REOCCUPATION OF BURMA

Evening Star, Issue 24328, 17 October 1942, Page 5

REOCCUPATION OF BURMA

POSSIBLE ALLIED ACTION INDIA PREPARED FOR JAPANESE ATTACK (lieu. 8 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 16. At any time now tiie eastern defences or India may become a major issue in the war, says the India correspondent of ‘ Tno limes.’ Doubtless detailed Allied plans are ready for the reoccupation ot Burma. Military authorities believe that the Japanese have suffered over-many hard blows in the Pacific, especially in the loss of aircraft carriers, to undertake a seaborne offensive against .Ceylon or south India. There is no relaxation of military vigilance, but if the Japanese do come there will need to be a change of heart, not only among the Indian community. The Madras Club’s great preoccupation at present is in the insistence on the right, which the military commander nimself is challenging, to exclude Indian officers from the temporary privileges extended Britisn officers.

It is, believed that fully a third of the Japanese, forces in Burma is stricken with malaria, nevertheless they are in greater strength than is generally supposed ; and recently there has been a great increase in Japanese fighter plane strength. The main forces are apparently based on the Irrawaddy The Japanese most likely plan of advance would be a series of bounds along the coastal belt from Akynb to Chittagong. Considerable Chinese reinforcements are concentrat. ing on the Yunnan border. British reinforcements have been poured into India’s strategical areas, and the training and equipping of over 1,000,000 Indian recruits have been accelerated in a manner few thought possible, largely as the result of the diversion of material from the Far East. Because of communication difficulties it is believed that the Burma Road would represent the limit of an Allied advance from the north. Other Allied offensive activities would be a matter for combined operations against Rangoon and Akyab.