The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1943. GUADALCANAR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 34, 10 February 1943, Page 2

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1943. GUADALCANAR

THE Japanese were first on Guadalcanar, and they went there to stay. Now, according to their own report, they have gone, "having achieved their primary objective." Perhaps their precise objective will not be known until after the war, but it is quite certain that they did not achieve it. They have gone because their forces had been reduced to a tattered remnant, which in a short time would have been destroyed. They have "cut their losses" on Guadalcanar, and those losses have been heavy, although not in relation to their enormous resources of manpower. Their most significant losses have been in ships, and in prestige. It seems clear that they were both surprised and mortified by the sudden attack of the United States marines on August 7-8, and that it was wounded pride which impelled them to make their subsequent extraordinary efforts to recapture the airfield and drive the Americans from the island. All their efforts, made with great determination and complete disregard of cost, were frustrated, although tne history of the campaign probably will record that more than once the margin between failure and success was very narrow. They were frustrated by the sheer "sticking-power" of the marines, the quality of whose achievement all New Zealanders with memories of the Gallipoii campaign know how to judge. The brief record of Guadalcanal- is that the Japanese landed there with the immediate objective of building an important aerodrome, and that the Americans seized it from them, used it against them, successfully resisted all their attempts to recapture it, and while fighting to defend it developed it in size and efficiency. During the land campaign United States naval forces fought a series of engagements with the enemy and inflicted heavy losses upon him at considerable cost to themselves. As the result of these engagements the Americans were able to continue reinforcing and supplying their troops on the island, and the Japanese were unable to reinforce and supply theirs. These are the reasons for the Japanese decision to evacuate the island.

The first round of the fighting in the South-west Pacific is over. The United Nations have won it, but the result is far from decisive. The experience both in New Guinea and the Solomons has impressed upon everyone the magnitude of the task which lies ahead. Guadalcanar is but one island of the Solomons; Papua is about one-third of New Guinea. The Japanese occupy many other islands, ports and airfields, and occupy •them more strongly. Whether or not they have abandoned, for the time, their "southward drive," the "northward drive" of the United Nations has still to be launched, and the time which passes before it can be launched is time given the Japanese to make it more difficult. The situation might be transformed by a successful naval action on a major scale, such as is asserted to be "in the making" now, but no one ignorant of the size and composition and purposes of the naval forces which are said to be "jockeying for position" can venture any opinion on the outcome of the operations. Fundamentally the future depends on the size of the forces which the United Nations can and will allocate for the Pacific war. The Australian contention (New Zealand seems to have no opinion) is that a relatively small increase in allocations, particularly of aircraft, would bring disproportionate gains, a contention strongly supported by the achievements of the limited forces which General Mac Arthur has had under his command. But there is little to indicate,that this contention is making headway against the strategy of a "holding war" in the Pacific. Meanwhile we may be thankful that the "holding war" has been, to date, successful, and grateful to the men, on sea, on land and in the air, both American and Australian, whose blood and sweat have made it successful.