Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 12, 1995 TAG: 9507130056
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Seven spies, six Japanese and one Filipino, were hanged after a plot to kill Gen. Douglas MacArthur was uncovered. The spies, who had been trained in a special Japanese spy school in northeastern Luzon, had been unable to get past MacArthur's guards.
President Truman, who was expected to depart soon for a Big Three conference at Potsdam, Germany, was expected to return with the Soviet Union's decision on whether it would enter the war against the Japanese.
A ban on the use of Pullman cars for short runs was expected to last up to five months, as the redeployment of troops from Europe to the Pacific was setting new rail passenger records.
Moss A. Plunket, a Roanoke lawyer and advocate of poll-tax repeal, tried to stir up the race for the Democratic nomination for governor by attacking what he called "the invisible government which has long made a mockery of Democracy in Virginia." Plunket's opponent was William A. Tuck of South Boston.
Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, former Japanese "peace envoy" to the United States, warned the Allies that they would have to shed blood if they continued to insist on the unconditional surrender of Japan.
An American guard at a prisoner-of-war camp in Salina, Utah went bersek and killed eight sleeping German prisoners and wounded 20 others with a machine gun.
More than 1,000 carrier planes of Admiral William F. Halsey's powerful Third Fleet hammered Tokyo in a bold attack that caught the enemy completely by surprise.
U.S. forces found a German plane that was nearing the production stage before the war ended that had a cruising speed of 450 mph above 25,000 feet. The plane had propellers on the nose and tail.
Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew said that persons without authority to speak for the Japanese government had put out "peace feelers" but he said no surrender offer had been received from Japan.
The widow of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini said her great regret was that she and the late "Il Duce" had not come to America in their youth to raise a family as they had once planned.
A typhoon that tossed battleships around like match sticks struck the American Third Fleet between the Philippines and Okinawa in June and damaged more than 21 warships, but the fleet continued on to attack the Japanese three days later.
Three thousand Illinois coal miners went on strike demanding more meat, but elsewhere other strikes were ending and only 40,000 workers were still off the job, including 16,000 at a Firestone tire plant in Akron, Ohio.
by CNB