Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines. Wikipedia.
By Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
In the Philippines, Japanese resistance on Luzon is reduced to rearguard actions by June 1, 1945. On the Philippines island of Mindanao, fighting continues. British troops occupy Lebanon and Syria, attempting to keep the peace between the local populations and the French military.
From the Vatican, Pope Pius XII on June 2 expresses hopes that Germany will abandon the principles of Nazism and build a new foundation. In Paris, President de Gaulle criticizes British intervention in Lebanon and Syria, saying the U.K. is meddling in French affairs. The British, in turn, charge the French with using Lend Lease supplies against the Syrians and the Lebanese in violation of their agreement with the United States. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, Klaus Fuchs, a high-level and valued British theoretical physicist working on the Manhattan Project, gives a Soviet agent detailed drawings of the plutonium bomb that will shortly be tested at Los Alamos. Fuchs, a member of the Communist Party of Germany, had entered the United Kingdom as a refugee from the Hitler regime in 1933. He applied for British citizenship, which was granted in August 1942.
Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on June 3 distributes captured maps of German minefields to all Allied governments in Europe. In the Middle East, French forces, escorted by British troops, leave Damascus, Syria.
On June 4, two regiments of the U.S. 6th Marine Division make landings on Okinawa’s Oroku Peninsula in an attempt to outflank Japanese positions. In Bremen, Germany, two explosions occur at U.S. Military Police headquarters, killing 15 people.
In Europe, the Allies on June 5 sign the Berlin Declaration, legally dissolving the government of Nazi Germany. They also agree to divide Germany — and separately, its capital, Berlin — into four sectors (one each controlled by the British, the French, the Americans and the Soviets) overseen by an Allied Control Council. The frontiers of occupied Germany are defined as those that existed on December 31, 1937. Radio Moscow announces the award of the highest (and rarest) Soviet military honor — the Order of Victory — to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Five days later, the Order of Victory is also awarded to U.S. General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower.
On June 6, Gen. of the Army Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, orders a holiday for troops in Europe in honor of the first anniversary of D-Day. Allied casualties during the eleven months from D-Day to VE-Day are 776,967, of which 141,590 were killed. On Okinawa, elements of the 6th Marine Division advance on the Oroku Peninsula; Naha airfield is secured. Brazil declares war on Japan.
In Kwanghsi Province, in the far south of China, three Chinese armies on June 7 prepare to launch an offensive to liberate the Hong Kong-Canton area. The first Allied cargo ship in three years enters Wewak harbor, in Papua-New Guinea. In Europe, King Haakon VII returns to Norway on the fifth anniversary of his leaving the country; he is greeted by cheering crowds. The U.K.’s King George VI visits the Channel Islands to congratulate the populace on its resolve during the German occupation. In Turin, Italy, U.S. troops find and arrest Rita Louisa Zucca, who had broadcast Axis propaganda to Allied troops in North Africa and Italy from Rome. Closing her programs with the saying “a sweet kiss from Sally,” she was often referred to as “Axis Sally” much to the chagrin and annoyance of Mildred Gillars, the “Axis Sally” who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Berlin. Although Zucca was born and raised in New York City, attempts by the U.S. government to prosecute her for treason come to nil when it is found that she had renounced her U.S. citizenship and had become an Italian national in 1938, well before her broadcasts began.
On Okinawa, heavy fighting continues on the Oroku Peninsula on June 8. The Japanese heavy cruiser Ashigara, transporting Japanese troops, is sunk in the Java Sea by the British submarine HMS Trenchant. Over 1,200 troops and 100 crewmen go down with the ship. Some 400 soldiers and 853 sailors survive. Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces reveals the details of German plans to have exterminated all Jews in Europe by the summer of 1946. U.S. Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew denies that the Soviet Union will be “given” Korea and other territories in return for entering the war against Japan.
On June 9, on Okinawa, Japanese forces defending the Oroku Peninsula are cut off and surrounded by units of the U.S. 6th Marine Division. Meanwhile, on the south end of the island, the U.S. 1st Marine Division is moving southward toward Kunishi Ridge, one of the last Japanese strongpoints. Radio Tokyo reports that 4.9 million Japanese have been displaced by Allied bombings. Japanese Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki tells the Diet (the nation’s legislature) that Japan will “fight to the last.”
Australian troops land near Brunei, Borneo, on June 10. While on picket duty off Okinawa, the destroyer USS William D. Porter is attacked and sunk by a Japanese kamikaze. Miraculously, while many of her crew of 243 are wounded, there are no fatalities. In Prague, there is worry over what is viewed as Soviet interference in Czechoslovakia, along with pressure for the “Sovietization” of the nation (that is, adoption of Soviet-like institutions, laws, customs and the Soviet way of life). Adding to the concerns are the three Red Army divisions based in the outskirts of the capital.
In China, Japanese forces recapture Ishan, in Kwanghsi Province, on June 11. The Allied South East Asia Command announces that an estimated 108,240 Japanese have been killed in Burma since 1944. Soviet authorities begin the forcible expulsion of ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland, in western Czechoslovakia.
On the Oroku Peninsula of Okinawa, on June 12, many of the encircled Japanese troops begin committing mass suicide to avoid surrendering. In Europe, the Yugoslav Army, per an agreement signed on June 9, departs Trieste, Italy, leaving New Zealand troops in control. The local population welcomes the arrangement.
On Okinawa, Japanese resistance on the Oroku Peninsula ends on June 13. On Borneo, troops of the 9th Australian Infantry Division enter Brunei. U.S. Army ordnance experts state that German plans to attack the U.S. with V-2 rockets could have been realized by November 1945 had the war continued.
In China, Chinese forces on June 14 recapture Ishan, in Kwanghsi Province. In Washington, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issue orders to Gen. of the Army MacArthur (Army), Gen. of the Army Arnold (Army Air Forces) and Fleet Adm. Nimitz (Navy) to prepare plans for the immediate occupation of Japan in the case of a sudden capitulation. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop is taken into custody by British troops near Hamburg, Germany. In Rangoon, Burma, Allied troops hold a victory parade.
