Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1942. PACIFIC WAR DEMANDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1942. PACIFIC WAR DEMANDS

EVEN those .who are least inclined to accept possibly extravaJ gant estimates’of Japan’s available war resources and present striking power may be expected to agree with the opinion expressed and elaborated in a cablegram from Sydney at the end of last week that the “Get-llitler-first strategy, favoured in some influential Allied quarters has its definite limitations. There is no doubt that if Japan were given time in which to consolidate and exploit her gains of territory and of immensely important and valuable sources of war and other materials, including rubber, oil and tin —not to speak of a virtually illimitable reservoir of labour—the task of defeating her would be made immensely more difficult.

In light of these facts a serious state of affairs is indicated in the contention of the Australian Minister of External Affairs (Dr Evatt)—a contention based, presumably, upon accurate and detailed information—that the resources of the United Nations devoted to the Pacific fronts “were still far less than were desired and deserved.’’ From a far broader standpoint than that of the defence and security of Australia and New Zealand, or of any other Pacific country, it is incumbent on the Allies to do everything in their power to deny Japan an opportunity of developing and turning to account the vast potential resources over which she has gained control—to prevent her becoming master, as the former United States Ambassador in Tokio (Mr J. C. Grew) put it recently, of “an enslaved East Asia, possessing within itself every raw material, and all the sources of energy needed, to maintain the most formidable and most autarchy-like military Power.” Taking account of the present and potential resources of Japan and of the ruthlessly predatory aims of her war lords, it seems rather obviously dangerous to assume that “once the Germans are defeated Japan will be a push-over.”

An informative and balanced account of the strength and weakness of the Japanese position was given in an article in the “Christian Science Monitor,” by Mr Frederick B. Opper, a correspondent who returned recently to the United States after his release from a Japanese prison. Observing that if Japan were given five to ten years of peace in which to develop the rich areas she has overrun —the Philippines, Indo-China, Malaya, Burma and the East Indies —she would be impregnably entrenched in one of the very richest empires any country in modern times has ruled, Mr Opper added that fortunately much of this vast wealth and strength was still only potential. So long as she must fight, Japan can do comparatively little to develop the areas she has occupied.

As regards both tier conduct of the war and exploitation of invaded territory, Japan’s greatest weakness is a lack of adequate shipping with which to maintain communications with the fighting fronts she has established in occupied territories and to draw upon the resources of these territories. When she’ entered the war, she possessed less than 6,000,000 tons of merchant shipping, about one-fourth of which had already been requisitioned by the Navy. Allied attacking forces, particularly bombing planes and submarines, have done and are doing a good deal to cut down that tonnage and an intensification of attacks on Japanese shipping clearly is one of the most effective forms that an Allied offensive can take.

Japan is doing her utmost to ease demands on her shipping by the development of railway and other land transport routes, but her attempt to open a through railway service linking Shanghai with Indo-China and Malaya has been defeated, for the time at least, by the .successful Chinese counter-offensive in Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces and by American bombing attacks. It appears very clearly that the Allies in the Pacific must either, at a minimum, maintain such a pressure of attack on Japan as will prevent her from solving her transport problems and building up 'her strength, or expect to see the war lengthened out considerably.