Edward A. McMurray, Jr. at the Surrender of Japan, 02 Sep 1945
(Due to scheduling conflicts, our post for “The Man with the Hoe,” Edward B. Payne, and Labor Day, Part 2 has been delayed until Thursday, 4 Sep 2014.)
Edward A. McMurray, Jr., in South Pacific or Australia. c1944. (Click to enlarge.)
Edward A. McMurray did not talk much about his time in the Pacific during World War II. He had a few stories he would tell only when extremely prodded, and would just say that he couldn’t remember much more, though it was obvious that he did. When the WWII Memorial was being proposed and built in Washington, DC, however, he became more interested in his time in the military- though sadly that did not translate to new stories being told- and he even donated money to the Memorial. He was very excited about it finally being built, and wished he could have gone to see it. I wish we could have taken him there, but he did not want to travel once he was in his late 70s/early 80s.
One of the stories he told again was that he was on a ship in Tokyo Harbor the day of the surrender of Japan to the Allies, which ended World War II officially.
The clouds hung low in the early morning over Tokyo Harbor on September 2, 1945, and the harbor was full of ships, including the one that Ed and those in his unit stood on to listen to the radio. The Stars and Stripes, along with the flags of the Allied Nations, were rippling in the breeze over the USS Missouri, on which representatives of the Japanese and Allied powers stood at attention. The ceremony and its broadcast around the world began at 9:02 am.
“Shigemitsu signs surrender” by Army Signal Corps – Naval Historical Center Photo # SC 213700. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 02 Sep 1945 aboard USS Missouri. (Click to enlarge.)
After the Japanese signed “The Instrument of Surrrender,” American General Douglas MacArthur accepted it and signed the surrender as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. He gave a brief speech that included the following words:
“It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn
occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.”
In just 23 minutes, World War II, the “war to end all wars,” was truly over. This date is commemorated as “V-J Day,” or Victory over Japan Day, in the US. (“V-E Day,” or Victory in Europe Day, had occurred on 08 May 1945.)
Edward, just 21 on that momentous day, told how elated they all were to be a part of the occasion, and right there in Tokyo Harbor, after all they had been through the past few years. They were later allowed to go visit in Japan, and he brought home Japanese money, a chocolate set, and a Japanese flag.
He also spoke of how incredible their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty was as their ship finally returned to the United States. It was a reminder of what they had been fighting for, and that now the world was safe. They could return to their lives as planned, though they themselves, would be forever changed.
Notes, Sources, and References:
1) Fold3 HQ- the official blog of Fold3: Japan Surrenders: September 2, 1945. http://blog.fold3.com/japan-surrenders-september-2-1945/?utm_source=tmih&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tmih-sept-2014. Accessed 09/01/2014.
“Shigemitsu-signs-surrender” by Army Signal Corps – Naval Historical Center Photo # SC 213700. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shigemitsu-signs-surrender.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Shigemitsu-signs-surrender.jpg
5) Family photos.
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Copyright 2013-2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.
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“The Man with the Hoe,” Edward B. Payne, and Labor Day, Part 1
“L’homme à la houe (The Man with the Hoe)” by Jean-François Millet – The Getty Center, Object 879, Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The 1890s were a turbulent time in America. The growth and expansion of “The Gilded Age” collapsed with the Panic of 1893, and sent the country into a depression. Railroads, the primary long distance transportation of Americans pre-automobile, had been overbuilt with shaky financing and could not earn revenues to exceed their loans and other costs. Just ten days before the second inauguration of Grover Cleveland, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad declared bankruptcy; three large railways went bankrupt soon after. Numerous banks failed and there was a run on gold. New silver mines flooded the market, driving down the price of silver, and the value of the American dollar fell. The United States still had a large portion of the population involved in farming, but prices for agricultural commodities also plummeted, especially for wheat and cotton, and farmers could not afford to put in their next crop, nor pay workers for planting or harvesting. To add to the economic woes, the McKinley Tariff of 1890 had increased the prices of imported goods by almost 50%, thus causing a sharp increase in prices for all.
Over 3,000 Pullman railroad workers decided in 1894 that the only way to deal with layoffs, wage cutbacks, and the high prices of living in the required ‘company town’ was to stop work. Their wildcat strike paralyzed travel of people and goods, including the mail. Unions were still illegal then, but strike sentiment grew across the country. When Pullman strikers were shot and killed, 250,000 workers in twenty-seven states stopped work at the urging of Eugene V. Debs, who led the American Railway Union. The Army was called in to force passage of mail trains and break the strike. More violence and sabotage of the railroads ensued and at least 30 persons were killed, many others wounded in the strike.
A Drawing of National Guard troops firing on Pullman strikers in 1894. More than 1000 railcars were destroyed during the strike. Published in Harper’s Weekly, unknown date, public domain.
President Grover Cleveland knew he had to make peace with the workers and unions or risk more riots and a worsening of the economic depression. Just six days after the strike ended, he rushed a bill through Congress to create Labor Day as a national holiday to honor all those who toil in our nation. It was a unanimous vote for the new federal holiday.
Continued concerns about the economy, however, caused bank runs and thus more panic. Some estimates place unemployment rates as high as 18.4% in 1894; unemployment continued for four more years above 12.4%. Americans were stunned, afraid, out of work, and could not feed their families or pay their rent or mortgage. (Do you sort of know how folks in those days must have felt? It was as bad as the 2008 crash- probably worse.)
Sadly, we have little of the 1890 census available to compare with 1900, so we could look at incomes, home ownership, etc and compare the two decades. Reviewing at the 1900 census, it seems that more people than usual can be found living in one home- parents moved in with their children and grandchildren (or vice versa) to save money. Rural folks were moving to the city in hope of finding a job and boarding houses were full. The disparity between the rich and the poor was more striking than it had ever been in American Society. Social evangelists worked to alleviate the effects of the depression on the poor, and debates on socialism were common in magazines and newspapers, the lecture circuits, parlors, and universities.
Edwin Markham circa 1899. Library of Congress.
Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940), generally known as Edwin Markham after 1895, had grown up poor as he toiled on his family’s farm. He became a teacher in northern California. Markham was influenced by socialists such as Thomas Lake Harris, and Jack and Charmian London (both avowed Socialists) were frequent correspondents and friends. As a poet, after seeing the French painting, “The Man with the Hoe,” Markham was inspired to write about the plight of poor workers.
First presented at a New Year’s Eve party reading in 1898, the poem was published by The San Francisco Examiner on January 15, 1899. It was picked up by newspapers and magazines around the world- over 12,000 reprints in 37 languages before the computer age- and it made him famous. The poem begins:
“Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world.”
2) The issues involved in the Pullman Strike are much more complex than just lowered wages and layoffs- ‘company towns’ and not lowering rents when wages are lowered, the railroads refusing to run trains without Pullman cars, government intervention in the private sector when national issues are involved such as mail service, etc. See, among other good sources, http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/1912/content/pullman.cfm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike.
3) Note population changes with City Directories as well- look for the address, not just the name, and you may find many married children, often with children of their own, living at the same address as parents/grandparents. Remember too, that these were small houses- we have one family group of 11 living in a two-bedroom house in 1900!
5) I wonder who attended that New Year’s Eve reading- Thomas Lake Harris (who later founded a Utopian religious community in New York and later at Fountain Grove, in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California), Jack & Charmian London, possibly Edward Biron Payne (who later founded Altruria, another Utopian community in Sonoma County)? They travelled in the same literary circles and all had socialist leanings, plus Markham was probably living in Oakland, California at that time. (His move to New York occurred the next year.) We still have not found a definitive link to Markham and Edward B. Payne, though it is highly likely that they knew each other due to politics, geography, and social groupings.
10) An intriguing animation of Edwin Markham reading his poem (apparently from an image of him and an actual recording, I think.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apHsb5Xou-0
11) Edwin Markham image available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c05934.
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Copyright 2013-2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.
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