WAR IN PACIFIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 March 1943, Page 4

WAR IN PACIFIC

GENERAL MACARTHUR INTERVIEWED ON ANNIVERSARY OF ARRIVAL DECLARATION OF CONFIDENCE. IN ABILITY OF ALLIES TO HOLD JAPANESE. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. General MacArthur on Wednesday met war correspondents on the first anniversary of his arrival in Australia from the Philippines. In an interview lasting for two hours, he discussed the main events of the year in the Southern Pacific. The minute detail of his review of the Pacific war answered in advance a barrage of planned Press questions. General MacArthur praised the work of war correspondents in this area and told them no brake would be applied to criticism except where it was based on false premises or incomplete information. After correspondents were in possession of all the facts no attempts would be made to shade or dictate their opinions. He had given the Press reports almost as fast as they were received from the front line. BIG PROBLEMS AHEAD. Correspondents were impressed with the quiet confidence with which General MacArthur spoke of the Allies' ability to maintain a successful holding war in this theatre. However he made it clear that big problems lay ahead. “Australia’s war strategy was drastically revised after General MacArthur took command of the SouthWest Pacific front,” says a “Sydney Telegraph” correspondent. "Our defence plan then conceived that the islands to the north would be lost and that North Queensland and Darwin would be overrun. Provision had been made for organised resistance behind a line drawn west from Brisbane. General MacArthur considered the conception of this strategy defeatist and fatal to Australia’s safety. He changed the strategic conception with the basic thought that the battle for Australia would be settled in the littoral of the islands to the north, north-east and north-west. The new strategy was to make these islands the battleground — w’in, lose or draw.” FIVE JAPANESE DEFEATS. The Japanese have been repulsed in five major actions in the South-West Pacific since the development of General MacArthur’s new strategy, in which air power has played a vital part. Actions were fought in the Coral Sea, at Milne Bay, Buna, Gona and in the Bismarck Sea. The Allied success in gaining command of the air contributed most importantly to the enemy reverses. It is now revealed that captured Japanese documents disclosed that the enemy planned to take the Allied main New Guinea base, Port Moresby, with a force of twenty transports. It is also admitted that Allied strategy conceived the occupation of the Buna area, but lack of air power at the time prevented the Allies from beating the Japanese to this base. As the enemy later discovered, strong air power is essential to the maintenance of any ground installations. “Our air strength was then so weak that we had no chance of stopping the Japanese landing on Buna,” declares the “Telegraph” writer. "Our bomber forces today could knock out a convoy of the size that went into Buna in a matter of hours. The Japanese also erred in building up air strength at Buna without adequate warning facilities. They lost more than a hundred planes on the ground because of this defect.” THE CHANGING ART OF WAR. The ultimate stages of the Papuan campaign, in which General MacArthur employed air transport on a mass scale to move troops and equipment, must figure among classic examples of the changing art of war. However this reverse, together with those subsequently inflicted upon the Japanese, has not. prevented enemy encroachment in other areas, particularly to the north of Australia. Nevertheless, General MacArthur has had a main part in keeping Australia inviolate and in establishing valuable bases for the eventual development of an Allied offensive. War correspondents who last met General MacArthur about six months ago noted many personal changes. One writer described him as “slightly heavier and certainly far more jovial and informal.” At the interview, General MacArthur wore a leather Air Force jerkin, a gift from members of his air command before he went to New Guinea to direct the Papuan campaign. Formerly a cigar smoker, he was smoking a heavy pipe. He spoke with a deliberate matter of factness and made no attempt a’t dramatic effect. Restless and an inveterate room pacei, General MacArthur’s familiar gestures and mannerisms were on this occasion less in evidence than formerly.