AMERICA ALERT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1941, Page 5

AMERICA ALERT

PRECAUTIONS at pacific BASES

STATEMENTS IN TOKIO.

JAPAN’S TRUE INTENTIONS NOT UNDERSTOOD.

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) LONDON, July 27

Great Britain has informed Japan that she is severing trade relations between the two countries. This followed earlier announcements in London and in Washington that all Japanese credits in the British Empire and the United. States had been frozen as a counter to Japanese aggression in French Indo-China.

Japan has retaliated by freezing British. and United States credits. It is officially announced in Vichy and Tokio that France and Japan have concluded an agreement for the mutual defence of Indo-China. It is reliably reported that the agreement provides for the stationing of 40,000 Japanese troops in Indo-China, and that they are to be maintained by Indo-China. It also provides for the occupation of the Cam Ranh Bay naval base and the Saigon air base. All United States troops in Hawaii have been placed on the alert and precautionary status. Units of the Army outside Hawaii will be affected. President Roosevelt has ordered the Army and the Navy in the Philippines Commonwealth to be formed into a command of the armed forces of the United .States for the duration of the emergency. The Netherlands Government in London is consulting the Netherland East Indies Government about measures to be taken. The Japanese Minister of Finance, Mr Ogura, stated that Japanese assets in the United States were not large. Moreover, trade with the United States had diminished steadily in recent months, and therefore the effect of the American action would be comparatively slight. The Japanese Cabinet spokesman, Mr Ito, in a broadcast, said the United States misunderstood Japan’s true intentions. The agreement regaiding Indo-China was the same as the American arrangement to occupy Iceland. American actions would not affect Japan but Japan would take countermeasures.

THREAT TO SINGAPORE

SEEN BY MR HUGHES.

MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.

LONDON, July 27

In a statement today, the Australian Minister of the Navy, Mr Hughes, said Indo-China was a jumping-off place lor Singapore, and that for Australia was a matter of life and death.

FAR FROM GOAL

JAPAN’S SUPPLY LINES

VULNERABLE.

AMERICAN WRITER'S VIEW.

WASHINGTON, July 26. Writing in the New York “HeraldTribune,” Captain Foilding Eliot says the current coup leaves Japan far from her goal, and her Indo-China suppl) lines vulnerable to attack from Hong Kong and Manila. There are no roads to enable the Japanese to concentrate men and supplies in Indo-China fot a great campaign against Thailand and British Malaya. “Indo-China itself cannot support a great offensive of any kind,” he says. “If the Western Powers, with or with-' out the Soviet aid, stick firmly together and determine to resist with armed force any further Japanese aggression, they still have every means _of doing so, and the Japanese move in IndoChina does not greatly improve Japan’s position. It can be dangerous to our interests in the Far East only if we permit it to become so.” The Military Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives rejected a request by the Administration for the declaration of a state of national emergency.