"NEW KIND OF JAP." APPEARS IN BURMA

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 58, 9 March 1944, Page 5

"NEW KIND OF JAP." APPEARS IN BURMA

NOT LEGENDARY TYPE Suffering And Terror From R.A.F. Attacks

N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 11.30 a.m. LONDON,'Mar. 8. "A new kind or jap.," is the description given by the Daily Mail correspondent to prisoners captured on the Arakan front. He says it is a surprising experience to see a group of prisoners, from General Tannabashi's beaten Army. "There were nearly 30 of them. All but one—the only silent member—were only too ready to talk of their sufferings and terror under the intensive R.A.F. bombing in the jungle.

"Since the war began, we have heard a good deal about the superJap., but here was a group of very cowed little men, demoralised, bitter against their commander and far from -thoughts of hari-kiri. They told us resentfully that w r hen they went into battle they believed they had air superiority, but they seldom saw their own planes.

"Hungry, with wounded around them and with no reserves, they hated General Tannabashi, saying that he was a fat, overbearing stickler for discipline who gave the troops no consideration. They were sent into battle with short rations and were hungry all the time. Many were sick and all the time there was bombing. They had no loyalty for Tannabashi and pretended none. No Resemblance to Legendary Jap.

"Not one of t'nese malaria-ridden, ragged troops bore any resemblance to the legendary Jap. super-man. These half-starved men bowed low when British officers approached and grinned quickly back if they saw one of their captor's smile. They were obsequious and only too ready to please." Tne Times special correspondent expressed the opinion that Japanese troops can easily be surprised. They will fight to the last and then hurl themselves to perdition when they know what they are up against, yet in the face of the unexpected they often guess wrong and lose their heads. , . There is a curious lack of imagination in the enemy, whose tactics depend so much on low cunning and the stab-in-the-back. One of the most disconcerting things about their tactics, this correspondent says is the speed with which they back-up; the machine-gun post rapidly becomes a strongpoint and the strongpoint a well dug position. The correspondent adds that to thousands of British, Indian and West African troops the tangled mass of jungle and hills at Arakan is a stark reality, but the operations there as elsewhere along the frontier hardly impinge as yet on the broad perspective of the Far Eastern war. Almost imperceptibly, however, we are encroaching upon the Japanese position in Burma.