Saturday, December 22, 1945. Truman prioritizes displaced persons in immigration.

DIRECTIVE BY THE PRESIDENT ON IMMIGRATION

TO THE UNITED STATES OF CERTAIN DISPLACED PERSONS AND REFUGEES IN EUROPE

Memorandum to: Secretary of State, Secretary of War, Attorney General, War Shipping Administrator, Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, Director General of UNRRA:

The grave dislocation of populations in Europe resulting from the war has produced human suffering that the people of the United States cannot and will not ignore. This Government should take every possible measure to facilitate full immigration to the United States under existing quota laws.

The war has most seriously disrupted our normal facilities for handling immigration matters in many parts of the world. At the same time, the demands upon those facilities have increased many-fold. It is, therefore, necessary that immigration under the quotas be resumed initially in the areas of greatest need. I, therefore, direct the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Attorney General, the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, the War Shipping Administrator, and other appropriate officials to take the following action:

The Secretary of State is directed to establish with the utmost despatch consular facilities at or near displaced person and refugee assembly center areas in the American zones of occupation. It shall be the responsibility of these consular officers, in conjunction with the Immigrant Inspectors, to determine as quickly as possible the eligibility of the applicants for visas and admission to the United States. For this purpose the Secretary will, if necessary, divert the personnel and funds of his Department from other functions in order to insure the most expeditious handling of this operation. In cooperation with the Attorney General, he shall appoint as temporary vice-consuls, authorized to issue visas, such officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service as can be made available for this program. Within the limits of administrative discretion, the officers of the Department of State assigned to this program shall make every effort to simplify and to hasten the process of issuing visas. If necessary, blocs of visa numbers may be assigned to each of the emergency consular establishments. Each such bloc may be used to meet the applications filed at the consular establishment to which the bloc is assigned. It is not intended however entirely to exclude the issuance of visas in other parts of the world.

Visas should be distributed fairly among persons of all faiths, creeds and nationalities. I desire that special attention be devoted to orphaned children to whom it is hoped the majority of visas will be issued.

With respect to the requirement of law that visas may not be issued to applicants likely to become public charges after admission to the United States, the Secretary of State shall cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service in perfecting appropriate arrangements with welfare organizations in the United States which may be prepared to guarantee financial support to successful applicants. This may be accomplished by corporate affidavit or by any means deemed appropriate and practicable.

The Secretary of War, subject to limitations imposed by the Congress on War Department appropriations, will give such help as is practicable in:

(a) Furnishing information to appropriate consular officers and Immigrant Inspectors to facilitate in the selection of applicants for visas; and

(b) Assisting until other facilities suffice in: (1) transporting immigrants to a European port; (2) feeding, housing and providing medical care to such immigrants until embarked; and

(c) Making available office facilities, billets, messes, and transportation for Department of State, Department of Justice, and United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration personnel connected with this work, where practicable and requiring no out-of-pocket expenditure by the War Department and when other suitable facilities are not available.

The Attorney General, through the Immigration and Naturalization Service, will assign personnel to duty in the American zones of occupation to make the immigration inspections, to assist consular officers of the Department of State in connection with the issuance of visas, and to take the necessary steps to settle the cases of those aliens presently interned at Oswego through appropriate statutory and administrative processes.

The Administrator of the War Shipping Administration will make the necessary arrangements for water transportation from the port of embarkation in Europe to the United States subject to the provision that the movement of immigrants will in no way interfere with the scheduled return of service personnel and their spouses and children from the European theater.

The Surgeon General of the Public Health Service will assign to duty in the American zones of occupation the necessary personnel to conduct the mental and physical examinations of prospective immigrants prescribed in the immigration laws.

The Director General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration will be requested to provide all possible aid to the United States authorities in preparing these people for transportation to the United States and to assist in their care, particularly in the cases of children in transit and others needing special attention.

In order to insure the effective execution of this program, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Attorney General, War Shipping Administrator and the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service shall appoint representatives to serve as members of an interdepartmental committee under the Chairmanship of the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization.

HARRY S. TRUMAN

The United States and the United Kingdom recognized the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Catholic People's Party was founded in the Netherlands.

Last edition:

Friday, December 21, 1945. Patton dies.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, China, Chinese Civil War, Death, George S. Patton, Patton Slapping Incident, Personalities, Petroleum, Post death visitations by the dead, Transportation, Wyoming (Casper), Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Sunday, November 25, 1945. Taxing war profits.

MacArthur ordered the Japanese government to submit a plan to tax away all war profits.

The Austrian People's Party won the Austrian election.  The Christian Democratic party still exists.

Zionist terrorists attacked coast guard stations near Tel Aviv.

Last edition:

Thursday, November 22, 1945. Thanksgiving Day.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Cartoons, entertainment, Home Front, It was because of World War Two, J.R. Williams, Japan, Joseph Stalin, Rationing, Strike Wave of 1945-1945, Thanksgiving, The written word

Sunday, October 21, 1945. A pink France.

Women voted in a French election for the first time as France chose a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution for a Fourth Republic.

The elections were won by an alliance of the French Communist Party, the Christian Democratic Popular Republican Movement and the Socialist French Section of the Workers' International.

A disaster for French conservatives, the coalition saw the Communists take the most votes, drawing 26.08% and taking 148 seats, followed by the Republican Movement taking 24.91% and 141 seats.  The Socialists took 23.77% and 134 seats.  The pre war far left, the Radicals, took a beating, as did all the conservative parties, given that they had supported the government of Petain.

Basically, all the parties that had not participated in prewar French politics came out on top, which resulted in an alliance, albeit one that was temporarily very much left wing.  Socialist Guy Alcide Mollet became the Prime Minister, with Communist Maurice Thorez the deputy prime minister.

The Fourth Republic would last until 1958, having seen, in spite of its hard left origins, the French effort to retain Indochina and much of its efforts to retain Algeria.

In Luxembourg the Christian Social People's Party won the general election.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 20, 1945. 100%?

Labels: 1910s, 1911, 1940s, 1945, China, Chinese 1911 Revolution, Indonesia, Indonesian National Revolution, Mongolia, Red Army, USSR, White Russian Army

Sunday, March 12, 1944. Derailed.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 12: 1944  Nineteen cars of a Union Pacific train derailed near the location of old Ft.Steele.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

A few photos of Ft. Steele (more are on the linked in site.

Ft. Fred Steele, Carbon County Wyoming

In the past, I haven't tended to post fort entries here, but for net related technical reasons, I'm going to, even though these arguably belong on one of my other blogs.  I'll probably cross link this thread in.

These are photographs of Ft. Fred Steele, a location that I've sometimes thought is the bleakest historical site in Wyoming.

One of the few remaining structures at Ft. Steele, the powder magazine.  It no doubt is still there as it is a stone structure.

The reason that the post was built, the Union Pacific, is still there.

Ft. Steele is what I'd regard as fitting into the Fourth Generation of Wyoming frontier forts, although I've never seen it described that way, or anyone other than me use that term.   By my way of defining them, the First Generation are those very early, pre Civil War, frontier post that very much predated the railroads, such as Ft. Laramie.  The Second Generation would be those established during the Civil War in an effort to protect the trail and telegraph system during that period during which the Regular Army was largely withdrawn from the Frontier and state units took over. The Third Generation would be those posts like Ft. Phil Kearney that were built immediately after the Civil War for the same purpose.  Contemporaneously with those were posts like Ft. Steele that were built to protect the Union Pacific Railroad.  As they were in rail contact with the rest of the United States they can't really be compared to posts like Ft. Phil Kearney, Ft. C. F. Smith or Ft. Caspar, as they were built for a different purpose and much less remote by their nature.

Ft. Sanders, after it was abandoned, remained a significant railhead and therefore the area became the center of a huge sheep industry. Quite a few markers at the post commemorate the ranching history of the area, rather than the military history.

One of the current denizens of the post.

Suttlers store, from a distance.

Union Pacific Bridge Tenders House at the post.

Current Union Pacific bridge.

Some structure from the post, but I don't know what it is.

The main part of the post's grounds.

This 1914 vintage highway marker was on the old Lincoln Highway, which apparently ran north of the tracks rather than considerably south of them, like the current Interstate Highway does today.

The Marine Corps occupied Wotje Atoll in the Marshalls without opposition.  A small U.S. force landed on Hauwei in the Admiralty Islands but did meet opposition.

The Red Army reached the Bug at Gayvoron.

Pope Pius XII asked the belligerent parties in World War Two to spare Rome.

Hitler authorized Operation Margarethe, the German occupation of its ally Hungary, in order to prevent it from concluding a separate peace with the Soviet Union, which it was secretly attempting to do.

Romolo Murri, controversial former Italian Priest and politician, and founder of the political party that would become the precursor to the Italian Christian Democracy Party, died.

Italian journalist and anti-fascist partisan Silvio Trentin died as well.

The Duke School of Medicine’s all-white intramural basketball team secretly played North Carolina College for Negroes’ all-black team.  North Carolina won the game.