THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW APARADE of distinguished witnesses filed before the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the Pearl Harbor disaster this week, but while their tens of thousands of words of...
...Names And Notes In The News Thomas Gains...
...What's An Ultimatum...
...President Truman revealed last week that the U. S. is still manufacturing atomic bombs—for experimental purposes...
...The President actually nets only $3,000 from his $75,000 salary since he has to pay $46,000 in Federal taxes, $1,000 in state taxes, and $25,000 for White House expenses over and above what is met by the Government...
...The workers, led by Walter P. Reuther, able UAW vice president, last week recommended that the issue be submitted to impartial arbitration of the wage issue on condition that automobile price increases would be ruled out to begin with and the arbitration board would have access to the company's books to determine how much wages could be raised without eating up profits...
...GM stalled...
...Such a policy, he pointed out, "will give the wife of the lowliest GI the same right as any officer's wife, or my wife, for instance...
...Kent Case...
...Richardson revealed that long-range reconnaissance which he had ordered when the fleet was moved to Pearl Harbor in April, 1940, was later abandoned on orders from Washington as unnecessary...
...Ernest J. King...
...Thomas is suing for $500,000 as a result of a Tobin article comparing the Socialist leader with Adolf Hitler...
...Hull, old, ill, and feeble, brought a 20,000-word statement which was read for him...
...Undaunted by this stubborn refusal to arbitrate, the union this week made a new bid to reopen negotiations, inviting General Motors officials to sit down around the table again...
...Husband E. Kim-mel Feb...
...Welles, who, was Hull's top assistant until he broke with his chief and left the Roosevelt official family, testified that he felt for some time in 1941 that war was imminent—was, in fact, "a million to one shot"— but he, too, could throw no ligh on Why we were so totally unprepared for a surprise attack...
...26, 1941, "ultimatum," which, in turn, was almost immediately followed by hostilities...
...Shift...
...Two of the leading Roosevelt Administration policymakers and foreign policy administrators—former Secretary of State Cordell Hull and former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles—were among the principal witnesses of the week...
...26 note "touched the button that started the war...
...26 demands on Japan constituted an "ultimatum," and decried use of that word as Japanese propaganda...
...Atomic Bombs...
...7,1941...
...The U. S. was under constant pressure from the British, the Dutch, the Australians, and the Chinese, Welles testified, to take the lead in cracking down on Japan...
...GM said not yet...
...Nevertheless, he testified, on Nov...
...The former Secretary of State vigorously denied that the Nov...
...President Roosevelt picked Kimmel to relieve Richardson because the latter had protested to the President against basing the fleet in Hawaiian waters...
...He told the Committee that a meeting between Prince Konoye and President Roosevelt, proposed by the Japanese as a desperate 11th-hour effort to prevent war, could only have resulted "in another Munich or nothing at all...
...Moreover, he testified that President Roosevelt in 1940 opposed increasing Navy personnel to bring it up to full war strength...
...Tyler Kent, former U. S. embassy clerk who served a British jail term after having been convicted of revealing contents of coded messages, sailed for America last week...
...President Truman last week nominated Gen...
...The chance of a peaceful settlement was never better than "one in a hundred," Hull declared, adding that he kept on negotiating to gain time...
...J. T. McNarney will take over Eisenhower's duties as commander of U. S. forces in the European theater, and Adm...
...U. S. Baptists were divided this week regarding the morals of President Truman...
...20, when they demanded, in effect, that the U. S. help, rather than hinder, Nippon's program of expansion in Asia...
...We proposed that the issue be settled on the basis of facts—the arithmetic locked up in GM's vaults...
...Population...
...20 were...
...Dwight D. Eisenhower to be Army Chief of Staff, succeeding Gen...
...27, the day after he sent his note to the Japanese, Hull told Henry L. Stimson and the late Frank Knox, then Secretaries of War and the Navy respectively, that "he was washing his hands of the affair and matters were from then on in the hands of the Army and Navy...
...To have accepted the Japanese proposal," Hull said, "would have made the U. S. an ally of Japan...
...Dwight D. Eisenhower said last week that he favors taking the wives of occupation forces to Europe "after we have got down to occupation forces...
...General Motors failed to respond within the 24-hour deadline, and the strike began—reportedly 100 per cent effective...
...26 proposal to the Japanese omitted provisions for a temporary settlement previously approved by the Army and Navy and the British...
...We proposed arbitration...
...He insisted that his Nov...
...Conflict Over The Fleet Significant evidence was presented by Adm...
...Mr...
...26 note to the Japanese had been "ignorantly misrepresented...
...George C. Marshall, and Adm...
...J. O. Richardson, who was Chief of Staff of the Pacific Command until he was replaced by Adm...
...We proposed public negotiations...
...Reuther deplored the company's refusal to arbitrate and to make its records available to the public and charged that GM had indicated willingness to meet wage demands if the UAW would abandon its resistance to inflationary price increases on new cars...
...Truman of their "earnest and continued prayers" in the discharge of his official duties...
...It would have meant yielding to the Japanese demand that the U. S. abandon its principles and policies...
...I stated that in my opinion the presence of the fleet in Hawaii might influence a civilian, political government, but that Japan had a military government which knew that the fleet was under-manned, unprepared for war, and had no train of auxiliary ships, without which it could not undertake active operations...
...R. A. Spruance will succeed Nimitz as commander of the Pacific fleet...
...This was not an offer of arbitration but a demand for abdication...
...Returning to the witness stand this week, Hull asserted that the Japanese were "hell-bent" for war in November, 1941...
...Strike At General Motors The nation's number one labor-management controversy, whose outcome is bound to have a far-reaching effect in establishing a pattern for other disputes, reached the strike stage last week when 170,000 employes of General Motors, members of the CIO's United Automobile Workers, biggest union in the world, walked out of 75 GM plants in 20 states...
...26 was not an ultimatum, but that the Japanese demands of Nov...
...30, 1941, although Britain was then up to its neck and over its ears in war with Germany...
...Also unanswered was the question of why, in view of all the secret information available in Washington, we were caught so completely unprepared when the Japanese struck on Dec...
...Welles supported the claim of his former chief, Hull, that the U. S. note of Nov...
...therefore, the presence of the fleet in Hawaii could not exercise a restraining influence on Japan's actions...
...Testimony received by the Committee reveals that Hull's Nov...
...Still undetermined, for instance, was the question of whether the United States were pursuing a belligerent policy toward Japan—a policy which culminated in the Nov...
...Baptist Schism...
...GM said never...
...Both defended the Administration's course during those fateful months, and both testified that they had become convinced months in advance that war was imminent...
...Winston Churchill urged Mr...
...THE WEEK IN REVIEW APARADE of distinguished witnesses filed before the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the Pearl Harbor disaster this week, but while their tens of thousands of words of testimony filled in gaps in the background of the disaster, they failed to throw conclusive light on any of the major issues to be resolved...
...Norman Thomas, leader of the Socialist Party, won an important round in his libel suit against Daniel Tobin, czar of the Teamsters' union, when the Supreme Court of New York denied a motion for dismissal...
...The witness testified that he got "the very distinct impression" in June, 1940, that Washington thought "Japan could be bluffed...
...On the following day the company formally rejected the UAW's plea for arbitration, claiming that "stripped of its deception, the union proposed that General Motors relinquish its right to manage its business...
...The Committee heard former Ambassador Joseph C. Grew deny that he had said—as an Army Inquiry Board quoted him—that Hull's Nov...
...A week ago the Baptists of Texas criticized the President for his "reported attitude" toward drinking and gambling, but a few days later the District of Columbia Baptist convention adopted a resolution assuring Mr...
...Roosevelt overruled this advice, and Richardson, soon to be replaced by Kimmel, learned that he "had hurt the President's feelings...
...The real ultimatum, he claimed, was served by the Japanese on Nov...
...I further stated that we were more likely to make the Japanese feel that we meant business if a train (the various auxiliary ships carried in train) were assembled and the fleet returned to the Pacific Coast with complements filled, the ships docked and fully supplied with ammunition, provisions, stores, and fuel, and then stripped for war operations...
...Harry Truman will probably be in the red when he leaves the White House, according to an article in Collier's...
...1. Wives...
...Kent was sentenced to serve seven years for violating the British Official Secrets Act, but was released Oct...
...Chester W. Nimitz to be Chief of Naval Operations, replacing Adm...
...Weeks of negotiating had failed to break the deadlock over the union's demand for a 30 per cent wage increase to meet the sharp decline in take-home pay brought about by the end of war production...
...Presidential Poverty...
...We proposed conciliation...
...The President stated that the fleet was retained in the Hawaiian area in order to exercise a restraining influence on the actions of Japan," Richardson recalled...
...GM said no...
...The Census Bureau disclosed last week that the population of the U. S. passed 140,000,000 about Oct...
...1, 1941...
...5 because of time off for good behavior...
...Roosevelt to issue a war warning to the Japanese Nov...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 48
