April 15, 2016

Oroville Mercury Register
January 8, 1951
Gear Nation For War, Truman Asks, President Presents Costly 10-point Plan To Meet Russ Threat
By Merman Smith
Washington-(UP)- President Truman submitted to Congress today a 10 point program for building U. S. defenses against the possibility of a “full-scale war.” In his annual state of the union message, the President told a joint session of the House and Senate that it would be necessary to build up plant capacity which could produce on short notice arms and supplies “that may be needed for a full-scale war.” “We are preparing for full wartime mobilization, if that should become necessary,” the President said. “And we are continuing to build a strong and growing economy, able to maintain whatever effort may be required for as long as necessary.” Mr. Truman charged Russia, by name, with being the free world’s enemy. He said “the aggression in Korea is part of the attempt of the Russian Communist dictatorship to take over the world, step by step.” “The threat of world conquest by Soviet Russia,” he asserted “endangers our liberty and endangers the kind of world in which the free spirit of man can survive.” The President then outlined legislation he considered necessary to put across “ A big program and a costly one” to meet the threat of Soviet-inspired aggression.
1. Appropriations for military expansion.
2. Extension and revision of the Selective Service law.
3. “Military and economic aid to help build up the strength of the free world.”
4. Revision and extension of authority to expand production and to stabilize prices, wages and rents.
5. Improvement of the agricultural laws “to help obtain the kinds of farm products we need for the defense effort.”
6. “Improvement of our labor laws to help provide stable labor management relations and to make sure that we have steady production in this emergency.”
7. Legislation to provide for housing and training of defense workers and encouraging full use of all man power resources. 8. Increasing the supply of doctors, nurses and other trained medical personnel.
9. Aid to the states to meet “the most urgent needs” of elementary and secondary schools.
10. “A major increase in taxes to meet the cost of the defense effort.”

Oroville Mercury Register
Monday, January 8, 1951
Two More Cities Given Up To Reds Allies Step Up Pace of Withdrawal
By Earnest Hoberecht
Tokyo-(Tuesday)- (UP) United Nations forces abandoned the key Korean strongholds of Osan and Wonju to the Chinese Communists Monday and continued their retreat south toward the Pusan perimeter. Red forces took complete control of Wonju, highway hub 45 miles south of the 38th parallel, after an all-night battle in the streets. But at Osan, 27 miles south of Seoul, the main U. S. 8th Army force moved back out of contact with the Reds. The retreat from Seoul picked up speed over the week end under pressure of a 200,000-man drive down the center of the peninsula which threatened to overrun the 8th Army’s line of withdrawal. Less than an hour after the fall of Wonju, a United Nations battalion surprised an enemy regiment two miles south of the city and killed 200 Red troops, after catching them asleep. When the surprised Reds rallied and tried to out flank the UN battalion, allied artillery and planes chased them off. United Nations forces retreating along the Korean east coast t toward Pusan also had outdistanced their Communist pursuers.

Stu’s Notes:
In 1951 my brother Larry and I, often went to the State Theater on Saturday afternoon, that is if we weren’t fishing or hunting, duck and geese, October through January. I liked to snipe hunt. Don’t laugh, they lived in the marshes, I think, I remember. Their beaks were as long as their legs and they never flew straight. A very noisy bird. Its been said some hunted them at night with a net and flash light. Well this is what a hunter would tell an unknowing friend, he would leave him out there till he felt sorry for him, walking through the marsh calling here snipe, snipe. Is this true? Well maybe, well I don’t know. Maybe Alligators were there too. I never saw one but maybe watch out.