Articles from 1945
“In December 1945, SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) issued a sweeping directive demanding that Japanese peasants be freed from the burden of absentee landlordism, oppressive debt, discriminatory taxation, usury and other evils that had plagued the Japanese peasants for centuries.”
In the wake of the SCOTUS opinion, Korematsu v. U.S., some talk could be heard about the return of the Japanese Americans to the previous homes. This article examines the anti-Nisei attitudes in two Western states, California and Oregon. It was the conclusion that the former had become a bit more tolerant and the later a bit worse (sadly the last paragraphs, printed on brittle brown paper, withered away in our hand.)
As the Allied Armies were nearing Berlin and Tokyo, U.S. magazines began running articles concerning the nation’s problems that had all been put on the back burner during the war years. Subjects of concern involved inflation, alcoholism, and juvenile delinquency. The article attached here concern America’s curse: racial and religious prejudice, and how to get rid of it.
“There are reports that these prisoners are often pampered, that they are getting cigarettes when Americans civilians cannot get them, that they are being served by American soldiers, that they are often not working at a time when war workers are scarce. The general complaint is that the 46,000 American prisoners in Germany are not faring as well as the 300,000 Germans in this country.”
An anonymous reporter relays all that came across his desk in the way of wild victory celebrations on VJ Day. Spread out over 14 paragraphs are eyewitness accounts of the pandemonium that spread across the nation when the news arrived that the war was over.
As the Allied Armies were nearing Berlin and Tokyo, U.S. magazines began running articles concerning the nation’s problems that had
As if Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Nordhausen and Bergen-Belsen weren’t bad enough – in late April, 1945, advancing Soviet infantry reported that:
“The Red Army had found a concentration camp for children at Konstantinov, beyond Lodz in central Poland…There were 862 children in the camp, all Russian, White Russian and Ukrainian.”
Here is an eyewitness account of the daily life at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Ravensbrück was the largest concentration camp for women in Germany. The Germans gassed between 5,000 and 6,000 prisoners at Ravensbrück before Soviet troops liberated the camp in the April of 1945.
“It is in Palestine where the Jews are building a national home, that the Arab enjoys higher standards of living and of health than anywhere in the Middle East… The Arab population of Palestine has risen from 600,000 to 1,200,00.”
