PACIFIC FRONT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 29 August 1942, Page 5

PACIFIC FRONT

SITUATION SATISFACTORY

IN VIEW OF ALL THE FACTS WAR CORRESPONDENT’S SURVEY New York, Aug. 27. “The Pacific situation is satisfactory in view of all the facts,” declares Mr Joseph Harsch, “Christian Science Monitor” correspondent who recently returned from covering the war in the South-West Pacific. The front was being held with not very substantial American assistance. The Allies were a long way from beating Japan, however, and still faced a desperate fight until America was able to divert her major offensive strength to the Pacific. But we had retained our main positions and resisted enemy attempts to cut communications and seize lines of re-entry. The Japanese had not succeeded in shaking Allied strategy of concentrating on Hitler while holding Japan.

Mr Harsch’s chief reason for finding the Pacific situation satisfactory is that the Japanese have not been allowed to advance beyond the lines established by American military councils years ago. He reveals that before the attack on Pearl Harbour British, American and Canadian forces were being moved in the Pacific into a buffer area between American and Japanese spheres, but the enemy moved too quickly to permit completion of the plan and seized the Philippines after resistance almost exactly equal to Washington’s anticipations.

LOSS OF MALAYA AND SINGAPORE “American leaders did not, however, expect the easy fall of Malaya and Singapore,” he says, “but London after the war may reveal that it anticipated these losses and intended to withdraw the Malayan array from Singapore to defend Burma. The final disastrous attempt to defend Singapore cost 100,000 men and may turn out to be an improvisation forced on London by the Australian Government”

Mr Harsch believes that Java might have been held with 200 good fighters and 150 first-class bombers, but the Dutch possesesd only a few obsolete planes purchased before the outbreak of the European war. They did not receive any lease-lend planes from America. These began to arrive in Australia only after the fall of Java. Mr Harsch says the loss of Burma was not a vital blow to the Allies since Burma forms part of no-man’s-land outside the vital Allied bastion. Mr Harsch also sets out the full facts of restricted American assistance in the South-West Pacific theatre. He confesses a sense of guilt that his dispatches, like those of other American correspondents, emphasised the cheerful aspects of the war in the Pacific and says he has now offered the real facts by way of atonement. America, he says, was following the master strategy of concentrating her efforts on Europe, and the forces available for the Pacific were extremely small for what had to be accomplished. Considering this the success achieved had been magnificent. —P.A.