I DARE SAY —
Cockeyed world
By Florence Fisher Parry
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Work-or-fight bill tightened by Senators
Labor hoarders would face prison
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House to probe Red commissions
New Army order to be investigated
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Despite new war on racket –
Numbers play rises, falls in various cities of U.S.
Some sections report policy gambling booms especially in view of horseracing ban
By the United Press
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Bravest guys in world fighting on ‘Hell Island’
By the United Press
Iwo’s too crowded for both Yanks, Japs
U.S. PACIFIC FLEET HQ, Guam (UP) – Referring to the unparalleled density of American and Jap fighting troops on tiny Iwo, an American officer remarked today: “Someone’s going to have to get off and it isn’t going to be us.”
Iwo could well be named “Hell Island” where a battle beyond comparison with anything else anywhere is raging, a correspondent said today in a pooled broadcast from Adm. Richmond K. Turner’s flagship off the island.
The correspondent said:
The situation was terrific from first one side and then the other. But the Marines are going ahead and they’re driving the Japs back.
I saw the bravest guys in the world hiding in foxholes, running forward in a crouch, leaping into Jap emplacements and then finishing off the enemy at close quarters.
You know it takes guts to fight that way.
Replacements are constantly moving forward. There are Japanese bodies everywhere, too, and that makes you feel a little better.
He said the Jap artillery and rockets and the American warship bombardment throughout the night “makes a hell if there ever was one – and that is Iwo.”
Jap mortar and artillery fire is everywhere. When reinforcements arrive, there is a “Hail, hail, the ammunition is here.” We’ve got to have ammunition.
The beach itself is littered with scores of landing craft.
There is nothing anywhere to compare with the battle of this island – the Battle of Iwo Island.
Last-stand Japs battle with spears
Yanks gain in Manila – Bataan mop-up ends
MANILA, Philippines (UP) – The last stage of the Battle of Manila degenerated into medieval warfare today with the Japs taking up spears in a desperate attempt to stave off certain annihilation.
U.S. troops encountered the frenzied tactics of the trapped enemy naval and marine personnel as they reduced the Jap pocket south of the Pasig River to less than one-tenth of a square mile.
The Americans were entrenched in a siege line along the playground and golf links, which once were the bed of the medieval moat around Manila’s ancient walled city.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur announced, meanwhile, that Bataan Peninsula was cleared completely and that the Jap forces on Corregidor were practically destroyed.
Bury 1,700 Japs
“So far as can be found, no living Japanese soldier is now on the peninsula,” Gen. MacArthur said, in disclosing the vindication of the famous American stand on Bataan three years ago.
More than 1,700 Japs were already buried on Corregidor, he said, and the count was only partially complete. Only isolated enemy stragglers holed up in caves remained to be mopped up on the island fortress guarding Manila Bay.
Reports from the front lines in Manila said the Japs apparently were running short of arms and were using spears in a bitter defense of their tiny pocket.
One group of 21 Japs was armed with only spears and grenades, while an enemy platoon fighting near the Army-Navy Club had only four rifles. The rest fought with spears attached to poles.
The Americans were withholding heavy shellfire from the area to avert as many civilian casualties as possible and the battle continued on savage hand-to-hand fighting.
Indicative of the situation was a report by Maj. Gen. O. W. Griswold, commander of XIV Army Corps which was attacking the holdout Japs.
“We will just go in fighting and kill every last Jap,” he said.
Blast Formosa
Gen. MacArthur’s communiqué revealed that Allied heavy bombers continued the steady attacks on Formosa, dropping 50 tons of explosives on installations near Heito and the barracks at Takao. Two more enemy freighters were sunk, one off the east coast of Formosa near Hong Kong.
Yanks seize more hills on Italian front
Vienna railyards hit by 15th Air Force
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Not a forgotten front, general says –
War in Italy ‘is definitely linked’ to plans for knockout of Germany
By Henry J. Taylor
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A live shell in patient’s stomach –
Surgeons operate 105 minutes in peril of being blown sky high
By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Editorial: The glorious Marines
Our losses on Iwo Island will sober those who had concluded, from the Luzon victories and the unchallenged sweep of our fleets into Tokyo waters, that the Japs were weakening. American military men never had that idea. But even they, apparently, are somewhat surprised by the ferocity of this battle.
Adm. Halsey predicted that it would not be as tough as Tarawa. Now the Marine command says it is the worst in the Corps’ 168 years, which is the most extreme description an American can think of.
No immediate letup is in sight. There is no front line or rear in the usual sense; that is, there is no spot on the five-mile island where our troops are safe from enemy fire. The Japs have the heights overlooking all of our hard-won positions, and are making use of that advantage.
All of which makes the American advance more remarkable. The Marines not only have lived up to their heroic history, but have written a grim new chapter of valor. Without cover of any kind, they have climbed the treacherous rocks under enemy fire from all sides and kept going. They took the main airfield 30 hours ahead of schedule, cut the island in two, and are now flanking the second field.
Every possible aid is being given our ground troops by the supporting services. Surface ships, ringing the island, keep up a steady bombardment of enemy positions. Carrier planes follow the ground forces like protective hawks, regardless of foul weather. So far, the sea and air patrol has been so complete that not a single Jap ship or plane has broken through.
And not least important, virtually all American casualties on the island are being removed at once to safety and care.
Nobody will question the strategic necessity of this battle. To the Japs, Iwo is a base which must be held at all cost; to Americans, it must be taken at all cost. That is why the fighting is so bloody. Iwo and the Bonins, 100 miles north, are the last fixed sea defenses before Tokyo itself – only about 700 miles away.
Iwo, when captured, will protect the flanks of our fleet operating in Jap home waters. Iwo will give us air bases from which even medium bombers can blast Japan, and from which fighter planes can escort Superfortresses. The fall of Iwo will shake the enemy as nothing before.
It’s a job that must be done. It’s a job the Marines are doing with great glory.