JAPAN’S POSITION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 June 1943, Page 3

JAPAN’S POSITION

DISCUSSED BY AMERICAN CORRESPONDENT SUGGESTIVE INDICATIONS OF WEAKNESS. SHIPPPING & OTHER FACTORS (By Tclegraoh—Press Association-Copyright) tuyiceg new YORK( _j une 19. A new attitude of confidence about the Pacific war is detectable in high naval quarters in Washington, says the “Christian Science Monitor’s' correspondent, Mr Joseph Harsch, in an article entitled “How Strong Are the Japanese Now?" . The correspondent points out that it is more than a year since Japan undertook a serious offensive, because the Guadalcanal, New Guinea, and even the Bismarck Sea battles can be regarded only as counter-offensives. “Nobody in Washington will ever again under-estimate Japan after Peail Harbour and Singapore,” says Mr Harsch, “but for the Japanese to accept what amounts to a stalemate on every front is something so phenomenal and so entirely out of keeping with the aggressiveness the enemy showed in the early stages of the war that it seems to lead to two conclusions either the United States is now going overfar the other way and, ovei-esti-mating them or. with the Oriental s extraordinary time sense, the Japanese are capable of a type of warfare which is alien to the Western mind “The Orient thinks in terms of generations, instead of years. We know in the broad scheme of Japanese expansion, the present war is only a phase of the plans laid down before 1914. Therefore, it is conceivable that the Japanese have now' gone in this war as far as their plans intended. “It is a plain fact that Japan can hope to hold what she has acquired, only by advancing. Therefore, it is a reasonable assumption that their failure to advance for a year requires some explanation other than a voluntary one. “There are two such explanations. First, and the most impoftant, is that Japan has lost 2,000,000 of the 6,000,000 tons of merchant shipping with which she entered the war. She seized about 1.000,000 tons and replaced some losses, but the strain of supplying the extended fighting fronts must be enormous. “Japanese shipping is reported to be already falling behind in the elementary task of moving essential foods and supplies to Japan itself. In other words, even if the Japanese had military power to push farther, they may no longer have the shipping necessary to sustain a further expansion of the present front. “The second explanation is the Japanese aircraft industry’s inability to keep up in the race for air power. The conviction therefore gains increasing credibility that Japan has actually passed the stage where she is able tto advance, and must be content to sit back and try to defend, leaving the initative entirely in Allied hands. If that is so, the end may not be so far off as we once thought when paralysed by Pearl Harbour’s implications.”