inject into US PoWs at a Tokyo hospital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shir%C5%8D_Ishii
Arrested by the US occupation authorities at the end of World War II, Ishii and other Unit 731 leaders were to be thoroughly interrogated by the Soviet authorities.[9] Instead Ishii and his team managed to negotiate and receive immunity in 1946 from war-crimes prosecution before the Tokyo tribunal in exchange for their full disclosure of germ warfare data based on human experimentation. Although the Soviet Russian authorities wished the prosecutions to take place, the United States objected after the reports of the investigating US microbiologists. Among these was Dr. Edwin Hill (Chief of Fort Detrick), whose report stated that the information was “absolutely invaluable”, it “could never have been obtained in the United States because of scruples attached to experiments on humans”, and “the information was obtained fairly cheaply”.[9] On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur wrote to Washington that “additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as ‘War Crimes’ evidence.”[10] The deal was concluded in 1948.[citation needed] In this way Ishii was never prosecuted for any war crimes.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/truman111345.html

Harry Truman Administration:
Letter to Attlee Concerning Resettlement of Jewish Refugees in Palestine

[Released November 13, 1945. Dated August 31, 1945 ]

My dear Mr. Prime Minister:

Because of the natural interest of this Government in the present condition and future fate of those displaced persons in Germany who may prove to be stateless or non-repatriable, we recently sent Mr. Earl G. Harrison to inquire into the situation.

Mr. Harrison was formerly the United States Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, and is now the Representative of this Government on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. The United Kingdom and the United States, as you know, have taken an active interest in the work of this Committee.

Instructions were given to Mr. Harrison to inquire particularly into the problems and needs of the Jewish refugees among the displaced persons.

Mr. Harrison visited not only the American zone in Germany, but spent some time also in the British zone where he was extended every courtesy by the 21st Army Headquarters.

I have now received his report. In view of our conversations at Potsdam I am sure that you will find certain portions of the report interesting. I am, therefore, sending you a copy.

I should like to call your attention to the conclusions and recommendations appearing on page 8 and the following pages — especially the references to Palestine. It appears that the available certificates for immigration to Palestine will be exhausted in the near future. It is suggested that the granting of an additional one hundred thousand of such certificates would contribute greatly to a sound solution for the future of Jews still in Germany and Austria, and for other Jewish refugees who do not wish to remain where they are or who for understandable reasons do not desire to return to their countries of origin.

On the basis of this and other information which has come to me I concur in the belief that no other single matter is so important for those who have known the horrors of concentration camps for over a decade as is the future of immigration possibilities into Palestine. The number of such persons who wish immigration to Palestine or who would qualify for admission there is, unfortunately, no longer as large as it was before the Nazis began their extermination program. As I said to you in Potsdam, the American people, as a whole, firmly believe that immigration into Palestine should not be closed and that a reasonable number of Europe’s persecuted Jews should, in accordance with their wishes, be permitted to resettle there.

I know you are in agreement on the proposition that future peace in Europe depends in large measure upon our finding sound solutions of problems confronting the displaced and formerly persecuted groups of people. No claim is more meritorious than that of the groups who for so many years have known persecution and enslavement.

The main solution appears to lie in the quick evacuation of as many as possible of the non-repatriable Jews, who wish it, to Palestine. If it is to be effective, such action should not be long delayed.

Very sincerely yours,
HARRY S. TRUMAN

Sources: Public Papers of the President

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=60671

Harry S. Truman
Executive Order 9608 - Providing for the Termination of the Office of War Information, and for the Disposition of Its Functions and of Certain Functions of the Office of Inter-american Affairs

August 31, 1945

By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes, including Title I of the First War Powers Act, 1941, and as President of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

1. Effective as of the date of this order:

(1) There are transferred to and consolidated in an Interim International Information Service, which is hereby established in the Department of State, those functions of the Office of War Information (established by Executive Order No. 9182 of June 13, 1942), and those informational functions of the Office of Inter-American Affairs (established as the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs by Executive Order No. 8840 of July 30, 1941 and renamed as the Office of Inter-American Affairs by Executive Order No. 9532 of March 23, 1945), which are performed abroad or which consist of or are concerned with informing the people of other nations about any matter in which the United States has an interest, together with so much of the personnel, records, property, and appropriation balances of the Office of War Information and the Office of Inter-American Affairs as the Director of the Bureau of the Budget shall determine to relate primarily to the functions so transferred. Pending the abolition of the said Service under paragraph 3(a) of this order, (1) the head of the Service, who shall be designated by the Secretary of State, shall be responsible to the Secretary of State or to such other officer of the Department s the Secretary shall direct, (2) the Service shall, except as otherwise provide in this order, be administered as an organizational entity in the Department of State, (3) the Secretary may transfer from the Service, to such agencies of the Department of State as he shall designate or establish, any function of the Service, and (4) the Secretary may terminate any function of the Service, in which event he shall provide for the winding up of the affairs relating to any function so terminated.

(b) There are transferred to the Bureau of the Budget the functions of the Bureau of Special Services of the Office of War Information and functions of the Office of War Information with respect to the review of publications of Federal agencies, together with so much of the personnel, records, and property, and appropriation balances of the Office of War Information as the Director of the bureau of the Budget shall determine relate primarily to the said functions.

(c) All those provisions of prior Executive orders which are in conflict with this order are amended accordingly. Paragraph 6 of the said Executive Order No. 8840 and paragraphs 3, 6, and 8 of the said Executive Order No. 9182 are revoked.

2. Effective as o the close of business September 15, 1945:

(a) There are abolished the functions of the Office of War Information then remaining.

(b) The Director of the Office of War Information shall, pending the abolition of the Office of War Information under paragraph 3(b) of this order, proceed to wind up the affairs of the Office relating to such abolished functions.

3. Effective as of the close of business December 31, 1945:

(a) The Interim International Information Service, provided for in paragraph 1(a) of this order, together with any functions then remaining under the Service, is abolished.

(b) The Office of War Information, including the office of the Director of the Office of War Information, is abolished.

(c) There are transferred to the Department of the Treasury all of the personnel, records, property, and appropriation balances of the Interim International Information Service and of the Office of War Information then remaining, for final liquidation, and so much thereof as the Director of the Bureau of the Budget shall determine to be necessary shall be utilized by the Secretary of the Treasury in winding up all of the affairs of the Service.

HARRY S. TRUMAN
THE WHITE HOUSE,
August 31, 1945

Citation: Harry S. Truman: “Executive Order 9608 - Providing for the Termination of the Office of War Information, and for the Disposition of Its Functions and of Certain Functions of the Office of Inter-american Affairs,” August 31, 1945.

America and the Reconstruction of Italy, 1945-1949

https://books.google.com/books?id=dnyXtXWR0wwC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=august+31+1945&source=bl&ots=ot73gtObmM&sig=cyHb6fCimOZBhoP4bmSqFhUU9iY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwATgyahUKEwiUouyErNTHAhWDUJIKHWBVDmk#v=onepage&q=august%2031%201945&f=false

http://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/displaced-persons/resourc2.htm

Letter from President Truman to General Eisenhower enclosing the Harrison Report on the treatment of displaced Jews in the U.S. zone

September 29, 1945

White House News Release.

August 31, 1945

MY DEAR GENERAL EISENHOWER:

I have received and considered the report of Mr. Earl G. Harrison, our representative on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, upon his mission to inquire into the condition and needs of displaced persons in Germany who may be stateless or non-repatriable, particularly Jews. I am sending you a copy of that report. I have also had a long conference with him on the same subject matter.

While Mr. Harrison makes due allowance for the fact that during the early days of liberation the huge task of mass repatriation required main attention he reports conditions which now exist and which require prompt remedy. These conditions, I know, are not in conformity with policies promulgated by SHAEF, now Combined Displaced Persons Executive. But they are what actually exists in the field. In other words, the policies are not being carried out by some of your subordinate officers.

For example, military government officers have been authorized and even directed to requisition billeting facilities from the German population for the benefit of displaced persons. Yet, from this report, this has not been done on any wide scale. Apparently it is being taken for granted that all displaced persons, irrespective of their former persecution or the likelihood that their repatriation or resettlement will be delayed, must remain in camps-many of which are overcrowded and heavily guarded. Some of these camps are the very ones where these people were herded together, starved, tortured and made to witness the death of their fellow-inmates and friends and relatives. The announced policy has been to give such persons preference over the German civilian population in housing. But the practice seems to be quite another thing.

We must intensify our efforts to get these people out of camps and into decent houses until they can be repatriated or evacuated. These houses should be requisitioned from the German civilian population. That is one way to implement the Potsdam policy that the German people “cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves.”

I quote this paragraph with particular reference to the Jews among the displaced persons:

“As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops. One is led to wonder whether the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy.”

You will find in the report other illustrations of what I mean.

I hope you will adopt the suggestion that a more extensive plan of field visitation by appropriate Army Group Headquarters be instituted, so that the humane policies which have been enunciated are not permitted to be ignored in the field. Most of the conditions now existing in displaced persons camps would quickly be remedied if through inspection tours they came to your attention or to the attention of your supervisory officers.

I know you will agree with me that we have a particular responsibility toward these victims of persecution and tyranny who are in our zone. We must make clear to the German people that we thoroughly abhor the Nazi policies of hatred and persecution. We have no better opportunity to demonstrate this than by the manner in which we ourselves actually treat the survivors remaining in Germany.

I hope you will report to me as soon as possible the steps you have been able to take to clean up the conditions mentioned in the report.

I am communicating directly with the British Government in an effort to have the doors of Palestine opened to such of these displaced persons as wish to go there.

Very sincerely yours,

HARRY S. TRUMAN

General of the Army D. D. Eisenhower

http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/history-up-close/surrender-at-marcus-island/

Surrender at Marcus Island

The surrender ceremony that took place on the deck of the battleship Missouri (BB 63) in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, received the most attention and acclaim for marking the end of World War II. However, in the weeks leading up to that event, at islands scattered around the Pacific, smaller and less formal proceedings took place as Japanese garrisons surrendered to Allied forces. One such place was Marcus Island, which in August 1943, had been the target of strikes that marked the combat debuts of the Navy’s new Essex-class and Independence-class aircraft carriers.

Two years later, on August 31, 1945, flying the flag of Rear Admiral Francis Whiting, the destroyer Bagley (DD 386) arrived at Marcus Island. Later that day, on the deck of the destroyer, which had been moored at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941, Whiting accepted the surrender of the Japanese garrison on Marcus Island. An eyewitness to the events surrounding this ceremony was a hospital corpsman, Pharmacist’s Mate Joseph M. Clayworth, who left an account of his experiences and observations.

Read the first hand account at the link:

http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/history-up-close/surrender-at-marcus-island/

http://conelrad.blogspot.com/2010/12/first-yank-into-tokyo-atomic.html

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still standing when Gordon Douglas’s cheapie World War II adventure picture, First Yank Into Tokyo, completed production on March 3, 1945. For months this movie about an undercover soldier who infiltrates the Empire sat on a shelf awaiting its turn for a bottom-rung release. But after Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped on the aforementioned Japanese cities, the fortunes of the neglected little picture changed dramatically. Indeed, with news of the fantastic new weapon dominating front pages around the world, the savvy producers decided to re-work a critical plot device in their film to capitalize on the mania for all things atomic. And they succeeded in beating their competition to theaters with the world’s first feature to exploit the Bomb.

Eau Claire’s class of 1945 recalls how World War II defined their high school years

http://www.leadertelegram.com/News/Front-Page/2015/07/10/War-and-memories.html

At their 70-year class reunion, as they greet old friends for maybe the last time, some on the tail end of the Greatest Generation recall how World War II defined their high school years in Eau Claire

It seemed almost weekly that Eau Claire Senior High School principal David Barnes’ voice would echo over the intercom to announce the names of local soldiers who had been killed or captured in World War II.

Students at the school, who attended classes in the three-story brick building at the top of the downtown hill on Main Street — now the Eau Claire school district’s headquarters — came to expect the reality of war that often seeped into classrooms and stayed with the class of 1945 throughout their high school years...

http://www.leadertelegram.com/News/Front-Page/2015/07/10/War-and-memories.html