V-E Day development –
Blood bank here closes on May 19
Army and Navy needs are cut in half
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Racketeer accused of fleecing U.S. Army
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V-E Day development –
House group urges world trade parley
Stresses need for reciprocal program
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Allies feared Axis junction in Far East
That gave European war top priority
WASHINGTON (UP) – The reason America gave the European war top priority after Pearl Harbor was because it was imperative to prevent a German-Japanese junction in India.
Speaking in the Army’s V-E Day film, Two Down and One to Go, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall said the Axis had planned to meet in India and then destroy Britain, Russia and the United States one by one.
Any cost strategy
“Our strategy,” he said, “was to prevent at all costs the junction of Germany and Japan, and then push them back.”
It was imperative to send forces to Europe immediately because Germany had Britain and Russia “on the ropes,” he said. Had the U.S. concentrated first on Japan, he declared, Germany would have become almost impregnable.
Gen. Marshall said another reason for temporarily subordinating the Jap war was that it was a two-year job to build the shipping strength to transport troops and supplies across the Pacific.
Ended at El Alamein
The threat of a German-Japanese junction ended when the Germans were forced back from El Alamein in 1943 and the British smashed the Japs at Ceylon.
The film, shown privately to the press last night, will be distributed theaters for exhibition to the public. It was made last summer for distribution with the end of the European war.
Be kind to Reich, Japs urge Allies
Hope expressed for Germany of future
By the United Press
Tokyo’s newspapers gave prominent display today to news of Germany’s surrender and expressed hope that Allied treatment of the fallen Nazis would be “as kind as that which Germany would have given if the Axis had been the victor.”
Most of the newspapers said the surrender had not been entirely “unanticipated” and reiterated that Japan’s determination to continue the war would be unaffected.
Press comments, reported in a Jap Domei broadcast, emphasized that Japan’s leaders should take advantage of lessons learned in Germany’s collapse to prepare Japan for “the very hard times that lie ahead.”
The newspaper Asahi was quoted as expressing hope that Germany eventually would rise to regain its position as a leader nation in Europe.
Second oilfield on Tarakan menaced by Australian drive
Jap headquarters on island off Borneo captured – area near airfield cleared
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Humbled arrogance mixes with Nazi tears of relief
German officers look stunned as they file up to drop weapons in barrels after surrender
By Malcolm Muir Jr., United Press staff writer
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Germans battle Norse patriots
Quisling reported under arrest
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PWs due to stay in U.S. long time
By Earl Richert, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Hoover criticizes delay in relief
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In Washington –
Pearl Harbor quiz demands stepped up
Army, Navy still gathering evidence
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33 die in plane crash
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Big Three faces test of ability to agree on post-war tasks
‘Amazing lot’ of problems are beginning to develop, high U.S. official says
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U.S. moves to preserve Pan-American security
Plan would allow Western Hemisphere to settle its own disputes
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Jap cabinet decides to keep fighting
By the United Press
Japan announced today that it will keep fighting as hard as ever in spite of Germany’s surrender.
The announcement, broadcast by Tokyo radio, was made after a special meeting of the Jap Cabinet under Premier Kantaro Suzuki.
While it expressed “deep regret” over Germany’s surrender, the official statement said the “sudden change of the war situation in Europe will not bring the slightest change in the war objective of the imperial government of Japan.”
‘Bad girl’ wants to reform, studio won’t let her!
So Virginia is still a ‘sinner’
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Ex-husband accused by Sen. McAdoo’s kin
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Editorial: Ernie Pyle and V-E Day
Ernie Pyle had some ideas about V-E Day.
His ideas, we think, are pretty much the ideas of most G.I.’s.
He wrote them long before V-E Day, which he never lived to see. He wrote them from his heart and out of the long months in which he trudged the bitter, tragic paths of war – war, which he once described as “a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.”
As we mark the end of fighting in Europe and turn to the tedious, painful months of death and anguish still to come in the Pacific war, listen to Ernie’s words on V-E Day:
The end of the war will be a gigantic relief, but it cannot be a matter of hilarity for most of us. Somehow it would seem sacrilegious to sing and dance when the great day comes – there are so many who can never sing and dance again.
We have won this war because our men are brave, and because of many other things – because of Russia, and England, and the passage of time, and the gift of nature’s materials.
We did not win it because destiny created us greater than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud. I hope we can rejoice in victory – but humbly. The dead men would not want us to gloat.
And all of us together will have to learn how to reassemble our broken world into a pattern so firm and so fair that another great war cannot soon be possible.
These are the words of a gifted writer, a writer who knew not only the filth and dirt and numbing horror of war, but knew the innermost confidences and thoughts and hopes and fears and ideas of the men who fight wars, and die in them.
For the great numbers of us at home, who have been so jubilant over the news from Europe, those of us who have fought the war in petty inconveniences and shortages, in small and paltry sacrifices, these are good words for us to know.
Let’s keep them in our minds until V-J Day, and in our hearts forever.