JAPAN AND THE PACIFICRISE AND DECLINE OF AN EMPIRE

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 7, 7 May 1945, Page 16

JAPAN AND THE PACIFIC—RISE AND DECLINE OF AN EMPIRE

A KORERO Survey

When japan attacked the United States Pacific naval base at Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, she risked the loss of all that she had gained during her existence as a great Power. She involved twelve other nations in the struggle, and turned the European war, two years and three months after it had begun, into a world war. More than this, she gave the great Powers fighting the Axis an opportunity to plan for a world peace and not merely a European peace. These Powers have decided that when victory is won Japan must be so dealt with that she will no longer be in a position to threaten the peace. For New Zealand as a Pacific nation the manner in which Japan built

up the power that enabled her to strike that treacherous blow and the methods by which it is proposed to make her harmless in the future have both a particular interest. Eighteen months ago, two years after Japan had struck at Pearl Harbour, President Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill, and Marshall Chiang Kai-Shek, at a conference in Cairo, agreed on the terms to be imposed on Japan after her defeat. In the pact of North-Africa they declared that (1) Japan must be crushed as a military Power : (2) Japan must give up all territory gained since 1894 : (3) Korea must be freed :

(4) None of the three Powers— the United States, Britain, and —desired to acquire new territories. These decisions, published in the Cairo Declaration on December 1, 1943, mean the wiping-out of the Japanese Empire. If all the lands mentioned in the pronouncement are stripped away Japan will be left with 148,000 square miles of the 3,000,000 square miles which she held when the Allied declaration was signed. Instead of ruling over 500,000,000 people, .the Emperor will rule over 75,000,000 — all Japanese. Japan will consist of four main islands and the Archipelagos dribbling off to the north and the south—the islands of Honshu, where Tokyo, Kobe,

and the rest of Japan's main cities and also her industries are situated, Hokkaido to the north and Kyushu and Shikoku to the south. She will, in fact, be reduced again to the island State which an American, Commodore William Perry, with a few gun boats “ opened ” to world trade in 1853. Thus, as it seems now, one hundred years will have covered the rise and fall of Japan—her growth from a weak feudal State to a mighty military and industrial empire, and her decline again to the insignificant island country on which that empire was founded. The circumstances of the sudden Japanese assault on the Far Eastern bastions of the Western Powers and the

rapid gains the Japanese made until the battle of Midway Island on June 4, 1942, •are now history. These were the last gains Japan made in almost half a century of expansion.

In her swift thrusts at the vital Pacific bases Japan was following a policy which had served her well in the past, a policy •of carefully calculated aggression. In 1895 her first moves under this policy brought the defeat of the crumbling ■Chinese Empire, and with it Formosa, the Pescadores Islands, and Southern Manchuria ; in 1905 the defeat of Russia (brought the southern half of Sakhalin Island, Port Arthur, and Dairen. In 1910 Japan annexed Korea, whose independence from China had been recognized in 1895 ; in 1914 she seized the German possessions in the North-west Pacific ; ;and in 1931 Northern Manchuria, where :she set up the puppet State of Manchukuo. July of 1937 saw the beginning of the present war with China, in which Japan large areas along the railways -and around the Chinese coasts. In 1940 Japan virtually took over French IndoChina. And so, in December, 1941, she was ready to make the calculated thrusts which brought her for a time the Philippines, Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and a foothold in the islands of Melanesia.

To prevent Japan from again attaining what the Japanese leaders called “ such a favourable situation ” will be the task •of the victorious Allied Powers. And in their plans for this the disposition of the Japanese-held islands in the South Seas will have much importance. Already it has been suggested in Australia that in the hands of the United States they would form valuable bases for keeping the peace.

The term “ South Seas ” is usually applied to the islands scattered from New Guinea and the Carolines in the west to Hawaii, the French Establishments and Easter Island in the east. The area includes New Guinea* and New Caledonia, but not the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, or Borneo. The Dutch possessions form a great girdle 4,000 miles long, half a million square miles in area, and with nearly 60,000,000 people; the Philippines are 114,000 square miles ,in

area and have a population of 16,000,000 ; The Island of Borneo, most of which is also Dutch, has an area of 284,000 square miles and a population of 2,500,000. Even with these great island masses excluded the South Seas take in about oneeighth of the world’s surface, and the islands within have a total area of about 391,000 square miles and a population of 2,500,000 people. The Archipelagos and islands of the South Seas may be likened to the exposed ridges and - peaks of immense mountain ranges running along the floor of the Pacific Ocean from east to west.

These islands lie in three groups :

Melanesia, to the south-west, contains the main land areas. New Guinea alone covers 315,000 square miles, over three times the size of New Zealand ; New Britain, next largest, contains 14,600 square miles ; and other islands in this group are also large. Melanesia includes, in addition to New Guinea and New Britain, the Solomons, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and Fiji.

Micronesia, lying above'Melanesia to the north-west of the South Seas group, contains only 1,200 square miles of land, and its islands are very small. It includes the Carolines, the- Marianas, and the Palaus, all Japanese-held mandates seized from. Germany during the last war, the United States island of Guam, and the Gilberts and Nauru Island.

Polynesia forms the whole of the eastern half of the South Seas. The land area of this far-flung group is but 10,000 square miles, and of this Hawaii accounts for over 6,000 square miles. Polynesia holds Hawaii, Niue, Tonga, Wallis, Ellice, Samoa, Pitcairn, Easter and Tokelau Islands, and the Cooks, Australs, Societies, Gambiers, Tuamotus, Marquesas, and Phoenixes.

All these islands were before the outbreak of this war controlled by eight nations—Australia, Chile, France, Great Britain, Holland, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. Various systems of government were in use, eighteen in all. Some islands were held as mandates, some where protectorates, some were Crown colonies, some had a certain share in their own Government. In the New Hebrides Britain shared control with

France in what is known as a “ condominium," and in Canton Island shared a similar condominium with the United States. In fact, politically, the islands of the South Seas formed a crazy quilt. The situation in the thirty-odd years from 1900, when the importance of the islands as ports of call and coaling stations had begun to appear, had not changed greatly except in the redistribution of the German-held territories following the last war. By the turn of

the century Germany had taken over the stake already established by large German merchant companies in New Guinea, Western Samoa, and the Micronesian islands. France had established herself in New Caledonia, in the Society Islands, and other eastern groups —the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Gambiers, and Australs. The United States had acquired Guam and the Philippines from Spain, and had annexed Hawaii and Eastern Samoa. Chile had taken over Easter Island, the

oceanic outpost nearest South America, 2,000 miles west of. the Chilean coast. Britain had taken over Fiji and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, and had established protectorates over south-east New Guinea, the southern Solomons, and the little kingdom of Tonga, and shared with France the rule of the New Hebrides. New Zealand had acquired the Cook Group and Niue.

With the end of the last war Germany disappeared from the South Pacific, and Japan came on the scene with her occupation of the German Micronesian islands —the Carolines, Marshall, and Mariana groups, in the midst of which there remained tucked away the United States outpost of Guam. Australia occupied New Guinea and Nauru, and New Zealand took over German Samoa. Throughout the period of the last war changes continued to be made not so much in ownership as in adminstration. For instance, in 1916 the Gilbert and Ellice Group became part of the British Dominions. These changes continued right up until almost the outbreak of this war ; Ocean, Fanning, and Washington Islands, for example, came under New Zealand in 1926. z

Through the years of this century modern methods of transport have gradually brought to these islands a greater importance. Their harbours, used in the early days by the sailing-ships in the China trade, were by 1900 vital as coaling stations to the growing steamer fleets passing through their waters. To that value the advance of aviation was in the next forty years to add greatly ; air strips were to become as valuable as harbours. This led to other changes. The Phoenix Group, previously uninhabited, became suddenly important through its position on the Fiji-Honolulu air-mail line, and was brought into the Gilbert and Ellice Island Colony by Order in Council in March, 1937. I n *938 American officials were placed on Canton and Enderbury islands to sustain America’s claim that she had as much right there as Britain. The argument was settled amicably in 1939, when Canton Island was placed under Anglo-

American condominium and became an important station on the Pan-American Airwavs’ southern route.

In trade the value of the islands was substantial, but in the aggregate volume of world trade was scarcely important — even by 1938. The whole trade, export and import, of all the islands in that year was hardly three-quarters of that of New Zealand£s7,ooo,ooo against £BO, 000,000, and of that £57,000,000 no less than £41,000,060 belonged to Hawaii, leaving only £16,000,000 for all the rest.

Above all this was the strategic value of the islands as bases for naval and air forces. For Britain and France they were .links in the chain of empire, and for the nations bordering the Pacific—the United States, Australia, and New Zealandthey were, in fact, outer zones of defence.

In this respect the Japanese mandates had a value out of all proportion to their size. The six hundred islands of the Caroline, Mariana, and Marshall groups stretch over 2,700 miles from east to west and 1,300 miles north from the Equator, and their 830 square miles of land area contain several large harbours and a number of excellent airfields. Under the terms of the mandate granted to her after th£ last war Japan was forbidden to fortify these islands, and at the Washington Conference of 1921-22 she agreed with Britain and the United States not to strengthen or extend fortifications in other Pacific Island territories. Japan did not observe the terms of her mandate or abide by the Washington agreement. “ For commercial reasons,” as at Saipan, she began the construction and improvement of harbours and the development of airfields, the building of dry docks and submarine bases, and other works, which by the early 1930’s had already provided her with the bases she used for her southward offensive in 1941.

This was the last step in Japan’s creeping advance before her final thrust, a move remote from her larger operations on the Asiatic mainland, but an essential part of her whole attempt to seize world domination, an attempt which she is not to be allowed to repeat.