Lacking orders to halt, patrol hooks up with Reds
Unofficial juncture takes place by accident before formal linkup of Allied armies
By John B. McDermott, United Press staff writer
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Japs cracking in South Okinawa
Spurting ahead on Okinawa, U.S. troops seized a ridge overlooking the capital, Naha, and Shuri village. To the north, the Japs reported U.S. troops landed on Motobu Peninsula, behind holdout Jap forces. U.S. Superfortresses raided Kyushu Island of the Jap homeland, while carrier planes hit the Sakishima Islands below Okinawa.
GUAM (UP) – Jap resistance began to crack on Southern Okinawa today.
Tokyo reported a new American landing on the northwest coast of the strategic island.
U.S. troops assaulting the southern defenses shielding Naha, capital of Okinawa, captured bitterly-contested Sawtooth Ridge, highest point on the island. The Yanks wedged deeply into the enemy line less than a mile from the inland town of Shuri.
Radio Tokyo said the Americans were landing men and materials from barges in the vicinity of Minatagawa on the Motobu Peninsula, which juts out of Northwest Okinawa.
The landing put American units in the rear of Jap pockets still holding out on the peninsula and should speed the opening of the Unten Harbor navy base to American ships.
Capture of bloody Sawtooth Ridge was regarded as the turning point of the Okinawa campaign. From here out, it is a downhill battle with the Americans looking down the enemy’s throat.
Two of the last three airfields on the island, Machinato on the west just north of Naha, and Yonabaru on the eastern coastal plain, were almost within the Americans’ grasp. The Yanks also outflanked the inland town of Urasoe Mura from the west.
Maj. Gen. John R. Hodge, commander of the XXIV Army Corps, said that numerous Jap troops were deserting to the American lines.
“Soldiers don’t do this until they begin to crack,” Gen. Hodge said. “I think the Jap is pretty well disorganized and in my opinion the time for a possible counteroffensive has passed.”
Some 400 miles to the northeast, a fleet of 150 B-29 Superfortresses today hit seven Jap suicide-plane bases on Kyushu, southernmost of the enemy’s home islands, for the second time in 24 hours.
Weather good
Early reports indicated good weather favored the raiders in marked contrast to the extremely bad conditions which handicapped yesterday’s force of 200 to 250 bombers over Kyushu and adjacent Shikoku.
U.S. carrier planes continued their neutralizing attacks on airfield installations in the Sakishima group south of Okinawa Wednesday. Navy search planes strafed and sank a number of fishing craft, a small picket boat and a torpedo boat east of Kyushu yesterday.
Russians win 2 big demands at conference
Parley deadlocked on chairmanships
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
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Goering reported to have killed self, daughters
LONDON, England (UP) – A Zurich dispatch of the Exchange Telegraph said today that Reich Marshal Hermann Goering shot his five daughters and then himself when the Nazis sentenced him to death and ordered him to execute his own death sentence.
The British Who’s Who says Goering has only two daughters.
The Exchange Telegraph dispatch said the commandant of Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler’s bodyguard read a Nazi death sentence to Goering, newly replaced as head of the German Air Force, and ordered him to carry it out.
An unidentified Zurich diplomat was quoted by the Exchange Telegraph as giving this melodramatic account of the crackup in the top ranks of the Nazi Party:
Last Monday, Goering sent Hitler an urgent letter requesting him to accept with the Nazi Party the consequences of a lost war and thus spare the Germans further bloodshed.
The same night Himmler replied by sending his own bodyguard to Goering’s home, where his wife, Emmy, was present, and Goering’s fate was sealed.
The diplomat was quoted as saying that, according to one version, the bodyguard shot down Goering and his wife without warning. Goering was married to former actress Emmy Sonneman.
Big ship named for Ernie Pyle
WASHINGTON (UP) – The Maritime Commission announced today that it will name one of its largest ships for Ernie Pyle, the famous Scripps-Howard war reporter who was killed on Ie Island April 18.
The Maritime Commission said:
Pyle many times honored the men of the Merchant Marine for the vital, and often heroic, part they have taken in the war effort. Millions of Pyle’s G.I.s have crossed the oceans to the fighting fronts on ships manned by his friends in the Merchant Marine.
The Ernie Pyle will be a C-4 military type cargo ship – 522 feet long, 14,600 deadweight tons, 9,000 horsepower, and 14,000-mile cruising radius.
Perkins: Lewis forgets past – slugging away at critics
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Baden major bags eight Jap planes
Beat accomplished in only 20 minutes
(SHS) – It took Maj. George C. Axtell Jr. of Baden nearly five years to get into action. But he made up for it when he did get there.
In his first 20 minutes of combat near Okinawa Monday night, he became an ace by shooting down five enemy planes, war front dispatches revealed.
In addition, the 24-year-old Marine fighter pilot damaged three other Jap planes which may have gone down.
A son of Mr. and Mrs. George C. Axtell of Baden, he graduated from Ambridge High School and attended the University of Alabama before entering service in 1940.
He was seriously injured in a plane collision in 1942, but fell in the sea and was rescued. He went overseas last summer, but only got into action this spring.
Eisenhower offers evidence of atrocities
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OPA orders crackdown on black market
Fines, jail await violators in new drive
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Pews challenge Fascist charge
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Goering’s escape reported – Mussolini may be prisoner
By the United Press
Allied armies, herding the remnants of Nazi fighting forces into a dead-end corridor of Germany for the kill, were smoking enemy ringleaders from their hideaways today.
According to various European reports, the following headliners had been captured or were being driven toward capture although Allied confirmation of these reports was lacking:
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Reich Marshal Herman Goering: Radio Moscow said the “eagle of the Luftwaffe” had escaped from Berlin by plane with a $20 million “nest egg.” Earlier, Radio Hamburg said Goering had “resigned” his command of Germany’s beaten air force because of heart trouble.
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Lt. Gen. Kurt Dittmar: The spokesman of the German High Command and widely-quoted military commentator of Radio Berlin was reported in Allied hands. A BBC broadcast today reported his capture by Allied armies in the west.
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Benito Mussolini and Roberto Farinacci: The former Duce of Italy and the former secretary of the Fascist Party were hounds and hares in today’s dispatches. Radio Rome repeatedly broadcast a Swiss agency report that Mussolini was in Allied hands at Palanza on Lake Maggiore. The Italian government did not confirm or deny the report. Another unconfirmed report located Mussolini and Farinacci in a monastery at Como after a flight from Milan. But a Zurich dispatch said Mussolini had not reached Como.
The Milan radio reported that Benito Mussolini had been arrested by customs guards at Lecco on Lake Como.
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Lt. Gen. Emil Remer: According to a British broadcast, this loyal henchman of Hitler committed suicide April 20 after his division broke before Russian pressure on the Eastern Front. Remer was credited with foiling the bomb plot against Hitler last July and was rewarded with command of a division.
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Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler: The London Evening News reported that Himmler was dead. Reports are current in London, the Evening News said, that Himmler met his end in an unknown manner. The newspaper recalled that the British recently shelled a car in which Himmler may have been riding in Northwest Germany.
Meanwhile, Radio Hamburg insisted that Adolf Hitler was leading the defense of Berlin in a “martyr’s” last stand.
And British dispatches said Rudolf Hess, an early fugitive from Nazi circles, reportedly had gone insane in captivity.
Marshal Erwin Rommel’s widow told her U.S. Seventh Army captors that the “Desert Fox” died in bed a “broken man.” Mrs. Rommel, found in her home in Herrlingen, said her late husband “knew the fight was hopeless” after he had witnessed the crushing of his Afrika Korps. She said Rommel disagreed with Hitler’s military strategy. A heart attack finished him, she said, as he apparently was recovering from shrapnel wounds inflicted by an Allied fighter pilot.
Zurich reports said King Leopold of Belgium had been taken into the southern redoubt by the Nazis.
There was growing suspicion in London that other Nazis – possibly including Hitler himself – were using the battle of Berlin to cloak their disappearance into hiding.
The usually-reliable diplomatic correspondent of Exchange Telegraph reported no definite evidence had reached London that Hitler was still in Berlin.
Patton’s men get Reds’ radio call
By Robert Richards, United Press staff writer
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47 Nazi prisons already overrun
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Medal of Honor urged for Pyle
LONDON, England (UP) – Pvt. Karl Detzer Jr. and “50 other Joes” proposed in a letter to the Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, today that the Congressional Medal of Honor be awarded posthumously to Ernie Pyle, war correspondent recently killed on Ie Island.
Editorial: They are Americans, too
Two American soldiers have asked the U.S. government to protect their parents from terrorist shooting raids on their California home. Vandals ride by in an auto, firing into the house of the invalid father.
How can such a thing happen in this country? Well, the victims are Japanese-Americans. And there are some in this country who don’t think those people have the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to protection by the law, as the rest of us American citizens.
Because Japan is our enemy and guilty of atrocities, some think we should take it out on these Americans of Japanese ancestry. Fortunately, they don’t try to punish Americans of German ancestry for Nazi barbarism. But they think that Japanese-Americans somehow are different.
The record shows the Japanese-American units fighting in Italy are among our finest soldiers. They have earned fair treatment for themselves and their families here at home.
Not only in justice to these fellow Americans who have proved their patriotism the hard way, but also for our own self-respect and the preservation of American ideals, our law officers must protect the equal rights of all citizens regardless of ancestry. We can’t win a war against barbarism by becoming barbarians ourselves.