Gen. Douglas MacArthur signs as Supreme Allied Commander during formal surrender ceremonies on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Behind Gen. MacArthur are Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright and Lt. Gen. A. E. Percival, September 2, 1945. MacArthur removed many Japanese officials as “undesirables” following World War II.
By Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
U.S. Gen. of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers during the occupation of Japan, on January 4 begins a purge within the Japanese government to oust “undesirables.” Over the next two and one-half years, over 210,000 people are removed or barred from public office. Thirty items of the treasures of the Holy Roman Empire that had been removed from Austria by the Nazis after the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938) are returned to Vienna by U.S. Gen. Mark Clark after members of the U.S. Army discover the missing items.
On January 5, Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Nazis’ “Final Solution” escapes from the American detention camp at Oberdachstettin, Bavaria, Germany. (Assuming a new identity, he successfully eludes capture in the area for four years. Then, in 1950, he makes his way to Austria, then Italy, and, finally, to Argentina, where he makes a new life for himself. In May 1960 he is found and kidnapped by agents of the Mossad [Israel’s intelligence and special-operations agency], who bring him to Israel, where he is tried for war crimes. Convicted, he is executed by hanging in 1962.)
The Polish government on January 6 nationalizes banks, communications companies, mines, factories, and utilities. Vietnam holds its first democratic elections: the Viet Minh Party, led by Hồ Chi Minh, wins 230 of the 300 seats in the National Assembly.
On January 7, a working group of the United Nations meets for the first time, in London. Two captains in the Imperial Japanese Army are sentenced to death at a British military tribunal in Labuan, North Borneo. They are found guilty of causing the deaths of 820 British and Australian prisoners of war. The Allies reinstate Austria as a republic, with the borders it had before its annexation by Germany in 1938 (the Anschluss), but they will administer the country in four occupation zones: American, British, French and Soviet. Vienna and its environs are administered jointly by all four powers. In Budapest, three former members of the Hungarian government are sentenced to death for war crimes. By mutual agreement, France resumes its protectorate relationship with Cambodia and will manage all of the Asian nation’s foreign affairs.
British troops attack Indonesian forces in the Semarang area of the Netherlands East Indies on January 8. In Germany, the Allies abolish the German Hereditary Health Court system, which between 1934 and 1945 ordered the surgical sterilization of over 400,000 people having “hereditary defects,” such as mental retardation and epilepsy. In California, the last Japanese prisoners of war held in the U.S. depart by ship to be repatriated. In Washington, D.C., President Truman vows to stand by the Yalta Accord regarding self-determination for the Balkan nations.
Two Japanese army officers are sentenced to death in Manila on January 9 for the torture and death of 105 Filipinos. László Bárdossy, Hungarian prime minister in 1941 and 1942, and who collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of the country, is hanged in Budapest for treason.
The first human contact with the moon takes place on January 10. A U.S. Army team led by Lt. Col. John H. Dewitt at Evans Signal Laboratory in Belmar, New Jersey, bounces a radar signal off the lunar surface. The experiment not only enables an exact measurement of the moon’s distance from earth (a mean of 238,857 miles) but also demonstrates that communications can be conducted across the vacuum of space. The General Assembly of the United Nations meets for the first time, in the Central Hall of Westminster, London. Delegates from 51 countries elect Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium the General Assembly’s first president. In China, the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek and those of the Communist Party of China stop fighting.
On January 11, 1946, in Nanking, China, 38 delegates representing different groups and interests in China sit down to meet. Within ten days they reach agreement on most military and political issues of contention in the country. The accord will never be implemented. Albania’s communist-dominated assembly ends the nation’s monarchy and establishes the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania. In the Caribbean, Élie Lescot is overthrown as president of Haiti by a coup; he is replaced by Franck Lavaud.
Anwar Sadat, a member of the pro-Axis Iron Guard of Egypt that aimed to overthrow British rule and expel the British from Egypt, is arrested in Cairo on January 12. He is charged with conspiracy in the 1944 assassination of pro-British, former Egyptian finance minister Amin Osman. (After spending 2-1/2 years in jail, Sadat is acquitted at trial. In 1970, he becomes president of Egypt.)
In Belgrade, the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission on January 13 names 15 Germans and 24 Yugoslavs — including Draža Mihailović, leader of Serbian Chetnik guerrillas — as war criminals. In Albania, Omer Nishani, a physician prominent in resisting the Italian occupation during the war, becomes head of state. In China, a ceasefire in the Chinese Civil War — brokered by U.S. special envoy Gen. of the Army George C. Marshall — goes into effect between the Nationalist and Communist forces. In the U.S., cartoonist Chester Gould debuts the “two-way wrist radio” in his comic strip “Dick Tracy.” The device sparks the public’s imagination of a future where people might have their own personal-communication devices.
On January 14, the Soviet Union ratifies a treaty it had signed with its puppet Polish government on August 16, 1945. Most of what was Polish territory in the east of the country becomes part of either the Ukrainian or the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Office of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Tokyo on January 15 reveals the extent of the Japanese balloon-bomb program: Between the summer of 1942 and March of 1945, the Japanese launched over 9,000 of the balloon-borne bombs, 225 of which landed in North America. In 1945, one of the latter had killed a pregnant woman and five children on a picnic in Oregon.
On January 16, Charles de Gaulle resigns as the head of the French Provisional Government. Two unions call a strike against the six largest meat-packing companies in the U.S. — 268,000 workers walk off their jobs. The strike is called off after 10 days when the U.S. government seizes the struck plants.
Seven Germans, including Lt. Gen. Herman Winkler, on January 17 are hanged before 65,000 people in Nikolaev, U.S.S.R., for war crimes. Winkler, once the commandant of Nikolaev, was convicted of responsibility for the deaths of 105,000 Soviet citizens. Ba Maw, who headed the government of Burma during the Japanese occupation, is captured by U.S. counterintelligence agents in Japan. At Westminster Central Hall in London, the United Nations Security Council holds its first meeting and establishes its procedures. In the Mediterranean Sea 40 miles off Palestine, the Italian ship Enzo Sereni, attempting to smuggle 910 Jews past immigration officials, is intercepted by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Talybont and escorted into the port of Haifa. The passengers are interned while officials decide what to do with them.
