1945-1950
My paternal grandmother, Corinne Wilson Rawlings, reading to me, circa 1949
I was between the ages of 1 to 5 during the last
half of the decade of the 1940s. I was
not aware of a lot of what was going on internationally, although the word, communism¸ was added to my vocabulary.
The Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, Heber J. Grant, died in 1945. He and the First Presidency and Quorum of the
Twelve Apostle sent a special gift and message to all young Latter-day Saints
who enlisted in the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The gift was a small, brown leather-bound New
Testament and Book of Mormon. The letter
encouraged them to stay faithful and prayerful; if they lived, they would be
living unto Christ; if they died, they would die unto Christ. Dad showed me the letter and books several
years ago. I don’t know where they went
after his death in 2008.
Following the death of President Grant, George
Albert Smith became the Prophet and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. Yes, you can believe
it: I am really that old! I don’t consciously remember these two great men, but
I was alive for at least part of their presidencies.
I do vaguely remember the Berlin airlift from
48-49. Mom allowed my dad to talk about
it around me (she tried not to allow anything she thought would scare me*.) I
even saw pictures in the newspaper. I
remember feeling proud of my country that they were taking food and clothing
and blankets to the people of West Berlin, so they could survive the winter of
48-49.
One
of the most popular pilots in Operation Air Lift was a young LDS officer from
Idaho, Gail Halverson. The US sent WWII planes over Eastern Germany (which as
held by the Soviets) to and airfield in West Berlin. As he was stretching his legs, he noticed a
group of German children standing with their faces pressed against the wire
fence. He walked over and offered them 3 pieces of gum he had in his flight
suit. Instead of fighting over it, the
children broke the gum into as many little pieces as they could and shared. Those who didn’t get a small piece was given
a wrapper to smell and lick. After that,
Halverson never flew his cargo without taking candy and gum for the
children. He attached the sweets to
white handkerchiefs and dropped them like little parachutes. Before he landed to unload his official
supplies, he’d fly over the field behind the fence and wiggle his airplane’s wings,
so the children would know that treats were coming soon. The children called him “Uncle Wiggle Wings.”
Halverson received candy and handkerchiefs from all over the Western World to
“bomb” the children of West Berlin.
It was during this time that we moved from Ohio back
to Las Vegas. In blood type, Mom was Rh- and Dad was Rh+. As a result of this
factor, Mom lost a baby around 1947 when we were living in the motel. I remember her lying on the couch so sick,
she couldn’t lift her head. I decided
she needed eye drops and proceeded to use a dropper we had in the medicine
cabinet to squirt plain water in her eyes. The water didn’t hurt her, but I can
now imagine how Mom must have felt under the care of a 3-year-old “nurse,” bent
on drowning her with “eyedrops!”
Dad found us a one-bedroom apartment on 5th
Street in Las Vegas, not far from Fremont St.
I was still sleeping in my crib in my parents’ room. We had to walk up a flight of stairs to the
apartment. I remember Helldorado in May
of 1949. It was a big western celebration with parades and a carnival. I wanted to go, but I didn’t want to take a
nap. Mom told me I had to nap, or I
couldn’t go. I whined and fussed in my
best 4-year-old manner that I should be able to go to the carnival and not nap.
I remember thinking at the time that it was a very logical argument.! It
didn’t take much of that for Mom, tired of my whining, to pick me up and put me
in my crib and let me cry myself to sleep. Needless to say, I did nap, and I did
go to the carnival!
When I started kindergarten in the fall of 1949, at
the 5th Street Grammar School, I wanted to be a big girl and walk
the 2 blocks to school. I think dad has
a home movie of me in a pink dress, turning around to wave as I took my
grown-up walk (remember: I was still 4.)
It wasn’t until years later, Mom told me that Dad had followed me ½ a
block behind every day!
By late fall, Mom got pregnant with my brother,
Brent. It was considered a high-risk
pregnancy and Doctor Eklund told her she couldn’t climb the stairs to our
apartment. We moved to cute little duplex just off of E. Charleston and 5th
St. This time, the crib was retired for
the new baby and they bought me a set of bunkbeds, which sat just at the foot
of there double bed. I felt so grown-up! Since I was already in school, I
thought that was a nice touch! (Thanks, Brent!)
-----
In
the larger world outside my tiny world
·
February 4-11, 1945 - President Roosevelt, Prime Minister
Churchill, and Premier Josef Stalin held the Yalta Conference in the Soviet
Union. The discussion centered around what they were going to do once the war
was over (by then, it was pretty much of a foregone conclusion that the Allies
would achieve unconditional surrender of the Axis.
Notice how ill President Roosevelt looked. He would die shortly after the Yalta Conference. Winston Churchill would live on well into his 80s and remained powerful and respected. Joseph Stalin remained in power until his death in 1953. He was responsible for the deaths of at least 15 million. Scholars say we will never know the extent of his terror because Russians didn't keep records of their victims like Hitler did in Germany. His death toll was 6million.
We despise Fascism, but we enthrone Socialism when both are pure evil!
·
February 19, 1945 - Thirty thousand United States Marines landed on Iwo Jima. On April 1, American troops invaded Okinawa, beginning the Battle
of Okinawa, which would continue until June 21.
·
March 1, 1945 - American troops crossed the Rhine River at
Remagen, Germany. Two weeks later, on March 18, twelve hundred and fifty U.S.
bombers attacked Berlin, causing Adolf Hitler to announce the destruction of his
own industries and military installations one day later. (On a personal note: Dad
had been furloughed home just before that raid.
I was over 3 months old when he saw me for the first time.)
·
April 12, 1945 - President Roosevelt died suddenly; Vice
President Harry S. Truman (D) assumed the presidency and role as commander in
chief of World War II.
·
April 30, 1845, Adolph Hitler committed suicide by gunshot in
his bunker. Because the Soviets got to Berlin before the Allies, there have
always been rumors that somehow, Hitler survived. It’s a moot point now because
Hitler was born in 1889 and would have to be 129 years old!
·
May 7, 1945 - The unconditional surrender of Germany at Reims,
France concludes the military engagements of World War II in Europe. It is
accepted by General Dwight D. Eisenhower in his role as the commander of Allied
troops in the European theater of the war.
·
July 16, 1945 - The first atomic bomb was tested at Alamogordo,
New Mexico, after its production at Los Alamos, New Mexico (The Manhattan
Project.)
·
August 6, 1945 - President Harry S. Truman gave the go-ahead for
the use of the atomic bomb with the bombing of Hiroshima. Three days later, the
second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. On August 15, Emperor Hirohito of
Japan surrendered to General MacArthur on the deck of a US battle ship Missouri
anchored in Tokyo Harbor.
·
January 10, 1946 - The first meeting of the United Nations
general assembly occurred after its founding on October 24, 1945 by fifty-one
nations, including the Security Council nations of China, France, the Soviet
Union, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.A. These actions would lead to the
disbanding of the League of Nations on April 18, when its mission was
transferred to the U.N.
·
April 1, 1946 - Four hundred thousand mine workers began to
strike, with other industries following their lead. This is important to note because the US
Communist Party was always behind the scenes stirring the pot.
·
June 6, 1946 - The NBA was founded for all you basketball fans
·
July 4, 1946 - The island nation of the Philippines was given
their independence by the United States. That ended four hundred and
twenty-five years of dominance by the west.
·
August 1, 1946 - The Atomic Energy Commission was established.
·
March 12, 1947 - The Truman Doctrine was announced to the U.S.
Congress. When passed it granted $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey to
battle Communist terrorism. President Harry S. Truman implemented the act on
May 22. The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated
purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It
was upon this doctrine that US involvement was based. It referred to the spread
of Communism into South East Asia as the “Domino Effect" which led to the Vietnam War.
·
April 2, 1947 - The United Nations Security Council unanimously
approved the trusteeship of Pacific Islands formerly controlled by Japan to the
United States.
·
April 15, 1947 - Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's
barrier against colored players when he debuts at first base for Branch
Rickey's Brooklyn Dodgers (for all you baseball fans.)
·
April 25, 1947 - Theodore
Roosevelt National Park is established by President
Harry Truman along the Little Missouri River and scenic badlands of North
Dakota.
·
June 5, 1947 - Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposes
aid extension to European nations for war recovery, known as the Marshall Plan,
which would lead to Congressional approval of $12 billion over the following
four years.
·
June 20, 1947 - President Harry S. Truman vetoes the
Taft-Hartley Labor Act that would have curbed strikes, only to be overridden by
Congress on June 23. It is interesting to me that Harry Truman was a democrat,
but his form of anti-communist and socialism would be more a Republican move
today. Our 2-party system has been turned
on its head since then. The breach between the liberals and conservatives gets wider every year and political moderates seem pulled between the two camps.
·
April 1, 1948 - The Soviet Union begins its land blockade of the
Allied sectors of Berlin, Germany. A counter blockade by the west was put into
effect, as well as a British and U.S. airlift of supplies and food, until both
blockades were lifted on September 30, 1949.
·
April 30, 1948 - The Organization of American States is founded
by twenty-one nations to provide a mutual security pact after World War II.
Founding nations were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica,
Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the United States, Uruguay, and
Venezuela.
·
July 26, 1948 - Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the
United States military, is signed into effect by President Harry S. Truman.
·
November 2, 1948 - President Harry S. Truman rallies from
behind, capturing his first president election from the supposed winner Thomas
E. Dewey, the governor of New York. Headlines in national newspapers had
overtly announced a Dewey victory, only to be proven wrong. Truman won the
Electoral College vote with 303 to Dewey's 189, with Strom Thurmond, running as
the States' Rights candidate, receiving 39 Electoral votes. Truman won the
election with less than 50% of the popular votes. The media of the day got its proverbial foot
caught in its proverbial mouth by announcing a Dewey win.
·
December 15, 1948 - Alger Hiss, former State Department
official, is indicted for perjury in connection to denials of passing state
secrets to a communist spy ring. He would be convicted of the conspiracy on
January 21, 1950 and receive a five-year sentence. This shows how the actions
of one man can alter history. The
Soviets Union used that information and information from other spies to
accelerate their own development of the atomic bomb. Quite honestly, I’m
surprised the Hiss received such a short sentence. See today's other post for more about Soviet spies of the 1940s
·
April 4, 1949 - NATO, the North American Treaty Organization, was
formed by the United States, Canada, and ten Western European nations (Belgium,
Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
United Kingdom). The treaty stated that any attack against one nation would be
considered an attack against them all.
·
June 29, 1949 - United States withdraws its troops from Korea.
·
October 7, 1949 - Tokyo Rose, the femme fatale of Japanese war
broadcasts, was sentenced to ten years in prison. She was paroled in 1956 and
pardoned in 197
·
October 14, 1949 - Eleven leaders of the United States Communist
party are convicted of advocating a violent insurrection and overthrow of the
U.S. government. The Supreme Court would uphold the convictions on June 4,
1951.[1]
More later!
Aunt Kath
[1]
All timeline references are from https://americasbesthistory.com/abhtimeline1940.htm
[2]
All information about spies and traitors are from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spies-who-spilled-atomic-bomb-secrets-127922660/
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