Straws In the Wind

¶ A “powerful” U.S. fleet, according to Radio Tokyo, had left the Marianas and was maneuvering south of Japan this week.

¶ The British Admiralty announced that a Japanese 10,000-ton, eight-inch-gun cruiser had been attacked by torpedo planes and finished by five British destroyers in the Malacca Strait off Penang, Malaya.

¶ Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Allied Southeast Asia commander, was now able to consider: 1) a move to cut off the Malay peninsula by a thrust through Moulmein to Bangkok; 2) a drive at southern Malaya and Singapore by way of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean.

¶ The U.S. War Department announced that General Courtney Hodges’ First Army was being redeployed to the Pacific by way of the U.S., keeping enough veteran units and personnel to maintain its battle record.

¶ Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King stated last week that 30,000 Canadian ground troops, in addition to air and navy forces, would be sent to the Pacific.

¶ France wanted to send several divisions to help reconquer Indo-China.

¶ A Moscow dispatch, passed by Soviet censors, said that the Red Army had started “intensive” summer field training in the Lvov area and in the Caucasus.

These were the straws in the wind as the Allied storm gathered over the dwindling empire of the Rising Sun.