Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 May 1944 — Page 1
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FORECAST: Partly cloudy tonight and tomorrow with s some likelihood of showers or r thundershowers tomorrow; continued warm.
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| VOLUME 55—NUMBER 52
THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1084
Entered as Second-Class Matter at Postoffics Indianapolis 9, Ind. Issued daily except Sunday
PRICE FOUR CENTS
Ja s Nai led ( “hinese To Trees, Liberated Prisoners Declare
By RALPH C. TEATSORTH United Press War Correspondent
ADVANCED ALLIED HEADQUARTERS, New ' Guinea, May 11.—Chinese who aided Australian guerrillas on the Malay peninsula were crucified by Japanese troops who nailed them to palm trees with spikes @riven through their foreheads, it was revealed today, with announcement of the liberation of 707 allied prisoners during the U. S. invasion of Hollandia and Aitape.
A communique from Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters disclosed that 462 Sikhs, Indian troops captured at the fall of Singapore, were liberated at Hollandia, along with 159 other allied prisoners, including American missionaries, Australians, Dutch, Chinese, Filipinos, Poles and Czechoslovaks. Eighty-six Javanese were freed at Aitape. . The communique also disclosed that the Japanese already have lost 1502 dead and 290 captured in the twin
American invasion. At the same time, it was revealed that 69 Sikhs rescued during the invasion of the Admiralties last March, and the Australian department of information quoted one of them as accusing the Japanese of the atrocities against the Chinese. The liberated prisoner, Jemadar Shingeera Singh, declared: “On an 18-day march from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur we were herded along the road like cattle. At one
place we saw a number of Chinese who had been nailed to palm trees with spikes driven through their foreheads. “We were told by our guards that they had been sus-
pected of helping guerrillas, mostly Australians, who were still fighting determinedly in inland areas.” Another Sikh, Naik Gurman Singh, said 15 of the Indian troops who became ill were put to death by the Japa-
(Continued on Page 8 —Column 5)
MRS. IKE SPEAKS: ave Faith, “Confidence,
She Advises
By GWEN MORGAN © Duftss Pred Stall
| \ ; . : ‘VV ASHINGTON, May 11.,
—To the millions of American * wives, mothers and sweethearts whose menfolk are poised in England for the mightiest battle in history, Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower recommends faith and confidence in the high command as invasion day approaches.
“We must rely on the generals who are leading us,” said the wife
realize more than ever in these times " that there is a | divine power greater than any human
ids
by the
“These women keep busy, knowing that stewing and fussing will
SEE RE-RATIONING OF
MEATS, VEGETABLES
OPA Aid Predicts Return to Point Basis in "44.
BOSTON, May 11 (U, P.).—Col. Bryan Houston, deputy OPA administrator in charge of rationing, said today that meat and canned vegetables will be returned to a “reasonable ration basis” before the end of the year, but added that serious food shortages were unlikely for the duration. Col. Houston said at a press conference here that ‘the extent of vegetable ra would depend largely on two production factors:
tables and meats will be heavier than ever.
He anticipated a beef surplus be-
- tween September and November,
ROOM P {AT LARGE AGAIN ON NORTH SIDE
Screams Trace Path
of Assailant.
A bedroom prowler terrorized north side residents again early today, bringing several squads of police on the run to the vicinity of 30th and Illinois sts, where one woman's screams were followed by another as the wsajian, went from house to house. It started about 4 a. m. when Morris Beck, 2954 N. Illinois st, heard a screen being ripped from a second floor window in his building. He saw a man running through his yard and he spread the alarm. A few minutes later the neighborhood was awakened by a woman screaming a block away at 2052 N. Kenwood ave, where Miss Virginia
by a man in her bedroom on the second floor. Jumps Onto Roof She said when she screamed the man jumped out of the window onto the roof of a porch and disappeared. Police were swarming into the vicinity from all directions, and firemen from engine house No. 14 at 30th and Kenwood ave. left their post to join the search. Plein also saw a man pacing up and down the streets with a shotgun, looking for the prowler.
She said he fled when she
Police squad cars and walking patrolmen searched the neighborhood for half an hour and turned! up with two suspects they found walking the streets. One suspect was identified “pari tially” by the victims, police said, but the second suspect was
(held on vagrancy thusges Te further investigation.
HOOSIER HEROES— 2 Men Lost on Missions Over Nazi Territory
S. Sgt. Richard E. Whicker , . . missing ever France.
and said during that period beef |
points or taken off ‘rationing en-| tirely, 1 There is no indication that sugar, |
butter, cheese, fruit and Juices, or cdnned fruits will be taken
off point values, the OPA ration- |
ing head said.
LOCAL TEMPERATURES 6am...
Sam...
TIMES FEATURES
| Ge {two more Hoosiers, one of them
from Indianapolis, to: the list of soldiers missing in action.
ON INSIDE PAGES
Police Comb Area as Eo become
Howald, 22, said she was awakened
not (Continued on “Page 9—Column 4) | identified by any victim. Both were |
REPORT 23,000 JAPS
They are | 5; Set. Richard . Wacker, 950) %
]
ACE'S STORY:
Bob Johnson
Claims Luck Big Factor
ne June Time"
of of wton, America’s king of aces In this war sir theater
mand, en gratuiate Johnson. Ketner said, “Johnson, the best thing about the job you have done is not shooting down 27 ny, but the way you pisved on the Said Johnsen, “Without the rere 1 couldn’t have ‘dome it, sir.” By CAPT. ROBERT S. JOHNSON
Written for NEA Service HEADQUARTERS, 8TH FIGHTER COMMAND, Britain. — Shooting down enemy planes is largely a matter of teamwork. There is also more than a little luck involved. If it hadn't been for the fact that the canopy stuck so that I couldn't open it, I would have bailed out over France in one of my earliest mis- ... — sions. But we will get to that later. I have been interested in Ja
three of it for flying. After that I (Continued on Page 3—Column 1)
4887 JAP PLANES LOST IN 27 MONTH
on to Aoricam} in Same Period Set at 1414.
WASHINGTON, May 11 (U.P) .— Army air forces facing the Japanese destroyed 4887 enemy planes during the first 27 months of the
| war while losing 1414 of our air- | craft, Secretary of War Henry L. | Stimson revealed today. { Of the Japanese planes destroyed, | 3765 were shot down in combat and 1 1122 were destroyed on the ground.
| Stimson disclosed the figures dur- of
ing a press conference in which he introduced Maj. Richard Bong, credited with 27 enemy planes shot down in aerial combat in the Pacific. Heé is the “first American fighter pilot to exceed the world war record of Oapt. X Eddie Rickenbacker,” Stimson noted “As 1 introduced Capt. Rickenbacker to you I think it is only proper to introduce his successor,” the secretary said. Bong, of Poplar, Wis, who also is credited with eight probables, was scheduled to hold a press conference later today.
KILLED IN INDIA WAR
Thousands More Caught in
TWO DISTRICTS BOOM JACKSON FOR GOVERNOR
Senator Will Announce His Candidacy for Post
Soon.
(Earl Richert's Political Column, Page Three.)
The Jackson-for-governor boom was underway today, ‘the Democratic organizations in the fourth
and 10th districts having indorsed Senator Jackson for the guberna-
ization meetings yesterday,
the governship nomination: Senator Jackson is expected to anshortly.
Indorsement of Governor Schricker for the U. S. senate nomination
brought to eight the number of districts that have so indorsed him. The 10th and eighth districts reindorsed him. The district reorganization meetings themselves were quiet affairs, {changes being made in the chair{manship and vice chairmanship in lonly one of the nine districts wers | Democratic reorganization meetings | where held yesterday. Re-election of Democratic State Chairman Fred Bays and all other officers of the state committee at the state reorganization meeting here Saturday was apparently assured. Elect Harry Fenning
- distriet committeemen elected Harry Fenning of Portland as chairman, succeeding Harry Baldwin of Anderson, and. Mrs. Leah Miles of Marion, vice chairman, succeeding Mrs. Nancy L. Schaefer Huntington.
District chairmen and vice chairmen were re-elected in the second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th districts. In the first and 11th districts, new party heads were appointed last week by Lake and Marion county party chairmen authorized to name district chieftains because their districts are comprised of only one county each. The convention program will be on the agenda of the state organ-
torial nomination at thelr reorgan- | [i
They were the first districts to| come out for the U. 8. senator for|
by his home district, the second,
Is Eivil War Shell Alive? Finder Gives Police a Poser
POLICE laboratory technicians were confronted today with a Civil war, three-inch cannonball for examination to determine if . it is loaded with powder. William Kootz, 1708 Arrow ave., the willing donor; found the
ball in a tree trunk curio he had been using in his rock garden the past two years for atmos-
phere.
had become rotten and decided to chop it up for kindling. ~ = 2 Swinging away, his ax hit metal and uncovered the cannonball embedded in the wood. Probing farther he found fragments of another, some musket balls and small shrapnel-like ‘metal pieces. That was enough. He called police to haul his arsenal. away. Meanwhile, Mrs. Kootz had used some of the wood in the . furnace. “I don’t know what to do with the rest of the tree, but
(Continued on Page 9—Column 5) |
Mrs. William Koofz . . . a rock garden, tree-trunk curio had =a civil war cannonball imbedded in it. :
Sgt. Fred D. Staggs, in charge of the police property room, singerly handles the Kootz cannonball believed to be “alive.”
Alleged 'Dean of Con Men'
Indiana FBI special agents last night apprehended Jack K. Meredith, widely-sought as the alleged “‘dean of confidence men,” as he stepped from the bus station in Hammond. He is held in the county jail here. Using over 100 aliases, Meredith is said by the FBI to have applied his various schemes of fraud throughout the country, posing as an
Valley Trap.
' SOUTHEAST ASIA HEAD- | QUARTERS, Kandy, Ceylon, May [i 11 (U. P).—An estimated 21,000 to,
B00 Japanese have been “Kile
Capt. "Hoff and Lt. Tucker Covering Pacific News Beat
automobile salesman, army officer, construction company official, a prosperous rancher and farmer. Federal prosecution against Meredith is outstanding at Des Moines, 1a, Charging him with violation of the national stolen property act in connection with passing a $10,000 . fraudulent check .drawn on an In-
By CHARLES P. ARNOTT United Press War Correspondent
WITH THE 37TH (OHIO) DIVISION ON BOUGAINVILLE, : May 11.—This tiny beach-k 4
coving 12 square miles along he
| Bougainville west coast has b | the best “covered” battlefront of] "
Sunday he noticed the wood
rail line feedi
1
Nabbed by FBI in Hammond, :
25TH DAY: HITLER'S WEST WALL IS BATTERED BY 3000 PLANES |
Mighty Attacks on Invasion Coast
May Force Rommel to Change ~ Whole Plan of Defense.
By LOUIS F. KEEMLE United Press Foreign Editor
A sky -filling parade of allied warplanes, about 3000 | strong, heaped more than 4000 tons of bombs on the French
\invasion coast and its supporting network of rail lines today
and radio Berlin said other American bombers were striking again at western Germany on the 25th day of the non-stop air offensive. Every type of plane in the allied arsenal shuttled across ‘the channel to carry the attack against Hitler's west wall, |starting at midnight and continuing on through the late twilight. By early afternoon official reports showed that 10 important railway junctions and two airdromes behind the French channel coast had been blasted.
See Hitler Plan Disrupted Observers said Hitler's invasion defenses were taking one of the worst aerial beatings of the war, and some analysts believed the Nazi high command's entire scheme to defend the continent may have been upset by the over- | powering weight of the allied onslaught. The allied Sia to cut every Belgian and French the invasion coast may already have made impossible for the Germans to drop parachutists into | British embarkation ports, these observers said. Severing of the rail lines, it was pointed out, would force the German command to save these air-borne reserves for use against the invasion force itself. Growing “eve-of-invasion” tension also was marked by the following developments:
Marshal ‘Erwin Rommel, German anti-invasion commander, was reported to have taken charge of the ' bomb-crippled French railways in an effort to keep trains ‘running for vital war purposes, while Vichy said all passen-
ger service is being canceled. 2 French national authorities in Algiers decided to incorporate the organized French underground into the regular army as the “French Army of the Interior.” The underground forces are estimated even by the Germans
“to number 175,000.
3 The official German DNB agency reported that 1,400,000 men had been enlisted in a “sharpshooting organization of the German people” to defend the Reich against invasion, along lines similar to the British home guard in 1940, when it was Britain which feared invasion.
4
Foreign Commissar Viacheslav M. Molotov said in a speech in Moscow that the time has eome when the
‘allies are prepared for joint operations from East and West,
‘and that the enemy is soon to feel their blows.
5 London military observers declared the fall of Sevastopol has cleared the last obstacle to full Soviet participation in the Tehran plans for simultaneous assault. The 25th straight day of he pre-invasion "bombard-
gets vital to the support of Naz anti-invasion forces. Again the southeast coast of England quaked under the impact of allied bombs bursting amidst the mysterious German installations
ment of western Europe followed attacks in force by British night bombers which cut a trunk railway behind the invasion coast at
four points while the R. A. F. was striking from Italy at Budapest, Hungary Following through by daylight, many hundreds of U. S. and British medium, light and fighter-bomb-ers maintained the “earthquake blitz” on the Pas de Calais and ranged inland to strike heavily at rail yards, airdromes and other tar-
D-Day Guess Wrong Twice, ‘Lear Gives Up
PUEBLO, Colo., May 11 (U. P.) —Gen. Ben Lear, a mem-
across the 25-odd miles of channel waters. The Nazi-controlled Paris radio said an allied air force dropped bombs on Annecy deep in eastern France this afternoon, causing “important” damage. The Berlin radio reported that a bomber formation approached southwest Germany, but turned away. The first daylight announcement from the allied air forces reported American Marauders and Havocs
(Continued on Page $—Column 0 Rommel Seizes