LONDON: United States Air Headquarters announced yesterday [July 20], “More than 1,200 heavy bombers of the eighth Air Force made simultaneous attacks yesterday morning upon a number of aeroengine factories, fighter assembly factories, synthetic oil plants and other targets in Central Germany in the Leipzig area.

The weather was generally clear and bombing visual with a few exceptions. Fortresses and liberators were in attacking divisions with strong fighter escorts.

[Meanwhile, as reported by another agency in Washington], General Yoshijiro Umezu, who succeeds Tojo as Chief of the Japanese General Staff, belongs like General Tojo himself to the extremist group of the Japanese army. He comes to his new post from the Kwantung army wherein he was Commander-in-Chief. Tojo was Chief-of-Staff of this army at the time of the July 7, 1937, attack on China. Based on Manchuria, the Kwantung Army has been the spearhead of continental aggression.

Far Eastern experts here point out that there are many parallels in the careers of Tojo and Umezu. For instance, Tojo and Umezu were classmates at the Japanese military academy; they both served in Manchuria. They both have been military attaches to the Japanese embassy in Berlin, and now, Umezu takes Tojo’s place as Chief-of-Staff. For these reasons, they regard the change not as a substitution of new leadership, but as another instance of the Japanese custom of removing the top person responsible at the time of a disaster or failure.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2019