http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/7/20.htm
August 20th, 1945 (MONDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Westminster: Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, condemns Soviet policy in eastern Europe as “one kind of totalitarianism replaced by another.”
HMS Baffin paid off and returned to RN on the Clyde.
NORWAY: Oslo: Vidkun Quisling, Hitler’s puppet ruler of Norway, sprang to attention in the Oslo courtroom today and proclaimed his innocence after listening to a 14-page indictment accusing him of high treason, murder and theft of royal property. The prosecution produced evidence gleaned from Nazi files in Germany, that Quisling had been in regular and secret contact with Nazi leaders before the war. In 1939, according to one document, Quisling urged Hitler to occupy Norway because the people were almost all pro-British. He sat scowling in the dock as the evidence was given.
POLAND: Anti-Semitic riots break out in Cracow.
U.S.S.R.: Baltic Fleet ship MS “T-355” is lost, mined in the south part of the Baltic Sea.
Pacific Fleet ship loss - SKR “Partizan” - mined at Genzan port area (Korea) (Sergey Anisimov)(69)
INDIAN OCEAN: A de Havilland Mosquito based on the Cocos Islands visits Penang and Taiping covering 2,600 miles in a mission which lasts over nine hours. (22)
CHINA: Communist and Nationalist troops clash in northern China.
The Red Army occupies Mukden and Harbin.
Two Chinese junks, manned by seven Americans and 20 Chinese guerrillas were en-route from Haimen to Shanghai when they were attacked by a Japanese junk with 83 men aboard. The 45-minute battle was fought with bazookas, machine guns and grenades and when it was over, the Allies boarded the Japanese junk and found 45 dead and 35 wounded against four Chinese killed and one American and five Chinese wounded. The USN officer in command, Lieutenant Livingston Swentzel Jr, USNR, was later awarded the Navy Cross in what was probably the last surface action of WWII.
From Stars and Stripes:
SHANGHAI - Oct. 5 - (UP) - The United States Navy’s last surface engagement of World War II was won off the China coast by a handful of Yanks aboard
a pair of ancient junks.
The battle occurred Aug. 20 - five days after Japanese surrender - when one Army captain, two Marine officers, one Navy lieutenant and four Navy enlisted men conquered a heavily armed Jap army junk, killed 43 Japanese and took 39 prisoners, all but four of whom were wounded.
The Navy’s first battle under sail since the Civil War days took place on the night of Aug. 19 when Lt. Livingston ‘Swede’ Swentzel, Jr., led a little two junk flotilla out of a coastal town near Hainan, Shanghai bound.
Commanding the second junk was Marine Lt. Stewart L. Pittman. Aboard Swentzel’s junk were Capt. Austin B. Cox, an army air-ground support officer whose necessity to reach Shanghai was one of the reasons for the voyage; Capt.
Pat O’Neill, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and Seaman First Class James R.
Reid.
With Pittman were three enlisted men - Gunners Mate William K. Barrett, Gunners Mate Floyd Rose and Motor Machinist Mate David A. Baker.
The morning of the 20th, while tacking north against a heavy wind, the tiny task force suddenly confronted a big menacing junk.
The Americans spotted a gleaming .75 howitzer which immediately belched smoke and fire, making a direct hit about 10 feet above the deck. The blast killed a pair of Chinese tommy-gunners and knocked out a third and sprayed Captain Cox with fragments.
U.S. Navy patrol planes reconnoitre Indochina and south China coasts. During the missions, Japanese fighters attempt to intercept them.
CANADA: HMC ML 114 paid off.
Frigates HMCS Outremont, Poundmaker and Prestonian completed tropicalization refits at Sydney Nova Scotia, Lunenburg Nova Scotia and Halifax Nova Scotia respectively
Tropicalization refit of HMCS Buckingham at Shelburne Nova Scotia suspended.
Tropicalization refits cancelled: HMCS Strathadam (not known), Victoriaville (Saint John NB), Carlplace (Shelburne Nova Scotia), Fort Erie (Pictou Nova Scotia), Inch Arran (Sydney Nova Scotia)
U.S.A.: Washington: The war production board lifts restrictions on the production of consumer goods.
In baseball the Brooklyn Dodgers play the Pittsburgh Pirates. During the game, Dodger shortstop Tommy Brown hits a home run off Pirates’ pitcher Preacher Roe and becomes the youngest player (17 year, 8 months and 14 days) to hit a home run in major-league baseball.
Destroyer USS John R Craig commissioned.
One of the conclusions I am coming to is that the actual occupation of Japan was a lot like the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles that ended World War 1. More on this when I submit my senior writing project at the end of the semester as a requirement of getting my degree in World War 2 history from “Homer J Simpson University.”
I will proudly display my diploma next to my degree in opening locked car doors that I received from Haughville City College. (Haughville was a “working class” neighborhood on the near west side of Indy where my mom grew up, today it is one of Indy’s worst neighborhoods.)