The US Army Air Force conducted a 48 hour fire bombing raid of Tokyo. Sixteen square miles of the city's interior were destroyed and between 80,000 and 130,000 civilians killed. One million were rendered homeless.
Similar raids on Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe also took place.
The U.S. 1st Army took Bonn and Godesburgh
The Japanese launched Operation Bright Moon, 明号作戦, the attack on the French military and government in Indochina.
The Japanese had tolerated ongoing French administration of Indochina up until this point, but by this point, the French government had gone from Vichy to Free French, and Japan was becoming concerned that the Allies would land with French consent in region. The French were expecting the attack but were unablet o successfully repel it, with some French forces having to retreat to Nationalist China where they were not well received.
Troops of the Italian Social Republic committed the Salussola Massacre as the war in Italy increasingly devolved into a civil war which would carry on, in some ways, until the 1970s.
Benito Mussolini sent a priest to Switzerland to propose to a Vatican envoy that Italy and Germany join with the Allies to attack and defeat the Soviet Union. The proposal met with the predictable response.
Congress passed the McCarran–Ferguson Act, exempting the insurance business from most federal regulation.
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