How Long Can Japan Hold Out?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 161, 10 July 1945, Page 4

How Long Can Japan Hold Out?

XTOBODY on the Allies' side would IN venture to predict how long Japan will last against the ""divided attentions of Great Britain and the United States. Russia has as yet given no hint of her intentions. But, as matters stand now. Russia s help is not necessary for the defeat of Japan; and that, one is at least safe in saying, will come much sooner than was gloomily predicted m 194 A writes O. M. Green in the Observer. It is a solemn thought that, with all her advantages and in spite of the Allies' struggle with Germany, Japan has lost all her huge island conquests and Burma, almost as suddenly as she made them. Thirteen months ago Japan still held the Marianas, the most important of all her "floating fortresses,' where now the American naval headquarters are installed; and she was threatening India in Manipur. It is under nine months since General Mac Arthur landed in Leyte; he has now such complete control of the Philippines that he can effectually bar the passage between them and South China and launch out as he pleases for. further invasions. Their Sole Asiatic Allies There is no indication yet of Lord Mountbatten's next move, but with the fine port of Rangoon already being used by deep water ships, the invincible 14th Army and absolute command of sea and air, Lord Mountbatten can strike anywhere. In passing, one feature of the cap; ture of Rangoon deserves more notice than it has had, that is, the valiant help given by the Burma National Army and its Commander Aung San. The Japanese recruited, armed, and trained this Army after granting a bogus independence to Burma in 1943. Immediately after the fall of Mandalay, the B.N.A. got m touch with the 14th Army to signify its resolve to rise against Japan and in the rush to Rangoon it did most valuable work, continually obstructing the Japanese efforts to form a new defence line, bringing in prisoners for interrogation, and once ambushing and killing a Japanese divisional commander and all his staff.

The actions of the B.N. A. are a happy omen, not only for the future of Burma but much further afield. If the Siamese stand up for Japan, they will be the only Asiatics to do so The underground movement m Indo-China broke out prematurely, but is still there. In China it goes without saying that every man m the puppet troops will turn on Japan when the word is given. The "mainland fortress , is very big, but its foundations are sand.

Thus Japan, losing the great ring of defences which she built' up in 1942 thousands of miles from her shores, is driven back upon herself. Her navy has been whittled down to about the size of one section of either of the Anglo-American fleets. She cannot reach the hundreds of thousands of her soldiers isolated in the South Seas or draw upon the wealth they were sent to guard. "Suicide" aeroplanes and boats are a nuisance, but only a nuisance. Invasion Prospects Against an invasion Japan has certain advantages. Her odd configuration and length of coastline make it something of a problem to choose the point of attack; while roads and railways enable troops to be concentrated swiftly , wherever needed. One point, small but worth remembering, is that the typhoons begin in July and last till October, making the sea impossible for landing craft.

Against this, Allied warships have overcome the distance of their bases by moving about with .trains of suppty and repairing ships. Fighting from aircraft-carriers has been so greatly perfected that the former unquestioned superiority of landbased planes has been neutralised. Lastly, the Americans have all the means ready to blast Japanese factories, airfields,, ports and railways to atoms, and will do so. American bitterness against Japan is very deep. The "Big Business" Taetor It has often been said that the Japanese will suffer anything rather than give in; their conduct in battle certainly supports that view. Yet one cannot help wondering whether, in the background, the half-dozen big firms, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Okura, etc., which control all Japan's industry, commerce and finance, are suggesting to the soldiers that Japan could do better now by giving in than by persisting in a hopeless struggle. Japan, they might say, would of course lose all her colonies, but she would save her homes and factories from obliteration; she could build up the national wealth again on materials bought from abroad, as she did before; and in 50 or 100 years (what is that in Japan's eternity?) she could start her "holy mission" once more.

"Big business" in Japan is powerful, as it has proved more than once —in the withdrawal from Siberia in 1920, for instance, and from Shantung in 1928. The present issue, of course, is far greater than those, but that might lend force to the arguments of big business as here imagined. For the soldiers can no lontrer pay the dividends for which the businessmen trusted them.