Showing posts with label Strike Wave of 1945-1945. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strike Wave of 1945-1945. Show all posts

Saturday, November 22, 2025

Thursday, November 22, 1945. Thanksgiving Day.

It was the first postwar Thanksgiving.
Proclamation 2673—Thanksgiving Day, 1945
November 12, 1945
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

In this year of our victory, absolute and final, over German fascism and Japanese militarism; in this time of peace so long awaited, which we are determined with all the United Nations to make permanent; on this day of our abundance, strength, and achievement; let us give thanks to Almighty Providence for these exceeding blessings.

We have won them with the courage and the blood of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We have won them by the sweat and ingenuity of our workers, farmers, engineers, and industrialists. We have won them with the devotion of our women and children. We have bought them with the treasure of our rich land. But above all we have won them because we cherish freedom beyond riches and even more than life itself.

We give thanks with the humility of free men, each knowing it was the might of no one arm but of all together by which we were saved. Liberty knows no race, creed, or class in our country or in the world. In unity we found our first weapon, for without it, both here and abroad, we were doomed. None have known this better than our very gallant dead, none better than their comrade, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Our thanksgiving has the humility of our deep mourning for them, our vast gratitude to them.

Triumph over the enemy has not dispelled every difficulty. Many vital and far-reaching decisions await us as we strive for a just and enduring peace. We will not fail if we preserve, in our own land and throughout the world, that same devotion to the essential freedoms and rights of mankind which sustained us throughout the war and brought us final victory.

Now, Therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, do hereby proclaim Thursday November 22, 1945, as a day of national thanksgiving. May we on that day, in our homes and in our places of worship, individually and as groups, express our humble thanks to Almighty God for the abundance of our blessings and may we on that occasion rededicate ourselves to those high principles of citizenship for which so many splendid Americans have recently given all.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this 12th day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred forty-five and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and seventieth.

Signature of Harry S. Truman
HARRY S. TRUMAN

By the President:
JAMES F. BYRNES,
Secretary of State.

The Hollywood Canteen was open for the last time.

The Rocky Mountain News claimed that the Japanese tried to assassinate Stalin.

 


I've never heard that before, and I'm fairly sure it isn't true.

The paper also informed readers of the death of Gen. Alexander Patch, part of the great post war senior officer die off that followed the Second World War.


And it noted that Koreans were complaining that the Soviets were stripping the country of machinery.


The paper ran Out Our Way.


And there was an advertisement for a pen that you didn't have to fill for a year. . . an advertisement I don't, frankly, believe.


The Reynolds was revolutionary, however.  It was a reengineered Biro type ballpoint pen.

Meat rationing was to end. . .but not before Thanksgiving.


The only thing that remained rationed was sugar.

Last edition:

Wednesday, November 21, 1945. UAE goes on strike.

Friday, November 21, 2025

Wednesday, November 21, 1945. UAE goes on strike.

The United Auto Workers went out on strike against General Motors.  They were seeking a 30% increase in wages and a hold on product prices.


General Motors currently has 162,000 employees.  The actual number of UAE GM workers that went on strike was 320,000.

The Sheridan Press noted the season:


Other cartoons for this edition:


Guatemala ratified the UN Charter.

Last edition:

Tuesday, November 20, 1945. Commencement of the Nuremberg Trials.

Sunday, October 5, 2025

Friday, October 5, 1945. Hollywood Black Friday.

The 1945 strike wave expanded to Hollywood on a day known as Hollywood Black Friday.  The strike by the Conference of Studio Unions would last for six months.

The American Mercury, which became Meet The Press, premiered on the radio.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 2, 1945. Patton relieved.

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Monday, September 24, 1945. Hirohito threw Tojo under the bus for Pearl Harbor. Elevator operators on strike.

Hirohito threw Tojo under the bus for Pearl Harbor.

Manhattan elevator operators went on strike.

It's odd to think of them going on strike.  They were common at the time, and were into the 1960s.  Now, of course, they're so rare that most people have never encountered one.

Miss Dorothy Eyster, an elevator operator at a downtown office building in Philadelphia, in 1943. The occupation had been considered a male one in the United States, but women broke into in increasing numbers during World War Two, although there were female elevator operators prior to that.  By the 1950s and 1960s, female elevator operators were common.  This photograph gives a good example of elevator controls of the period.

Related threads:

Mid Week At Work. Elevator Operators

Last edition:

Sunday, September 23, 1945. A call to arms.

Sunday, September 14, 2025

Friday, September 14, 1945. Strike!

The Great Strike Wave of 1945-1945 expanded as Ford Motors was idled due to wildcat strikes.

Contrary to the universal bliss myth so often assumed about the postwar world, the lid was coming off of labor relations as soldiers returned and wartime compromises, which oddly approached a sort of corporatism that fascist states had aspired to, ceased.  It was flying apart.

The Japanese garrison on Celebes surrendered at Manado.

The Government of Belgium announced a 17,000 man commitment to the occupation of Germany.


Last edition:

Thursday, September 13, 1945. Start of the 1945–1946 War in Southern Vietnam,