The Daily Alaska empire Newspaper, July 18, 1944, Page 1

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THE DAILY ALASKA EMPIRE “ALL THE NEWS ALL THE TIME” VOL. XLII, NO. 9706. JUNEAU, ALASKA, TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1944 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SERIAL RECORD 44 Q | ) | UG12 1Y A GIFT 4 MEMBER ASSOCIATED PRESS PRICE TEN CENTS g 2NAVY SHIPSBLOW UP; HUNDREDSKILLED 'Greatest Offensive of Red Forces to " PREPAREDTO RED ARMIES - SMASH HARD : Hores \ Whole Front Expected fo| Be Thrown Info Vio- | lent Adtivity | By EDDIE GILMORE | MARINE MascoTs sHARE THE RIDE | AMERICANS this picture of Spitz, mascot of the Duke are the best of pals despite KInternational’ CHICAGO, July 18. — President Roosevelt let it be known through a letter made public by Senator Jackson of Indiana that he would vote for Henry A. Wallace for Vice- President if he were a delegate to the Democratic National Conven- | tion, but that he would leave. the | actual choice of a running mate to the convention itself. | The letter, which was long ex- | pected, brings into a clearer focus | one of the big issues of the conven- tion and left both sides claiming The President said that he likes {and respectd Wallace and would | vote for him personally, but “at the | same time I do not wish to appear | in any way as dictating to the con- CHICAGO, July 18.—Vice Presi—;vontiun; obviously the convention| OUTSIDE ST. LO, July 18.—Am- | must do the deciding.” 10J0 GIVES " UPONE JOB, TOKYO SAYS {Gen. Amezu Named Chief of Japanese Army General Staff NEW YORK, July 18.—General Yoshijiro Amezu has been appointed | Chief of the Japanese Army General DRIVEINTO ST.L0. FORT rGermans A?é_Reporied fo 1 Be in Retreat from " | Important Area SUPREME HEADQUARTERS OF | T HE ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY | FORCES, July 18.—The Americans | today drove into St. Lo bastion | through crumpled German opposi= tion northeast of the strategic high- | way hub, a front line dispatch de- clares and the “Germans are in re- treat.” Withdrawal of the German forces | appeared to extend at least to the eastern edge of the rublled bastion, the middle of the Nazi anchor in Normandy. Indications are the Germans did not plan a house-to-house stand on the eighth day of the bitter siege. The breakthrough followed fierce { German night counterattacks at St. Croix. It is radioed from Berlin that an artillery fire and air bombardment is also taking place on the British front, east of the Orne River, near Caen, | Smashing the German lines in a twin breakthrough, the Americans captured the German’s central bas- ticn of St. ¥o and the British and Canadian-troops battered across the Orne River in a powerful offensive on the road to Paris. The drive on St. Lo was sup- ported by a tremendous aerial power hit. BATTLEIS | SAVAGEONE ‘GUAM, LONG IN e GUAM, far Pacific outpost of the United States before its seizure by the Japs the day after Pearl JAP HANDS, MAY BE NEXT ON LIST 3 k] e Harbor, may be the next invasion spot for U. 8. Pacific action following the successful invasion of the Saipan in the Marianas, in which Guam is grouped: ' Guam, before the war a transpacific air stop in the Pacific, S. stepping stone and s 30 miles in length and about six miles wide. (Internationai) ROCKETS . AREUSED ~ il Ground Installations on Rota Also Hit - Jap Convoy Strafed | WASHINGTON, July 18.—Carrier based aircraft hit Guam again on | - ONGUAM Start EXPLOSIONS INJURES AT LEAST1,000 'Munifion V;ss-els Blofi Up at Port Chicago, Near San Francisco ' IMMENSE DAMAGE | DONE, WIDE AREA {Two Coast Guard Boats Also Sunk-Cause Not f Yet Defermined 1 PORT CHICAGO, Calif., July 18. | —Two Navy ammunition ships, ex- Iploding late last night with earth- |shaking roars, killed from 200 to 1650 men and injured hundreds cf others, levelling the Port Chicago |depot dock area and inflicted im- mense damage at the war-booming |port, 35 miles from San Francisco. | One medium sized cargo vessel Ibeing loaded went up in a thund- {ering roar at 10:19 o'clock last night, Pacific war time. A second later, a larger ship, moored nearby, was blown to bits. The ground shook for miles around. Skyrocket Flame One obsefver, a milé ‘away, saw “mile high skyrocket” of flame |leaping out on the night air. | The Twelfth Naval District re- vised an earlier statement and said both ships exploded, instead of one, and also said two small Coast |Guard vessels were sunk by the ;exploslonArofled waters in Suisun iBay, which branches east of San |Francisco Bay. Death Toll Upward | The death toll estimates ranged - NEARST. LO Americansie_ai Back All| | German Assaults-Fight- | ing on 45-Mile Front By DON WHITEHEAD SUPPLIES REACH PIE Gloucester, in the South Pacific, |erican troops savagely beat back a| German counterattack last night, |to hold positions in St. Croix De |Lo, 'a suburb in the outskirts of St Lo, a mile and a fourth from the |center of the city that has be-| come the Troina (Sieily) of the| Normandy . campaign — a bloody battleground over which doughboys have fought for seven straight days. The Yanks dug in along the main highway from St. Lo to Bayeux, }aying & By JACK INNETT WASHINGTON, July 18-—Telling rive in an LCM at a slin construct and, using houses as strongholds, battled to drive the enemy from most of the strongly defended po-| ;smons on the 48-mile front, while| {other units from the north grad- |ually closed in on the city. Progress, though by yards, is gradually closing thé trap on St. Lo and the strategic highway net-| work around it. Whether the Ger-| !mans have fortified the town| proper or plan to make a stand linside the city is not known, but | Staff, taking one of the posts held it is believed that some enemy { by Premier Tojo, a Japanese broud-itroops have already pulled back |south of the city on the only route Amezu was formerly Commander- left open after the locks are made. in-Chief of Japan’s Kwantung army| The river has been closed by Am- (and Ambassador to occupied Man- erican engineers, who are flooding ‘Tojo who is already Premier and War Minister took over the post of | Chief of the Army General Staff in | February when the first in the series | of upheavals in the High Command bridgs on other main escape roads. a minister or an ambassador that he is “persona non gr the diplomatic way “Here's your hat. If you can catch the first boat.” That's what happened in the case | of Minister Hjalmar Procope u!L Finland. The real reasons behind it prob- of you hurry,|a diplomat his hat in just this the attack on Guam, Admiral Ches- £ R — At Blue Beach, Cape supplies for U. 8. Marines ar- ed by Seabees. TTeIIing Diblomal He’; "PersonaNonGrata” Is 1 Hu_r ‘ State Department officials, check- ing back through records and mem- ,Gei Oulf’ manner is among the first diplo- matic records of our relationship with other nations. It was President Washington himself who handed Citizen Genet ably won't be known until after his beret and told him to run along the war, unless the furore raised by [right away back to France. The the order here in some circles good citizen it seems had been causes the State Department or gullty of trying to stir up the the White House to explain more fully. The given reason was “ac- tions inimical to the interests of the United States.” No one ever doubted that Mr. |Procope is by birth and national | war and the present one, his dec- of fighting. . $ laration of anti-Russian feeling It is Troina all over again, where There is no immediate indication that the assignment of the job to ‘Amezu. long one of the most pow- {erful Japanese militarists, means ‘any real diminution of Tojo's pow- The broadcast recounted the Joss- sustained at Saipan and de- |clared that “the real war has yet The broadcast appealed to the | Japanese to “set his Imperial Majes- MOSCOW, July 18. — There is| every reason to believe the Red| Armies are ready to hurl the great-| est offensive of the Russians in| three years, and staggering all Ger—: man offensives in the present war.| ‘ The Russians may throw the| whole front into violent activity from the far north to the south. | 8 (The wording of the dispatch,| through censorship, suggested the Red Armies south of the Pripyet Marshes in Old Poland, may in- 3 deed strike toward the great Euro | CUTE as the proverbial bug’s ear is pean center of Lwow. The Ger-| o) ' gic school at the Parris Island, S. C.. Marine barracks, riding mans, four days ago, ‘reported the| ... o pack” on Duke. a Great Dane who has seen overseas service Russians were preparing for a gerat’ i nis master. Maj. Gen. Clayton B. Vogel, now commanding gen- e sasive.) 5 eral at the Marine base. Spitz and With their back against the E_nst‘ the great disparity in size. > “Prussian border, besides giving " B I0 Pr ir . «Continued on Page Four) }R Roosevelt Declares The Washington He Wants Wallace fo Merry - Go-Round e wanis wallace g | ] [] 5y DAFW g Be His Running Mafe (Lt. Col. Robert S. Allen now on active service with the Army.) . £3 ‘ WASHINGTON — Vice President | Wallace is too discreet to say much about the seamy side of his mission * to China, but inside word, both| from diplomatic reports and from| those who accompanied him, in-; RUSHING To dicates that China continues to be; Allied problem No. 1, much tougher than the American public realizes.| To understand China, it is neces-| (ONVENTlofl y sary to remember the following ]\ things. Millions of its people have s never heard of its President, Gen-| _— eralissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Many | | Climo Ot Mwaame cnans| ROOSEVEI! Letter Taken as v, an American upstart because she H H H Ao s i coummy. he| Dismissal for Vice- people of North China have to use . pidgin English to converse with the PreSldeni people of South China. Chiang Kai-shek’s first wife was Japanese, | and his son was educated in Ger- dent Henry A. Wallace, whose pro-| many. Finally, you are dealing'gress for renomination showed al with an age-old civilization. = It lag after President Roosevelt's mild g moves with the serenity of centur- expression in his behalf, is coming' , les. To it this war is just another to the Democratic Convention to- of many hundreds. lmorrow. 1 Remembering all' this, here are! To his supporters, who put in a| some of the unpleasant but mes-}hurry—up call for him to take over | capable facts which Wallace (and his campaign for Vice President the rest of.us) have to face aboutlpersonally, he telegraphed “I'll be| China sympathetically. {with you Wednesday morning. Strictest censorship in the world Thanks.” i + exists in China. U. S. newsmen| Earlier, Jake Moore, Iowa State are virtual prisoners. Chinese|Chairman, had urged him to come | , guards with bayonets pace in front by telling him that “butters-in” are | of their offices—ostensibly to pro-|trying to confuse the delegates. | ¢ tect them from any anti-foreign Byrnes, Barkley Gain demonstration; actually to see who| Meanwhile, Office of War Mob- comes and goes, and to remind the‘ilizatio nDirector James Byrnes and newsmen constantly that they are Senate Majority Leader Alben | under guard. The New York Times’ Barkley have cut visibly into the | correspondent Brooks Atkinson, support of faintly-praised Wallace | most respected of newsmen, has in a furious pre-convention battle. . ~kept careful notes on everything| Roosevela said the delegates must happening during the past couple|“do the deciding” in choosh?g a ¢ of years, is returning home soon. nominee for Vice President, in a| If the N. Y. Times lets him printistatemem which one official called’ . his diary, it will blow the lid off. |2 “perfunctory dismissal” of the |cast declared. U. S. relations with China before incumbent Vice President. the Wallace visit were bad. They| Roosevelt made it clear that were super bad * * * U. S. Ame-|while he likes and respects Wallace 3 passador Clarence Gauss, a con-|as a friend and personally would | churia. scientious diplomat, for a long time |vote to renominate him, the dele- | was not received by the Generalis- gates will have the final decision. , simo. Chiang was always too busy Expression of the President’s + » * When the N. Y. Times want-|viewpoint was made public in a [ ed an interview with Chiang, they|letter to Permanent qhairman Sew‘ dropped ‘Fleld Marshal General were told he would be busy alljator Jackson of Indiana. | Sugiyama. . summer. Impersonal Letter | Palace politics are carried on| The letter was written in an al- with bitter intensity, with Chinng}most impersonal tone and led some in the middle and with control of [to say that Wallace is “out.” China as the stake. The war lords| At the same time, supporters of around Chiang jockey constantly Byrnes and Barkley swung into ac- |ers. for control * * * They are not in-|tion immediately in an attempt to; terested in Western civilization,|get some of the 250 votes. |es ¥ Western politics—only in Western| It is expected that first ballot weapons. They don’t like Madame balloting may start Thursday night | to be fought.” . Chiang because she is too pro- when Roosevelt is tentatively sched-‘ ‘ (Continued on Page Four) (Continued on Page Three) ty’s mind at rest.” in Sicily the Germans made a great stand and temporarily checked the American advance on Messina. e Hollywood Ador Alan 'DinehartPassesAway HOLLYWOOD, Calif.,, July 18 An attack of the heart and double pneumonia caused the sudden death 'last night of Alan Dinehart 48, stage and screen actor. were a good deal milder than the expressions many of our members | of ongress Cand others are utter- ing publicly. No one could doubt either his great devotion and loyalty to Fin- land. If that led him into any diplomatic indiscretions, it could certainly be understood, even if it could not be condoned by a nation at war with the Nazis, with whom Finland is an ally against Russia and England. youthful United States against Eng- land. There was also the Sackville- West case in the 1880's where that worthy of the British embassy w: German paratroops are battling mherit:.ncel an f’"“'_“"rs{"“; :’:f‘sent packing for writing a letter to for every field in the ro]lmfl‘;’“ tse }c;ra Mca‘?‘”““ “”"F'ff l~; a naturalized Britisher here sug- |countryside, in the bitterest kind|{rSt Phase of the Russo-FINNSH|goqing that Cleveland's election| wou ldbe more favorable to Great Britain than Benjamin Harrison's And the records are full of cases Saturday, carrying attacks on the'ypward from the Navy's official former American naval base for the}.xmtemem, at least 200 to 250 of twelfth consecutive day. |Navy personnel alone, including The air raid followed a twin as- nine officers. sault Friday when both planes and| mppe Navy's estimate does not in- \\'JI'S]?‘l’S were engaged. {clude civilan crews employed Buildings in the bivouac areas gpoard the two destroyed vessels. |were destroyed or damaged by Ships Identified - |rocket bombs. The Navy identified the two de- It is also announced that rocket- giroyed vessels as the S. S. Quin- iring _carrier-based planes struck|qule Victory and the E. A. Bryan ground installations at Rota Island,| 1t is feared almost all (;rewm:xl. |between Saipan and Guam, and di-| Irect hits -were :scored on concens| o ToNVARE o VIR MR tration quarters. (Continued on Page Two) | Navy Liberators, ranging north| last Thursday, hit a Japanese de- stroyer and strafed a 3,000-ton Jap |¢argo ship near Iwo Jima, volcano “i.slmlll, The destroyer, acting as }m(:ml to the large cargo ship and 12 smaller craft, all were “heavily 5 JAP SHIPS - HIT; AITAPE strafed.” L | T { MIGHTY SHIPS ENGAGED | 'RAP HolD | PEARL HARBOR, July 18:7—The! |biggest battlewagons of Admiral " is just|ories for at least 15 years, couldn’t|Spruance’s Marianas invasion fleet| saying, |find any similar case, but handing |have added their mighty guns to |ter W. Nimitz announces in a spec- lial communique, the fir official |word that the Navy's mightiest |weapons are now taking part in the attack | In the past, battleships, cruisers land destroyers have moved in against enemy positions and level- led the sturdier type of ‘enemy de- |fenses just prior to sending ashore the first invasion troops. | ( | BRATILIANS |Nippan CounferattacksRe- pulsed as Yap Is Hit, Shipping Bombed ADVANCED ALLIED HEAD- | QUARTERS IN NEW GUINEA, July | 18.—Five Jap merchant ships were set afire or damaged by roving Al- | lied aircraft, Headquarters announc- ed in @ communique, which also dis- closed that Jap attacks on the | Driniumor battle front, where 45,000 | Japs trapped at Aitape have been |trying to break out, had dwindled to light assaults, all repulsed. ‘Two ships of 4,000 tons each and one smaller vessel were set afire between Java and Timor on Sun- day. A 7.000-tonner was hard hit and a 1,500-tonner sunk off Halmahera JOIN ALLIES, | ITALY FRONT | where minor consular or diplomatic | officials were invited to go home our own as well as those of ()LherJ‘ nations. | WASHINGTON, July 18. — The The case of “Mr. Procope prob-|uprival of a Brazilian Expeditionary ably will turn out to be no mol ® | Force in Naples on July 16 to join than diplomatic maneuvering in our |the Allied armies on the Ttalian greater war strategy, but whether | front was today officially announced it is or isn’t, he and his charming | by the War Department. English wife undoubtedly will have! There are no details made public a lot of friends to come back to regarding the force, size or equip- when it’s all over. 'ment. { | Island, 300 miles south of the Phil- ippines, last Thursday. In two successive raids on Yap, Saturday and Sunday, 65 tons of {bombs were dropped to batter the | stronghold. Eight Zeros were shot |down and two Liberators lost. Aitape positions were unchanged, the communique disclosed. The Japs made three strong attacks, the last two on Friday night and Saturday, followed by two light attacks which were easily thrust back by strength- ened American lines.

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