PACIFIC FORCES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 November 1943, Page 3

PACIFIC FORCES

ALLEGATIONS BY AMERICAN CORRESPONDENT CONCENTRATIONS OUTSIDE COMBAT ZONE. POSITION OF MACARTHUR & HALSEY. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 19. A thorough survey of the Pacific west of the Solomons clearly demonstrates that the Allied forces lack the strength of a major thrust, says the New York “Daily News” correspondent, Jack Turcott. in a dispatch from the South-West Pacific. This may be a deliberate policy of London and Washington, intended to save soldiers and planes for other areas, says the correspondent, but the premeditated publicity campaign in the United States proclaiming that the Pacific is now armed with half of America’s power has certain “sinister implications.” Mr Turcott asserts that he flew across the Pacific twice in the last seven weeks and observed the impressive American strength at several of the oceanic bases which literally dot the Pacific east of the Japanese-man-dated islands. “Indeed, the United Slates has thousands of combat planes and hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Pacific,” he said, “but the most sizable portion of them defend places which are becoming more and more remote from the active combat zones.

“The strong installations in the Fijis, Samoa, Hawaii, and the Aleutians, are naturally gratifying for Americans, but they all are not available to General MacArthur, though he commands the only Pacific army zone where fighting is in progress. General MacArthur is even unable to requisition Admiral Halsey’s fleet from the Solomons, New Hebrides, and New Caledonia, though Washington, which apparently desires to leave a contrary impression, blared forth the announcement that Admiral Halsey was under General MacArthur’s command.”

Mr Turcott concludes by stating: “General MacArthur’s position is neither fish nor fowl, as United States officialdom restricts him from anything except minor campaigns. If he commanded everything in the Pacific, including the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have never seen and probably never will see action, he could redeem the Philippines within a year and then go on to defeat Japan.”