OIL EMBARGO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 August 1941, Page 5

OIL EMBARGO

AMERICA STOPS SUPPLIES TO JAPAN SERIOUS IMPLICATIONS SEEN. JAPANESE EXPLOITATION OF THAILAND. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, August 3. President Roosevelt has issued an order prohibiting the export of United Stall's pet,rol and oil to Japan. The embargo applies to shipments destined for countries other than those of the British Commonwealth, Western Hemisphere nations and other countries resisting aggression. The United Press says that most diplomatic observers in Washington believe that the obvious implication of the President’s embargo is that the Administration has definitely called for a halt in further Japanese expansion in the Pacific and served a warning that the United States is prepared for a showdown if necessary. The Japanese Minister of Commerce. Vice-Admiral Sakonji, in a statement in Tokio, said the international situation was so tense that a single spark might be sufficient to cause an explosion. He said that Japan had frozen New Zealand. South African and Indian assets, and that the Japanese fleet had taken over the Cam-Ranh Bay naval base in French Indo-China.

The semi-official Japanese news agency, Domei, reveals that the South Seas Trade Association is the Japanese Government’s chosen instrument for the economic subjugation of IndoChina. It will rigidly police IndoChina’s imports and exports, taking unrestricted charge of vital war materials. such as rubber, vegetable fats, bauxite, zinc and iron, which are no longer obtainable from the Netherlands East Indies. Plans are being completed for the exploitation of Thailand’s resources. As a bait Japan offers Thailand the province of Laos and the city of Anghor in Indo-China. In exchange Japan wants a monopoly of Thailand’s production of rubber, tin and rice, plus air and naval bases.