MASS EVACUATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25718, 14 December 1944, Page 5

MASS EVACUATION

CIVILIANS LEAVING TOKIO

AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS NEW YORK, Dec. 12.

Tokio radio announced that several waves of Super-Fortresses were over the Japanese mainland to-day. They made four flights over Tokio, dropping incendiaries. The fires were immediately extinguished. The radio stated that Super-Fort-resses which raided Mukden on December 7 dropped bombs on a prison camp, killing 18 British and American prisoners and wounding 39 others. The radio quoted .a Domei News Agency announcement that Japanese planes attacked enemy forces on the western coast of the Biliran Islands, north of Leyte, damaging two enemy motor vessels. (The Associated Press points out that no Allied report has indicated that Allied troops have landed on Biliran.)

Berlin radio stated to-day that Tokio will be evacuated and added that mass evacuation will begin immediately. Twenty thousand will leave to-day, especially the old and infirm, children, and expectant mothers. Workers in war industries and essential industries will not be allowed to depart. Tokio radio said workers in a Tokio war plant gave a pledge to work from 7.30 a.m. to 11 p.m. on seven days a week, aiming to increase production 80 per cent. Industrial engineers, hampered by an iron, shortage, achieved amazing success in producing wooden boring machines with the body and the pulleys made from hardwood, the only iron being the shaft and the chucks.