RAPID HEADWAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 April 1942, Page 4

RAPID HEADWAY

MADE BV THE JAPANESE IN BURMA SERIOUS THREAT TO ALLIED COMMUNICATIONS. CHINESE REINFORCEMENTS POURING IN. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 1.25 p.m.) NEW YORK, April 23. The Chinese are removing essential supplies from Lashio and evacuating its inhabitants because the Japanese not only Menace the city but also threaten to outflank the Allied forces on the Sittang front, reports the Associated Press of America’s Chungking correspondent. The latest dispatches indicate that the Japanese are exerting their full strength in Burma, with a view to reaching, before the monsoons, a position for an attack against India. , A Chinese spokesman announced that reinforcements for the Chinese troops were pouring into Burma and that the highways near Lashio were being destroyed, in an attempt to prevent the Japanese cutting off the Allied supply route to China. The spokesman admitted that the Japanese were drawing perilously close to the Burma Road and that the entire Lashio-Man-dalay railway was threatened by the enemy drive. Five Japanese divisions, totalling 100,000 men, supported by bombers, tanks and armoured cars are storming the southern edge of the Upper Burma plateau. A Chungking message states that American Volunteer Group pilots shot down eleven Japanese fighters without loss when 27 Japanese bombers and 20 fighters attempted to raid the Americon flying base in Northern Burma. The Japanese planes then flew to Lashio, where they started great fires and bombed the aerodrome. The Chinese Government has announced that it has begun the construction of refineries to produce petrol from tung oil.