June 15, 1945; Japanese Defense Line Completed:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, JUNE 15, 1945:

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, FRIDAY MORNING, JUNE 15, 1945

 

 

Japs To Get 2,000,000

Tons of Bombs a Year

 

Rate to Step

Up July 1,

Says Arnold

By Associated Free Press

GUAM,. June 15. —The American bomb load dumped on Japan will reach the rate of 2,000.000 tons a year by July 1, General H. H~ Arnold announced Friday just as 520 Superfortresses were strewing 3,000 tons of incendiaries on industrial Osaka and Amagasaki in a first-anniversary raid.

Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Airforces, personally disclosed the heavy Osaka raid in a dramatic press conference in which he detailed his program for "complete and utter destruction" of the enemy homeland by air.

The gigantic desolation already wrought in Japan by a series of Superfortress raids, that have totaled about 75,000 tons since November, will be as nothing compared with the devastation the enemy may expect to start within hardly more than two weeks, Arnold made clear.

5,480 Tons Daily

The scheduled 2,000,000 annual bomb tonnage would average 5.480 tons each day, and the five-star commander of the airforces grimly declared: "If that is what Japan wants, by God, that is what she is going to get."

Here on his first, visit to the Marianas area and the 21^st Bomber Command, Arnold disclosed that the program for Japan was the same 33 for Germany— aerial destruction of her industries, with the aid of Japanese- acquainted target-evaluators.

 

Okinawa Hill Captured,

Japanese Center Cracked

By-Associated Press

GUAM, June 15.—Maj.Gen. James L. Bradley's 96^th Infantry Division cracked the center of the previously outflanked Japanese defense line on southern Okinawa Thursday by capturing 500-foot-high Yaeju hill and pushing on south.

The summit of southern Okinawa's highest peak was gained early yesterday after a brisk fight, while other divisions cut in behind both ends of the rugged escarpment line where an estimated 30.000 Nipponese are making a last stand in an area of

less than 13 square miles. West of Yaeju Hill, a key position, other 96th Division infantry assaulted a. second high point. The hill was won by the 3Sl.st Regiment.

 

Tokyo Premier

Says Defense

Line Completed

By Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO, June 14.—

Japanese broadcasts today called on the people to - make "an island fortress" of the homeland and declared that "scores" of Flying Fortresses and Liberators from the European war were coming to the Philippines for increasingly heavy aerial attacks on Nippon. Premier Kantaro Suzuki boasted at a press conference in Tokyo that plans for the defense against invasion were "complete and perfect" and that even 500,000 American invaders would be met by forces "five or 10 times superior."

One of the series of broadcasts heard by the Federal Communications Commission said "the next phase of the American offensive against Japan" would be in China, while preparations went, forward "for a direct landing on the Japanese. Mainland."

People Told to Rise