America at war! (1941-1945) -- Part 6

Five Japanese generals, two admirals surrender

MANILA, Philippines (AP) – The highest-ranking Japanese yet taken in the Philippines, five generals and two admirals, were in the hands of American forces tonight.

Six of the Japanese military leaders were brought in a few hours after Japanese Vice Adm. Furuse, who commanded the defenses of Manila, surrendered at Infanta on the east coast of Luzon.

The other prisoners, who refused to disclose what their commands were, identified themselves as Lt. Gens. Tadasu Kataoka and Shinpei; Maj. Takeo Manjome, Isama Hirai and Masuo Yoshiki; and Rear Adm. Kaku Harada. They were taken to new Bilibid prison south of Manila.

The final overall surrender of Japanese military and naval survivors in the Philippines was scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Monday (8 p.m. Sunday EWT) at Baguio, summer capital of the islands.

Agrees to surrender

The “Tiger of Malaya,” Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, agreed to come out of his mountain hideout Sunday to make a trip to Baguio.

Meanwhile, the number of Japanese officers and men surrendering in the Philippines and in other Pacific islands continued to grow hourly. Forty-one thousand Japanese surrendered on Halmahera and Morotai Islands instead of the 8,000 previously announced. A message received at headquarters from the Australian 6th Division in New Guinea reported arrangements were being made there for the surrender of the Japanese 18th Imperial Army.

Japanese Army commander Gen. Adachi, whose troops are scattered over 500 miles of New Guinea’s mountains and jungles, reported 5,000 of his 14,000 troops have malaria or beriberi and 1,000 are litter cases. It was estimated it might take two or three months to bring the Japanese survivors out.

Jap election to be January 20

By the Associated Press

The Japanese cabinet decided today a general election will be held in Nippon January 20 to 31, and the Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Hochi urged “spontaneous and vigorous action” toward forming a democratic government.

Tokyo radio broadcasts, reported the cabinet’s election decision. It said the government would summon the national diet to an extraordinary session early in December to revise Japan’s election laws, and a nationwide census probably would begin November 1.

The Yomiuri reported that the Nipponese people were “breathing a sigh of relief” because their fears of possible disturbances with the entry of Allied occupation forces “have thus far not materialized.”

To land at Singapore

Allied occupation forces will begin landing at Singapore soon after the formal signing of capitulation terms on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay today, Tokyo radio said.

Yomiuri’s editorial called upon the Nipponese to prepare themselves for democratic government, pointing out that the duration of Allied occupation of Japan will depend upon the speed of political rebirth.

“The basis of modern society is democracy,” the paper said. “Without a change in the people’s spirit and adequate training, democracy cannot be established.”

In a broadcast beamed to Asia, Tokyo radio said the Japan Cultural Patriotic Association. one of the wartime organizations, intended to tighten relations between Nippon and conquered territories, had decided to disband.

Congress called back, will meet Wednesday

Hot session expected; layoff pay, draft and employment issues await action


Poll in House indicates draft may continue

Truman, Krug praise labor; real celebration due Monday

Editorial: Education in a free society

Editorial: The end of the war

It would take a Thucydides who sees deeply into the remote causes of events to write the history of Japan’s attack upon Pearl Harbor and ultimate defeat. “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” It was in the nature of things that God should destroy the Japanese empire. That empire was all a sham, built upon superstition and falsehood, and nothing that has so flimsy a base can long endure. When Admiral Peary opened Japan to the outside world in 1853 the Mikado and his people were living mentally and spiritually in the dim and distant past. Their god was a war god, who taught them that was their obligation to conquer the earth. From the warlords to the common man, they believed that this was the Japanese destiny.

It was no wonder, then, that Japan was ruled by a military clique, with the Emperor as their puppet. In time, as the Japanese mingled with the civilized world they were joined by another clique – the businessmen who were to bring to their country the science and invention which seemed to them so glittering and desirable. Superficially, Japan put on civilization. Her people were quick to learn and quicker to copy. They learned and copied so fast that they came to despise their teachers. They owed a moral obligation, they believed, to bring the rest of the world under the Japanese roof.

Civilization, however, is not so easily acquired. One does not become civilized in a lifetime. Hundreds of years are essential to that process. The Japanese did not know that the nations whom they thought it would be so easy to overtake had backgrounds of tradition and culture and religion extending back for thousands of years. These things are not seen; they are not on the surface, but their roots are deep. The Japanese had no such roots. So, they thought they were getting ahead when they attacked their neighbors without warning and always won. They thought that that was the way of progress; they had no idea that they were slipping steadily to their doom.

So, they lorded it over the Russians and the Chinese, then over the British and Americans and all of the white race whom they took by surprise in the six months or so beginning with Pearl Harbor. No insult was too dastardly, no torture too horrible for them to perpetrate. They felt that at last their day had come. They had the power, they were to be the lords of the earth.

But the Japanese had no civilization. They had only myths and a “front.” Their lives were as jerry-built as their paper houses. Their conquests collapsed just about as rapidly. They might win for a moment by stabbing an unsuspecting neighbor in the back; but it was quite another thing to hold out after the victim’s friends and relatives had time to collect their forces. The “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” rapidly melted away, and when it crumbled the homeland was too vulnerable to hold out.

So, we had the strange spectacle of the last few days: the Japanese mentality was always childish, and the people showed that they were children again. Their arrogance had disappeared; they seemed even to enjoy their defeat as the Allies moved in, as if they were spectators at a pageant or guests at a garden party.

We and our Allies have reason to be happy as the war ends and peace returns to us and to all the earth. The years of worry and sacrifice are over; the outlook is brighter than had seemed possible even a short while ago. We have only one cause for regret, for concern for the future. The atomic bomb, a triumph of our science, has brought doubt and fear as to ourselves. We seemed to forget our sense of high purpose when Germany fell. We did many things that we shall blush to remember. Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be stains upon our own good name. We ourselves shall have to be different men hereafter. We shall need, as someone has well said, to put our intelligence into the service of principle rather than passion. To quote the words of St. Thomas, written almost seven hundred years ago:

In all created things there is a stable element, even if this be only primary matter, and something belonging to movement, if under movement we include operation. Now things need governing as to both, because even that which is stable, since it is created from nothing, would return to nothingness if it were not sustained by a Governing Hand.

We, as a nation, shall have to have more regard for the Governing Hand from this time on, if the peace which begins today is to endure.

Peace between Russia and U.S.

We don’t want to fight the Soviets now and can’t fight them later – we have won a victory that foreshadows an era of peace and liberalism
By Donald Bell

Ridder: Nazis still policing Norway

Allies couldn’t spare troops or food and Germans were there, so they took over the job
By Walter T. Ridder, North American Newspaper Alliance

Turn Okinawa into an American Malta

65-mile-long island is being made so strong that its importance will be history-making
By George Weller

Toscanini to conduct concert; Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen return today

Eddie Cantor fills in on Phil Baker’s show

Joan Davis will open new show Monday night

Securities markets remain calm in face of summer of earth-shaking events

Investors find peace sound economy factor
By Charles F. Speare, North American Newspaper Alliance

Shortage of farms may curb back-to-land parade

Huge migration to cities goes into reverse
By Alexander R. George, Associated Press staff writer

Mississippi had a wandering youth; plowed 20 river beds

By Howard W. Blakeslee, Associated Press science editor


Detroit has problem: Half-million jobs

Industry pins hope on huge car demand
By Felix B. Wold

Pride of Marines tells war hero’s sobering story

Jane Russell, pinup beauty, can act too, but she won her fame from still pictures

By Rosalind Shaffer, Associated Press staff writer


Mutiny on the Bounty sequel to be filmed

Series plan is changed

Werner: Russian-Chinese pact is far-reaching triumph for American foreign policy

Demonstrated Soviet peace aims; will stabilize Asia
By Max Werner

How migration during the war has changed the United States’ population picture

By Herman R. Allen

USO has job to do despite Jap surrender

CHICAGO, Illinois (Sept. 1) – A vast job remains to be done by USO and its thousands of volunteer workers, even though hostilities have ceased, I. B. Rhodes, USO regional executive, announced today, following a report made by President Dr. Lindsley F. Kimball to the national USO executive committee.

The task of serving men and women in uniform, in accordance with the requests of the U.S. Armed Forces and the wishes of the American people who have supported it through their contributions to the National War Fund, has not yet been completed, the report said.

“It seems evident that the USO program will continue with some volume until September 30, 1946, and on a reduced scale well-into 1947,” Rhodes said, adding that USO will make adaptations to meet changing conditions and that a comprehensive program to meet diminishing needs has been developed.

Continued service to troops in transit, in Alaska, Hawaii, in the Pacific area, in areas adjacent to military hospitals and to permanent bases along the Atlantic seaboard is foreseen. Training camps and separation centers will require minimum service and mobile services to isolated Army and Navy outposts will be greatly reduced. With the end of the war, USO is relieved of its responsibility for services in war production areas.