Posted on 06/09/2015 5:02:19 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
#1 – “Sentimental Journey” – Les Brown, with Doris Day
#2 – “There! I’ve Said It Again” – Vaughn Monroe
#3 - “Bell Bottom Trousers” - Tony Pastor, with Ruth McCullough
#4 – “You Belong to My Heart” – Bing Crosby, with Xavier Cugat Orchestra
#5 – “Laura” - Johnnie Johnston
#6 - “Dream” - Pied Pipers
#7 - “Bell Bottom Trousers” - Kay Kyser, with Ferdy Slim Quartet
#8 – “Caldonia” – Louis Jordan
#9 - “Dream” - Frank Sinatra
#9 - “Sentimental Journey” - Hal McIntyre
#10 - “Bell Bottom Trousers” - Louis Prima, with Lily Ann Carol
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/5/09.htm
June 9th, 1945 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The RAF reveals the Vampire, a new jet fighter which can fly at over 500mph.
JAPAN: Japanese Privy Seal Kido today gains the approval of the Emperor on a scheme to mediate peace through the USSR. This plan features 1) Honourable terms for Japan. 2) Withdrawal from occupied ares at Japan’s initiative. 3) Acceptable arms reductions.
Tokyo: Japan has responded to the daylight pounding of three of its mainland cities and the imminent defeat of its forces on Okinawa by stepping up kamikaze raids on the US naval task force off Okinawa. In the last three days suicide pilots have sunk two US destroyers, killing 312 servicemen. Japan has lost 67 kamikaze flyers in the raids. The attacks have ended hopes that Japan is preparing to accept the Allied demand for unconditional surrender. It is understood that even the premier Mr. Suzuki, a known moderate, is opposed to such a surrender, believing it to be a betrayal of Japanese forces still in the field.
In the latest raids on Japan - the first time that three cities have been hit in one day - a fleet of 110 unescorted B-29s dropped high-explosive bombs on aircraft factories at Nagoya, Narao and Akashi. At the same time US carrier-based fighters strafed bases on Kyushu used for Kamikaze attacks.
The USAAF’s Twentieth Air Force in the Mariana Islands flies four missions:
1. Mission 191: 44 B-29 Superfortresses attack the Kawanishi Aircraft Company’s plant at Narao; one other hits a target of opportunity.
2. Mission 192: 24 B-29s hit the Kawasaki plant at Akashi; there is 9/10 cloud cover and bombing is by radar; the village of Akashi rather than the factory is hit; two others bomb targets of opportunity.
3. Mission 193: 42 B-29s hit Aichi’s Atsuta factory; only four bombs hit the target area but one causes a devastating fire; one other hits a target of opportunity.
4. Mission 194: During the night of 8/9 June, 26 B-29s mine Shimonoseki Strait; one other mines an alternate target. Mines previously laid by B-29s sink two Japanese freighters off Japan.
On Okinawa, Ushijima’s defence force, confined to the island’s southern tip, has been split in two after landings behind the Japanese lines by US marines.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Mindanao: US troops capture the last major defensive strongpoint on the island, at Mandog.
TERRITORY OF ALASKA: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: Four North American B-25 Mitchells, based on Attu Island, Aleutian Islands, attack Araido Island in the Kurile Islands and are attacked by Japanese aircraft. Two B-25s stray into Soviet airspace and one is shot down by antiaircraft fire; the second lands at Petropavlosk.
Task Force 92, the light cruisers USS Concord (CL-10), USS Richmond (CL-9) and USS Trenton (CL-11) plus escorting destroyers, patrols the east coast of the Kurile Islands searching for Japanese shipping.
CANADA: HMC MTB 464 paid off.
Looks like Baguio is free of Jap control
How many here have been to Baguio?
The Air Force there made fantastic biscuits and gravy
Thanks for your work on this.
I know an elderly Asian woman who still has very vivid memories of the war when she lived on Okinawa as a child. It must have been awful. I told her about your posts. Recently our group of friends brought our baby pictures to an event — she had no pictures of herself as a baby or even as a young child due to the war.
As this was happening, my father was in a POW camp in Omori, having had his B-29 shot down over Tokyo on May 26th.
Very interesting. Thank goodness the camp was to be liberated in a few months.
Follow up with the store. The war has been over for while now.
....General Kenney pointed out that the population of Japan was limited to 30,000,000 by law before the islands were “opened” by Commodore Perry, and in modern times the balance has been supplied primarily by foreign imports..
Probably something to do with the Tokugawa Period, when ag reforms allowed the population to grow rapidly. It is known there were successful efforts to limit the increase in population from around 1700 to the late 1800s.
Actually, I used to get quite a few things there. My last purchases in 2000 were a 13 inch color TV/VCR combo and power lawn mower. They usually had good prices.
You sure you didn't mean the Meiji era (1868-1915)? From what remember of my Jpn history studies, the population was stable at 30,000,000 throughout most of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1868), mostly through a combination of periodic famines, and infanticide. A confluence of Meiji era industrialization and Christian missionaries preaching against infanticide led to the population taking its normal course and doubling within two generations. Part of the pressure to take over Manchuria in the early 1930s was the Japanese equivalent of lebensraum, that the Japanese mostly-farming population needed more arable land to feed itself, the military, and the workers in armament factories, and Japan saw Manchuria as low-hanging fruit for imperialism.
P.S. The population doubled again in the two generations after the war, so that it was around 120,000,000 by the 1990s, but it has stagnated since then, because of a combination of very late marriages and rampant abortion, so that without a turnaround, the Japanese population is set for a rapid decline in the next generation.
The reference was to Commodore Perry.
Film I see of kamikaze attacks typically seems to show planes attacking singly or in very small groups, enabling ships’ gunners to focus all their firepower on few planes and greatly diminishing the attackers’ probability of getting through to their target. Perhaps my data is inadequate, and I know many kamikazes did get through, but if that is true I wonder if it doesn’t expose a kamikaze “fatal” flaw (heh-heh): no feedback, no learning curve. No one came back and said here’s how we can better succeed: mass attacks, thereby overwhelming anti-air defenses and insuring success.
I ran that thing until the wheels literally fell off about two years ago. The Briggs & Stratton 3.5HP Quantum engine was still going strong though.
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