Showing posts with label 1946. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1946. Show all posts

Saturday, April 4, 2026

Thursday, April 4, 1946. Hirohito lucks out.

The Far Eastern Commission exempted Emperor Hirohito from war crime prosecution.

Richard C. Miller took a series of swimsuit photographs of Marilyn Monroe.  In them, which because of copyright we will not post here, she appears of much more normal proportions than she would later, which is interesting for a variety of reasons we've already covered.

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 2, 1946. MacArthur bans fraternization, Murray tries for national health insurance.

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Tuesday, April 2, 1946. MacArthur bans fraternization, Murray tries for national health insurance.

General Douglas MacArthur issued the first regulations against fraternization between American soldiers and Japanese citizens as an attempt to stop soldiers from consorting with prostitutes.  The regulations would grow into an extensive program of segregation.

Montana Democrat Senator James Murray convened his Committee on Education and Labor for the first hearing on comprehensive national health insurance.  His concern arose from his prior role as a labor lawyer for coal miners.

Murray had been born in Ontario and was moved to Butte upon the death of his father that very year.  He was left a very wealthy man by an inheritance that came about when his uncle, who raised him, died.

Murray was an Irish American/Canadian Catholic and died in 1961.

It's really dispiriting to realize that national health insurance, which was a desire of the Truman Administration, has never come about.  All the arguments against it really fail, but the opposition to it has left the United States the only major nation without it and has contributed enormously to the decline of the United States as a first rate nation since the 1970s.

Last edition:

Monday, April 1, 1946. The April 1, 1946 Aleutian Islands Earthquake

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Monday, April 1, 1946. The April 1, 1946 Aleutian Islands Earthquake

The April 1, 1946 Aleutian Islands earthquake occurred which resulted in an tsunami that devastated parts of Hawaii, most notably Hilo.  Up to 173 people were killed, mostly in Hawaii.

People fleeing the tsunami in Hilo.

Warnings were given but many ignored them, thinking them an April Fools Day joke.  The event is responsible for a much improved warning system.

Bituminous coal miners went on strike in the U.S.

The U.S. Navy destroyed 24 Japanese submarines.  Seems like a terrible waste really.

The UK made Singapore a Crown Colony and separated it and its mostly Chinese ethnic population from Malaya.

What does Russia want was a question that was posed (from more than one Reddit sub).


Last edition:

Sunday, March 31, 1946. Arresting Nazis, Russia pays up, you have to wonder about Дональд, Field Marshall Gort passes.

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Sunday, March 31, 1946. Arresting Nazis, Russia pays up, you have to wonder about Дональд, Field Marshall Gort passes.

7,000 Allied soldiers served warrants on Nazi officials.  Ausgezeichnet!

The first Greek elections since 1936 took place, with the Communist Party of Greece refusing to participate.  

Russia, as a political subdivision of the USSR, paid its U.N. dues of $1,725,000, under the thesis that the USSR had multiple representation in the UN.

Trump would probably support an effort of Russia not to pay, which was feared at the time, sending the leader of the nation a Я люблю тебя, Дональд note, like he does in an implied way to the current leader of Russia constantly.

What's up with that?

Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort became yet another World War Two senior officer to die following the war, albeit his death was due to liver cancer.


He was a recipient of the Victoria Cross in World War One.

Last edition:

Monday, January 14, 1946. Wartime and Post War foodstuffs.

Monday, March 23, 2026

Saturday, March 23, 1946. Marilyn Monroe and the Wedding Industrial Complex. Truman warns Stalin, and holds up testing the bomb. No public necking in Japan.

A really interesting Richard C. Miller photograph of Marilyn Monroe was taken, which we learned of due to Reddit's 80 Years Ago Sub, and which we repost here via fair use.



Miller had "discovered" Monroe, who was already modeling following her photo spread in World War Two's Yank.  Miller, typical for the era, photographed her in swimsuits, including bikinis (very modest ones by today's standards), but also  had a an entire series of other topics, including the subject shooting firearms.  Here he depicted her in a wedding dress.

The real life model had already been married and divorced by this time, having married at age 16 and then filing for divorce while her husband was deployed in the Navy during the Second World War.  This photograph is actually commonly claimed to be a wedding photo from her first marriage, which it is not, although the veil is remarkably similar to the one she actually wore in her wedding.


Actual photograph of Monroe at her first wedding, when she was 16 years old.

In the studio photograph she's holding some sort of book with a Christian cross on it, with that style of cross depiction very common for the era.  This is what causes us to note this photograph in a way, as it brings up the topic addressed here:

The Wedding Industrial Complex

Notes from the Spesia Underground


A really interesting episode.

This really fascinating look at modern weddings brings up a whole host of things we routinely discuss here, including agrarianism and subsidiarity.  The episode from Catholic Stuff You Should Know points out the extent that weddings were, at at the time the photo of Norma Jean was taken above still remained, community affairs and not big bride focused shows.

We've lost a lot here.

And we really need to recapture it.

While indelicate, this also shows the portrayal of a really beautiful woman before Playboy perverted all of that.

Monroe was, as is well known, Playboy's first, and unwilling, centerfold.  But what's interesting here is that prior to Playboy arriving on the scene, this was not an uncommon depiction of a really beautiful woman.  There were, of course, already some women who were focused on for being really busty, Jane Russell giving an example, but the theme did not absolutely dominate.  To look at the 19 year old Monroe here, you would not have thought of her in that fashion.  A decade later, you would, and even after Life intervened to push her nude photograph first as an art item.  We've dealt with that before here as well, although frankly we need to modify our entry.  That post is here:

Appearance. Shape and being in shape and women (men will come next).

Also posted via fair use, Colliers had an article on keeping everyone employed year around, showing how times were in fact changing.

We've looked at that here too.

Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two

Truman presented an ultimatum to Stalin demanding the Soviets comply with the agreement to pull their troops from Iran.

The Rocky Mountain News was a morning paper, so they didn't catch that, but they did catch something else that Truman had ordered the day prior.



The Army issued an order prohibiting soldiers from engaging in public displays of affection with Japanese women.


Out Our Way's gag was based on cleaning out the ash bin of a stove, something that's likely completely lost on modern readers.


Argentina extended its claims over Antarctica.

Mad King Donny must not be aware of this or we'd be staking a claim.

Indonesia Tentara Republik Indonesia (Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia) evacuated Indonesian citizens from the city of Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, after which the area was burned to avoid its use by the Dutch.

Commemorated as the Bandung Sea of Fire and a great patriotic act, poor people really don't have much of a say in things like this.

Last edition:

Friday, March 22, 1946. First U.S. rocket to escape the atmosphere.

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Friday, March 22, 1946. First U.S. rocket to escape the atmosphere.

The U.S. Army made the first successful out of atmosphere rocket launch by the U.S.

The rocket, a Bumper-WAC was a two staged rocked based on the German V-2.


Transjordan and the UK signed the Treaty of London giving Transjordan its independence with the UK retaining military bases in the country.

Cardinal Clemens von Galen, the great Catholic German cleric, died at age 68 from appendicitis.  He had only been made a cardinal the prior month.  He had been a fearless opponent of the Nazis.  To some degree, it's hard not to put him in the category of men who died shortly after World War Two after having struggled so mightily during it.

Von Galen is sort of a model of our own time.  He was very German but loyal to higher things.  He came from German nobility but served the Church, and he wasn't afraid to confront the barbarity of the Nazi regime.

Last edition:

Thursday, March 21, 1946. The Strategic and Tactical Air Commands created.

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Thursday, March 21, 1946. The Strategic and Tactical Air Commands created.

The Strategic Air Command and the Tactical Air Command were created.

Shoulder patch of the United States Army Air Forces Strategic Air Command.

SAC therefore predates the Air Force as an independent branch of the military.



And so does TAC, which has been inactive since 1992, when it was merged into SAC.

I've been meaning to do a post on reorganization of the U.S. military, which the illegal war on Venezuela and King Donny's War shows to be a desperate need, but I haven't gotten around to it.

The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure went into effect.

French forces engaged in the The Battle of Thakhek in Laos, allowing the French to reestablish themselves in that portion of French Indochina.

Kenny Washington became the first African American to sign with a professional football team since 1933.

Last edition:

Wednesday, March 20, 1946. Tule Lake closes but its residents struggles continue.


Friday, March 20, 2026

Wednesday, March 20, 1946. Tule Lake closes but its residents struggles continue.

The final adjudication of the cases of Japanese internees who had renounced their citizenship during World War Two concluded, resulting in the closure of Tule Lake War Relocation Center.  The litigation reversed their loss of citizenship, but the Justice Department would reverse that.  It would take until the 1960s for their citizenship to be restored.

Almost all of those who had renounced their citizenship had recanted, and for that matter not all of the renunciations were genuine.

There were two air disasters in the news:



26 DIE IN C-47 CRASH; AB-29 FALLS WITH 7; Army Plane Explodes in Sierras, Lost 'Superfort' Is Found South of San Francisco


Last edition:

Saturday, March 16, 1946. Route 66. George Mikan turns pro.

Monday, March 16, 2026

Saturday, March 16, 1946. Route 66. George Mikan turns pro.

Route 66 was recorded for the first time, the introductory edition of the Bobby Troup work by Nat King Cole.


Troup was a songwriter and actor, married to actress Julie London

London and Troup in Emergency, a nighttime television drama of the 1970s.

He was also a graduate of Wharton, which produced the unfortunate Trump and Gray, but that's another matter.  He served in the Marine Corps in World War Two, by which time he was already a songwriter. The war did not really interrupt his songwriting.

Route 66 was an absolute masterpiece, and has been recorded an innumerable number of times, and was even used for the basis of a television series that ran from 1960 to 1964.

In some very real ways, Route 66 symbolized the post war world and its sense of youth, indicability, and automotive freedom.

Route 66 itself was one of the original U.S. Highways of the United States Numbered Highway System.  It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year.  It became a huge factor in Depression Era migration to California, which makes the way its nostaglically remembered somewhat ironic, but as 

College basketball player George Mikan, who was hugely popular turned pro.


He was a great player, and notably played with glasses.  He struggled with diabetes in his final years, which focused attention on the plight of pre big money players.


He died in 2005 at age 80, a basketball great.

The Rocky Mountain News focused again on gambling.


An intersting service was being offered:


A tryst with a German Madchen went rather poorly.


To popular one panel cartoons of the day:



Last edition:

Friday, March 15, 1946. Soviets in Iran.