The Daily Alaska empire Newspaper, May 18, 1945, Page 1

PLOT Jap De . THE DAILY ALASKA EMPIRE “ALL. THE NEWS ALL THE TIME” VOL. LXV., NO. 9965 PRICE TEN CENTS JUNEAU, ALASKA, FRIDAY, MAY 18, 1945 MEMBER ASSOCIATED PRESS e 3 DEFENSES REPORTED (RUMBLING Daily Raids Will Be Made| on Nippon Empire In- dustrial Sections By Leonard Milliman (Associated Press War Editor) { Banazi charges, led by officers in full dress, indicated today the stub- born Japanese defenders were be-; ginning to crack on Okinawa, 325 | miles south of Japan, al on Min- danao in the southern Philippines. In general, however, the enemy | yieldeu slowly on both islands. { The see-saw battles in the pos- sible invasion sector of the North Shina coast, west of Okinawa, saw the Chinese recapture Wuyi. The town is several hundred miles north | of the port of Foochow which| Chinese troops reentered and lost | again to reinforced Japanese with- in the past week. | Sea Forces Attacked Japanese planes continued their attacks on U. S. Okinawa sea forces while Tokyo radio prepared | the Nipponese at home for the loss of the strategic island to “ex-; tremely severe and concentrated” American ground attacks that!| threatened to crumble the three, strategic defense strongholds. 1 Enemy aerial sweeps caused no damage, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz reported. Enemy broadcasts claimed a carrier was sunk and three other ships damaged. Raids To Be Daily | American air attacks, which Sec-| retary Patterson .said would con- tinue “almost daily strikes against | Japanese industry,” have virtually | (Continued on Page Eight) ————-— The Washingloné Merry - Go-Round | | | i By DREW PEARSON |- (Lt. Col. Robert S. Alien now om active service with the Army.) | our | WASHINGTON — Watching DRIVES ON 'IKE’ HEARS ABOUT NAZI ATROCITIES THE EXPRESSION of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower plainly reflects his reactions as he listens to an ex-slave laborer’s account of the brutal and inhuman crimes perpetrated on civilians at the German congentra- tion camp at Ohrdruf. The supreme allied commander visited the camp while on a tour of the Third Army front, ‘{q;qflwtinml) SINGAPORE IS SENT DOWN 6O DEEPER BY TROOPSHIP Nips Much Concerned Over | Giant Liner Queen Mary Soviet Attifude Toward | CutsBattle Craftin Half Pacific Struggle | -Belated News | | I | ;er. CRUISER AIRMEN OF ALEUTIANS SINK SHIP Jap Craft Sent Down af Ka- taoka Naval Base in ! Kurile Islands ; ELEVENTH AIRFORCE HEAD-| | QUARTERS, ALEUTIANS, May. 17 | —(Delayed)—Army airmen sank a| Japanese vessel tentatively identi- fied as an escort destroyer or & small cargo ship Wednesday ati| Kataoka Naval Base on Shumushu | Island in the Kuriles, where on| May 11 they surprised an enemy S ! . convoy and accounted for six cargo | and escort craft sunk or damaged. Liberator bombers scored three | hits on the ship and it sank im-| mediately. A second flight of B-24's bombed‘ a 6,000-ton cargo ship off Kasha- | wabara, but results were undeter- mined due to a smoke screen. Fleet Air Wing Four search; planes Tuesday damaged two armed | trawlers and two fishing boats off Kokutan Cape, northern Shumushu, | with rockets. T GoldSeandal. | hourly. dislodge Jap_ snipers. ' Is Revealed GRUENING From China pROTESTS | T0O ARMY ‘Foreign Minister Soong Promises Punishment Governor Questions War l ‘ fo Be Drastic Q Department Point i System Ruling By James D. White (Associated Press War Correspondent) WASHINGTON, May 18 — De- JAPS THREW IN FRESH RESERY] powerful American offensive that had reached the outskirts of Naha, capital of strategic Okinawa Island. ' Naha is a shell blasted and heavily mined city. Pictured is a section of Naha showing Marines advancing cautiously toward a building set afire to U. S. Aircraft 'Grr'ieflr, Charred, Battered Back _Home from Pacific War and laid down Enemy defense was By Pope Haley | | ; (Associated Press War Correspondent) WASHINGTON, May 18 — The | Aircraft Carrier Franklin, which | miraculously survived one of the | severest ordeals of this or any war, | is home. | She came home, sadly crippled |but under her own power, her ichan'c(l and battered hull manned |by a skeleton crew of survivors. | Now undergoing repairs at the 'Bmoklyn ‘Navy Yard, she will re- | sume her place in the war against | Japan. Until now Japanese radio propa- | gandists never knew how close they icame to being right when they thunderous artillery barrages in Fresh Jap Units Battle in Naha Line an effort to halt a reported growing more desperate (International) BIGFIVES VETOVOTE ~ SORESPOT 'Small Nation Opposition af | Conference May Re- sult in Modification | By John M. Hightower (Associated Press Diplomatic News Editor) | SAN FRANCISCO, May 18—The outspoken opposition of many small | nations to the big-power plan for |a veto control of future peace- | keeping machinery today nears a! United Nations Conference test| vote. | | It appears possible .that the big powers—the United States, Russia, By Leonard Milliman (Associated Press War Editor) . Tokyo worried today over Ameri- commands reported the deepest LONDON, May 18—The British tails of a multi-million - dollar |cruiser, HMS Curacao, cut in half Chungking “gold scandal” involving !by the giant lines Queen Mary speed- !yellow metal loaned by this coun- ing to elude a German submarine, !y, are coming to light here de- 1can fleet movements, while British sank in the Atlantic ocean on Octo- SPite a tight Chinese censorship. ber 1, 1942, with a loss of 338 officers| The scandal stemmed from pre- diplomatic relations close-up, both|qjaches yet made in the campaign and men, the Admiralty announced mature leak of a Chinese Govern- in San Francisco and Washington, |, regain Singapore, base for one ioday. leads to the unmistakable conclu-|,¢ the largest remaining segments | sion that the most important prob- lem this country faces—more im- of Japan’s broken fighting and merchant fleets. {ment decision in March to raise y | i An eyewitnesé declared the big the 9mcml prlce_ of gold, thus per- trcop transport “simply lramplcd"‘mm‘“g Chungking specglntm's to 'the 4,200-ton cruiser, which had a make fantastic profits in a few ANCHORAGE, Alaska, May 18— Gov. Ernest R. Gruening said yes- terday he was protesting to the War Department against a_ ruling under which Alaskans serving in the armed forces in Alaska were not given overseas credit under the Army point system He termed the ruling “a mani- China, Britain and - France—may accept some modification of the veto where peaceful settlement of | disputes is concerned, ulthougn‘ Russia could block this. But they all stand firmly on the proposal "boasted that the 27,000-ton vessel | of the Essex Class had been sunk.' Without the incredible stamina and strength built into her and without | the superhuman courage of her personnel, their claim might easily ! s Y that no force should be used against :hu\.e Deen G 1nny nation except when all five | As it was the carrier suffered 832 agree. Battle Of The Veto Prospects are that on a show- | men killed and missing and more | than 270 wounded—more than one- portant than any domestic or war | There was increasing interest in'normal complement of about 400 hours. fest injustice” and urged that Al- third her total complement — in down the powers can put over the problem—is our relations Russia. Russia is now on the road to beécoming the most powerful na-| tion in Europe and Asia, and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. Half a billion Chinese, plus one- third billion Indians, restless under British rule, are certain to gravi- tate to Russia; European countries of Czechoslo-| vakia, Austria, Poland and mc} Balkans. The United States, meanwhile, is bound to become the rallying na- tion for western civilization—Great Britain, Latin America, France, Holland, the Scandinavian coun- tries. | There will be two powerful blocks.}’ The question is: Will they drift into war 10 or 20 years from now? If the toboggan once starts, no power on earth can prevent war. The time to stop it is now. And: already our relations with Russia | have reached the low level of diplo- matic nose-thumbing and caustic note-writing which augurs ill for | the future. No peace machinery constructed at San Francisco can stop |this toboggan once it starts. The hasic theory of the San Francisco Con- ference is that big nations shal. be | free to do what they please. No! real machinery is even conlem-| plated to stop the war betweef big nations—except their own cofimon sense. And already the big ,j‘:ions at San Francisco have |shown! themselves unable to settle their own disputes. el With this alarming situation in| mind, this columnist' proposes to| diagnose the entire tangled skein of our Russian relations. Some of goat, s S R W (Continued on Page Four) also the middle-| With | Russia’s attitude toward the Pa- men. cific, although there was nothing to contradict a repeated Japanese; | broadcast that the Mikado’s Em- ire is maintaining “completely friendly relations with the Soviet { Union.” Russian Attitude Moscow newspapers prominently displayed a letter from the people of the Soviet portion of Sakhalin Island, north of Japan, “on the| Day of the Twentieth Anniversary, of the Liberation of Northern Sak- | i} Dr. T. V. Soong, Chinese Foreign Minister, took note of the incident |late yesterday by authorizing the |statement to a reporter that drastic punishment awaits those involved. Soong declined further comment, however, explaining he has not yet | learned the results of an investiga- The accident was considered one of the worst British naval disasters of the war. PRISONERS GIV askans serving in the Aleutians, the Alaska Peninsula and Bering Sea points e given overseas credit. These areas, he contended, were as much “overseas” for Alaskans as for any other service men. “After all,” he said, *“Alaskans are serving in the only part of the blazing, agonizing hours. Armor-Piercing Bombs Chance played into the hands of the lone enemy dive bomber that sneaked suddenly out of the clouds within 60 miles of the Japanese coast on the morning of March 19 in- and dropped two 00-pound armor- tion he ordered just before leaving Chungking last month for Wash-, ington and the San Francisco " DEPUTY TROUBLE | dividing Western Hemisphere actually vaded by the Japanese.” He sug- gested the 154th Meridian be the line for Alaskans, with piercing bombs. voting formula as they want it with the argument that unless they stick together on great international |issues of the future no peace-keep- 'ing league can hope to prevent war. As the battle of the veto builds| up in one of the key committees, | here are other top conference de- | velopments: Released from low altitude, both | 1—Considerable support, appar-| scored direct hits. One expludedll’"”)’ enough to put it over, is 'ON WAY SOUTH United Nations Conference. But, from his office here it was! learned that: | those living west of it gaining over- |beneath the flight deck, on which | |armed planes were ready for take- ANCHORAGE, 'Alaska, May 18— s tor service east of the o “mpe other went off on the forming behind an Australian pro- posal to pledge the United Nations | to respect each other's territorial | On March 28, the official price of - e hangar deck, where other planes'iimegrlly and political independ- halin from the Japanese Invader.” A Ketchikan dispatch to the Times Southern Sakhalin belongs to the yesterday said U. S. Deputy Mar- Japanese. The letter pledged con- |shal Willlam Bouwens, in charge tinued efforts toward “Strengthen- of 11 prisoners bound for, the states, ing the defensive power of Soviet {had a double headache--one pris- gold in China was raised from 20,000 Chinese. dollars an ounce to 35000 dollars. (The American price is $35 an ounce.) Because information of the im-| Ifalian Press in fueled and armed, were waiting to |be taken to the flight deck. | The attacking plane was shot jdown a moment later, but the ience, 1 : Risk Russian Rift | 2—The American delegation and | probably others are about ready to Sakhalin.” ; Paris radio quoted British diplo- oner refused to eat and another wouldn't stay put. pending increase leaked, speculat- jors and “insiders” made a financial Sharp Resenfment | bombs exploding where they did, ‘risk a rift with Russia, if neces- | |started a train of fires and ex- sary, by going ahead with a United | plosions which for hours were to |States formula for giving regional imuts as saying “Russia might join | One man, identified as a con- the war by first addressing an victed pick-pocket, shed his hand- ultimatum to Japan, demanding cuffs, picked the lock on the state- complete surrender and abandon- room door and was free for half ;killing by acquiring gold at the old price. The buying wave was said to have at least doubled a normal day’s transactions in the metal. At Frerfl Proposa ROME, May 18—The Italian press bend and torture the vessel. Many Explosions Explosion after explosion lowed the initial blasts. fol- Large | ment of continental conquest Japs Step Up Defenses Japanese broadcasts reported in- creasing home defense measures, | including the streamlining of the; Tokyo police board for this pur-| | pose, as it warned that a “power- ful Allied fleet” leaving the Mari- anas Islands “requires rigid watch- ing.” Extent of Japan's defenses was indicated by a report from| Mustang fighter pilots that !hay' found Tokyo's Atsugi Airfield loaded with planes despite o peated strikes at Japan's air re-! sources. Thirty-two were knocked' an hour on the ship taking the men Some of the gold involved had ! 1 .kM?N"“ v 'ghc PUDBET | poen flown to China as a part of ;‘h“ O o oth men wore coni® $300,000,000 loan to help stabilize ompson. Both men were cON-{ohings inflated currency. | victed here. LT fhg gk b 01y NS I e sl ESKIMO JOE BILL . FALSE ALARM gave a hostile reception today 1o pombs exploded and hurled men the reported statement by a French and planes the length of the ship. Foreign Office spokesman that| The whole after-end of the France would seek an adjustment vessel's flight deck became a mass of her frontiers at the future peace of flame and smoke. Airplanes dis- conference. integrated, and torrents of burning The independent newspaper Momento, asserting that such a Bombs, rockets and bullets exploded PLEADS INSANITY 10 TOT SLAYING SEATTLE, May 18—Joe Bill, 33, Eskimo formerly of Nome, Alaska, oal ‘slared_ listlessly at the floor today The Admiralty in London an- 25 his court-appointed attorneys nounced British warships and air- | entered an insanity plea to a first craft sank a 10,000-ton Japanese | degree murder charge for the re- rulser Wednesday in Malacea|CeRt brutal rape-slaying of five- *‘(Contiyx1ted on Page Two) \Vincent De Paul Salvage Depot. \ —_|year-old Irene McGough at the st.| DENVER—Manuel Martinez, 60, ¢rant would sow new “explosive was cleaning his kitchen when a hatred,” said: gas hot-plate toppled from its, “If this is the spirit destined to moorings and hit the floor with a | triumph in Europe the San Fran- smash. cisco Conference might as well ad- As Martinez whirled about, the|journ and the hundreds of good rays of a brilllant sunset caught men gathered there spare them- him full in the face. Almost blind, selves further work.” Martinez concluded there had been - an explosion. His cry for help MR., MRS. MALONY HERE brought five companies of firemen K and two squads of policemen. Mr. and Mrs. John F. Malony They helped him set his stove have arrived from Seattle and are back up. |guests at the Baranof Hotel. all around, and splinters of wood |and steel rained on survivors hugg- ing the deck. | But, without panic, those who . miraculously had escaped death or injury and the slightly injured moved in to fight the fire. Among those especially cited by the Navy’s account was the ship's | Chaplain, Lt. Comdr. Joseph O'Cal- lahan, Boston, whose actions brought from one of the ship’s (Continued on Page Two0) |groups of nations the right to or- |ganize for their mutual defense in | jevent the world league fails to pro- | * (Continued on Page Five) Russian War Bride | ANDIMESHK, Iran — Comely Ta- tiana Ostapenko is the first Russian wife of an Allied officer to be grant- ed a passport from the Soviet Union. A former actress and singer, she is |married to Maj. John F. Waldron, | South Orange, N. J., a Medical corps officer who went to Moscow in 1941 { with the American Military Mission. ‘They have a son, seven months old@ { Maj. and Mrs. Waldron met in Moscow in 1942 during the German blitz. She and the baby recently {Jjoined him at this Persian Gulf | command post. . Is Given Passport 11 gasoline streaked across her decks. | T0 KILL EISENHOWER REVEALED fenders Are Cracking On Okinawa PICKED GANG 'WAS 0UT 10 * KILL GENERAL | Scar-faced Polifical Kid- | naper, Other Germans Involved Captured By Tom Ochiltree (Associated Press Correspondent) Lt. Col. Otto Skorzeny, the scar- faced political kidnaper, and a picked gang of English-speaking {Nazi assistants plotted last winter |to kill Gen. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Headquarters disclosed to- day. Now in American hands, the six- ifoot-four Skorzeny and his group of German soldiers had kept the entire western front in a stage of alert for months during and after the Ardennes Battle. Skorzeny, a hatchetman for Ges- tapo Chief Heinrich Himmler, was captured rvecently by the Fifteenth Regiment, U. 8. Third Division, in the Arl Valley. Plot Is Hatched The plot agajnst the life of the Supreme Allied Commander was hatched months before the German attack in the Ardennes. Setting up a special school near Berlin, the Nazis enrolled ' German soldiers who spoke English either with an American or British accent. After weeks of training by the SS, the men were weeded down to a bat- !talion headed by Skorzeny, who was appointed by personal orders of Adolf Hitler and Himmler. Skor- zeny himself was believed to have been elected to kill Eisenhower. In American Uniform Special small groups of Germans in American uniforms were sent deep into rear areas with missions to commit major sabotage and ass- assinate key American Generals. ‘The capture and rigid questioning of some of these men disclosed the general plan to the Americans. Himmler Traced A British war correspondent said in a dispatch from Lueneberg that Himmler had been traced but not yet arrested, and that the British Army could take him into custody at any time, Maj. Gen. Albert yon Ihne, one- time secretary of Hitler's Chan- cellery, has been captured in the villa of an Itallan Count near Revoreto, Italy, where he had been hiding since April 27. “Blackmailing” Allies Continued dissatisfaction in Moscow over the Allies’ treatment of captured German military lead- ers was reflected by Michael Mik- hailov, a Moscow radio commen- ° tator, Mikhailov said in a broadcast that Germany's “military Fascist clique,” headed by Grand Admiral “is holding up a bugbear of chaos before the eyes of the Allies as a way of blackmailing them into allowing it to retain au- thority. French spokesmen said Pierre Laval, the former chief of the Vichy Government, was believed to have been sent to Prance. When the Nazi regime in Germany col- lapsed Laval unsuccessfully sought asylum in Spain. Jt was assumed that Spanish authorities placed him aboard a British warship last night for movement to France. Eorei . o mp cateriny STOCK QUOTATIONS | NEW YORK, May 18 — Closing |quotation of Alaska-Juneau Mine |stock today is 7%, American Can 97, Anaconda; 34%, Curtiss-Wright 6, International Harvester 86%, Kennecott 39, New York Central 25%, Northern, Pacific 28%, U. S. Steel 67%. Poundl, $4.04. Sales today were 1,430,000 shares. Dow, Jones averagés today are as follows: Industrials, ; 166.17; ralls, 56.01; utilities, 31.06. R o ammeed WERNER BACK Joe Werner, Regional Accountant for the U. S, Forest Service, re- turned to gJuneau plane from |Ketchikan yesterday afternoon, |after a week in the First City looking over the books of the Southern Division, Tongass Na- tional Forest. Karl Doenitz,