JAPAN’S PROBLEMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1943, Page 4

JAPAN’S PROBLEMS

0 HEAVY INDUSTRIES PLANTS MAY BE MOVED. LONG AND COSTLY PROCESS. Japan’s shipping losses may force her to shift a sizeable portion of her heavy industries to areas Japan has conquered in the South Seas, reports a New York correspondent of the Melbourne “Herald.” These industries could be moved bodily, as the United States is moving war plants to South America, and as Russia moved factories to the Urals from the west.

This movement .according to the wellinformed Wall Street journal, might enable Japan to free 1,000,000 tons of shipping for other essential war tasks, and might prove the most effective answer to America’s successful submarine campaign against Japanese shipping. The Journal regards the depen tralisation of Japanese industry as a likely gamble, because: (1) It would stabilise the conquered areas and repair the economic ruin caused by the loss of the British and American rubber, tin, hemp, spice and oil markets, and would relieve the food shortage in .Japan proper, which is basically due to the congestion of population; (2) It would permit the utilisation of native labour; (3) It would relieve Japan’s overburdened transport system, particularly the bottleneck in shipping. Japan now imports 80 per cent of her iron ore, 90 per cent of her tin, and 90 per cent of her petroleum. These bulky cargoes come long distances. For example, much of the iron and manganese ore travels 2000 to 3000 miles from the Philippines and Malaya. Lead, nickel and chrome come 4000 miles from Burma. All these cargoes run the gauntlet of Allied submarines, and then make return trips with finished products. American industrialists estimate that it would pay Japan to move southward about half her iron and steel industry, more than two-thirds of her tin and zinc industries, roughly 90 per cent of her petroleum refining, phosphate and chemical industries, and almost all her lead, nickel and rubber industries and part of her shipbuilding and textile industries. Such a move would greatly strengthen Japan’s hold on her conquests, although it must be a long and costly process, because of the shortage of shipping and the necessity of building up adequate sources of electrical power. American military circles say that the best way of blocking such an industrial redistribution would be by an intensification of the American submarine campaign.