MENACE OF JAPAN

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3244, 26 March 1943, Page 7

MENACE OF JAPAN

STRATEGIC POSITION FABULOUS EMPIRE GAINED CENTRE OF GRAVITY OF ITS OWN Japan has gained a fabulous empire, rich in raw materials and manpower; she has dealt such a blow to the system of 19th.-cen-tury empires that American leaders have proclaimed the age of the Anglo-Saxon and French empires already over (says a writer in the Atlantic Monthly). The assumption still prevails that the defeat of Hitler will lead to the automatic collapse of Japan: Japan can be dealt with later. The widespread feeling that Japan cannot stand after Hitler’ is defeated is based on the assumption of racial superiority—reluctance to admit the possibil-

ity that the white man can ever be defeated.

Japan is now striving for the political allegiance of the colonial peoples of Asia. The Japanese are meeting with difficulties in the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya and Burma but their political propaganda has had. its effect. They have razed the city of Cebu as a warning to the Filipino people, which indicates some unwillingness to co-operate; but a puppet regime is serving under the Japanese and sufficient members of Americanhating politicians have been found to run it. Strong Japanese Case The Japanese case is a strong one. Japan can afford to stress race hatred against the white man because there is a century of bitterness, in most countries, upon which to build. She can point to her conquest of the white

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man and parade thousands of American and British prisoners before , the eyes of wondering natives. She can use all the pent-up feelings of subject people agains the “white oppressor.” ,

The Far East has ceased to be an extension of the European political system; it now has a centre of gravity of its own.

If Japan were predominantly a naval Power the matter would be less serious, but Jtptn is primarily a continentaly Power. Much of her industry and most of her arby are on the mainland; she has locked the seas of Eastern Asia with a chain of island possessions. She faces our navies with long-prepared bases and landbased aeroplanes. The Solomons expedition was to protect our lines of communication, not to conquer Japan by hopping islands, but it serves to show those who favour this strategy how expensive the process would be. Premature Raid On Tokyo How many of us realise the price that China has paid for the premature air raid on Tokyo? While destroying

the three bases to which the American aeroplanes might fly and from which China could bomb Tokyo, if she had the aeroplanes, “the invaders made of a rich, flourishing country a human hell, a gruesome graveyard, where the only living thing we saw for miles was a skeleton-like dog which fled, in terror before our approach.”

Japan is in a position to attack in several directions. If Japan feels that Germany is losing the war she must go into Siberia, a move for which she has prepared herself very well. The opening- of the Alaska highway will help communications to some degree, ■but the coming of winter closes practically every way of getting* supplies to the maritime provinces of the U.S.S.R. And in spite of the development of Siberia the Russians cannot fight for long in the maritime provinces- without assistance from the United States.

The Japanese, by occupying Attu, Agattu, and Kiska, and possibly the Pribilofs, have anticipated -an American attempt to crash through the Kuriles to the Okhotsk Sea and Sakhalin. They have prepared the way to attack Alaska if they see fit to do so. They have destroyed, for the time being, the bases in China from which they coul dbe -bombed and can therefore turn their backs on Central China with some assurance.

Japan has less cause to attack Siberia now if she believes Germany is winning than she has to take Northern India, although she may have strength to do both. Realising better than we do the importance of China, Japan has to make sure that American air support, which she apparently cannot destroy at its Chinese bases, is destroyed at its source—Northern India.

Nor should we overlook the advantages to Japan of political and military chaos in India, as well as the importance of getting to India before Germany does. Russia will not fight unless she is attacked -but in India the bases for the retaking- of Burma and the supplying of China are gradually -being built up. The attack on the Solomons, although a limited -affair designed to secure limited strategic results, is most important because it opens up the battle for the initiative. Until Burma is retaken, the proper place for the major attack on Japan, from China cannot be properly utilised; in fact, China has taken so much punishment since the loss of Burma that a great deal of the will to attack has been undermined.

The United States, by virtues of its growing production, is assuming a more important role in the war effort of the United Nations and therefore can expect to have more to say about the poltical front. But many changes will have to come about in America’s attitude toward the conflict before there can be any assurance that American concepts of the struggle in Asia will be more advanced than the British. And we cannot afford many more political defeats such as we faced during 1942; if the United Nations do not soon become really united, they still stand a very good chance of ceasing to be nations.