The Abilene Daily Reporter News
Carrier Planes Blast
18 Nip Home Bases
ABILENE,
TEXAS, WEDNESDAY MORNING, MAY 16, 1945-TEN PAGES
Hot Ground
Fight Rages
GUAM, Wednesday, May
16.—(AP)—Carrier planes hammered 18 Nipponese homeland airfields and destroyed,
damaged or strafed 357 enemy planes in a sweep beginning Saturday night and
continuing through Monday. Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, announcing the carrier raids
on the fields from which Japan has been staging aerial onslaughts on the American forces at Okinawa,
said fierce
fighting continued there today.
A strong Japanese counter-attack on the west flank was beaten back by the
Sixth divisions, veterans of Eniwetok
and Orote peninsula, while 77th divisions troops captured "Chocolate
Drop" hill about 1,800 yards northeast of fortress Shurt
after five days of bitter
fighting.
The three-day attack on Kyushu and
Shikoku was the first American strong Japanese counter-attack the west flank
was beaten back carrier strike in force since the Inland sea raid on March 19.
Radio Tokyo previously had reported 900 planes were Involved.
It started with a torpedo plane strike
on Kyushu Saturday night. Twelve enemy planes were shot down. •— •
Sunday
and Monday, Japanese planes were destroyed or damaged and an additional 73 were
brought under machine- gun and rocket attack with unobserved results.
A-barrage
balloon was shot down. A preliminary check revealed that 10 U. S. planes were
lost.
Vice Adm. Marc A.- Mitschner's carrier
planes also struck' targets of opportunity during the two – day sweep.
Solons Report Torture
Camps 'Organized Crime
WASHINGTON, May 15.—(AP)—In shocked silence, Congress heard
from its own eyewitnesses today
the gruesome story of Germany's torture
camps where thousands of slaves
lived like cattle and died like beasts.
The report of six senators and
six representatives who visited three
notorious concentration camps was
read simultaneously in the two chambers
by Senator Barkeley (D.-Ky.) and
Rep. Thomason (D.-Tex.)
It was a bitter denunciation of the German
government—an indictment on the high charge of mass murder. It did not spare
the German public.
Senator
Barkeley did not spare the German army either. He said
it was
inconceivable that the general staff would not have known
about
the savage practices of the SS and gestapo.
"It Is
the opinion of your committee that these practice! Constituted no less than
organized crime against civilization and humanity," the report said,
"and those who were responsible for them should have meted out to them
swift, certain and adequate punishment."
The investigations conferred with
war crimes commission in London
and the French commission,
praising the steps already taken for prosecution
of war criminals in Germany. This
work is well underway, the
report said, and thus there is no
need for the committee to recommend
any action.
The 12 legislators visited
Buchenwald, Nordenhausen and Dachau, the
most notorious camps for
political prisoners. They saw the dead, they saw
the dying. Barkley said some
helpless captives died while the American
investigators were there.
Dachau was overrun so fast by the
American troops, the report said that none of the evidence of the atrocities
could be destroyed. This wa largely true of Buchenwald too. At Nordhausen U.S.
forces had ha three weeks to put things in shape but the story was the same,
traced back through witnesses.
It was
a story of planned starvation, of use of German criminals to
destroy
the mentality "of all those who opposed the master race," of
huge
ovens for cremating victims, and of torture devices.
Barkley
said the magnitude of the horror could be understood only
"by
the stench" of the places, and "smell of death."
The report said everywhere there
was evidence that the German civilian was fat and well clothed.
The 12
concluded that the contrast pointed to 'a calculated and diabolical program of
planned torture and extermination on the part of those who were in control of
the German government."
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