http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/6/08.htm
July 8th, 1945 (SUNDAY)
JAPAN: Two Twentieth Air Force fighter groups (100+) P-51s from Iwo Jima pound airfields and other targets at Hyakuri, Chofu, Tokorozawa, and Yachimata, Japan; 5 aircraft are claimed downed and at least 25 destroyed on the ground; 8 P-51s are lost.
SOUTH CHINA SEA: Dutch Submarine O-19 ran aground on Ladd Reef. Unable to free herself and deep in enemy waters, O-19 was at the mercy of any Japanese warships and planes in the area. Their situation was desperate, but responding to a coded message about O-19’s situation, submarine USS Cod made full speed for the imperilled Dutch submarine and arrived at the scene later that same day. Two days of attempts to pull O-19 free yielded no results and the captains of both vessels agreed that there was no hope of freeing the Dutch sub from the grip of the reef. After removing the 56 Dutch sailors to safety, Cod destroyed the O-19 to keep any of its equipment from falling into Japanese hands. The rescue was the only international submarine-to-submarine rescue in history.
BORNEO: On Borneo, Thirteenth Air Force B-24s and B-25s, supporting Australian forces who arelanding at Penajam, hit the Balikpapan area defensive positions, Samarinda shipyards, various targets along the Samarinda road, and warehouses at Tandjung. B-24s [including some of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)] bomb warehouses at Donggala on Celebes Island.
CANADA:
Corvettes HMCS Asbestos, Moose Jaw and Smiths Falls paid off Sorel, Province of Quebec.
HMC ML 050, 087 and 103 paid off.
U.S.A.: Opinion pollsters asked the following question:
Do you think American soldiers in Germany should be allowed to have dates with German girls?
All Men Women
Yes 30% 41% 22%
No 59% 48% 67%
No opinion 11% 11% 11%
Utah: A soldier opens fire on German PoWs, killing eight and wounding 20.
Bedford Springs Hotel:
As the war in Europe was coming to a close in the spring of 1945, Allied forces rounded up Japanese diplomatic personnel who had either fled to or were living in places like Sweden and Austria. Officials from the U.S. State Department felt the captured diplomats might come in handy for prisoner exchanges or other tactics and needed a place to house them.
Nestled in the Allegheny Mountains of south-central Pennsylvania, the Bedford Springs Resort was vacant (the owners had plans to renovate at the time), isolated, and less than three hours from Washington, D.C. The resort, founded in 1796, had previously served the war effort as a radio school for the navy. The first group of detainees, including General Hiroshi Oshima, Japanese ambassador to Germany, arrived in Bedford in August 1945.
News of the hotel’s new “guests” spread quickly and angered locals who saw the containment of an enemy nation’s diplomats at a sprawling resort as a slap in the face. “Some of them had sons and daughters, mostly sons, who were interned in Japanese camps and they were treated very cruelly and here we’re putting up these Japanese ambassadors, representatives of their country, in a luxurious hotel,” Bill Defibaugh, the hotel’s resident historian, says.
Not surprising I suppose that American women are much more opposed than American men to American occupation soldiers in Germany having “dates with German girls.”