United Steelworkers during a job action in 1946. Facebook.
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.
A court on Morotai Island, in the Moluccas, on February 15, 1946, convicts 36 Japanese of torturing Australian and Dutch prisoners on the island group’s Ambon Island. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announces the arrest of 22 current and former government employees suspected of spying for the Soviet Union in Canada. The United Steel Workers of America and the United States Steel Corporation bring an end to the strike that had begun on January 21. Under their agreement, 130,000 employees will return to work on February 18 in return for an 18-1⁄2-cent-per-hour wage increase.
The Sikorsky S-51 — the first helicopter designed for commercial, rather than military, use — is tested at Bridgeport, Connecticut, on February 16. The Soviet Union registers the first veto to be cast in the United Nations Security Council, killing a resolution regarding the presence of British and French troops in Syria and Lebanon. In New York, Macy’s markets the first frozen french fries. Pre-fried and intended for reheating in the oven, the Maxson Food Systems product is not immediately popular.
With Soviet occupation troops planning to withdraw from Manchuria within a month, Chinese Nationalist forces move into and claim Liao Chung, Manchuria, on February 17. In the first elections held in Belgium since 1939, the Christian Social Party wins the most seats, followed by the Socialists.
The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny begins at 8:00 a.m. on February 18 at the port of Colaba, near Bombay. In the first mutiny in British India since 1857, some 1,600 sailors from the shore facility designated HMIS Talwar walk out of their mess hall because of inadequate food, and begin to chant, “No food, no work!” The next day, sailors on other ships and shore bases in and around Bombay join the strike to protest substandard food, intolerable conditions aboard ships, and no addressing of their complaints by officers. Rioting breaks out by roving bands of sailors.
The Cabinet Mission to India is announced in the British House of Commons on February 19 by Fredrick Pethick-Lawrence, the Secretary of State for India. He, along with Sir Stafford Cripps, of the Board of Trade, and Albert V. Alexander, the First Lord of the Admiralty, will depart the U.K. on March 15 to meet with representatives regarding the eventual independence of British India and the maintaining of unity within the country.
In the U.S., the Employment Act of 1946 is signed into law on February 20. It lays the responsibility for the economic stabilization of inflation and unemployment onto the federal government. In the U.K., British Prime Minister Clement Attlee announces plans “to effect the transference of power to responsible India hands by a date not later than June 1948.” In Palestine, the Palmach — the fighting arm of the Jewish underground in Mandatory Palestine — attacks the British Coast Guard station at Givat Olga, near Haifa. One person is killed and ten are injured. Documents found during and after the raid indicate that the attack is in retaliation for the seizure on January 17 of the Italian ship Enzo Sereni, which was attempting to smuggle Jewish refugees into Palestine. A coal-mine explosion in Bergkamen, Germany, about nine miles northeast of Dortmund, kills 405 people.
The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny continues to expand on February 21, as Indian seamen in Poona, Karachi, Calcutta and other cities begin seizing ships and detaining officers. Gunfire breaks out between Indian sailors and British army and naval troops sent to subdue them. In Egypt, riots and demonstrations against British rule take place amidst a general strike in Cairo. British troops fire into crowds of demonstrators, killing at least 12 people and injuring over 100. Former Finnish president Rysto Ryti, two former prime ministers and five former ministers are convicted in Helsinki of driving Finland into war allied with Germany. All receive prison terms.
On February 22, 1946, support for the Indian naval mutiny grows among the civilian population, which begins a general strike in Bombay. An anti-British demonstration in that city draws a crowd of 300,000. Rioting and looting break out, with nearly 200 people killed and 677 injured in subsequent fighting as authorities try to quell the unrest. George Kennan, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, sends his “Long Telegram” from the Soviet capital to U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes in Washington, D.C. Consisting of five separate cables, Kennan’s message urges a new strategy for diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R., stating that Joseph Stalin’s Soviet regime is, among other things: fundamentally insecure, if not paranoid; opposed to the U.S.; and holds designs for the violent destabilization of the world. Kennan’s communiqué is the trigger that leads the U.S. to redesign its foreign policy to one of firm “containment” of Soviet expansion and hostility over the long term.
On February 23, Indonesian prime minister Sutan Sjahrir rejects the Dutch proposal of February 10 that Indonesia remain within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with Dutch citizenship for its population, commonwealth status and internal autonomy. The mutiny in the Indian Navy ends when the mutineers, essentially leaderless and receiving no support from India’s political leaders (in fact, both Mohandas Gandhi and the Muslim League condemn the sailors’ revolt and the civilian rioting), find themselves facing heavily armed British military and naval forces with orders to “forcibly repress” the uprising. In all, over 20,000 Indian sailors on 78 ships and at 20 shore bases are involved. The mutineers suffer 8 dead and 33 wounded; among civilians across the country, there are 233 deaths and 1,027 injuries related to the mutiny. In the Philippines, Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita is hanged as a war criminal in Los Baños, 34 miles south of Manila, along with Lt. Col. Seichi Ohta, who had headed security for the kenpeitai, Japan’s secret police. Yamashita — who led the Japanese in Singapore and in the Philippines — had been found guilty on December 7, 1945, of being responsible for his troops’ atrocities even though there was no evidence that he approved of their actions or even knew about them. In fact, many of the atrocities were committed by troops that were not even under his command. Yamashita had maintained that what he had really been charged with was losing the war.
In the first open elections held in Argentina since 1928, Juan Perón on February 24 is elected president despite U.S. State Department evidence that he aided Nazi Germany during the war.
In Palestine, 22 British Royal Air Force planes are destroyed on February 25 in attacks on four different airfields. Chinese Nationalist and Communist leaders sign an agreement in Chungking to unify their armies.)
France closes its border with Spain on February 26 as a formal protest of that nation’s execution of ten Spanish communists who were veterans of the French Resistance during the war. British authorities in Palestine round up 5,000 Jews in response to the attacks on RAF airfields the previous night. A race riot erupts in Columbia, Tennessee, as black residents take up weapons in response to white residents attempting to lynch a 19-year-old black Navy veteran. When the violence ends, four white local policemen are shot and wounded, two African-Americans have died in jail, 10 people are injured, and over 100 are arrested by the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Spain on February 27 closes its border with France in retaliation for the French border closing of the previous day and — escalating the situation — sends troops to the area. After reviewing a report from National Urban League executive secretary Lester Granger on his tour of U.S. naval bases worldwide, U.S. Navy Secretary James Forrestal issues the order (applying to the Navy only): “Effective immediately, all restrictions governing the types of assignments for which Negro naval personnel are eligible are hereby lifted.” President Harry Truman requests former president Herbert Hoover’s assistance in persuading the American public to help with worldwide famine relief.
British commanders announce on February 28 that Indian troops will begin leaving the Netherlands East Indies immediately. Béla Imrédy, former prime minister of Hungary, is executed by a firing squad in Budapest for collaborating with the Nazis. The U.S. Army declares that it will use the V-2 rocket to test radar as an atomic-rocket defense system. Hồ Chi Minh, newly elected as president of Vietnam, sends a telegram to U.S. President Harry S. Truman, asking that the United States use its influence to persuade France not to send occupation forces back into Vietnam, and to “interfere urgently in support of our independence.” Truman does not respond, and ultimately backs France to keep that nation solidly in the Western bloc against Soviet expansion. Ignored by America, Hồ ironically turns to the U.S.S.R. to seek assistance.
