Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Tenth Army on Okinawa was moving to avenge the death quickly of its commander, Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., who had been struck down and killed the day before by a fragment from one of six Japanese mortar shells striking in and around the observation post where he had been inspecting the front lines just south of Kunishi Ridge, where the Third Battalion of the Eighth Marine Regiment had just entered combat two hours before the General was hit. He had just remarked that if he had two dry days, he could cut the remaining enemy to pieces. His aide stated that the General died with a smile on his face, as he had been smiling at the time he was hit. He was still breathing when the men reached him, but unconscious.

Now, the Second Marine Division had been hurtled into the attack on the enemy's western flank, with great effect. Many of the enemy, however, continued fiercely to resist.

Admiral Nimitz declared that the day before had been essentially the day of victory, as the remaining Japanese were reduced to an area of six square miles, swept completely from the Yaeju Plateau, left with their backs to the sea. Wrote the Admiral to the troops: "x x x all of us take pride in the day of victory on which [General Buckner] gallantly met a soldier's death."

Meanwhile, General Buckner was buried in the Seventh Infantry Division cemetery near Hagushi Beach, the point where the Americans had invaded the island on April 1.

Maj. General Roy Geiger, commander of the Third Marine Division, was placed in command of the Tenth Army for the duration of the campaign.

About 400 or more B-29's struck Kyushu and Honshu the previous night, the targets not yet identified.

Tokyo reported that the Allied Navy and Air Forces had been bombarding for days the Balikpapan refinery center on western Borneo, but there was no sign yet that the Allies intended invasion.

The Australian Ninth Division entered Sarawak on Borneo, reaching Tutong, 35 miles from the original point of invasion at Brunei Bay, and 25 miles north of the Seria oil fields.

On Luzon, the 37th Infantry continued its rapid advance in the northern Cagayan Valley as the retreating Japanese continued to flee from relentless air strikes. Indicative of their dire predicament, the Japanese were using caribou to pull ox carts as part of their military convoys in the area. Guerillas were operating on the west bank of the Cagayan River as far as Aparri on the northern tip.

On Mindanao, bitter fighting continued inland from Davao Gulf, north of Calinan.

In Paris, it was determined that eight battle-hardened U. S. divisions would comprise the occupation force of the American Zone in Germany, including the 82nd Airborne, the First and Fourth Armored, the First, Third, Ninth, 29th, and 26th Infantry Divisions. The First Infantry had been routed at Kasserine Pass in February, 1943, then fought on to victory at Cap Bon in Tunisia two months later. They had landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, later capturing Aachen across the Siegfried Line in Germany and pushing through the Hurtgen Forest, eventually helping stop Von Rundstedt in the Ardennes offensive of December.

In New York, General Eisenhower received another hero's welcome, to match the one he had been accorded the day before in Washington. An estimated crowd of two million had turned out to see the General in City Hall Park, as another four million, the largest assembled crowd in the city's history, had cheered the General as he toured the city.

President Truman departed Washington by airplane in the morning to head for Olympia, Washington, for a short vacation, planning to arrive in San Francisco on Friday for a Saturday speech to the assemblage of the Conference at their passage finally of the U. N. Charter. General Eisenhower was on hand to see the President off before the General had boarded his own plane to New York. The President wore a gray suit and light tan hat, had on a striped blue shirt and a blue tie.

Before departing, the President requested of Congress that it change the order of succession to the presidency to make the Speaker of the House the next in order of succession after the Vice-President. As it was at the time, based on the 1886 law, the Secretary of State was the next in order of succession. The President based his request on the idea that the Speaker, as an elected official, was more truly representative of the people than a Cabinet officer, and on the fact of there being no Vice-President for another three and a half years.

The change was in fact enacted in 1947, with the president pro tempore of the Senate being established as the next in order of succession following the Speaker, after which follows a series of Cabinet officers, starting with the Secretary of State. The law is still in effect.

After the assassination of President Kennedy, however, the Constitution was amended in 1967 to require that a President appoint a successor Vice-President, to be confirmed by both houses of Congress, whenever the office becomes vacant. That provision has been utilized only twice, in the case of Vice-President Agnew's resignation in 1973, followed by President Nixon's appointment of Representative Gerald Ford as his successor, and at the accession of President Ford after the resignation of President Nixon less than a year later, in 1974, when President Ford appointed former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to become Vice-President. The latter instance was the only time thus far in the history of the Republic when neither the President nor the Vice-President had been elected neither by the people nor their designated electors of the Electoral College.

In Regensburg, Germany, the 12th Corps had discovered five billion dollars worth of gold, securities, and jewelry secreted away by the Nazis in hidden vaults of the Regensberg Reichsbank. It included the wealth of Bavaria and Austria and was more valuable than the haul found April 7 in the Merkel salt mine, which included 200 tons of gold and art works, also discovered by the 12th Corps. Some of the gold found at Regensberg had been taken from the victims of the concentration camps.

On the editorial page, "Okinawa's Blood" points out that the Americans had suffered more than 36,000 casualties and over 10,000 dead in the 80 days of fighting for the island. The Navy had lost 26 ships and another 45 damaged, with more men lost than the Army. By comparison, casualties on Iwo Jima in February and March had been under 20,000, on Saipan the previous summer, under 15,000.

This bloody toll on Okinawa lay back of the criticism leveled at Army and Navy strategy by columnist David Lawrence, primarily insisting that additional Marines should have been landed to attack the Shuri line from behind, with Admiral Nimitz defending the strategy on the basis that such a landing would have been problematic for the unsuitable beaches and heavy defenses of them by the enemy, as well as supply problems for such a landing. Part of this argument also was the difference in strategy employed by the Marines, who favored quick amphibious assault, accepting heavy landing losses to avoid a long campaign, from that of the Army, who favored slow, cautious landings establishing firm beachheads before moving inland.

Moreover, the B-29 attacks had to be diverted from Honshu to Kyushu, source of kamikaze raiders on Navy ships at Okinawa. Likewise, carrier planes had to be used in the effort, taking them from strategic attacks on other Japanese airbases.

Despite the heavy losses, the piece favors acceptance of Admiral Nimitz's defense of the strategy employed on Okinawa, realizing that it was 66 times the size of Iwo Jima and half again as close to Japan, 325 miles to the south, compared to 750 miles for Iwo Jima, and yet was taken with less than half the casualties.

It might be noted, though not yet understood at this point in 1945, of course, that the lack of hesitation in using the atomic bomb in August, once successfully tested on July 16, was the result of the increasing tenacity with which the Japanese fought, the closer the Americans came to the mainland of Japan. In effect, the tough, relentless, suicidal fight the Japanese put up to the end on Okinawa cost virtually the entire cities of Hirsohima and Nagasaki.

"Another Lesson" discusses the longest river in the world, the Missouri, stretching from the Red Rock River in Montana, 3,988 miles, to the Gulf of Mexico, and its erratic behavior, having flooded six times during the prior year, impacting thousands of acres of adjoining farmland.

"Days Are So Long" finds the proposal by the United Automotive Workers union for a thirty-hour work week to be laughably absurd. Questions would be posed in six-hour work days as to how to have a lunch break. And if a person were to work a couple of days with overtime, he or she might fulfill all the work hours for a couple of weeks. One salutary benefit would be the relief of overcrowded buses.

"Control of Chaos" remarks on the inflation to hit the marketplace should the Congress refuse to renew the Price Control Act by the end of June, its slated end date otherwise. With so much money in circulation from wartime wages, raising prices, the desire of retailers and the bane to consumers, would produce runaway inflation rivaling that desperate economic downturn following World War I.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Congresswoman Mary Norton of New Jersey telling Congressman Roger Slaughter of Missouri, a fellow Democrat, that she was disappointed in his resort to a trick which was not slick in suggesting that the wording of the bill to make permanent the Fair Employment Practices Committee, as favored by both President Roosevelt and President Truman, would, by the use of the word "creed", allow Communists to receive favorable minority treatment in employment and equal pay. Ms. Norton urges that Mr. Slaughter substitute, if he liked, the word "religion" or "faith" and the Secretary of Labor would not object.

Drew Pearson comments on the fact that President Truman had occupied the office for a little over two months, two of the most historic months in the nation's history. The snapshot had provided a fairly good portrait of how the new President would likely govern during the remainder of his term.

Samuel Grafton offers a "dull little point", that there was not much use in lowering tariffs if the country were going to raise prices by abolishing OPA. The result would be that the countries who could afford to trade on the basis of lowered tariffs would not be able to afford the goods from America for the higher prices. But the Congress appeared to alternate back and forth between these contrary positions.

Marquis Childs finds the cries of outrage regarding Elliott Roosevelt's $4,000 payoff in 1942 on a 1939 loan for $200,000 made by A & P president John Hartford to be hypocritical, coming primarily from the sources who always looked for an excuse to attack the late President.

Dorothy Thompson remarks on the German system which had provided for no individual initiative, leaving Germans to train themselves for administrative or technical niches, then to retire on a pension. She recommends that all such pensions be abolished.

Anyway, it all might have looked, and sounded, a bit like this, a kind of systemic plot, without conscience, without principle, set in motion of its own revolving emolument.

And, just which of the Watergate burglars Dorman Smith depicts, and whether the guard is Blaze, we leave to your fertile imagination.