JAPAN’S DEFEAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1943, Page 4

JAPAN’S DEFEAT

LIKELY WITHOUT INVASION AMERICAN OFFICER’S VIEW ATTACK ON LIFELINES (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, December 7. Japan will be beaten without an invasion of the mainland, said a senior United States army officer in Cairo in a Press interview. The officer, who took part in last week’s Cairo conference, gave the Allied general staffs a full picture of General MacArthur’s plans for the south-west Pacific. He is returning to the south-west Pacific to report the Cairo decisions to General MacArthur. According to “The Times’’ correspondent, the.officer is Major-General R. K. Sutherland, Chief of Staff to General MacArthur. The- officer said he doubted whether an Allied expedition would be landed in Japan until the time came to occupy the country. “What we are trying to do is cut off the Japanese lifelines, particularly to stop the flow of oil from the East Indies,” he explained. '“Japan can be throttled by a combined air and naval action and by isolation or retaking of the East Indies, on which the enemy leans heaviest for her supplies. The Japanese would prefer us to make an all-out head-on attack against her well defended mainland shores. Instead, we are hitting against Japan’s air strength, her oil supplies and her merchant and naval shipping. Everything is being done to bring the Japanese fleet to action but they are avoiding combat.”

“The bombing of the main Japanese islands will play an important part in the plan to knock out the Japanese,” he said. “The policy of bypassing Japanese land forces is often more useful than a direct attack. The Japanese in the area are clearly trying to make the operations as costly as possible for our forces. The enemy regards it as a privilege to die for the Emperor and such tactics are costly to us. That is why it is often better to bypass their forces, isolate them, bomb them out and cut them off from supplies. Japan’s main hope is now to make the war so expensive that Americans will shrink from carrying it through.” The officer described Japanese air losses as “terrific.” The enemy was losing four planes to one Allied plane. During one period of four months the ratio was ten Japanese fighters lost for one Allied. The Tokio official radio has declared that the recent Cairo and Teheran conference declarations do not affect Japan’s determination to crush America and Britain.