Violent Winds
Hamper B-29's
Bombing Japan
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(This dispatch was written by Mr Wheeler before he was
wounded recently on Iwo Jima.)
By KEITH WHEELER
North American Newspaper Alliance
Saipan --(Delayed) -- At above 30,00 feet over Japan, the wind blows from the West at velocities ranging from 100 to 200 miles an hour, a meteorological phenomenon immensely complicating the work of the B-29's.
"It was hard to believe the wind was that strong. But it's there all right, and it sometimes plays hell," says Lieut. Jack Daugherty of Minneapolis, who at 29, commands a group of the million-dollar super bombers.
Bombing downwind sends them scooting over the target at speeds sometimes as high as 500 miles an hour, while the long, slow crawl upwind exposes them perilously to Japan's highly efficient ack-ack.
The wind indeed has only one effect that Superfortresses can regard as a boon. It's so strong that Jap fighters can stay with them only a short time on the homeward journey. Interceptors are short-ranged, and if they continued to heckle the B-29's after the bombing they wouldn't have fuel enough to get home against the wind.
B-29 Gunner Loses Beer Over Kobe
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A B-29 BASE, Tinian, March 18 - Sunday - Irish Sergt. Walter C. Calhoun of Lakeville, Ill, gunner on a B-29 attacking Kobe yesterday, didn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day like he hoped.
Four cans of beer he had cooling in the camera hatch fell through the opening over the target.
Freed Prisoner Gains Six Inches in Girth
Flying Home
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A rapid six-inch gain around the waistline is a great comfort to Robert Teed Hubbard, Seattle engineer, who arrived home Sunday night after spending 45 months in Japanese prison camps, but he laughed yesterday as he told what a nuisance his sudden weight increase was to Marine Corps quartermasters en route home.
"They had to give me three pairs of pants while I made the flight," Hubbard said. "The first pair was issued in Yokohama when my waist measured 30 inches. When we landed at Guam I had to apply for a second pair when I discovered I had gained two inches. By the time we reached Honolulu my waist was up to 34 inches and I mad the third application for pants. That happened to a lot of us and the Marines were having a tough time keeping pants in stock."
Still underweight, Hubbard said he'd gained back 40 of the 80 he lost since being liberated and would soon be back to a normal 240.
Employed by the City
Hubbard was employed by the Seattle city Engineering Department
for 30 years before going to Guam in May, 1941, as a field supervisor
for the Pomeroy Construction Company on military installations. He was
captured when Guam fell in December, 1941.
"We were herded into the jail and later transferred to the Catholic Church", he said. "Later they put 500 of us, civilians and military personnel, into the hold of a ship and moved us to a camp near Kobe."
Hubbard said the Japanese soldiers didn't use much physical violence but seemed to delight in thinking up mental tortures.
"Of course the commonest stunt would occur when the sentries didn't think they were getting enough respect and would force us to bow 50 times," Hubbard recalled. "I couldn't count the times I've had to stand in the sun bending from the waist in front of a leering guard."
Crashed in Compound
"We had a bird's-eye view of the March 17 B-29 raid on Kobe", Hubbard said. "Unfortunately, the Japanese shot down one and it crashed inside our prison compound. Two of the crew parachuted to safety and we saw them being marched off. We never heard what happened to them after that."
When Hubbard arrived at Guam on the way home he said the natives treated him as a ghostly apparition.
"They heard that I was dead and when I arrived back I had an awful time convincing them I was still an earthly form," he said.
Mrs. Hubbard flew down to San Francisco to meet her husband after receiving the news that he had been liberated.
Lounging in a comfortable chair today, Hubbard said that he didn't plan ojn doing anything for a while, but definitely will stay in Seattle. He is the past president of the Seattle Engineering Club and took his engineering degree at the University of Washington in 1913. The family resides at 5023 21st. Ave. N.E.
Jap Beheaders Knew Act Illegal
Listed U.S. Fliers As Having Been shot
Yokohama, Aug 4 (AP). Two American fliers, "convicted" under Japan's wartime airmen's enemy act, were beheaded by Japanese who knew the act was illegal, a prosecution witness said today at the Eighth Army Commission trial of three former Japanese generals and five others on charges of complicity in the case.
The Americans were Lt. Robert W. Nelson, Minneapolis, Kans., and S/Sgt. Algy Stanley Augunas, Bay Shore, N.Y.
The witness, Yasukasu Shimamiura, said the Americans, captured after their B-29 was shot down down were convicted after a two-hour trial in Osaka and sentenced to death. The method of execution was not prescribed.
Shimamura testified that the Americans were blindfolded and forced to lie on the bottom of a truck which carried them to the army training grounds here. On arrival, they were seated at the edges of two graves, their backs to the guards, he said.
The witness said Capt. Kanji Nakamichi, commander of Osaka military prison and a defendant in the trial, ordered the guards "to cut, and at the same instant, the swordsmen came down with their instruments."
The two Americans fell into the graves, but the decapitation was not complete, Shimamura went on. Japanese of the execution party jumped into the graves and shot the Americans.
Shimamura said Capt. Nakamichi tole the executioners that if they were questioned about the affair they were to say the Americans had been executed by a firing squad. The witness added that the death certificates indicated the Americans had been shot.
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