http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/5/17.htm
June 17th, 1945 (SUNDAY)
CHINA: Japanese troops start withdrawing between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers.
JAPAN: The US continues to make advances in the Kunishi Ridge area of Okinawa.
Okinawa: Admiral Minoru Ota, the commander of the Japanese naval base, commits suicide.
25 Twentieth Air Force B-29s mine Shimonoseki Strait and waters around Kobe, Japan; 2 others mine alternate targets.
US bombers start a series of raids on civilians, targeting 58 secondary cities.
The USAAF’s XXI Bomber Command in the Mariana Islands flies one mining and four incendiary missions against Japan during the night of 17/18 June.
Mission 205: 25 B-29 Superfortresses mine Shimonoseki Strait and waters around Kobe; two others mine alternate targets.
Mission 206: 117 B-29s attack the Kagoshima urban area and one hits an alternate target; 2.15 sq mi (5.57 sq km) are destroyed; one B-29 is lost.
Mission 207: 116 B-29s hit the Omuta urban area and three hit alternate targets; the was the heaviest attack of the four incendiary missions but only 0.217 sq mi (0.56 sq km), 4.1 percent of the city’s area, are destroyed.
Mission 208: 130 B-29s hit the Hamamatsu urban area; 2.44 sq mi (6.32 sq km) are destroyed.
Mission 209: 89 B-29s attack the Yokkaichi urban area; 1.23 sq mi (3.19 sq km) are destroyed.
33 P-47s from Ie Shima Island bomb and strafe shipping, the airfield, villages, a bridge and radar and radio facilities on Amami Gunto Island and Tokuno, Japan. During the night of 17/18 June, two P-61 Black Widows from Ie Shima Island fly an unsuccessful (due to weather) intruder strike over Amami Gunto and Kyushu, Japan; this begins a campaign of night and day intruder missions over Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands by the night fighters (12 more are flown during June).
KURILE ISLANDS: Aircraft of the Eleventh Air Force and Fleet Air Wing Four (FAW-4) fly several missions to the Kurile Islands. Four North American B-25 Mitchells attack ships at Kataoka Naval Base on Shimushu Island while four other B-25s fly an anti-shipping strike between Shimushu and Paramushiru Islands sinking one ship and setting another on fire. Two B-24s attack two ships west of Paramushiru Island and one is shot down. Five B-24s bomb Shimushu Island damaging an ammunition dump while three other B-24s off Shimushu sink and unescorted vessel and slight damage two other vessels.
Two Lockheed PV-2 Harpoons of FAW-4 bomb shipping in Paramushiru Straits using radar and two others bomb Suribachi Air Field on Paramushiru Island.
CANADA: Corvettes HMCS Cobalt and Long Branch paid off Sorel, Province of Quebec.
Corvette HMCS Eyebright paid off and returned to RN at Belfast.
Trawlers HMS Anticosti, Ironbound, Liscomb, Magdalen, Manitoulin and Miscou paid off and returned to RN at Belfast.
Fairmiles HMC ML 060 and ML 064 paid off.
U.S.A.: General of the Army Henry H “Hap” Arnold, Commanding General US Army Air Forces, requests of Lieutenant General Albert C Wedemeyer, Commanding General US Forces in China, that Lieutenant General George E Stratemeyer replace Major General Clare L Chennault as head of USAAF units in China.
Light cruiser USS Little Rock commissioned.
Submarine USS Cubera launched.
Destroyer USS Kenneth D Bailey launched.
Professor Luski would have been right at home in any American University’s Political Science Department. In fact, I think he taught my “Comparative Political Systems” Seminar at IU in the fall of 1980. Or someone just like him did. The better title for the course was “Soviet Communism Here and Now.” It’s nauseating how these academicians fellate the USSR and ignore the mass murder of millions, the camps, the repression of thought and liberty. Men in the USSR were no more than pieces of meat to be disposed of as the state saw fit.
One the one thing they all ignored; not one country at this time willingly voted for or accepted the Soviet Communist system. And all of them who had it imposed built walls to keep their people in rather than to keep people out.