1946: USO Dissolves
(Collier’s Year Book, 1947)
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1947
Articles from 1947
1946: The Camps Close
(Collier’s Year Book, 1947)
“On June 30, 1946 the central office of the War Relocation Authority [an arm of the Department of the Interior] closed on schedule with substantial completion of its war-time task of providing ‘relocation, maintenance, and supervision’ of the 120,313 persons of Japanese ancestry who were in its custody as a result of the War Department’s evacuation in 1942 of the West Coast. Of this number, 5,981 were born in the ten relocation centers maintained by the Authority.”
‘Its a Wonderful Life’ – the Synopsis
Lovingly ripped from the binding of a 1947 issue of Photoplay Magazine was the attached thumbnail Its a Wonderful Life,
The Truman Doctrine
(See Magazine, 1947)
“The Truman Doctrine is the only road to lasting peace. Twice within 30 years the stubbornly-observed practice of ‘minding our business’ has brought war.”
The Further Education of Harry Truman
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)
President Harry Truman (1884 – 1972) Came to the presidency following the death of FDR on April 12, 1945. He said of the post, “I wasn’t briefed for the job, I had to learn it from the ground up”; by 1947, he was no longer “Roosevelt’s stand-in, reading from a New Deal script” – he was his own man and this was becoming clearer and clearer to his critics in Washington. This article, by Frank Gervasi (1908 – 1990), covers Truman’s earliest years in the White House, and his handling of some of the hotest potatoes that landed in his lap.
What was the Truman Doctrine?
Throwing Off the British Yolk
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)
An article from 1947 concerning the ugly war fought by the visionaries who brought Israel back to life.
Click here to read a 1917 article that predicted America’s unique bond with Israel.
FDR, Congress and the Plan to Pack the Supreme Court
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)
Attached is an article by James A. Farley (1888 – 1976), who in 1933 was appointed by F.D.R. to serve as both the Postmaster General as well as the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. During the Thirties, Farley was also FDR’s go-to-guy in all matters involving politics on Capitol Hill, and he wrote the attached article two years after Roosevelt’s death in order to explain how the Court-packing scheme was received in Congress and how his relationship with FDR soon soured.
Boss, I asked him, why didn’t you advise the senators in advance that you were sending them the Court bill?
Jim, I just couldn’t, he answered earnestly. I didn’t want to have it get to the press prematurely…
The U.S. Navy’s War: Tarawa to Tokyo
(Dept. of the Navy, 1947)
Attached is a 1947 report by the U.S. Navy summing up the remarkable roll that naval aviation played during the last half of the war with Imperial Japan:
In the advance across the Central Pacific the carrier task force with it’s extreme flexibility and mobility had been the dominant factor. It established the conditions under which long-range amphibious advances were possible. It never failed to gain command of the air at the required time and place, successively overwhelming the air garrisons not only of the Japanese perimeter but of the major fortresses of Formosa and the Philippines, and maintained command of the air until shore-based air forces could be established.
To read articles about W.W. II submarines, Click here.
What the Navy Learned During the Pacific War
(Dept. of the Navy, 1947)
The following is an essay from the office of the Chief of Naval Operations concerning what the U.S. Navy learned about carrier warfare during the four year war against Japan.
The U.S. Navy’s War: Pearl Harbor to Midway
(Dept. of the Navy, 1947)
An essay on the U.S. Navy’s progress during the first six months of World War Two.
Japan’s decision to launch a war was based on the assumption that the conflict in Europe would render Russia and Great Britain negligible factors in the Far East. It was based on the further assumption that the United States, already committed to near belligerency in the Atlantic could not, even if finally successful in that theater, mount an offensive in the Pacific in less than 18 months to two years and would not in any case be willing to pay the price of total victory in the Pacific.
Japanese Naval Losses Measured in Tons
(Dept. of the Navy, 1947)
Four graphs from a 1947 Naval study illustrate the amount of Japanese aircraft and assorted sea faring vessels that were destroyed during the course of World War Two.
Princess Elizabeth During the Second World War
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)
A printable article (excerpted from a longer one) outlining what exactly Princess Elizabeth II was up to during World War II:
…and it was decided that Elizabeth must not enlist in anything, that her training for the throne was of the first importance. But Elizabeth felt that she would be a slacker and carry about an inferiority complex for life. So for a year, relentlessly, she persisted. Just before her nineteenth birthday, her father gave in…
Henry Dreyfuss
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)
Attached is an article about the work of the American industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904 – 1972):
At 43, Henry Dreyfuss is enormously successful, a fact which he makes every effort to conceal… In designing a typewriter, he measured the fingers of hundreds of typists. In creating a new chair for plane or train, he doesn’t settle for the fact that the chair simply seems comfortable. He hires an orthopedic surgeon to advise.
Industrial design was barely getting started when the 1929 Depression struck. America’s economic collapse may have meant calamity for millions of people, but for designers it spelled golden opportunity. Savage competition became the rule. To stay in business, a manufacturer had to give his products new utility, new eye-appeal…
The James Agee Review of It’s a Wonderful Life
(The Nation, 1947)
James Agee, the film reviewer for The Nation (1942 – 1948), was charmed by the warmth of It’s a Wonderful Life
and believed that it was an admirable and well-crafted piece of film making; he nonetheless came away feeling like he’d been sold a bill of goods and rejected the movie primarily because he believed that films created in the Atomic Age should reflect the pessimism that created the era.
Down With Christian Dior and His ”New Look”!
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)
The California fashion critic who penned this article believed that the fashions of Christian Dior stood firmly in opposition to the optimistic, Twentieth Century casual elegance of Claire McCardell (1905 – 1958) and Adrian (1903 – 1959). She could not bare Dior, with his vulgar penchant to spin
the feminine figure in the unconventional manner, trying to make her look good where she ain’t. He seeks the ballet dancer illusion – natural, rounded shoulders, too weak to support a struggling world…Her waist is pinched in an exaggerated indentation, the better to emphasize her padded hips…There are butterfly sleeves, box pockets, belled jackets, and barreled skirts, suggesting something like a Gibson girl, or whatever grandmother should have worn.
Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.
The Archbishop Did His Bit
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)
A small notice from 1947 that reported on the archdiocese of St. Louis standing up in favor of racially integrating their school system – while simultaneously threatening excommunication to all members of the flock who contested the decision.
Government-Supplied Scabs
(Commonweal Magazine, 1947)
Writing to the editors of the news monthly, Commonweal during the Autumn of 1947 was Harry Leland Mitchell (1906 – 1989), president of the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union who reported that the National Farm Labor Union was engaged in an important strike against the Di Giorgio Corporation in Bakersfield, California:
First, the Di Giorgio Corporation is the world’s largest fruit-producing corporation… it is to large scale industrialized agriculture what Ford is to the automobile industry. If the National Farm Labor Union wins the strike, it will be possible to proceed rapidly to the [organizing] of the migratory agricultural workers of California.
– but the union didn’t win. Di Giorgio, in league with the Department of Agriculture, secured foreign laborers to break the strike.
It’s a Wonderful Life’ – the Synopsis
(Photoplay Magazine, 1947)
A thumbnail review of It’s a Wonderful Life written in the form of a favorable plot synopsis. Oddly, the film was released in March of 1947 – long after Christmas.
