July 27, 1945; JAPANESE REJCT PEACE OFFER /

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, JULY 25, 1945:

SAN MATAO, CALIFORNIA, FRIDAY, JULY 27, 1945

WASHINGTON, July 27.- (U.P)—Japan rejected the American-British-Chinese surrender ultimatum today despite the clear warning: that she NOW faces' 'prompt and utter destruction" by the mighty allied land, sea and air forces assembled in the Pacific.

The Japanese stand was announced by the government-controlled Domei News agency in a dispatch saying that Japan would ignore the allied ultimatum issued yesterday in Potsdam and would fight on "to the bitter end."

Cabinet Meets

Domei said the Japanese cabinet held a special meetings this afternoon (Tokyo time) to hear a report from Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo on the terms in which the allies would agree to halt hostilities.

The decision to take no action on the ultimatum apparently was made at that meeting.

By its stand, the Japanese government itself rejected the last opportunity to halt the war without ending Japan's national existence and without bringing untold misery and suffering to her people.

Alternative Clear

President Truman, former British Prime Minister Churchill and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek made clear yesterday what Japan would receive if she rejected their final terms for ending the war.

Devastation Certain

"The full application of our military power, backed by our resolve, will mean the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." Japan laid herself open to that devastation and that destruction by

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Japs Reject
Peace Offer
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rejecting the Potsdam surrender terms.

Before the Japanese decision was revealed, Chairman Tom Connely  (D., Texas) of the senate foreign | relations committee and other' prominent senators warned that the  alternative to the Potsdam surrender terms was "national hari-kari."

 

LEAFLETS LIST NAMES

OF ELEVEN NIP CITIES

NEXT TO BE DESTROYED

GUAM, July 28.—(U.P.)

America's 20th air force, putting teeth into the Potsdam ultimatum, today told the Japanese the names of the next 11 Nipponese cities which will be burned out by Superfortress raids, in a move unprecedented in any war.

As three more of Japan's flimsy war centers were still flaming from the last B-29 incendiary raid, six Superforts cruised over the 11 targets-to-be at midnight, dropping 60,000 leaflets warning civilians to evacuate or be burned

out.

Thus the Twentieth air force, for the first time in any war naming its targets in advance, laid down the most direct challenge possible to the Japanese to fight, quit or

else.

Maj. Gen. Curtis E. Lemay, commander of the Twentieth, declared: "The Japs have nothing to look

forward to except total destruction.

We've reached the point where they refuse to fight while we burn down their cities. Now we're telling them where we're going to do it,"

Cities Named

The leaflets, psychological prods to the thinking element of Japan, named the following target cities

including nine new B-29 targets to be added to the 49 already hit by devastating fire raids:

On Honshu: Ichinomiya, Tsu, Ujiyamada, Nagaoka, Nishinomiya, Aomori, Ogaki and Koriyama. On Shikoku: Uwajima. On Kyushu: Kurumc. On Hokkaido: Hokariate.

All are secondary industrial centers with populations of between 50,000 and 200,000.

Of these cities, three have been attacked heavily before. Ichinomiya, a city of 50,000 population, has been 50 per cent destroyed by B-29 raids, and Uwa Jima, 52,000 population, was 16 per cent destroyed. They were last attacked July 11.

 

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