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

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Aleutians, Coal, Disaster, Geology, Hawaii, Hawaii (Hilo), Hawaii (Maui), Imperial Japanese Navy, Malaya, Mining, Singapore, Strike Wave of 1945-1946, The Cold War, U.S. Navy

Wednesday, February 13, 1946. Harold Ickes resigns.

Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior since 1933, resigned in protest after President Truman said that Ickes could have been "wrong" in testimony given to a U.S. Senate committee about Truman's nominee for Undersecretary of the Navy. 

Ickes wrote to Truman saying, in part; "I cannot stay on when you, in effect, have expressed a lack of confidence in me."

His overall resignation letter was some 2,000 words in length and reflected a growing dispute with Truman.  Ickes was known for his combative nature.

Ickes had been appointed to the position by Franklin Roosevelt at a time at which the largely unknown Ickes was a progressive Republican.  Under Roosevelt, he was also head of the Public Works Administration.  He'd come up almost out of nowhere at the time as he'd not been nationally known at the time of his appointment, and was already 59 years old.  He was over 70 years old at the time of his resignation.

He also had an unusual personal life.  He'd married divorcee Anna Wilmarth Thompson in 1911, who was just about his own age.  They had one son, and he was the stepfather to her two children by a prior marriage.   They also had an adopted son.  She was killed in an automobile accident in 1937.  His adopted son Wilmarth killed himself on the anniversary of her death a year later.

Ickes and his second wife, Jane.

At age 64 he remarried 25 year old Jane Dahlman, the younger sister of his adopted son's wife. The couple had two more children, one of whom became Deputy Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton.

Last edition:

Saturday, February 9, 1946. Stalin declares war inevitable.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Capitalism, Communism, Crime, Italy, Joseph Stalin, Mafia, Personalities, The Cold War, the spoken word, USSR, War