http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/4/19.htm
May 19th, 1945 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Minesweeper HMS Pyrrhus launched.
GERMANY: Flensburg: Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s unofficial philosopher, responsible for formulating the party’s race policies, is arrested.
Hermann Göring is captured by forces of the American Seventh Army. (Gene Hanson)
MIDDLE EAST: French troops arrive in Syria and Lebanon, sparking off nationalist demonstrations
NEW GUINEA: Australian forces capture Wewak, the last Japanese-held port on the mainland, after a bitter struggle.
JAPAN: As 272 B-29s today hit Hamamatsu on Mission 178, it was revealed that a quarter of Nagoya, Japan’s main aircraft-manufacturing city, has been flattened by two raids in the last week.
The aircraft, from the USAAF’s Twentieth Air Force based on the Mariana Islands, also made an abortive raid on aircraft industry targets in Tachikawa. 14 others hit targets of opportunity; four B-29s are lost.
The raids on the two cities are the start of attacks on Japan’s secondary industrial centres with populations under 200,000.
Reconnaissance photos released today revealed the results of two fire-bomb raids by fleets of over 450 B-29s, the largest so far to strike at mainland Japan, which hit Nagoya three and five days ago, setting fire to 5.9 square miles of the city. Since incendiary attacks began, nearly 60 square miles of Japanese cities have been wiped out. Nagoya’s Aichi aircraft works and two other key factories were destroyed, while Mitsubishi’s aircraft plant, the world’s largest, was damaged. Results of today’s high-explosive raid on Hamamatsu, 120 miles from Tokyo, are not known. Bombs were dropped through the clouds from medium altitude using precision instruments.
RYUKU ISLANDS: Ie Shima: VII Fighter Command, United States’ Seventh Air Force bases the 413th Fighter Group flying P-47Ns on this island.
CHINA: Foochow: Japanese troops today abandoned the east coast treaty port of Foochow, seven months after capturing it. Two other east-coast ports, Amoy and Swatow, have also been abandoned, their forces retreating to Hong Kong, confirming reports that Tokyo has ordered a strategic withdrawal from south China. Since the US recapture of the Philippines these ports have come within US bomber range. In the event of an invasion these garrisons would be isolated, cut off from support from Japan or Formosa.
CANADA: The only submarine to be operated by the RCN during the war is commissioned. HMCS Esquimault is the former U-190. (Dave Hornford)
U.S.A.: Escort carrier USS Salerno Bay commissioned.
U-873 commander, Kptlt Friedrich Steinhoff, committed suicide while being kept in a street prison in Boston instead of a POW camp.
Corvette HMCS Barrie departed New York with Convoy HX-357.
Hatred for Germans Tempers Joy Of 197 Ex-Prisoners on Arrival – 8
The soldier mentioned at the bottom of the first column became actor Woodrow Parfrey (Dirty Harry, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and other film and TV roles)
The fighting on Okinawa is a grim preview of what Olympic would be like, only on a much larger scale. The more I read, I don’t think the Olympic forces would have been thrown back into the sea. On the other hand, we were not going to clear the island and pacify it before the scheduled launch of Coronet the following spring. In fact, I’m guessing we would not have cleared Kyushu at all without a much more massive effort than we had planned.
American forces slated for Olympic were 14 divisions, with a projected strength of just under 700,000 men, to take a rugged island much larger than Okinawa. The Japanese had 14 divisions and 11 brigades in defense. Although the manpower was less than the Americans, and they lacked artillery and ammunition, they were going to fight as tenaciously as the Japanese ever did.
The projected occupation of Kyushu in 90 days was not going to happen. The Sugar Loaf, Chocolate Drop and Shuri Castle would be repeated dozens of times.
"Mutual understanding through international education, economic stabilization on the basis of Bretton Woods agreements, national unity, equality of peoples, freedom of the press and radio, military force to keep the peace and moral law, founded on an international bill of rights, to guarantee it..."
In high school, in the early 1960s I attended a similar "Student United Nations" session, in San Francisco -- remember it as being a long drive from Monterey, for a boring meeting.
Curious to note these began in 1945, and I suppose, continue to this day.
So why are not the world's problems all solved by now?