La semaine de 48 heures abolie aux États-Unis
WASHINGTON, 31 août – Le président Truman a annulé l’ordre fixant à 48 heures au minimum la semaine de travail.
U.S. State Department (September 1, 1945)
841.24/9-145
The British Prime Minister to President Truman
[London, September 1, 1945]
We received early this morning (Saturday) from the representatives of the British Treasury in Washington a report of a discussion which they had had with Mr. Crowley, the Foreign Economic Administrator, yesterday, 31st August, on the arrangements to be made for Lend-Lease supplies in the immediate future.
I am informed that Mr. Crowley has made it plain that any supplies which we need from the pipeline should be taken up either on payment of cash or on credit terms which he had already indicated, that is credit for thirty years at 2⅜th percent. I understand that he was not prepared to await the settlement of the terms of payment until our special mission had arrived in Washington within the next few days or to agree that we should consider these credit terms as applying to the supplies coming forward within the next few weeks. He was willing however to agree that if we accepted the credit on the terms and conditions he had indicated this would be on the understanding that these conditions should be reviewed in the over-all financial discussions which were about to be undertaken with the United States Government and, if deemed desirable, would be brought into line with the decisions resulting from those discussions. Our representatives requested a reply from us within a few hours and informed us that notice had been given by the United States Administration to the Inland Transport Authorities not to load any more supplies for the United Kingdom meanwhile.
You will remember that at Potsdam on 24th July Mr. Churchill wrote to you that very important questions affecting Lend-Lease and the financial arrangements to be made after Lend-Lease would be coming up and that we wanted to send an authoritative mission to Washington early in September to discuss the matter with your representatives. You agreed to this and informed Mr. Churchill that you were sending Mr. Clayton, an Assistant Secretary of the State Department, to London to discuss the position with us, and to make a report to you.
Mr. Clayton came to London and had several discussions both with my ministerial colleagues and with senior officials. An agenda for the discussions in Washington was worked out in agreement with Mr. Clayton and his colleagues. This agenda covered in the first place Lend-Lease, the financial arrangements after Lend-Lease, and also the lines upon which further developments on commercial policy could be worked out on the principles which we have been discussing with representatives of the United States Administration over the last year or so. One of the items included under the heading Lend-Lease was “terms for continued delivery of non-munitions pipeline.”
During the progress of those discussions, we were advised that the Foreign Economic Administrator had indicated that Lend-Lease supplies coming forward must be accepted on terms to be determined by the United States Administration. As this was contrary to the expectations we had formed from the correspondence between you and Mr. Churchill in Potsdam, representations were made by our Embassy in Washington and we also raised the matter direct with Mr. Clayton. On the 21st August Mr. Clayton wrote to us in the following terms:
The Secretary of State has informed me that the President has approved an amendment to the August 17th Lend-Lease directive whereby countries such as the United Kingdom which have not entered into 3(c) agreements, may obtain delivery of goods in the pipeline upon agreement to pay for them on terms to be mutually agreed on.
I must make it plain to you that none of us here had understood that letter to imply that within a few days we should be informed of the terms under which the supplies in the pipeline could go forward to us and that meanwhile orders would be given to the Inland Transport Authorities to suspend the loading of supplies for the United Kingdom. Nor can I believe that this action by the Foreign Economic Administration was in your mind when you authorized the Secretary of State to send us the communication of the 21st August.
You are aware that in the immediate future the maintenance of the physical flow of supplies from the United States, both of food and of certain essential raw materials, is necessary for the maintenance of the living conditions of this country. You have probably also been informed by Mr. Clayton of the general financial position in which we find ourselves because our war effort took a certain shape as part of the combined war plans. I referred to this matter in my statement to Parliament on Friday, August 24th.
It is impossible for our Government to give an answer to the proposals of the Foreign Economic Administration within a matter of a few hours, and you will not misunderstand me if I say that the preparation of a suitable answer would not be made easier for me by the knowledge that instructions had been given to suspend the loading of supplies for the United Kingdom.
I hope therefore that you may feel able to give an urgent directive that supplies in the pipeline coming forward for shipment, say within the next month, may proceed to the United Kingdom and that the terms and conditions of payment for such supplies will be discussed and agreed between the United States Administration and the special mission which has been sent to Washington for this purpose. We have recognized that with V-J Day Lend-Lease as we have known it, and as you have described it in your recent striking report to Congress, is at an end. We have realized that in some form or other we shall henceforward have to pay for the urgent supplies that we need from the United States. Therefore it is hardly necessary for me to assure you that if these supplies for the next month come forward to us, as I have suggested, they will be paid for.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (September 1, 1945)
ALLIED WAR LEADERS IN JAPAN FOR SURRENDER SIGNING TONIGHT
Nip plea for new parley unheeded by MacArthur
Civilians accept widening rule of U.S. Army with docility; troops ready to cross into Tokyo
YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP, Sept. 1) – U.S. troops in swelling numbers stood at Tokyo’s southern gates today and Allied dignitaries were arriving in Yokohama for tomorrow’s historic surrender ceremony (Saturday, Eastern Time).
American control was spreading smoothly and swiftly through the area of Tokyo Bay, where the U.S. Eighth Army of Philippines liberation fame was scheduled to begin moving in before nightfall in force.
Japs seeking new postponement
Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger’s army will land in Yokohama, sixth city of Japan, where Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters in the customs house pulsated with preparations for the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. The hour of this event has not been announced.
An NBC correspondent reported in a broadcast from Yokohama that the first units of the Eighth Army now are landing at Yokohama.
Japanese Imperial headquarters tried to put off this final, humiliating act of a lost war by asking MacArthur for further conferences on the terms, but it was asserted here the ceremony will go off on schedule.
Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, liberated hero of Corregidor, arrived in Yokohama for the surrender ceremony and had dinner with MacArthur in the New Grand Hotel.
Wainwright voices pleasure
“It is one of the greatest thrills of my life to come back to witness the surrender,” declared the tall soldier, gaunt from his long imprisonment in Japanese camps since he signed the surrender in Manila in 1942.
He had not seen his old chief since MacArthur left Corregidor in March of that black year for the Allies to go to Australia where he organized the drive that is now ending triumphantly in Japan.
“The last surrender I attended, the shoe was on the other foot,” Wainwright said. “It’s good to be back a free man and an American soldier wearing a gun again.”
Later, Gen. Wainwright, in a radio broadcast, expressed his gratitude to the American people for their understanding of his surrender in 1942.
He said:
I can never adequately express my appreciation and gratitude to the people of the United States for their generous understanding of my dire misfortune when I was forced by circumstances beyond my control to surrender to the Japanese forces at Corregidor.
Gather for surrender
Meanwhile, Russian, French and Dutch delegations were arriving by plane for the surrender ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri, and other signatories were moving in by transport ships.
With but a single incident – the shooting of a Japanese who refused to halt in a restricted area – American troops and Marines fanned out over the bay area.
Troops of the 11th Airborne Division sped up to the south bank of the Tama River, at the southern edge of Tokyo, but observed that temporary line of demarcation. On the north bank, armed soldiers of the emperor mounted guard.
Tokyo garrison disarming
Associated Press correspondents inside the ruined capital said that the main Tokyo garrison was disarming, and repairs were rushed on the fire-damaged roof of the American embassy, which will become MacArthur’s headquarters upon his triumphant entry into the city.
The Japanese asked that Tokyo, its hungry population cut two-thirds to a total of 2,000,000 by the bomber raids that ruined it, be placed out of bounds to American troops during the disarming to avoid incidents.
All Yokohama was under American control, as was adjacent Kawasaki.
Adm. Nimitz and Adm. Halsey, setting foot in Japan for the first time, inspected the great naval base of Yokosuka, which was being repaired swiftly for the waiting tide of Allied shipping.
Then they returned to their flagships, Nimitz to the battleship USS South Dakota and Halsey to the superbattleship USS Missouri, where the articles of surrender will be signed.
Civilians desert Yokohama
American troops occupying the nearby city of Yokosuka, once with a population of 150,000, found it deserted save for the black-uniformed Japanese police.
Next on the occupation list was the naval anchorage of Kisarazu, across the bay, which will be taken over by airborne troops making their first appearance on the eastern shore.
Farther south, the Marines took over Tateyama-hojo naval base and air station, standing sentinels at the east approaches to the bay.
Eichelberger’s Eighth Army, which would have had to fight its bloody way over this same area had Japan not given up, also will land on this strategic spit of land and will spread over the plains eastward.
The three-star general, who had fought the Japanese all the way from New Guinea, complimented his old enemies for living up to the occupation agreement, saying: “I haven’t seen so many peaceful Japs in a long time.”
In nearby Atsugi, Skymaster transport planes were landing at the rate of 20 to the hour with their loads of troops and supplies, swelling the total of more than 6,000 men brought in on the first day of occupation Thursday (Wednesday EWT).
The Air Transport Command with about 300 planes moved 960 tons on the 98-mile flight from Okinawa that first day, and such heavy movement will continue for several days.
Premier is in seclusion
The premier, who was one of the prime movers of the events that led to this sad day for Japan – Gen. Hideki Tojo – was in seclusion at his home in a Tokyo suburb, Japanese civilians told Associated Press correspondents.
He was alternatively pictured by the Japanese as ready to commit hara-kiri and ready to stand trial as a war criminal.
The men Tojo sent to war against America and Britain were surrendering or getting ready to quit all over the Pacific.
The great naval fortress of Truk, which the Japanese fortified in days of peace while they held a mandate over the Caroline Islands, will be surrendered aboard a U.S. cruiser off the island tomorrow. It has a garrison of 38,000.
Often-bombed Marcus Island, northeast of the Superfort bases on Guam and other islands of the Marianas, was surrendered with its garrison of 2,455 aboard the destroyer USS Bagley.
Next week, a British aircraft carrier will draw up outside Rabaul, bypassed Japanese fortress in New Guinea, and there the Japanese will yield all New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland and the Solomons.
Similar events will take place in Nanking, where the Japanese armies of China will surrender, and in Singapore, where the men of the Mikado will disgorge the wealth they conquered in Southeast Asia.
Surrender on all radio networks
WASHINGTON (AP, Aug. 31) – President Truman will proclaim V-J Day in a radio address immediately following the formal surrender ceremony which will also be broadcast from the USS Missouri near Tokyo.
White House Press Secretary Charles G. Ross said today no final official word has been received from Tokyo as to when the surrender terms will be signed. It is expected sometime this weekend.
Ross hoped the broadcast would be about 10 or 11 p.m. ET Saturday night, but said he was not in a position to name the day or hour. He said this tentative plan had been worked out:
The actual signing ceremony will be broadcast from the ship over all networks, and as the ceremony ends, the broadcast will be shifted to the White House, where Mr. Truman will make an eight or nine-minute speech. The program will then return to the Missouri and the public will probably hear messages from Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester W. Nimitz.
Mr. Truman’s proclamation will not signal the formal end of hostilities, which will be terminated later by presidential proclamation or joint resolution of Congress.
Ross said the President’s proclamation of V-J Day will have no legal significance. It will not mean an end to the legal war emergency and the “duration” will continue. Mr. Truman has urged Congress to guard against ending the war emergency too soon.
Jap torture camp near Tokyo uncovered
Cmdr. Stassen terms supposed hospital a hellhole; B-29 men beaten
…
Real-reel hero on home soil again –
Jimmy Stewart back from wars
Mother and father meet Indiana flier in New York
It might be today and it might be tomorrow, but anyway it won’t be long until Col. Jimmy Stewart is back home in Indiana.
After talking long distance to the war and movie hero in New York City last night, his sister Virginia concluded Jimmy would arrive with his parents tomorrow.
The important thing for his sisters (Mary’s the other one) is, “Jimmy said they’re coming home.”
His leave began when he left Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, where he reported after docking yesterday with his Second Bomb Wing on the liner Queen Elizabeth.
Mr. and Mrs. Alex M. Stewart greeted their son in New York where they went Wednesday so that they wouldn’t have to wait any longer than necessary to see him. It’s been two years now.
In those two years, Jimmy, who had entered the Army as a buck private, rose to the rank of full colonel, became operations officer of an Eighth Air Force combat wing and won the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Croix de Guerre with Palm from the French Air Force.
Nazi monster slain; killer of 1,500,000
Shot by Yanks, he’s kept alive long enough to tell of crimes
…
Newsman in Yokohama on trail of Tokyo Rose
Jap gal educated in Los Angeles is his guide on delirious jeep trip
By Richard W. Johnston, Associated Press staff writer
…
Youngstown Vindicator (September 1, 1945)
SURRENDER SET FOR 8 TONIGHT; WILL BE ON AIR AT 9:30
MacArthur, Truman to broadcast – Nimitz also will talk during ceremonies aboard USS Missouri
President to speak to nation again Sunday night at 9:15
By the Associated Press
The White House announced today that the Japanese surrender ceremonies on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay will go on the air at 9:30 EWT tonight.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander in Japan, notified the White House to this effect.
The last act in the surrender will begin unfolding at 8 p.m. At approximately 9:30, naval transmitters on the Missouri will begin flashing the step-by-step account of the historic event. At the height of the ceremony, President Truman will speak.
The President will talk for eight or nine minutes, after which the broadcast will be switched back to the Missouri for brief addresses by Gen. MacArthur and Adm. Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander.
Troops expand grip
The White House also announced that the President will take part in a two-hour radio program beginning at 9 p.m. EWT Sunday, to be conducted by the Armed Forces radio service.
The President’s brief address on the Sunday program will begin at 9:15 p.m. and all networks are expected to carry at least part of the program.
It was indicated at the White House that Mr. Truman’s remarks tonight would clarify the question of presidential designation of a V-J Day.
There was no advance information on what day would be so designated, although the circumstances of the twin broadcasts by the President over the weekend provided a hint that tomorrow – Sunday – might be the day chosen. That would be September 2 – American Time – and the formal Japanese capitulation is occurring on that date on the Japanese calendar.
Historical significance only
The V-J date will have historical significance only, and is not expected to have any legal effect upon wartime statutes – and military service – which will end or start to run out only upon a declaration by Congress that the war is officially over.
In Japan, U.S. troops extended their steel grip along both sides of Tokyo Bay.
Last of the actors to take their places were the Eighth Army men of Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, scheduled to begin their mass landings in the bay sector by nightfall tonight. (A radio report said the landings had already begun.)
As a backdrop there was the black horror endured by prisoners of war, who poured from their stockades of death and degradation with blood-freezing accounts of the wanton cruelties inflicted upon them in the years when Japan was riding the crest of conquest.
Now, as the gaunt Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright remarked, “the shoe was on the other foot.” He and his staff who survived the forced surrender of the Philippines and the evil yeas behind enemy wire arrived to witness the Japanese surrender signatures aboard the battleship USS Missouri.
MacArthur laid his plans at a private conference Friday night with Admirals Nimitz and William Halsey and Generals Carl Spaatz and Kenney in Yokohama’s New Grand Hotel.
MacArthur warmly greeted Gen. Wainwright, the man in whose command he left the losing battle of Bataan in March 1942, when he was sent to Australia to organize the long trek back to victory.
Wainwright made a brief broadcast to the people of the United States, expressing his gratitude “for their generous understanding of my dire misfortune” at Corregidor.
Japanese Imperial Headquarters made one half-hearted attempt to postpone the national ignominy a little longer by asking MacArthur today for further conferences on surrender terms, but it was declared at this headquarters that the Missouri ceremony would proceed as scheduled.
Already on hand were the representatives of Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, the Netherlands and Russia.
Gen. Eichelberger, who came in advance of his army, declared, “if the Japanese continue their present attitude, there will be no trouble for them or for us.”
Can drop 8,000 tons
If there should be, however, Gen. Spaatz, commander of U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, said that American planes were in position to drop at least 8,000 tons of bombs on Japan if necessary.
Throughout the Pacific, the Japanese were surrendering or arranging to surrender vast forces peaceably. The only untoward incident reported was the attempted escape of three Japanese suicide boats from Hong Kong, where British aircraft promptly sank one beached another and forced the third back to port.
Surrender of Hong Kong was to be organized today at conferences between British Rear Adm. C. H.J. Harcourt and the Japanese commander.
‘Tiger’s’ claws drawn
In the Philippines, the one-time “Tiger of Malaya,” Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita agreed to go to Baguio tomorrow and sign surrender articles Monday for the remains of his Philippine army.
At Singapore, which Yamamoto conquered in 1942, the Japanese commander acknowledged Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten’s order to have the government house “ready for occupancy by September 5.”
The surrender of 86,000 Japanese in the Solomons, New Guinea and New Britain was to be received by Australian Lt. Gen. V. A. H. Sturdee aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Glory at Rabaul.
The 20,500-man garrison of the Bonin Islands was under pledge to surrender Monday after a conference between the Japanese and Americans aboard the destroyer USS Dunlap Friday.
East Indies delay
The East Indies, last of Japan’s major conquests, apparently would be the last to be relinquished. Dutch officials spoke of a matter of weeks before the reoccupation of those rich islands would be settled finally.
The island fortress of Truk was scheduled to surrender after the Tokyo Bay signing. Marcus Island had already surrendered its 2,455 men to the destroyer USS Bagley.
The Japanese at outlying bases sent in reports that their troops were in pitiful condition from disease and hunger, and the home government was planning to tell the people that the death toll from American air raids on Japan itself was 450,000, nearly double the previously-announced figures.
Premier Prince Higashikuni promised a public discussion and explanation of “the collapse of Japan’s fighting spirit,” for which he blamed her surrender.
Americans not impressed
But Japan’s tale of woes made scant impression upon the newly-released American prisoners of war. Emerging from their sometimes-secret prisons in increasing numbers, they told of treatment in which studied brutality and murder by violence or starvation were the rule rather than the exception.
Fliers and submariners got especially bad treatment, but few if any of the men told of even ordinary usage at the hands of their guards or the Japanese public.
Some were paraded blindfolded through the streets of Tokyo where crowds cursed and jeered them; some were beaten fiendishly the moment they parachuted into Japan, and then suffered continuation of the bodily assaults through long months.
Their stories of life that was worse than death, and from which some of their comrades finally did win the surcease of death, grew with the release of each new group.
Tokyo out of bounds
For unexplained reasons, the American occupation of Tokyo was still deferred.
The BBC said Tokyo had been placed “out of bounds to the American occupation troops at the suggestion of Japanese officials” to avoid “incidents.”
Troops of the 11th Airborne Division stood on the south bank of the Tama River, at the southern edge of Tokyo, and temporarily observed that line of demarcation, but work was being rushed on the bomb-damaged American embassy which later will be MacArthur’s headquarters.
For the present, however, the focal point of Japan was MacArthur’s headquarters in Yokohama.
But tomorrow it shifts to the great Missouri, where Japan’s leaders will literally “sign on the dotted line.”
JAP TORTURERS KILL 23,000 YANKS
Burned, diseased in ‘experiments’
Horrible spine injection given; powder lighted in wounds; half have tuberculosis
By Frank Tremaine, United Press staff writer
…
Allies continue Bormann hunt
LONDON, England (UP) – Anglo-American War Crimes Commission investigators are combing Western Europe for Martin Bormann, Hitler’s missing deputy, and there was no confirmation in London today of Radio Berlin’s bulletin announcing his capture.
An Allied War Crimes Commission spokesman declared as far as he knew there was no basis for the story.
Several London morning papers carried the Berlin report, which presumably came from Russian sources. British dispatches quoted the radio station as saying Bormann’s capture “had been confirmed.”
There has been no news of the powerful Nazi since the four-power prosecutors listed him for trial at Nuremberg along with 23 other top Nazi war criminals.
Trial in ‘absentia’
At that time the Russian prosecutor said in London that he believed Bormann was not captured, but would be tried “in absentia.” Earlier, American investigators had uncovered evidence that Bormann probably survived the battle of Berlin despite repeated rumors that he had been killed.
The Daily Express reported from Hamburg that a German political prisoner said that he saw Bormann in that shattered port city around midnight on May 1. The prisoner said Bormann had jumped into a military car and driven off.
The Express correspondent added, “no one here appears to know whether Bormann has been captured or not.”
United Press Correspondent Ronald Clark reported from Herford, Germany, that Field Marshals Walther von Brauchitsch and Fritz von Mannstein have been interned by the British and presumably will be tried at Nuremberg.