JAPAN'S SHIPS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 29, 3 February 1945, Page 9

JAPAN'S SHIPS

HER BRIDGE OF LIFE

HOW SHE SAVES TONNAGE

As the Allies succeed in gaining a foothold along the successive relay stations of this seaway, the vast ocean spaces of the Pacific are reduced to approximately the same distances as those separating the shores of the Mediterranean inland sea. In the words of General Mac Arthur, they have found the "ways and' means to bring their ground forces into contact with the enemy."

This marks the beginning of the final offensive phase of the Far Eastern War.

The core of the Mikado's empire depends upon effective continuation of the battle of the sea and upon more and more frequent bombing of the anchorages and island pillars of Japan's bridge of ships.

The landing on the Philippines was made possible only because Allied air and naval raiders had brought down the enemy's merchant fleet from a grand total of 8,000,000 gross tons (including captured tonnage and new construction up to January, 1944) to approximately 5,000,000 tons, and bombed everyone of his major ports and supply bases from Japan proper to conquered raw material areas and distant military bastions. ' Already the Allies are destroying more ships than the Japanese can build. Yet, in terms of tonnage, the enemy's merchant fleet still is sufficint to carry on. Intensive Railage Relief Up to 1939, less than 4,000,000 tons o£ Japanese shipping was employed in Japanese waters, along the China coast, and in South-east Asia. To-day, much of the traffic which used to move coastwise around the Japanese islands has been shifted to the railroads. With practically all the coal, iron ore, timber and other building materials transported by rail, the enemy has made about one-third of his 1,500,000 tons of coastal shipping available for maritime services abroad.

Tonnage also is being saved through the new rail connections which Japanese engineers are reported to have established between Indo-China, Thailand, and Burma, while the swift development of industrial and raw material production in Manchuria, Korea and northern China since 1939 has enabled Japan to draw most of the bulky war essentials, such as caking coal, iron ore, pig iron, steel ingots, aluminium, 15 to 20 million barrels of synthetic oil and more than 40,000,000 bushels of soya beans from her inner defence zone. Before the war, much of these materials was brought over distances of many thousands of miles across the Pacific or the South China Sea.

This explains why the blows Allied subs and long-range planes are delivering against Japan's shipping are bound to produce relatively slow results. Like in a real bridge, which can be destroyed only if its anchorage or pillars are hit, the individual vessels which form the passageway of the bridge of ships are easy to replace. Hammering the Vital Ports The anchorage and the pillars of the bridge of ships are harbours, refueling and supply bases and vital relay stations on both ends and all along the principal ocean highways of Japan. Seizure of the first overseas anchorages in the Philippines, the Bay of Bengal and the Central Pacific now have enabled Allied air power to strike in ever shorter intervals at such points as Formosa, Wenchow on the South China route, the oil refineries of Balik Papan on Borneo and Palembang on Sumatra, and the great port of Batavia in Java.

These blows are being supplemented powerfully by long-distance raids of America's B29's on the Japanese end of the bridge of ships, where the mainland ports of Dairen in Manchuria, the railhead of Fusan in Korea, the ports of Shimonoseki and Moji, on the eastern end of the Korea ferry, as well as various ports in North and Central China have been bombed. Each of these raids slows down loading and unloading operations, compels the enemy to re-route his supplies, and constitutes at least a great drain on his tonnage as sinkings.

As Allied airfields are pushed closer to Tokyo, Super-Fortresses will be able to bring about that "ever-increas-ing bombardment" to which, in Winston Churchill's words, "Japanese mainland installations and munitions centres will be subjected and which is the inevitable prelude to the enemy's defeat on the Asiatic mainland and to the eventual conquest of the Japanese Isles."—Paul Wohl, in the Christian Science Monitor.