WILL DEFEAT JAPAN

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3254, 19 April 1943, Page 6

WILL DEFEAT JAPAN

WEIGHT OF DEMOCRACIES A FANATICAL ENEMY JA,PS POOR IMPROVISERS The many books that are being published on the subject of Japan and the Japanese vary greatly in scope and quality, but there, are very few that do not have a recognisable value in emphasising some material or psychological aspect of the enemy’s strength or weakness. Hugh Byas’s small book, “The Japanese Enemy,” offers unpreteniously the kind of information about the political structure of " Japan, and the mentality of its leaders, that an intelligent reader would be glad to receive without undertaking detailed study. This information is accompanied by appraisals which are based on the author’s many years of experience in Tokyo as a correspondent of the London Times, and marked by an attractive common sense.

As Mr Byas emphasises, his book is partly a sermon on the too of ten. forgotten text, “Despise not thine enemy,” 'but while it makes no comforting underestimate of Japan’s strength it yet reaches encouraging conclusions regarding the capacity of the United Nations, and particularly America, to defeat the Japanese. The military leaders of Japan were under no illusions as to what colossal power would be arrayed against them if the Democracies decisively defeat Germany in Europe, and Mr Byas believes that japan made war as an insurance against- German defeat more than as a gamble on Germany’s victory. Having made themselves immune from blockade —so they think—■by gaining possession of the resources of the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese leaders intend to dig in so deeply while the European Axis is still able to absorb the whole of Britain’s and part of America’s fighting power that a second great war will be needed to dig them out. “The Japanese,” says, Mr Byas, “are attempting to protect themselves by taking up a position from which they believe they cannot be dislodged. The Japanese Empire would not be staked on any consideratiom'other than the belief of the fighting forces that they could themselves answer for its safety.”

A warning is implicit in Mr Byas’s outline of the shift in Japanese policy which may 'be expected when Hitler’s defeat is definitely registered—it is now apparently assumed in the highest quarters that Germany will be defeated before Japan—and the Japanese find themselves confronted by the full strength of the United Nations. Behind 'that strength the Japanese, who, like the Germans, have never understand. Anglo-Saxon psychology, will see democratic peoples tired and eager for peace, lower taxes and normal life. It is then that voices lately silent will be heard across the seas from Japan. One of the cardinal aims of Japan has always been to keep America and Britain apart in the Far East, and Mr Byas thinks that whenever Japan turns from war to peace strategy this aim will be revived. Many things-will be offered to America as an alternative to a long and exhausting war.

When the Japanese find that the offers are in vain they will fight on tenaciously, but psychological myopa is not their only handicap in lhe realm of the intangible. Mr Byas says there are some Japanese who 'believe that the incurable kink in the minds of Japanese officers has been made by the Military Academy’s, teaching on the necessity of deceiving your enemy. These officers attach the greatest importance to the first treacherous thrust. It is minutely prepared and secrecy is absolute. There is nothing, however, to show that Japanese military science has any surprises after the first. The Japanese follow the sudden opening move with heavy orthodox blows. Their plans are good and they sacrifice cannon fodder relentlessly. Mr .Byas, however, sees them , as poor improvisers. The Jap anese habit of regulating action by precedent is deep-rooted. “If the plan goes wrong, all is wrong. They are faithful unto death to rules and orders, but lost in situations for which new rules have to be invented on the spur of the moment.” In dealing. with this enemy, Mr Byas says, we should not expect that any Napoleonic short cuts to victory will be found. “The development of high pressure over an enormous area will naturally be a slow process, and at the. beginning more haste will be less speed. Victory will- come from the irresistible pressure ' of superior power.” ,' ■ ’ When victory against’ Japan is achieved, will she present - the same problem of future intractability that haunts our thoughts of Germany? Mr Byas is not unhopeful. ’ The Japanese,

despite the fact that they are always talking of national unity, have never ■been able to agree on the centre of power. Their only centre is the Emperor, a divine and powerless figurehead. “It is their subconscious sense of his earthly weakness that causes the Japanese to claim divinity for their Sovereign. Divinity treads on no one’s toes. The system is fluid and unfinished and that is the reason why we need not entirely despair of Japan.” Not the least service done by Mr

Byas’s book is that, examining briefly the plea of economic necessity which, in this country and in others, was wont to be made in extenuation of Japanese aggressiveness, he squeezes—to use his own words—some of the water out of the prospectus which has so often introduced Japan as a young nation driven wild by hardship and injustice. Japanese Plan

“How Japan Plans to Win,” by Kinoaki. Matsuo, was first published in Tokyo in October, 1940, under the title, “The Three Power Alliance and a United Statds-Japanese War.” The translator, Kilsoo K. Haan, who describes himself as the Washington representative of an anti-Japanese secret society, is said by the publishers to have “acquired” a copy of the book from the hotel room of two Japanese army officers who had come to the west coast of the United States to do propaganda work among JapaneseAmer icans.

Why Mr Haan had to “acquire” a copy in this'melodramatic way, when the book could have .been bought in Japan in 1940 by any American there is not stated. Perhaps it was because the authoi’ himself is “a high official of the Black Dragon Society” as well as an intelligence officer between the Japanese Foreign Office and the Japanese Admiralty, and it would be bad taste for a member of one secret society to secure by ordinary means a book written by a member of another secret society.

Despite its facts and figures about American strength and weakness, and its semi-technical disquisitions on this and that, “How Japan Plans to Win” only gives amateurishly and in the broadest outline the probable Ijnes of attack which Japan would follow in a war with the United States. Those lines of attack were rather obvious. What was not expected was the lightning surprise and treachery of the initial strokes.

The book, however, is interesting for the certainty with which it preached the inevitability of war between Japan and the United .States; for its forecast of the probable date of the clash, and the Japanese steps that would be taken against Singapore and Hong Kong in the event of Anglo-American action; and above all for its emphasis on the Japanese capacity for “surprise” operation against the enemy and on the creation of' a special “surprise attack fleet.” Kinoaki Matsuo enjoys himself greatly in moving the Japanese and American ships around the Pacific. It is a decided advantage to be able to move your enemy’s ships as well as your own. The author shows particularly good results when the poor Americans, endeavouring to recapture the Philippines, send a huge fleet of 300 Ships right into the traps of the waiting Japanese. The happenings off the Solomons recently have given some of the passages in this book a diverting quality, for instance, in a description of .one stage in the destruction of the United States’ fleet “. ... if night comes, the Japanese destroyers will attenapt a night attack. Once the United States’ crews are informed of the destroyer attack they will fire guns at random and in confusion, and the Japanese will thus have to risk danger; but if the Japanese fleet loses five destroyers, it can be assumed that five of the United States’ capital ships and 10,000-ton cruisers will be lost.” Mr Joseph Grew, former United States Ambassador to Japan, and others have frequently warned the American people that the Japanese are dangerously convinced that the citizens of a democracy like the United States cannot endure what they themselves can endure. This conviction manifests itself all through the pages of “How Japan plans to Win.” “The length of an American sailor’s service on boarj a submarine is about three weeks,’’ says, the author, “whereas it is recognised that a Japanese sailor is capable of an endurance more than three times that of the American.”

But the Japanese sees the superiority of his fellows hot only as a matter of physical endurance and the most rigid patriotism, but as a- source of strength in the financing of war, “American soldiers,” says ■ Matsuo, “do not hesitate ruthlessly to squander torpedoes or shells, each of which costs many thousands of yen, where-, as Japanese soldiers are so.careful and prudent in handling these weapons that they do not' use them unless they are sure that the. .missiles will - certainly hit the mark. ■ ’