Terrorists strike British bases in Palestine; US Coast Guard command transferred

December 27, 2015-December 31, 2015
Location: Government Documents

As 1945 comes to a close, death tolls of the Second World War are still being calculated.

In northern China, there are 46 thousand US Marines posted to avert the civil war between the Nationalists and Communists. In Japan, by a SCAP (Supreme Command for the Allied Powers) directive, the Japanese emperor works on drafting his imperial rescript renouncing his "manifest deity," to be delivered in the new year. Much hope rests in 1946.

The global conflagration culled mankind of somewhere between 60 and 80 million souls, of whom the greater number were civilians. It has been suggested that war--to prosecute it to its proper conclusion--must incur civilians deaths. And who can know those millions of physical, psychological, and economic casualties? Few remained untouched.

News featured in the US this last week of 2015 are borne out of the war: litigation over the relocation of an American air force base in Okinawa; the question of moral and legal responsibility for the dragooning of comfort women--a long-standing thorn in Japan-South Korea relations; declassification of 200,000 French Vichy-Nazi collaborationist records; and perhaps others. Every year there are over 1,000 publications alone on the subject of the Holocaust. The aftermath of the war seems to be forever experienced and examined. For further exploration, consider a virtual visit to the recently designated National WWII Museum, affiliated with the Smithsonian; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, particularly their maps; National Archives World War II Records; and the Library of Congress World War II Materials.

The infographic from the U.S. Census Bureau crunches some numbers on Americans in WWII. More were wounded than died as tabulated here. (As a side note: there are millions more displaced persons today in 2015 than there were Americans who served the armed forces in the Second World War.)

Newsmap. Monday, 7 January, 1945 [i.e. 1946]: week of 25 December to 1 January

Front: Text describes 5 Moscow conference decisions. Maps: Moscow conference decisions as reflected on the global map.
Includes photograph of Ernest Bevin (Britain), V. M. Molotov (Russia) and James F. Byrnes (U.S.) Verso: Reenlistment. List of reasons to reenlist. Charts of income and retirement income for enlisted classes.

• View this map in print in the Map Collection reading room, ground floor of UHM Hamilton Library, the week of 27 December 2015
• View this map online through the University of North Texas Digital Library (http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc837/)

Notes: Newsmaps were color posters issued by the U.S. Army and the Government Printing Office (GPO) on Mondays during the World War II. They combine maps, images, and news from the previous week’s war effort.