Monday, 21 February

Light snow, quite cold

At 4.00 in the afternoon, Laurence and Nikkle of the New York Times visited me. Laurence will go to Britain soon, and is ready to travel with the British and American armies to Europe. They said Americans are unable to understand the mentality of the Soviet Union people, and the Soviet Government rearrangements are always imprudent, so they lose sympathy. What he said was reasonable. With regards to the American election, they also said Roosevelt had difficulty running the four elections, but it was not hopeless. If Dewey is elected American post-war cooperation with the world will be a lot more difficult.

The American navy scored a big victory in the Truk archipelago by both air and sea. They sank 19 Japanese ships (including seven war ships) and 201 Japanese planes. The United States only lost 17 planes and one war ship was slightly damaged. People in the American navy said this could be taken as revenge for Pearl Harbor. The British and Americans reckon the reshuffling of the Japanese Cabinet and Tōjō Hideki’s dictatorship are outcomes of the setback in the sea war in Truk.

2,000 American planes bombarded Leipzig again. This is the main area producing fighter planes. General Henry H.Arnold said this time they destroyed one quarter of the German ability to produce fighter planes and that the amount of planes and bombs used could set a record for daytime bombardment.

Today the Soviet newspapers expressed dissatisfaction with Turkey, saying Germany’s propaganda personnel were too numerous, and to the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, the newspapers said that he stopped Yugoslavian military officers joining Tito to fight against Germany.

[Private matter, not available online]