International military tribunal for the Far East, 1946.
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.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convenes in Tokyo on May 3, 1946, to begin the trials of 28 Japanese defendants accused of committing war crimes. Radhabinod Pal, from India, one of three Asians named to the tribunal, is the only judge with a background in international law and the only jurist to find all the defendants innocent on all counts. Pal calls into question the Tribunal’s legitimacy, stating that the underlying criterion for passing judgment seems to be retribution and not impartial justice.
In Tokyo, Allied occupation authorities on May 4 void the results of elections held on April 10. Ichirō Hatoyama, leader of the party that won the elections, is barred from becoming prime minister. (The authorities are concerned about Hatoyama’s cooperation with Japan’s authoritarian government in the 1930s and the 1940s.) Instead, the occupation authorities name Shigeru Yoshida — a pro-American and pro-British diplomat and politician — to become the next prime minister of Japan, succeeding Kijūrō Shidehara.
On May 5, the government of China is officially moved to Nanking, in the eastern part of the country. A national referendum in France narrowly rejects the proposed constitution for the Fourth Republic. (The draft constitution proposes a unicameral legislature, which most of the populace does not favor.)
Zuni and Navajo veterans of World War II on May 6 are denied in their attempts to register to vote in the 1946 general elections in New Mexico. The county clerk of McKinley County rejects their applications, citing a provision in the state constitution that denies the right of suffrage to “Indians not taxed,” referring to Native Americans who live on federal reservations. (The applicants challenge the provision, and on August 3, 1948, a federal court rules that the New Mexico constitutional provision violates the United States Constitution. The 1948 general election marks the first time that residents of New Mexico’s Indian reservations may vote.)
In Japan, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita on May 7 found the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation with 20 employees. (In January 1958, the company’s name is changed to Sony Corporation.) In The Hague, the Netherlands, Anton Mussert, founder of the Dutch Nazi Party, is executed by a firing squad after his appeal to Queen Wilhelmina for clemency is refused.
On May 8, the U.S. government orders dim-outs in 22 states due to the strike by bituminous-coal miners that began on April 1. The Ford Motor Company begins a nationwide shutdown because of a lack of coal and 51,000 railroad workers are laid off. Two 14-year-old Estonian schoolgirls — Aili Jürgensen and Ageeda Paavel — use explosives to blow up a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn in retaliation for Soviet occupation forces removing and destroying monuments to Estonian soldiers. Apprehended shortly afterward, the two are tried and convicted as terrorists. Deported to the U.S.S.R., they spend eight years at hard labor in a Gulag work camp.
King Vittorio Emanuele III of Italy on May 9 abdicates his throne in favor of his son, Umberto II, who succeeds him. The abdication is an effort to bolster the monarchist cause and avert a plebiscite to decide whether Italy should remain a monarchy or become a republic (the latter a growing sentiment among the populace). The former monarch immediately sails with his wife into exile at Alexandria, Egypt, where he is welcomed by King Farouk.
Owners of U.S. bituminous-coal mines and the United Mine Workers union agree on May 10, to a two-week truce in the 40-day-old coal strike to get the economy moving. Some 400,000 miners go back to work temporarily. An American-launched V-2 rocket reaches a record-high altitude, soaring 75 miles above the White Sands, New Mexico, proving grounds.
In Milan, Italy, Teatro alla Scala opera house reopens on May 11 for the first time since an American bomb damaged the auditorium on 16 August 1943. The performance is conducted by the theatre’s former music director, Arturo Toscanini — the first time he has conducted in Italy in 15 years. The city’s Piazza della Scala and Piazza del Duomo and the two-block-long Galleria connecting them are closed to traffic and filled with people listening to the concert on loudspeakers. The program comprises selections from Italian composers Rossini, Verdi, Boito and Puccini. The concert is broadcast throughout Italy and the world via short-wave radio. After the last note, the applause lasts 37 minutes. At Le Havre, France, the first packages — containing 20 pounds of food each — from the U.S.-founded, international, humanitarian relief agency CARE (Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) arrive for distribution throughout Europe. In Germany, a U.S. military court in Dachau tries 61 SS members who had carried out exterminations at the Mauthausen concentration camp at Dachau. All are convicted of greater or lesser roles in murdering 70,000 people, mostly Jewish. Of the defendants, 49 are executed by hanging at Dachau; the other 12 are sentenced to life in prison.
In China, a truce between Nationalist and Communist forces in coastal Shantung Province is signed in Tsinan, the province’s second largest city, on May 12.
On May 13, negotiations between Iranian Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam and the leader of the Soviet-supported, breakaway province of Azerbaijan collapse in Tehran. In Moscow, the Soviet ballistic-missile program is formally created by a top-secret decree signed by Joseph Stalin. Minister of Armaments Dmitriy Ustinov is made overseer of the project. With U.S. bituminous-coal miners temporarily back to work for two weeks, United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis says that the walkout will start anew if negotiations on a new labor contract fail.
Nueces County, Texas, which includes Corpus Christi, is quarantined on May 14 to prevent the spread of a “polio-like disease” that had broken out in Corpus Christi. (The disease was, in fact, poliomyelitis, or polio.) In addition to the closing of all schools, churches, theaters, and parks, the roads leading into and out of Nueces County are blocked by 300 members of the Texas National Guard, and nobody under 21 years of age is allowed in. Buses and trains are sprayed with DDT — the pesticide being used as a disinfectant.
At New London, Connecticut, the U.S. Coast Guard on May 15 commissions its 295-foot sailing barque Eagle as a training cutter for future USCG officers. Built in 1936 in Germany for the Kriegsmarine as the training ship Horst Wessel, the vessel is a war prize, won by the U.S. in a lottery with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.
In Delhi, the British Cabinet Mission to India on May 16 proposes that, since Hindus and Muslims cannot agree on a unified India, the nation’s independence must be enforced on British terms. Rejecting a Muslim League push for an independent Pakistan, the Cabinet Mission recommends a united country made up of Hindu provinces, Muslim provinces and princely states. In Paris, the conference of “Big Four” foreign ministers (U.K., U.S., U.S.S.R. and France) adjourns with little progress. The conference was convened in an attempt to normalize the international relationships of former enemies Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Italy and Romania. In New York City, the Irving Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun, starring Ethel Merman as Annie Oakley, opens at the Imperial Theatre. The play closes in 1949 after 1,147 performances.
