The Daily Alaska empire Newspaper, March 23, 1945, Page 1

DAILY ALAS] “ALL THE NEWS ALL THE TIME” VOL. LXIV., NO. 9917 JUNEAU, ALASKA, FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 1945 A EMPIRE MEMBER ASSOCIATED PRESS PRICE TEN CENTS — | ALLIES SET FOR BIG CROSSING OF RHINE Record Appropriation "IN THE HALLS Representative Harry Badger,| {pioneer Fairbanks farmer, handed out a rush call for speeding legis- lation last night that likely never | |before has been heard in Alaska Legislative halls when he declared, |“Let’'s get down to" work and get | NOI ENDED‘zms darn thing settled. I've got to |sharpen my plowshares and get my Appropriatfi_of $5.631,-| " ™ 822, largest Ever Made, | Finally Agreed Upon The Seventeenth Session of the Alaska Legislature, after a turbulent wake of a night ses- sion in passing the biggest ap- propriation bill in Alaska his- tory, was all set to adjourn this afterncon when pressure was brought in the Senate for enact- ment of labor legislation. That was some monkey wrench in adjournment. The Senate was immediately deadlocked at 3:15 o’clock 7 to 7, on adjournment with two ab- sent. Voting for adjournment were Senators Collins, Green, Rogge, Shattuck, Whaley, Coffey with Walker and Cochran ab- SIXTY - DAY Royal prerogative was to be given | to Representative “Queen” Bess Cross this afternoon in the ad- journment motion before the House of Representatives, the honor being banded over by the traditionally- entitled junior of the House, Stan- ley McCutcheon. House Bill 30, the chiropractor | \bill, met death at the bitter end| of the session this morning when the Senate rescinded its favorable vote. Also killed, by tabling vote, !was Senate Bill 16, the Basic Heal- | |irg bill. The House refused to re-| {cede from amendments to the bill.! Representative Taylor was voted | “Poet Laureate” of the Seventeenth House this morning on motion of Representative Maurice Johnson. Taylor read before the body a comic | Colla pse of Remagen Span ~=and smashed to Golzow, FORCESOF |Germany s KONEVON | Bombed by BIG SWEEP Day, Night Advance Toward Inner|Over 200 Tons of Explos- Mountain Forfress of . ives Every Hour Turns Germany from South Reich I_nfg Chaos BULLETIN-LONDON, March | LONDON, March 23—Continuous | 23 — A German frontline radio |48y and night bombing of Ger-: report tonight said Zhukov's many at the rate of 274 tons or! Russian armies have broken |€XPlosives an hour is turning the | through Berlin’s Oder defenses |Reich into chaos, in preparation for six |the knockout blow from the ground. miles west of the River and Since the big aerial offensive | only 31 miles from Berlin, The [started three weeks ago, Allied radio says the “enemy is using |bombers have hit Germany wh,h; wave after wave of tanks and More than twice the tonnage of the battle is swaying to and ibombl dropped on England since | fro. The report also said Zhu- ‘lhe start of the war, causing ter-| kov may have massed close to |%fic devastation almost beyond ' 100 Divisions along the Oder for |cOmPrehension. However, the re-| the onslaught on Berlin. |lentless flailing of every type of | }mflltnry objective, from the smallest |crossroads to Berlin itself has un- LONDON, March 23 — Marshal questionably made the way easier Konev's new Silesian o!renslve'for the doughboys, General Eisen- Passed By Legislature GREAT PUSH OVER RHINE 15 T0 START Smoke Shrouds Movement of Big Armies Ready for Offensive BULLETIN-LONDON,, March 23-The German radio tonight reported that American shock formations in amphibious tanks crossing the Rhine near Op- penheim, south of Mainz, were “mostly wiped out.” The broad- cast also said elements of Pat- ton’s Third Army made a cross- ing of the Rhine under streng artillery protection and articlal fpg. BULLETIN-LONDON, March 23-Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley told war correspondents tonight “we can cross the Rhine most any- where and at anytime. He is Commander of the Twelfth REMAGEN BRIDGE IN DEMOLITION CRASH—First U. S. Army medics stand by on a collapsed span on the Ludendorff Railroad Bridge across the Rhine near Remagen, ready to aid Yanks rescued from the This Signal Corps Radiophoto is the first view of the bridge which collapsed March 17 The vital span, engineers report- Pontoon bridges are bearing the poem that took in every member | of the lower assembly. The Kodiak | attorney drew a big round of ap-| | plause. { sent. At 3:38 o’clock this afternoon, President Coffey of the Senate, arose and walked away, saying: “I'll see you at 8 o'clock in the morning” and a recess was on. In the meantime, Whaley ask- frolled forward along an 80-mile hower declared. Army group. !from toward the inner mountain | Final Phase Of War lortress of Germany, where Hitler‘s; Allied Supreme Headquarters said Elite Guard men are reported to be |Germany is approaching its flnnli niaking preparations for a finall!phase of the war. Oil production is| | | stand. | | | | | wreckage below. after serving as the first span to funnel Yanks across the Rhine River. ed, would require two years to rebuild with the equipment now available. PARIS, March 23.—Berlin report. ed shortly after noon today that Gen. Sir Bernard Law Montgomery “seems to be ready” for a grand As House and Senate rifts over the salmon pack tax measure |at its lowest level since Hitler's| | ed for an opinion from the At- torney General as to the legality of measures passed. Attorney General Henry Roden said the session ended 60 Gays after it 7aonlinuéd on Page Thiee The Washington widened in the midnight hours of last night's session, droll Repre- sentative Joe Diamond observed, “This free conference committee business won't work. What we need is a peace committee!” | Passed yesterday by the House was Senate Substitute for House | Bill 32, relative to recovery of| stolen property as was Senate | Substitute for House Bill 31 rela- | tive to care of certain dependent traffic across the Rhine at the First Army bridgehead. With swift tank-led rushes, Ko-|forces set out on their disastrous GemmillIsDenied .. Reinstatement; Will DRAFTLAW Resign Immediafely EXTENSION DISCUSSED Merry - Go- Round By DREW PEARSON (Lt. Col. Robert . Allen ncw on sctive service with the Army.* children. i e i Senate Bill 17 was passed, a Com-i |panion measure to Walker's Senate | iBnl 24, raising liquor tax and re- |pealing stamp tax. Number 17 WASHINGTON — Governor Leh-|merely “plugs a loophole” in the man’s UNRRA is doing its best t0|jaw against transporting liquor in hush it up, but a very strangewholesale quantities to the Terri-| V-BOMB WRECKS | SEATTLE, March 23—Lynn J. Gemmill, 41, acquitted in the Fed- eral Court here on March 10 on| two counts of bribery, has been denied reinstatement as United States Attorney of the First Judi- cial Division of Alaska with head- quarters at Juneau. | | Figurés Are??esenied for| Quick Action Before | Recess Is Taken BULLETIN — WASHINGTON |rev's army threatened the five |large Bilesian cities of Frankenstein, {iveisse, Zlegenhals, Leobschuetz ‘and |Ratibor in the Moravian Moun- |tains, and are already reported to !te fighting in one of them and the |suburbs of another. On the Berlin Front the German | |Command announced Zhukov had| |attacked from the flanks of his| |Oder bridgehead at Kuestrin, 38| !miles east of Berlin with strong tank and infantry forces. ! The Germans declared the at- tack was smothered in a storm of German fire, which destroyed 55 Soviet tanks, but Stockholm re-| ports and the American broadcast| from Moscow declared a full-scale assault on Hitler’s capital is im- mediately at hand. it lof the productior |scale crossing of the lower Rhine's | smoke shrouded 65-mile front from Dusseldorf to Arnhem, - Ger- man- targets mwwm by massed artillery’and bombers. Earlier enemy reports said the assault crossing had already started, while Supreme Allled Headquarters maintained a cagy silence, and battlefront reportérs are cramped by security regulations. Main; Far to the south, Gen. George S, road to conquest. As a result of ceasless bombings, oil" output _has_ghrupk from 45,000/ tons monthly, to only nine percent rate at the time| the air attacks on ofl plants began| in earnest last April. ¢ Air Blitz During the past ten days of this greatest air blitz in history, the industrial Ruhr Valley and the vast rolling Rhine plain have been sys-' tematically isolated, from the rest of the Reich and deprived of rail ond highway movement necessary to resist the full scale ground as- sault, When the Germans put 600 air- craft over London in one day back in 1940 it was regarded as a tre- mendous blitz, while today fleets of H 7000 or 8000 Allied planes are aloft, Patton’s Third Army has captured Mainz, with a population of 159,000, and Landau, fortified Palatinate road center. Mopping up operations are being carried out in the chemical capital of Ludwigshafen, a city of 143,000 people. The First Army’s east Rhine front widened to 31 miles when Gen. thing has happened in Greece. A British UNRRA worker was killed, and in his possession were 'found; receipts for money paid by the British to Greek factions. to en- courage them to fight against each | tory without paying tax. House Bill 85, the labor measure | setting up an Industrial Accidnt! Commission was laid on the table, Refusal of reassignment, Gem:nill said, came in a wire from the Office of Attorney General Francis| Biddle, denying “reinstatement even| for a limited time.” | rch 23-The House has passed nd sent to the Senate legisla- tion extending the draft law to May 15, 1946. FACTORY | Moscow reports suggested Konev‘s% {victory in Upper Silesia is paving‘ |the way for a Berlin attack, as the |25 mile breakthrough was celehnt-| jed in Moscow last night by a vie-| |tory salute, and hailed by Izvestia | Hodge's shock troops captured the Rhine factory town of Neuwied, af- ter crossing the narrow Wied River at a dozen places. At Ruhr Basin Tip Seven or eight miles from Bob- and 500 afrcraft hardly constitutes & good sized escort force. Gemmill was tried on a charge! ANOTHER “most important in direction and lenz, the First Army pulled up to other. | The incident was in no way the .way recess hours during the night fault of Governor Lehman or hislpy leading group singing in the! Washington staff, since the Near|poier room. { East UNRRA is under a British| | director. i Here are the so Iar-suppresscy facts as to what happened. The j, UNRAA worker who was killed was |, Y. PF. T. Shepherd, chief °f‘.H NRRA's Greek Mission’s Im./alli-l :nce Division. On the rolls he as listed as “Mister” Shepherd, ut actually he was a colonel in o British Army and had been in| -4 and Force 133, Iy Col. Shepherd joined UNRRA right after the liberation of Athens, | but during the while time up until his death he was acting for British Intelligence, though using| the American flag on his ear. After he was killed, UNRRA of- ficials who took an inventory of property in the Colonen’s hotel room found receipts for; huge amounts of gold sovereigns, {The receipts were dated October 22 to » 29, four days before \the oke in ‘Athens. seipts said: “I have re m Mr. L. F. R. Shepherc bag said to contain 1,00 ereigns.” These receipt 1ed ‘by Greek leaders ¢ royalist and right win ions. The accounts mer i the receipts varied fro eigns to 2,000. Representative A. B. Cain whiled Mrs. Ernest Gruening was busy wi feyo dck session, setting “counter” in the oom.” | ful of the 40 mem-' t of those who were mnference committees ng to find out what gislators were doing. rumors of an im- al session heard in night when the tax le who have seen a re of each other dur- sixty days than they ruening, boosting lib- m with tax bills at the list, Judge W. C. Ar- 1 industry counsel-at- ist), who this session sht the ablest and most battle of his career se tax bills, and Labor h the Governor have ‘st-over-breakfast items tion. “LK QUOTATIONS /RK, March 23 — Closing of Alaska Juneau Mine +y is 6%, American Can FLAG HAD INTRIGUE aer words, all during t when Greek political f: e trying to work out th oblems, a British Colo d as an UNRRA worl ring Greek Royalist facti it the EAM-ELAS gr rad done most of the gt shting against the Germ , Bethlehem Steel 72%, vright 5%, International 77'%, Kennecott 36%, ierican Aviation 10%, New and sandwiches dur- | next sixty days are! 2r Walter Sharpe, whosel conda 31%, Beech Air- | ' Direct Hit Scored in South- ern England-Explo- sion Kills Many of soliciting $3,000 and accepting| WASHINGTON, March 23—Con-| 1,500 bribe from Mrs. Cleo Pa- gressional . opposition to the un ls,-i(-’m Wilkins. | qualified . extension of the Draft ! The jury freed Gemmill after Law dissolved in the face of figures! {deliberating only 12 minutes. [.\Imwmg the need for more than | “Despite the rapidity of my ac- 405,000 inductions between now and LONDON, Marsh 23—A German V-bomb scored a direct hit on a jsouthern England factory recently, {exploded inside the building, turn- ing it into a blazing inferno, it was slature got any sleep;rnnounced Thursday.: Many in the {factory were Killed. | Rescue workers, including Ameri- can soldiers, toiled for hours amid |smoke and debris in an effort to ‘save those trapped in the wreckage, as ‘the crowd, many of whom had Irelatives killed in the explosion, |gathered at the main gate. Many {of the watchers collapsed when they learned of relatives who were killed jor injured. | e Afrocity Of Nazis R_e_porled Fifty ltalian Women amd Children Burned Alive by Storm.Troopers NEW YORK, March 23—Count- ;ess Carlo Sforza said in a letter |from Rome that German Storm | Troopers, before they left Italy, had ~d alive fifty womlen and chil- | | ( | | quittal, the Attorney General's ac- July 1, with prospects thereafter {tion leaves me no alternative except °f & 31 per cent dr |to resign, effective immediately,” present draft rate of said Gemmill 000 men per month. & b | - e | What started out as a well backed | !1novement to fence in the extension | | | | op, from the 135,000 to 93,- | | recesses next Wednesday for Easter vacation. | The House Military Affairs Com- law which is due to expire May 15. Whether the Sitka Trunk Case will |ever get a complete airing in Fed- eral District Court looks more | cent trial of Lynn J. Gemmill, plead WASHINGTON, March 23—War | guilty to a charge of grand larceny. Food Administrator Marvin Jones is She s to be sentenced at a later listed by Senators Hugh Mitchell |ty to a similar charge on Tuesday. North Pacific. | The fourth member of the quartet, originally charged ‘of the draft act, promised to turn} into a stampede to rush it mrough| mittee took little more than two hours yesterday to approve unani- - \ovond Sylvia Wilcox Given Until No pA(lH( 1‘ . L] | TomorrowfoPleain doubtful than ever today as Jean (Cleo) Patricfa Wilkins, who was the date as are the two former military ynd Warren G. Magnuson, of policemen, Herbert W. Hayes and Washington, as an advocate of ex- | Sylvia Wilcox, The Senators conferred with | with alleged stealing of a trunk from |Jones on their proposal that the without strings before the House mously a one-year extension of the government's star witness in the re- | Eugene E. Twisdale, who plead guil- panded fishing operations in the |Ruby Hazelwood, owner of a Sitka United States claim Jjurisdiction |raigned and given until tomorrow at great supplies of marine foc 110 o'clock in the morning to make a | Senator Mitchell said Jons 3 house of prostitution, has been ar- over the Bering Shelf, a sou e of | dangerous to Germany.” B WILLIAMS IS TURNEDDOWN BYU.S.SENATE ‘Allied Planes Bafer En-|. emy Communications in Burma Hard WASHINGTON, March 23—The | Senate rejected today 52 to 36 votes, the President’s nomination of Au- brey Williams to be Rural Electri- fication Administrator, The Senate action came two months after the President submit- ted the name of the former Nation- |al Youth Administration Director to be director of the lending program. Opponents said it may soon reach the proportions of a billion dollars. Some Southern Democrats joined with Republicans in defeating Will- iams, It is the first Senatorial 1 jection of a presidential appointee other than a postmaster, said to be lin June, 1939 when a nominee of a U. 8. attorney in Nevada was turn- jed down. Supporters contended that Wil- liams was falsely accused of having Communist leanings. RIS 4 SPECTATORS SOAKED DON-—Hundreds of specta- | the Sieg River, the north end sal- {lent on a ten mile front less than a dozen miles from the southern lip of the Ruhr Basin. For nineteen hours phenomenal smoke screen drifts, like the trail of INVADED a raging forest fire, obscured the winding lower Rhine Front, from | Nijmegen south almost to the Ruhr, a report from Ross Monro, of the Canadian Press said. Fortified Pirmasens Taken The Seventh Army has captured heavily fortified Pirmasens in the Siegfried Line, while its: Sixth Ar- mored Division entered Worms, ‘which was captured by the Third By JAMES HUTCHESON |Army when it reached the Rhine, (AP War Correspondent) itwo days after a 60-mile dash MANILA, March 23—Fortieth Di-through the Palatinate Saarland. vision Doughboys who invaded |Fanay, hopped across the mile and | |a half wide strait, and seized the | 5 mile long Guimaras Island wnh-lBRI'ISH pum (out opposition, Wednesday in a/ {move to safeguard the shipping NIPS soul"wm Landing at Guimaras, in Philippines Easily Accomplished ‘maras, directly opposite Iloilo helps {to form one of the best harbors and | !teaplane bases in the central Philip- | pines. | troops seized Guimaras Island| CALCUTTA, March 23.—British !southeast of Panay.” | Fourteenth Army troops swept south Meanwhile, heavy bombers lashed | from the Mandalay area in Burma, Cebu Island with 240 tons of ex-|steadily pinning the Japanese is concentrated on Japanese biv- installations in Burma and Thailand, cuac and supply areas. ) destroying 27 locomotives and col- In the vicinity of Cebu City | lapsing six bridges in yesterday’s op- “many explosions and fires were!erations. the fighting started, rd kept on _ stirring . As an UNRRA officer, : tral 23%, Northern Pacific S. Steel 62%. h flome throwers. ans evidently take a plea. AL S TR, ported their views, and p jlo prepare immediately apy Gen. Douglas MacArthur reporvedl ithe Twenty-Seventh island inva- zz,lves for the third consecullvefazainst other forces driving north juffered a thorough soaking |chserved,” a communique reported, and also told of the sinking of lane into the captured port of U.S. Marshal Orders Trans- !sion of the Philippines in a com-| i rom captured Meiktila. Heavy bombing of Cebu Islan a hose jerked itself from a many small craft along the Cebu — e FROM DUNDAS BAY Mr. and Mrs. Horace H. Hach, of nes averages today are as Industrials, 155.45; rails lities, 27.60. on a mission of mercy ontinued on Page Four) ure in revenging mili- on the Italians,” the ] ARL HERE to the Defense Plant Cor: Charles E. Pearl, of Sitka, is a for financial aid in the cons guest at the Gastipeau. of a floating cannery. hands during National Fire de Competitions at headquar- in Lambeth. | Toilo. ! The mountainous island of Gui- . fer of Prisoners fo Smunlquc today, announcing that “in | O'her Pla(es ‘a shore to shore operation our| ‘I ! d,| American and RAF bombers bat- |across the Camotes sea from Leyte, tered enemy communications and oast by P-T boats and patrol|Dundas Bay, bombers. Baranof. are guests at the