Show JAr JAPANESE A S fI FIGHT HI HIm TO m ESCAPE S Ar FIRE 1 TOKIO May 31 of AP Japanese AP-Japanese Japanese residents of southern Island is island island Is- Is land fought today for lor their lives live and their homes against forest fires UrE which were believed belle to have ban killed loo JOO persons and burned more than 1000 1040 houses Sparse dispatches to newspapers rs led to fear there had been a major disaster Communications on the Island were badly crippled with railways blocked tele telegraphs and telephones down and only meagre reports were obtainable A dispatch to the newspaper nc Asahl from a a. village near said MId llama hama had been wiped out and that there were dead and 1000 homes bomes burned The newspaper Nichi said that thirty bodies had been ered A shift In tn the wind carried the fires away from and toward I Survivors ors were sufferIng suffering suffering suf suf- fering from hunger huner and exposure with their sole provisions pro s scorched potatoes from the fields of burned- burned ocr over farms Disastrous fires have swept throughout tho the Island the dispatch said gald The Thc skies aro arc black with smoke obliterating the sun It 11 added that the blaze was spreading i from toward two miles to th the south louth where fighters were t trying desperately to save laVe a II coal mine |