The Daily Alaska empire Newspaper, July 28, 1945, Page 1

THE DAILY ALASKA “ALL THE NEWS ALL THE TIME™ A 4 2 4 VOL. LXV., NO. 10,025 1945 JUNEAU, ALASKA, SATURDAY, JULY 28, TAXPAYERS TAKE OVER CITY MEET Pefition Answer Due Mon- day-Mayor Jerks Bud- get for Rework Juncau was presented with prospective city budget last night, but it was soon pushed out of the spotlight as representatives of the Juneau Taxpayers Association drove for “action now” on their proposal for revamping the tax rolls. In the final wind-up to last evening’s Council session, 'Mayor Ernest Parsons withdrew his pro- posed 1945-46 city budget and called for another special meeting of the City Council, for 8 o'clock next Monday evening, to act on the property owners’ petition. “Hang Henretta” was the un- uttered by-word of the committee of lid citizens” representing the Taxpayers Association as it pressed for a re-survey of assessment valuations by “businessmen who own their own homes here.” Com- mittee members strongly declared they no longer have confidence in the evaluating abilities of Howard S. Henretta, whose recently-com- pleted revaluation of properties in Juneau had stirred local property owners to concerted demands for relief. b Petition Presented The petition which the commit- tee laid before the council last evening was the one ‘Thursday night at a public mass meeting held in the Coliseum Theatre. Bearing the signatures of 139 dissatisfied taxpayers—and with other copies outsanding with many additional signatures—the petition asks the council to select one of | its members who will act with a businessman named by the com- mittee, and a third agent to be appointed by the first two named, in checking over the assessment rolls to iron out inequities. Accept- ance of the proposal, the commit- tee maintained, will relieve the council of an almost impossible task that it would otherwise face when it comes time to sit as a Board of Equalization. Committee Member Allen 3hat- tuck cited several instances to the packed Council Chamber, demon- strating inconsistencies in retta’s valuations. The taxpayers' proposal, he declared, offers a way tc which will, at the same time, be satisfactory to the city’s prop- erty owners. The attendance at Thursday’s mass meeting, he pointed out, shows the extent of the dissatisfaction with the pxcsem «Lontlnund on Paae Two; The Washington Merry - Go- Round By DRFW PEARSON Lt. Col. Robert S. Allen now on active | service with the Army.) WASHINGTON—President Tru- man, who has a well-earned repu- tation as a champion of clean gov- ernment, faces another Dawes loan | scandal when he gets back to his desk in Washington. While former Vice-President Charley Dawes was President of the Reconstruction Finance Cor poration, the RFC loaned his own bank in Chicago $90,000,000. 'rhere were howls of protest from the Democrats. A similar situation exists in Washington where Democrat War- ren Lee Pierspn, when President of the Export-Import Bank, the International - Telephone and Telegraph Company and its sub- cidiaries 14 per cent of the Export- Import Bank's capital. Following this, Pierson stepped out to accept a fat salary as President of an International Tel. and Tel. sub- sidiary—All American Cables. Furthermore, just before he signed, Pierson tried to get an-| other $23,000,000 from the Export- Import Bank by which LT.&T. could buy out a telephone line in Mexico. All of this' has caused one of the hottest inter-Cabinet fights, Truman Administration, | of the with Secretary of Commerce Henry wallace and Secretary of the —_— (Continued on Page Four) - | adopted | Hen- | cut the work of the council, loaned | Airplane Crashes Into " Empire State Building l | | BULLETIN — W YORK, July 28 —A B-25 “Billy Mitchall’ bomber, roaring low acrcss Man- hattan from a northwesterly di- rceticn, cvashed into the 79th floor of the 102-story Empire State Building at 9:49 A. M, today and burst into an inferno of flame. Bodiss of 12 persons—eleven of them charred beyond recogni- tion—have been recovered. Po- lice and other unofficial esti- mates placed the death toll as high as 15. Chief Fire Marshal Thomas P. Brophy said: “Apparently maximum force was just under the 79th floor and se great that it bulged up the 79th level” He said the supporting beam at the 79th floor had been bent inwards about 18 inches by the blow. “At least two members of the plane crew were catapulted into the 79th floor,” Brephy said. One moter of the plane, he ad- | ded, shet through the corrider of the 78th floor, smashed a hole on the 33rd Street side of the building, and then dropped from the building. Brephy said he was unable to determine whether anyone had been killed when two elevators crashed from the 80th floor to the corridor level. NEW YORK, July 28 — Police headquarters reported today that an airplane struck one of the upper |tloors of the Empire State Build- |ing, the world’s tallest structure. The plane b into flames and police said the fire spread to other buildings. James W. Irwin, management donsultant and former managing editor of the Chicago Herald Ex- aminer, who has offices on the 75th floor of the building, said he heard | the plane ceming through the fog New V/age and Price Policy i e v, above Thirs- S'a'emen' '0 A"ay | Fourth Street, about the seventy- Labor Unrest | seventh or seventy-eighth floor. | Irwin said that the hall on the | seventy-tifth floor was filled with flaming gasoline and fumes and WASHINGTON, July 28. As| that vmo tall elevator bank in 1}12 strike and lockout totals edged to a | PUilding was put out of commiss new 1945 high, the administration | S0 S0 that people served by that | today worked on a new wage-and- | °ank could not leave. ! price policy statement intended %o B . L alay labor unrest in the transition to peace. | The June dispute record was 485 stoppages and 292,000 workers in- volved. Labor Department officials | expectad July to run about as high. " | While emphasizing that strikes| [ ] GOERING SUFFERS ATTACK May Not Béflle fo Stand Trial for War Crimes- | Awful, Isn't IR | MONDORF, Luxembourg, July 28 —A U. S. Army Medical Officer, | disclosing that Reichs Marshal Hermann Goering suffered a heart attack during an electrical storm | Thursday night, has raised the question whether the captive Nazi leader could stand the strain of a war crimes trial. | “Goering is so emotionally un- stable you never can tell about his type,” said Capt. Clint L. Miller, Summit, Mo. The officer attributed the attack to Goering’s fear of thunder and lightning. | Miller said Goering conscious.” STRIKES, LOCKOUTS INCREASE “is heart isince VE-Day have increased so moderately as to have a hardly | measurable effect on total armament production, WPB officials noted that | they had ‘really hurt” some es- pecially vulnerable parts of ihe war program. | The fear that unrest will grow, as workers forsee a sharp fall in weekly carnings because of short- | ened work weeks, prompted the drafting c¢f a public statement on ithe government’s wage and price | policy during the transition. No attempt can be mads to keep earnings at the high level attained garding Murder of Georges Mandel ‘ By LOUIS NEVIN Trench Coclonial Minister Georges through overtime payments and up- Aandel, most celebrated mm_'tyr to \gradmg workers, Office of Economic Trench resistance to the Nazis, was Stabilization said, but a compromise brought into the testimony as the |plan will be laid down to prevent trial of Marshal Petzin for intelli- any sHarp break in the relationship gence with the enemy and plotting | batween income and living costs. | against the security of F‘rance en- —_——————— tered its sixth day. i whe_l Clemenceau, son of Fran- 1Fomess Turned Over fo Army i | mads to a fl,xlxess where Mandel | e was held prior to his slaying last year. “His murderers have been execut- Clemenceau- said, “But the | BURBANK, Calif, July 28—The question is, who is guilty of this 12,731st B-17 Flying Fortress, last crime?” bomber of that type to be built, Clemenceau half turned and look- | has been turned over to the Army | ed squarely at Marshal Petain as he Air Forces by the Lockheed plant.| spoke. —————————— | Mandel, who was Mmlster of Col- |in the Sante Prison to be killed on [July 7, 1944. Mandel had defied !amination of the prosecuticn’s wit- GUAM, July 28—Fire raids by nesses by Monday night. | Marshal Petain and refused to agree | Superfortresses have leveled more Supe’ Fl’e Ra'ds on onies under former Premier Edouard | to the armistice with the Germans. Prosecutor Andre Mornet announ- T ” |than 150 square miles of urban-in- FINCH /IN TOWN Idusmul centers in 46 Japanese cities ~H. S. Finch, of Sitka, is a guest | Daladier, was taken from his cell |ced he hoped to conclude the ex- the 20th Air Force announced today at the Baranof Hotel. Then Bursts Info Flames Testimony Infroduced Re-. PARIS, July 28.—The murder of ALASKA COASTAL FLIES NEW SHIP | ON FIRST FLIGHT Grumman Twin - engined | Craft Makes Round Trip fo Ketchikan Inaugurating a new for Southeast Alaska, co-managers Alex Holden and Sheldon Simmons vesterday flew Alaska Coastal Air- lines new Grumman twin-engined | amphibian to Ketchikan and return ! | en the ship’s maiden flight. I | ‘The new seven-passenger ship 1§ | the first of several which the com= pany plans to put into operation as soon as they are obtainable on' the routes serving Sit Peters-! burg, Wrangell and Ketchikan. | Passengers on the first flight’ | were delighted with the new plane; which gives an unobstructed under-| | wing view from ev seat. The, passeng cabin is \.nrnnnadem‘ |in furn ngs and soundproofed to. permit conversation in a 'mxmal- | tone while the plane is in flighby ! Spun glass insulation, covered with’ a flam leatherette, covers the ca s and the seats are: fine grain cushicned leather. cabin is air conditioned and A toilet is installed aft. | greater maneuverability in er, a special retractable rudder was installed by ka Coastal mechanics, enabling | the ship to maneuver in the water | with one motor, reducing the water of The heated. speed and increasing safety of op- eration. The ship will be flown on the Sitka route as well as to Ketchi- kan as soon 2s docking facilities are complete at Sitka. The Grumman has a 49-foot wing span and a gross weight of four tons, loaded. It has a maxi- mum speed of 201 miles an hour at 5,000 feet and 191 miles an hour at sea level. It will maintain 6,000-foot ceiling on one engine tully loaded. It lands with the use of flaps as slow as 62 miles an hour. Alaska Coastal has an annual payroll of more than $80,000. Last year, the company’s pilots flew almost 300,000 plane miles, with almost 10,000 passengers, slightly than 100,000 pounds of e> s and 67,000 pounds of mail. Mrh- than a thousand round-trips were flown and planes were in the air almest 3000 hours. SI(I NNED JAP ISEYIDENCE OF : CANNIBALISM . Gruesome Indications Are Found by American | Patrol on Luzon a By JAMES HUTCHESON ! (Associated Prcss Correspondent) " WITH THIRTY-EIGHTH DI- VISION, LUZON, July 25.—(Delay- ed) —Strong evidence of cannibalism .among isolated Japanese stragglers, although possibly on a small scale, was reporter today by members of an American patrol returned from the heart of 'the. Sierra Madre mountains. Officers told of finding onz Japa- nese soldier's body mutilated after leaving it unwatched for an hour. They said one of two prisoners taken on their.grueling six-day mountain trek pleaded he surrendered to ¢s- cape the same fate, awaiting him, as a non-combatant. The revolting evidence was report- ed by Capt. Charles Yust of Baston, Texas, who commanded the moun- tain expedition of two hundred Thirty-eighth Division troops and | 300 Filipino carriers, and Lt. John Banton, of Ronceverte, W. Va. “I was leading an advance patrol of 80 men moving along a ' when we spotted five Japs,” s Yust. “We killed four. The fifth escaped into the jungle, but lost his pack and food. When we returned | to the bodies about an hour later, we found that the skin had been peeled |from the thigh of one of the dead Japsfu large piece peeled down-! ward from the thigh.” air serviee || g NEW CORSAIR ]0INS deck of a U, AVILEE OfF T0POTSDAM 3 (ONFEREN(E1 New British Prime Mlmster Joins Truman, Stalin in Talks LONDON, July 23.—Prime Minis- ter Clement R. Attlee went to Pots- dam today @s the freshman mem of the Big Three. Herbert Morri- son, new Lord President of the Council, and ‘Attlee’s principal un- derstudy, was left in charge of the country. Attlee departed after the six sen icr members of his cabinet, named last night, teck the oath fr King Ceorge VI. With Attlee y, it scemed unlikely that other members of the new Labor party cabinet would ke announced over the week-| end. orrison and Ernest Bevin, long- time Trade Union leaders who is the Foreign Secretary, are destined ) play principal rol in the gov- ernment that ousted - Winston Churchill. Bevin was expectdd to follow Att- > Potsdam, slong with Edward ridges, Sec to the Cabinet, and ings Ismay |cf Staff tc the Ministry of Delense. After the ca at Buck- ingham Palace, Attlee and his new cabinet confers prearcd before rhe 383 Labor members of thie new J40-man Hous nd re- ceived an ova The x gove 1 wern in after several Winston Churchill's government saw the King and relinquished their seals of ojfice Attlee’s selection of .the six Labor party stalwarts as the nucleus of his cabinet. was_hailed by the BEritish ibor press as censtituting a “new deal” in British government. Attlze himself tock the posts of inister of T)cli[r" and Lord of the Treasury, w also held by Churchill. SENTENCED T0 GALLOWS CAIRO, Egypt, July 28 The Supreme Military Court . returned a mal verdict today sentencing a ear-old lawyer, Mahmud Is- sawy, to death by hanging in con- nection with the assassination of ptian Premier Ahmed Maher Pasha, The Premier after his country the Axis. r o1 was slain declared w: - - BEACH ARRIVES A. Beach, of Yakutat, st at the Gastineau Hotel. Jame is a gu Seatile Fish | gory H,OGO 109 JBATII.FSH!P ir fighter plane, the F4U-4, lands on (he 5 four-bladed hydrbmatic propeller. FLEET 2 1t hes No Official Rejedtion | 0fPoisdam Ullimatum Reponed Madeby Jap By James D. White She cfln ‘Cun-Tan' ; (Assoclated Press Correspondent) } SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., July 28 i s | —Japan’s semi-official Domei News Agency said that Premier Suzuki | would broadcast to the nation to- day ‘“his determination for the | decisive battle in the streets,” but ‘z\ ries of Tokyo broadcasts failed |to report an official rejection of the Allied ultimatum to surrender. Japanese propaganda agencies | went through ccessive stages of | professed fury, vague double-talk, B0 | and ridicule of the Potsdam dec- laration in which America, China end Britain bluntly told Japan to quit now or be destroyed. Domei started with an angry statement that the ultimatum uld be ignored and that Japan would “fight to the bitter end.” The Tokyo radio soon toned this aown by saying that Nippon would “adopt a policy to strive toward etion of the Greater East war in conformity of the hitherto established basic prin- ciples.” The Tokyo radio, lieard by American Broadcasting Ccmpany monitors, then stated that the ultimatum was being *“dis- as quite a farce” ss. It quoted the news- Mainichi as calling it “a erous nonsense and bluff.” at the same time, it said ‘creign Minister Shigenori d reported the ultimatum to the binet terday “and also on matters pertaining to the declara- tion.” - in a broadcast > NO RETIREMENT SENSATION ef a camp pr of “Oklahcema” in Kunming, China, was the “can-can” number pictared sbeve, as introduced by June Szbel, a talented Red C: — cr from San Francisco Army LONDON, July 28. - Mail said today that former Prime Ministzr Churchill “will not” seek retirement or the role of elder stetesm-n, but will become the ac- tive leader of the Conservative op- pogition in the House of Commons. e — (HINESE BREAK Pictoriz! Serviee Landings Up WASHINGTON, July 28—Thirty per cent more fish and shellfish w received at Seattle during the first six months of 1945 than in the same 1944 period The C¢ ator of Fisheries ported that t iose to 5,663 from Rockfish accounted the increase, landings in rising from 1612713 362,919 pounds. Halibut rc to 62391431 pounds and shellfish from 2,560,909 to 3,031,181 pounds, INTO KWEILIN CHUNGKING, ‘July 28-—Chinese forces have broken into Kweilin, for- mer U. 8, Air Base in Kwangsi, the Chinese High Command announced teday A communique said the Chinese, gmashed into the city late last night for muct r a coordinated attack launched 1 the Southern and We: su-| burbs, The South and West gates were aptured humug in Kweilin’s suburbs had been described as bitter 36 by the ! Togo * FOR CHURCHILL The Daily - SENT DOWN IS REPORT Swarms of Z\Tn—erican, Brit- ish Planes Make Raid on Inland Sea By HAMILTON W. FARON (Associated Pross Correspondent) G U A M, July 28.—-A Japanese attlerhip was repoarted sunk today nearly 1,500 U, 8. and British ier planes battled through heavy ! and fighter screens and dealt he third heavy blow of the week on the brcken and bleeding enemy fleet in the Inland Sea. Pilcts reprotad that the 29,990-ton ot p Hyuga, a converted war- bip with a flight deck for catapult- |ing es, had been sunk in the |grcat Japanese Naval Base of Kure, wh the remnants of the Mikado's | leet took futile refuge under exten- sive camouflage In order to bore into their tar- 2ts along the inland sca, the swarms of Allied carrier planes 'knecked down seore of Japanese | planes, which came out of hiding and tried to ward off the pre-invas- fen blows. Threa of the first four Naval (plaves that roared in through a eavy curtin of flak landed their “alf-tcn bombs squarely on war- ships already hard hit by raids Tucsday and Wednesday, Associated | Precs Correspondent Richard O'Mal- ley reported from the U. S. Third Fleet. | After the third attack within a weck, Japan was left without a single heavy warship fit for action. Admiral Halsey's hard-hitting carrier planes knocked out 26 warships, in- cluding three battleships, six air- craft carriers and four cruisers in strikes Tuesday and Wednesday alone. Fires raged through the harbor at Kure, O'Malley reported, and flames spurted skyward from the ships of what once was the third mightiest fleet in the world. The enemy declared the raiders not only struck the Inland Sea and KKure, but fanned out over the scuthern island of Shikoku, batter- mu at air fields, factories and ship- ing. Reports from the fleet said 15t-Central Honshu's air bases also were under attack. Supplementing -these hammer klews, the Japanese said 250 Mus- tangs from Iwo Jima blasted air fields in the area of Tokyo and up o) Superforts laid their mines deng the Inland Sea and off the ‘West Coast of the main home Island »f Honshu. In attacks Tuesday and Wednes- iay, Halsoys’' pilots sank or damaged 238 Japanese ships or small craft and destroyed or damaged 290 nemy planes, Nimitz' communique y rcported. In the 10 which Halseys' consecutive days in great fleet has prowled virtually unmolested near on, ships' guns, carrier planes 1d Naval land-based aircraft have mk or damaged 796 enemy ships - small craft, destroyed or damag- d 832 planes. FULL PAY IS ORDER OF W.LB. {Insertion New Wage Scale ' Demanded in Labor- Management Contract WASHINGTON, July 28. -~ The War Labor Board for the first time today ordered a guaranteed full em- ployment plan inserted in a labor- management contract. With industry members dissenting, it upheld tbs New York Regional | Beard in directing that such a plan be inserted in the first contract be- ing negotiated for 300 salesmen em- | ployed by 88 shoe stores in the New York metropolitan area. ‘The plan provides for a guarantee {uf 44 hours a week for 52 con- | secutive weeks per year for regular full time employees and five nights and a Saturday weekly for 52 weeks for regular part-time workers.