Word: jap
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Premier Suzuki's Cabinet took control of the People's Volunteer Corps from the Army and Navy. War Minister Anami ordered his Kwantung troops to fight to the death (Moscow said they were surrendering in droves). A Jap torpedo hit a U.S. warship off Okinawa, and Admiral Nimitz ordered the hovering Third Fleet, silent for two days, back into action (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS...
Sixty-two hours after the first Jap offer the vigil, still continued. Then came the U.P.'s false report of final Jap surrender, and in the two minutes before it was denied a carnival din began. Firecrackers popped in Manhattan's Chinatown; searchlights swept the skies over Miami. Bonfires blazed in Pittsburgh...
...When President Truman reported to the nation, the night before the Jap surrender offer, he had the biggest radio audience he has had since V-E day-41,-500,000 (by Hooper rating). His listeners bent an attentive ear when he talked of the new bomb (see ATOMIC AGE), and when he spoke of the Russian entry into the war having been arranged at Potsdam. But much of what he said was immediately overshadowed by the march of events. Still, there were points for U.S. citizens to ponder...
...Navy was first to hack away. Before the Jap surrender offer had become poop-deck patter, it stopped construction of 95 ships, canceling contracts totaling $1.200,000,000. Halted in various stages of construction were the 45,000-ton battleship Illinois, the 27,100-ton carriers Iwo Jima and Reprisal, 20 heavy and light cruisers. (Still abuilding were 167 Navy ships, including one battleship, eleven aircraft carriers; still unanswered: what to do with the partly built battle hulls...
...these, only Okinawa, Truk and Manus are suitable for important naval usage. The Jap base at Truk, perhaps the Pacific's best landlocked anchorage, would presumably be acquired by what Truman called "arrangements consistent with the United Nations Charter." Postwar rights to Manus, an Australian mandate in the Admiralties which the Seabees built into a major fleet repair station, would be subject to negotiation, would undoubtedly entail reciprocal rights to one or more U.S. bases...