Friday, May 24, 2013

May 24, 1945; TOKYO BURNING:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, MAY 24, 1945:


The News- Palladium

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BENTON HARBOR, MICH., THURSDAY, MAY 24, 1945 20 PAGES

 

HIMMLER COMMITS SUICIDE

 

Ex-Gestapo

Chief Dies

Of Poison

 

LONDON, May 24-(AP)- Heinrich Himmler killed himself with poison last night three days after his capture by the Allies, the Exchange Telegraph Agency reported today. Reuters also announced the suicide.

The Exchange Telegraph Agency, in a dispatch from Terence Duncan with the British Second Army, said the 44-year-old Gestapo chief had been arrested three days ago Incognito, and was held captive in a house in Luenebnrg.

The agency^ report said Himmler took his life by drinking the contents of a hidden viaL

Reuters said the death was announced officially tonight at British Second Army headquarters

Chief Nazi Terrorist

Reuters set the time of death at 11:04 p. m. yesterday. The reports took one of the top-ranking names off the list, of' war criminals subject to trial. Granting the German account of Hitler's death, Himmler ranked with Hermann Goerlng at the top of the list. For years Himmler ruled the Reich as Hitter's right-hand terrorist.

He kept millions of Germans and the residents of occupied countries under the thumb of Nazism. It was Himmler who ordered the Lidice massacre in Czechoslovakia.

 

Tokyo Fires Visible 200 Miles

550 Superforts

Blast Tokyo In

Greatest Raid

Nine Million Pounds

Of Incendiary Bombs

Fall On Jap Capital

BY LEIF ERICKSON

 

GUAM, May 24-(AP)-Nine million pounds of fire bombs, dropped by more than 550 Superfortresses in the biggest single air blow of the Pacific war, spread fires in Tokyo today which were visible for 200 miles, smashed waterfront railroad yards and aircraft Parts shops south of the imperial

palace.

One B-29 pilot, Maj. Luther A. Jones, of Monroe, La., reporting direct hits on yards which handle one-third of Japan's rail traffic, said on his return from the pre-dawn strike: "I'm afraid they're going to do a hell of a lot of walking."

A brilliant moon and a ring of oil fires set by lead planes illuminated the target area, the Shinagawa Industrial section, which is populated by 750,000 of Tokyo's

millions and crowded with highly inflamable shops making, precision instruments for Nippon's air force High Winds Spread Fire

Pilots saw their Incendiaries spread huge fires. Flashes indicated the flames had spread to stores of explosive materials.

 

Marines Flank

Okinawa Japs

Turn Southern Front;

Enter Naha, Capital

GUAM, May 24-(AP)-American 10th Army troops fighting mud as tenacious as the dug-in Japanese, turned the southern Okinawa front at both flanks today.

Rubble-strewn Naha, Okinawa's capital, was entered in force yesterday by a regiment of Sixth division Marines under cover of warships guns and artillery.

With tanks and other mechanize: equipment mired behind the front toes, the leathernecks hacked out bitterly contested gains on the west coast.

The entrance to the northeastern side of Naha was accomplished by the tough veterans of the Fourth Marine regiment of the Sixth division, made up of former paratroops and Marine raiders.

Hard Fighting Ahead

They are likely to encounter infighting as they move through the bombardment-wrecked suburbs after fording the muddy Asato river.

With Naha entered in force, both of Okinawa's main cities and terminals of the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru defense line have been penetrates Yonabaru, .on the east, with it's nearby airstrip, fell to the 96th infantry division Tuesday while the Seventh made a quick encircling movement by nightfall, isolating from possible Japanese reinforcement.

Counter-attacks are continuing in other parts of the front lines but are being thrown back. Just west of Conical Hill, key point on the four-mile east-west  Jelense line. Maj. Gen. James L Bradley's 96th infantry division bounded down one counter-attack in which the 382nd regiment killed 150 enemy troops.

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