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The Office of Censorship was an emergency wartime agency set up on December 19, 1941 to aid in the censorship of all communications coming into and going out of the United States. It closed in November 1945. ==Overview== Voluntary censorship by the American press began before the country's entry into the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After the European war began in 1939, journalists began withholding information about Canadian troop movements. The First War Powers Act, approved on December 18, 1941, contained broad grants of Executive authority for the prosecution of the war, including a provision for censorship. The next day President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship and conferred on its director the power to censor international communications in "his absolute discretion." The order also set up a Censorship Policy Board to advise the director with respect to policy and the coordination and integration of censorship activities, and authorized the director to establish a Censorship Operating Board that would arrange for the use by other Government agencies of information acquired through the interception of communications. To effect a closer correlation of censorship activities, representatives of Great Britain, Canada, and the United States signed an agreement providing for the complete exchange of information among all concerned parties and the creation of a central clearinghouse of information within the headquarters of the Office of Censorship. Byron Price of the Associated Press accepted the position of Director of Censorship on 19 December 1941 after being told that he would report directly to Roosevelt and that the president agreed with his desire to continue voluntary censorship. Price immediately began to organize his agency, utilizing existing facilities of the War Department and Navy Department wherever possible. On March 15, 1942, Army and Navy personnel engaged in censorship activities moved from the War Department and Navy Department to the Office of Censorship, where they monitored the 350,000 overseas cables and telegrams and 25,000 international telephone calls each week. Offices in Los Angeles, New York City, and Rochester, New York reviewed films. Radio was especially vulnerable to government control under the Communications Act of 1934. The voluntary nature of censorship relieved many broadcasters, which had expected that war would cause the government to seize all stations and draft their employees into the army. Such authority existed; Attorney General Francis Biddle issued an opinion to Price in early 1942 that gave him almost unlimited authority over broadcasting. As an experienced journalist who disliked having to act as censor, he feared that a nationwide takeover of radio would result in a permanent government monopoly. Price believed that voluntary cooperation must be tried first with mandatory censorship only if necessary, and persuaded other government officials and the military to agree. As the military situation improved, plans for adjustment and eventual cessation of censorship were devised. All restrictions ended on 15 August 1945, and the Office of Censorship closed in November. Price thanked journalists nationwide for their cooperation: "You deserve, and you have, the thanks and appreciation of your Government. And my own gratitude and that of my colleagues in the unpleasant task of administering censorship is beyond words or limit." He posed for a press photograph hanging an "Out of Business" sign on his door. In a postwar memo to President Harry Truman on future wartime censorship procedures, Price wrote that "no one who does not dislike censorship should ever be permitted to exercise censorship" and urged that voluntary cooperation be again used. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Office of Censorship」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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