JAPANESE SHIPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 March 1943, Page 3

JAPANESE SHIPS

ATTACKED BY ALLIED BOMBERS 7,000 TON VESSEL PROBABLY DESTROYED. ANOTHER SEVERELY DAMAGED. 7 SYDNEY, March 12. Japanese shipping at various bases along the 1000-mile are north of Australia was attacked by Allied aircraft yesterday. The presence -of the enemy vessels at widely dispersed points indicates that the Japanese are still reinforcing their perimeter outposts. Most of the Allied raids reported were on a small scale. Six Japanese vessels were bombed or strafed in the attacks, which extended from the Banda Sea to the north coast of New Guinea. At Wewak, 350 miles north-west of Lae, near misses with 10001 b. bombs were scored against two medium-sized cargo ships, one ship of 5000 tons being severely damaged. A.t Boetong Island, south-east of Celebes, a direct hit was scored on a 7000-ton cargo ship, which was left burning and probably became a total loss. At Boeroe Island, west of Amboina, two cargo ships were bombed with unobserved results. At Regola, in the Tenimber group, a coastal vessel was strafed and damaged. The heaviest Allied attack was made by Flying Fortresses against the enemy base of Wewak, which is assuming increasing importance. Besides striking at shipping in the harbour, our bombers attacked warehouses. Liberators also made raids on enemy shipping north of Australia. It is reported at General MacArthur’s headquarters today that life-rafts carrying the bodies of Japanese who perished in the Bismarck Sea battle have been sighted off the north-east coast of Papua. A two-knot current which flows from the Bismarck Sea no doubt accounts for the presence of the rafts in this area. An enemy bomber reconnoitring Trobriand Island, in the same locality, was shot down by our fighters. AIR REINFORCEMENTS ADVOCATED BY AMERICAN CORRESPONDENTS. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, March 11. American war correspondents in this theatre continue to urge on the United States the need for air reinforcements in the South-West Pacific. Stating that during the Bismarck Sea battle, MajoTGeneral Kenney’s “compartively slender resources were stretched to the utmost,” the “Christian Science Monitor’s” representative here, Mr E. W. Lucas, asks, “What if two convoys from different points of the compass had approached New Guinea, instead of only one?” The powerful Hearst Press is reported to be running a vigorous campaign urging increased assistance for American forces in the southern Pacific and suggesting that one week’s entire United States aircraft production should be devoted to this theatre. However, the Hearst Press has been so notoriously anti-Administration and so consistent in its sniping of President Roosevelt that Australian observers in the United States believe its advocacy of the cause of this theatre may prove an embarrassment and merely provoke a stiffening of the present Washington attitude which minimises the danger of continued southward aggression by the Japanese. PACIFIC DEMANDS ■ AMERICA & BRITISH DOMINIONS. MR HALLETT ABEND’S VIEW. NEW YORK, March 10. “America, not Australia and New Zealand, must bear the brunt of the war against Japan,” says Hallett Abend, an expert ,on Far Eastern affairs. “The valiant Dominions have virtually exhausted their manpower resources. They cannot be expected to increase materially the size of their armies. “The Dominions have been at 1 war since September, 1939, and we will have to put into the field almost 11,000,000 men before we have made a manpower sacrifice equal to what Australia had made before Pearl Harbour.” Mr Abend sees the Chinese army as the only hope of important manpower assistance against Japan. “China will furnish an unlimited reservoir of fighting men once the United Nations make contact with her on the continent of Asia,” says Mr Abend, who stresses the difficulty of getting to, China the thousands of planes which will be necessary to bomb Japan effectively. “We must steel our hearts to the sacrifices which a long war will demand,” he declares. “There is no short and easy road to victory in the Far East.”