THE PACIFIC WAR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 4, 7 September 1943, Page 4

THE PACIFIC WAR

WITH the collapse of Italy imminent and the turn of the tide on the: Russian front now definitely assuming the proportions of a major defeat of Germany's choicest divisions, more and more attention has been given to the conduct of the Pacific war, where Japan for twenty months has scarcely been moved from any of the defence lines which she erected after a little over half a year's campaigning against the unsuspecting neutrals of the Orient. The only real changes which have taken place are the change-over of the Japanese attitude from the offensive to the defensive and the destruction of a substantial section of Horohitos Imperial Navy. Other than that Japan has been left to consolidate her vast gains in the Malay, Indies and China. Today she controls the destiny of well over 300,000,000 people, many of whom, it would be useless for us to deny, were bitterly opposed to white domination in Eastern Asia for many years before hostilities commenced. Whether they have learnt otherwise now that they have had at taste of Japanese administration remains to be seen, but to-day we have to recognise the fact that Japan's grip extends over the Phillipines, Malay States, the Dutch Indies, Java, Hongkong, Manchuria, Coastal China, Timor and the Celebes, French Indo-China, Thailand and Burma, teeming millions far in excess of Hitler's Europe and many of them deeply embittered against the 'foreign devils' from the Occident. Japan will find plenty of fighting material in Thailand, in Malay and even in Manchuria. The war of dislodgment will therefore be no easy undertaking and even when finally achieved it is doubtful whether Europeans will still be able to exert the same influence in the east which they were in the habit of exerting in pre-war days. The war with Japan, despite the superior sea and air power of the combined nations will be a long and bitter process, to be followed by a decade of social unrest amongst the peoples of Asia, who have lived to behold the defeat of the hitherto invincible forces of the great European powers.