While awaiting his war-crimes trial in Shanghai, China, Gen. Rikichi Andō, the former Japanese governor-general of Taiwan, on April 20 kills himself in his prison cell by ingesting poison.
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 Constituent Assembly in Paris on April 19, 1946, votes 309-249 to adopt a constitution for France’s Fourth Republic. A referendum is scheduled for May 5. In the U.S., President Truman asks Americans to live on a low-calorie, European diet twice a week, saying that “millions will surely die unless we eat less.”
While awaiting his war-crimes trial in Shanghai, China, Gen. Rikichi Andō, the former Japanese governor-general of Taiwan, on April 20 kills himself in his prison cell by ingesting poison. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry — a bi-national panel of diplomats, scholars and politicians — issues its report that recommends allowing up to 100,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors from Europe to emigrate into British Mandatory Palestine. The report, however, urges barring the establishment of a Jewish state there.
In the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, some 2,000 representatives of the Communist and Socialist parties vote on April 21 to merge into the Socialist Unity Party. The party’s membership will number over one million, and it will go on to become the governing political party of the German Democratic Republic from its founding in 1949 to the party’s dissolution in 1989. In the U.S., the Columbia Broadcasting System announces that it has successfully tested the transmission of color television over coaxial cables between New York City and Washington, D.C.
Harlan Fiske Stone, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, dies at 73 on April 22. Stone, who became chief justice in 1941, is delivering a dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court when he suffers the onset of a stroke. He dies later that night. In Massachusetts, 28-year-old Navy veteran John F. Kennedy, son of former U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy, announces his intention to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.
The French protectorate over Laos is reestablished on April 23. Piaggio & C. SpA files for a patent in Florence, Italy, for an inexpensive, new type of motor scooter. Inventor Enrico Piaggio calls it a Vespa because the high whine of its engine reminds him of the sound of a wasp (the Italian word for which is “vespa”). Highly acclaimed musical conductor Arturo Toscanini arrives in Italy from the U.S. (to which he fled to escape Mussolini’s Fascists) to conduct a concert celebrating the re-opening of Teatro alla Scala opera house, in Milan. As a condition of his performance, scheduled for May, he demands that all Jewish musicians who lost their jobs at the opera house in 1938 be reinstated, as well as those who had been fired for opposing fascism. Elsewhere in Milan, admirers of Benito Mussolini steal the remains of the Fascist dictator from an unmarked pauper’s grave in a Milan cemetery. Domenico Leccisi and two accomplices mark the first anniversary of Il Duce’s death by digging up his body and passing it to two monks, who re-bury it in a nearby monastery. The theft sparks a nationwide manhunt for the thieves and the corpse. The body is found 16 weeks later and reinterred in a secret location by authorities. (Eleven years later, Mussolini’s remains are dug up yet again, and re-buried at Predappio, Mussolini’s birthplace in northeastern Italy.)
Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, the chief of naval operations, on April 24 orders the establishment of the Blue Angels precision-flying team. Nimitz and other Navy officials say that the super-trained unit and its dazzling displays of flight maneuvers will be invaluable in attracting young and talented recruits into the Navy and Air Force. In the U.S.S.R., the Soviet military unveils two new fighter jets — the MiG-9 and the Yak-15.
The foreign ministers of the “Big Four” countries convene on April 25 in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris to work out peace treaties with the allies of Nazi Germany. In Mandatory Palestine, Jews raid a British military camp near Tel Aviv, killing seven and carrying off arms. The British respond by arresting and detaining 1,200 people over the next several days.
On April 26, 1946, Chinese Communist troops take over the port city of Harbin — the tenth largest in China — without incident as the Soviet Red Army evacuates the city.
Lt. Gen. Shempei Fukuei, tried and found guilty of war crimes at a tribunal in Singapore, is executed on April 27 by an Australian Army firing squad. Fukuei was convicted of inhumanely confining 17,000 Australians and Britons in facilities built for far fewer than those numbers. The sentence is carried out on the exact spot where he had ordered the execution of two Australian and two British POWs caught filling water bottles against rules. Fukuei’s last word is “banzai!” In the U.S., the first radar unit is installed aboard a commercial ship, the Great Lakes freighter John T. Hutchinson.
On April 28, Kazue Nagai becomes the first Japanese war bride to marry an American serviceman. The paperwork permitting her marriage to U.S. Army Air Forces Sgt. Frederick Katz in Tokyo requires 29 endorsements by U.S. military officials up to and including Gen. of the Army Douglas MacArthur. Nagai and Katz first met in a park in Tokyo.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trial) convenes in Tokyo on April 29. Former Japanese prime ministers Hideki Tojo (1941–44), Kiichirō Hiranuma (1939), Kōki Hirota (1936–37) and Kuniaki Koiso (1944–45) and 24 co-defendants are indicted for war crimes ranging from the murder of thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor, to conspiracy “to secure military, naval, political and economic domination of the whole world.” All the surviving members of Tojo’s cabinet are included in the 55-count indictment.
In Washington, D.C., Congress — just two months prior to the Philippines becoming independent of the U.S. — on April 30 passes the Bell Trade Act that specifies trade policy between the two countries. The Act mandates: preferential tariffs on U.S. products imported into the Philippines, a fixed exchange rate between the currencies of the two countries, no restrictions on currency transfers from the Philippines to the U.S., and “parity rights” granting U.S. citizens and corporations access to Philippines natural resources equal to that of Philippines citizens.
In the U.K., a prototype National Health Service is approved by a large majority in Parliament on May 1, 1946. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery is named supreme commander of the British Armed Forces. The Paris Peace Conference concludes that the islands of the Dodecanese should be returned to Greece by Italy.
“The Battle of Alcatraz” begins on May 2 — a three-day siege following an unsuccessful breakout attempt by prisoners at the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay. Six inmates, led by bank robber Bernard Coy, initially take nine guards hostage and capture weapons. Upon their failure to escape, one of the plotters — inmate Joe Cretzer — shoots the nine hostages (to prevent them from identifying the perpetrators) but eight survive. Over the next two days, Cretzer, Coy and one other would-be escapee are shot and killed within the cell block, as is another guard among those trying to quell the disturbance. By the time order is restored on May 4, five people are dead. Two inmates are later executed for their part in the plot, and one receives a life sentence.
