JAPAN FEVERISHLY PREPARING FOR RAIDS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 306, 28 December 1942, Page 3

JAPAN FEVERISHLY PREPARING FOR RAIDS

REAL WAR STARTING

Navy Minister's Claims In Sea Warfare Rec. 1 p.m. NEW YORK, Dec. 27. According to Tokyo official radio, the Prime Minister, General Tojo, in a speech, said: "The real war is now starting. Japan is engaged night and day providing against air raids and preparing for the future.

"In the Solomons," he continued, "The Japanese are fighting the enemy under adverse conditions. Excepting minor punitive operations in the Philippines, Japanese units are preserving peace and order and bringing to perfection all measures required to meet any contingency in the Philippines and in Malaya." The Navy Minister, Admiral Shigetaro Shimada, told the Diet at Tokyo that Japanese submarines had sunk 35 Allied merchantmen of 270,000 tons in the Indian Ocean and off South Africa since May. In the same period the Japanese destroyed 905 Allied planes in the New Britain and Solomons areas.

He said the Japanese sunk, among others, 11 Allied battleships and 11 aircraft-carriers, while the Japanese lost 52 naval vessels, including one battleship, three aircraft-carriers, four cruisers, 15 destroyers, nine submarines and 20 various other types, also 65 merchantmen. The areas and periods of the latter claims were not specified.