Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a pre-dawn banzai charge by 300 Japanese troops on southern Okinawa near Hanagusuku against the Seventh Infantry Division resulted in the death of all of the Japanese, though they fought with grenades and satchel charges as they approached. All were dead by noon and American casualties were light. The Seventh advanced 400 yards along the Yaeju escarpment.

On the western side of the escarpment line, the Sixth Marine Division completed the annihilation of the Japanese on the Oroku Peninsula, 3,500 enemy troops having been killed during the previous nine days. The First Division Marines strengthened their position on Kunishi Ridge by bringing up reinforcements under a smoke screen, protected by Sherman tanks, after crossing 800 yards of open rice paddies.

The Japanese were now clustered in a thirteen-square mile area behind the escarpment.

Kyushu airfields were struck by fifty American Marine Corsairs out of Okinawa. One plane was lost.

In Tokyo, Premier Suzuki wrote off Okinawa, as he had for several days, and declared that its fall would not lead to his resignation. He urged the Japanese to make the home islands, which he admitted to be under military rule, into an impregnable fortress such as that at Rabaul on New Britain.

On Mindanao, the Japanese continued to try to resist American forces along the east and west banks of the Davao River in the southeastern part of the island. The 19th Infantry Regiment was proceeding along the east bank and had eliminated resistance in the hemp groves and jungled hills. Scattered pockets remained active in the vicinity of captured Mandog. West of Davao City along the Talomo-Kinawe Trail, troops of the 24th Division and elements of the 41st fought against tough opposition. The 34th Regiment encountered heavy resistance while advancing up the main road from Ula to Baguio.

On Luzon, the 37th Infantry Division broke through enemy resistance at Ortoung Pass, seven miles northeast of Bagabag, near the entrance to Cagayan Valley. Heavy enemy mortar and artillery fire failed to halt the American advance up Highway 4. Five enemy tanks were captured, three of which were American General Grants, presumably captured by the Japanese at the fall of Bataan three years earlier.

On Borneo, the tank-led Australian Ninth Division were battling in swamp land for the only remaining air strip in the Brunei Bay area. The Labuan airfield was already in use, but was being fired upon from enemy positions on the ridge behind the swamps. The Brunei airfield had been easily captured also, along with some of the best rubber plantations on Borneo. Fighting intensified, however, as the Australians approached Timbalai airfield on Labuan Island.

The Seria, Lutong, and Miri oil fields, set on fire by the Japanese, continued to burn.

The Dyaks tribe had attacked the Japanese with poison dart blowers, swords, and spears, in support of the Australian invasion in the area of Brunei Bay.

Prime Minister Churchill informed Commons that relations among the Big Three nations had improved since the breaking of the deadlock on Poland and that there was no basis for misunderstanding with France regarding the Syrian crisis of the prior two weeks, that the British had no territorial desires in the Levant. In anticipation of the upcoming general election, the Prime Minister also stated that Labor Party leader Clement Atlee would accompany him to the scheduled Big Three meeting, set to begin sometime prior to July 26, in fact to begin July 16.

Moscow radio stated that the 16 Polish leaders arrested in late March for having a secret radio from which they had communicated with London would be tried within the ensuing few days. The broadcast named the ringleader of the group as General Bronislaw Okulicku.

The Ninth Army in Europe was slated to return to the United States while the Fifteenth Army would remain with the Third and Seventh Armies to occupy Germany, at least until December. At that point, the Fifteenth Army would likely be transferred to the Pacific if needed there. It was believed that the Ninth Army would follow the First Army to the Pacific.

The 86th and 97th Infantry Divisions became the first whole divisions to leave Europe, and would soon be followed by the 2nd, 5th, 54th, 67th, 95th, and 106th, all to be sent to the Pacific.

General Eisenhower was honored by General De Gaulle at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris, and, as he had been in London during the week, was given a hero's reception.

On the editorial page, "Veterans At Large" urges that the three veterans, one a former Ranger, recently caught in a swamp near Raleigh after committing four hold-ups, presented no cause for confirming the widespread belief that there would be a pattern of lawlessness following the war and the return into the civilian population of men who had been trained to kill.

"Come and Get It" reports that the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and the Disabled War Veterans had made a report to a House committee regarding the conditions they had found in Veterans Administration hospitals.

"An Old Hand" tells of World War I veteran Congressman James Richards of South Carolina having returned from a tour of the concentration camps discovered by the Western Allies in Germany, Dachau, Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen.

"Phosphorous Shells" comments on the report from Okinawa during the week that the Japanese were using phosphorous shells for the first time in the war. It was edited out of subsequent dispatches after the initial revelation.

"Quick Triggers" finds the new City Council to be stepping to the plate and responding quickly to citizen complaints. An example was a grassy strip with trees in front of a junior high school which many believed caused a traffic bottleneck. So, the Council ordered it removed. No sooner than done, the Council was confronted with citizens protesting the order to remove the strip, that it effectively impeded traffic flow to increase student safety. So, the Council then rescinded its order and decided to leave matters status quo for the time being.

The little squib following the piece remarks on the protest among liberal Congressmen regarding the appointment of Stuart Symington as head of the Surplus War Property Board, based on his having supposedly conspired at some point in the past to obtain a monopoly on parking meters.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record reprints a letter addressed to Senator "Pappy" Lee O'Daniel of Texas lambasting OPA as creating in the country a "hell on earth", acting as a veritable "gestapo", and being possessed of "silly ideas", that the letter writer never expected to buy another war bond in consequence of the OPA rationing and price control program. We are certain that the letter lays out its other points in colorful, erudite, and elucidatory phraseology, but, unfortunately, it will be lost to posterity for again being much too dim to read.

The editors present a series of statistics compiled by the North Carolina Hospital & Medical Care Commission, showing the rank of the state among all states in various social and economic indicia. The average tended to place North Carolina in about 40th place among the 48 states. It led the nation only in the average persons per home, four, against a national average of 3.3, and ranked high, 14th, in number of births, 90 per thousand women age 15 to 44, against a national average of 73.7.

Drew Pearson reports that Italian Ambassador Tarchiani had proposed that Italy declare war on Japan and provide troops for the Pacific war. The British and the State Department had approved the proposal, but neither government was willing to provide shipping to transport troops to the Pacific.

Samuel Grafton reports that the House had cut the appropriation for OWI in half, from 35 million to 17.5 million, much to the delight of many conservatives. The budget was cut with 160 members missing on a Friday afternoon.

The rest of the debate was equally impertinent, but, in the end, the Republicans managed to have their way, with so many members absent, and slashed the budget in half.

He does not mention the defense of OWI by Republican Congressman Everett Dirksen of Illinois as indicated in the column of the previous day. Mr. Dirksen wanted OWI preserved after the war for its producing foreign good will, as he had recently found in India and Turkey.

Dorothy Thompson, writing from Munich, discusses the atomization ongoing in Europe, where intense separatist movements were taking place even within the provinces of Germany and Austria, one having arisen in Bavaria as the Allies had approached Munich in April. Nationalist movements were equally intense, with pan-Frenchism and pan-Slavism apparent, the latter being encouraged by Tito and by the Soviets, recently joined by the Czechs. Within Yugoslavia, however, the Serbs, wanting no part of Tito, sought separation from the Croatians and Slovenians. Italy no longer had interest in any empire and was having a revival of nationalism.