A TOUGH CAMPAIGN

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 163, 12 July 1945, Page 4

A TOUGH CAMPAIGN

HTWENTY-ONE months after the American Ist Marine Amphibious Corps landed on Bougainville, severing Japanese surface lines of communication, the enemy forces in the southern part of the island this week launched a series of fierce attacks on the Australian positions. The Japanese infantry were fit and well equipped, and there was nothing the matter with their morale. After a series of traditional "banzai" charges a number penetrated the Australian perimeter defences, but all were accounted for. This latest engagement was the first clash of more than patrol size since the Easter fighting, when the enemy was heavily defeated at a cost of over a thousand dead. It is to be expected that the Japanese being steadily compressed in Southern Bougainville will fight back, but that they are fit enough, and well enough equipped, to do so with even a chance of local successes is, on the face of it, surprising.

The explanation is really quite simple. When the Japanese 17th Army was developing its" campaign into the lower Solomons it chose the Buin-Shortlands area as a major advanced base. At least three good airfields were constructed, and huge supplies of all types were landed. The Marines' arrival at Guadalcanal, in August, 1942, stopped enemy penetration and development of the Guadalcanal-Florida Islands area, and most of the stores originally assembled on Bougainville were never transhipped. Then, too, for twelve, months after the beginning of the Guadalcanal campaign the Japanese continued hurrying supplies to Bougainville with the idea of holding the Northern Solomons. American strategy did not specify a pitched battle for the strongly-held southern tip of the island, and even the abortive Jap assault on the Torokina perimeter in March, 1944, did not use up more than first-line supplies and equipment. The original Japanese garrison has been more than halved, but there are evidently still ample stores to keep the front-line troops going, and although the possibility of even essential medical supplies coming in by submarine is now slight, there is also little chance that the enemy, if left to his own devices, will "die on the vine."