World War Two – Page 65 – Old Magazine Articles

General Douglas MacArthur (’48 Magazine)

If you’ve been looking for an editorial that was intended to take General MacArthur down a peg or two, you’ve found it. It was penned by Shelley Mydans (1915 – 2002), a journalist who was primarily known at the time for her LIFE MAGAZINE news dispatches; she found the General to be both admirable and repulsive at the same time and was thoroughly baffled as to why he was so loved on so many different continents.

Written two years before General MacArthur’s stunning 1950 victory in the Korean War (the Battle of Inchon), this article makes apparent a deep-seated fear held within the senior leadership of the Democratic party that MacArthur was planning to challenge Truman in the 1948 presidential election.

Another article on General MacArthur can be read here…

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When Japan Went on the Defensive (Click Magazine, 1943)

Japan’s one purpose now is to fight back and stall for more time – not to attack. That period in her war is over, and she came out on top…All signs now point to a growing major Allied offensive, and for the first time the enemy will be faced with the problem of holding territory which he can’t afford to lose.

1943 was truly the year that proved to have been the turning point in the war, click here to read about it…

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Planing the Occupation (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)

Some seven months before Japan quit the war, the anointed heads of the Institute of Pacific Relations convened in Hot Springs, Virginia to discuss what the Allied Occupation of Japan would look like.

Click here to read about August 28, 1945 – the day the occupation began.

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A Hollywood Movie in Japan (Quick Magazine, 1952)

We were sympathetic when we learned that the Japanese did not much care for the movies Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Back to Bataan (1945) or David Lean’s masterpiece Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) – but when we heard that they hated Sands of Iwo Jima (1952) – we finally realized that there are some people you simply cannot please. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who felt this way: the editors of QUICK MAGAZINE were so outraged on this matter they dispatched a reporter to document the venom that spewed-forth from those Japanese lips as they left the theater.

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Reforms in Post-Fascist Japan (United States News, 1946)

Speaking of naive: when I was privileged to visit Japan in 2011 I actually believed that there would be a few native-born women who would recognize that I was an American and step forward to express some measure of gratitude for my country’s part in granting Japanese women the right to vote. I’m still waiting – however, it is important for all of us to remember that in the immediate aftermath of the war, our occupying forces introduced American values to the Japanese and they have thrived as a result:

General MacArthur has ordered the Japanese Government to provide for freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, and of worship. ‘Thought control’ by the secret police is to be a thing of the past.

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To Live in Occupied Tokyo (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1947)

A breezy account of American occupied Tokyo as reported by a literary magazine:

Regardless of the festivities, the War Crimes Trials proceed as usual and the accused sit with earphones listening intently as the defense presents the China Phase.
Japan seems to be striving toward Democracy, their interest in government affairs has broadened, and the voting in the national elections showed their arousal.

Should you like to read how the city of Kyoto fared during the Second World War, click here.

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‘Our Balance Sheet In Japan” (Collier’s Magazine, 1946)

Here is an honest report card concerning the first six months of the American occupation of Japan. The list of things that we did successfully at that point were considerably shorter than the list of our failings. Much is said concerning the Japanese deep state and their resistance to the new order.

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The Trial of Hideko Tojo (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)

Standing before the judges who made up the 11-nation war crimes tribunal in occupied Tokyo, General Hideko Tojo, among 19 other Japanese wartime leaders, put on the show of his life:

Without hesitation, Tojo accepted full blame for plunging Japan into war. But it was, he insisted, a ‘defensive’ war, and ‘in no manner a violation of international law..’

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Pvt. Lloyd McCarter on Corregidor (GI Joe Magazine, 1946)

We’re sure that Pvt. Lloyd McCarter of Takoma, Washington would have undoubtedly preferred to have been anywhere else but the island of Corregidor during the February of 1945, but there were no other legal options open to him at the time. This proved to be bad luck for some thirty Japanese soldiers who happened to have been in that same zip code.

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Inhumanity (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Here is a short column that recalls the bestial treatment that was meted out to the American and Filipino prisoners of war by their Japanese masters.

For example, in August of last year, some 300 Japs attacked an unarmed litter train on the Munda Trail. They hacked twenty of the wounded to death…

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