UNDER STRAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 130, 4 June 1945, Page 4

UNDER STRAIN

JAP OPPOSITION IN CHINA

CHUNGKING, June 2,

The Chinese High Command communique reports that the Chinese in a three-day drive have broken the Japanese defence line before Paoching. The speed and power of the new drive, which is slashing straight across the waist of the Japanese lifeline between north China and the Canton-Hong Kong area, indicate that perhaps the new American trained and equipped Chinese 6th Army is in action. Recent frontline dispatches said the army had taken up p.ositions on the bHunan Province front, after being flown from western China to meet the Japanese assault on Chih-kiang. Fourteenth Air Force headquarters revealed that 11 American air bases were evacuated between July, 1944, and January, 1945. Nanning and Suichwan have already been recovered, and Paoching and bLiuchow appear to be near recapture. Lieutenant-General Claire Chennault, the air commander in China, announced that the 14th Air Force, in attacks against Japanese inland shipping from the beginning of the enemy's drive from Hankow a year ago, has hit 2400 junks and 100,700 sampans, with the result that the advancing Chinese have found the enemy troops hungry and short of clothing and ammunition. General Chennault considered that the air force's most important contribution was the blasting of about 1,000,000 tons of Japanese coastal shipping. The lack of sea transport helped to make the Japanese inland corridor untenable. The Japanese air force in China had been reduced till it was only of academic interest. The correspondent of the Associated Press says that after overcoming stubborn resistance, the Chinese captured Suilo, south-west of Nanning, and continued to advance to a point 25 miles from the Indo-China border. The Chinese have now ripped a gap of 145 miles in the southern end of the enemy's corridor above and below Nanning, and have swept on 25 miles to the vicinity of Tsinkong, 50 miles south-west of Liuchow, on which the Chinese are closing from the southwest and north-west. Other Chinese have driven within nine and a half miles west of Paoching, for which the Japanese apparently intend to battle strongly. The Chinese killed, and wounded 28,000 of the enemy in the 50-day period that ended on April 28. '