ON ALL FRONTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25849, 21 May 1945, Page 5

ON ALL FRONTS

JAPAN’S LOSING BATTLE HOMELAND SMASHED FROM AIR LATEST PACIFIC NEWS (Rec. 9 p.m.) RUGBY, May 19. Japanese forces continue to fight a losing battle on all fronts in the Far East while their homeland is being smashed from the air on a steadily rising scale. Here is the latest position on all Far Eastern fronts: — Super-Fortresses have smashed at Japan’s war industry in Tokio and Hamamatsu, 66 miles south-west of Tokio. The Japanese have also reported raids on four different places on Formosa Island. On Okinawa the Americans are making gains in fighting of unparalleled bitterness. Thunderbolt fighters are operating from an airfield on Okinawa. On Luzon Americans linking up north-east of Manila have isolated several thousand Japanese and captured two dams, the chief sources of the capital’s water supply. The capture of two airfields on Tarakan brings the Borneo campaign virtually to an end. In Burma the Fourteenth Army, striking to cut off the Japanese eastward escape route, has advanced against strßng opposition. In China, after the Chinese capture of Foochow, there are indications that the Japanese are abandoning a 500-mile strip of the Central China coast as indefensible against the expected American landing there.