The Press MONDAY, JULY 23, 1945. Sea Power Against Japan

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24625, 23 July 1945, Page 4

The Press MONDAY, JULY 23, 1945. Sea Power Against Japan

Convincing proof of the impotence to which the Japanese navy has been reduced is evident in the audacious attacks made by United States and British warships on shore installations on the Japanese mainland in the last two weeks. During this time the Allied vessels have ranged up and down the Japanese coast, attacking shipping, military, naval, and air installations, industrial, plants, and transport with sea-borne aircraft and witli gun bombardments from close inshore. The power of naval supremacy has never been more impressively vindicated. The ease with which this has been accomplished has underlined the feebleness of Japanese counter-measures. This is not to say that casualties have not been suffered, principally from suicide plane attacks; but whether from strategy or impotence, the Japanese have so far produced no effective answer to this pro T longed assault. Added to the increasing air assaults from recently recaptured islands near the Japanese mainland, the naval attacks serve warning that the Allied offensive against Japan proper is now well under way and that it can be expected to' grow and intensify as the months run oh. The conquest of Iwo Jima and Okinawa plainly indicated to the Japanese—and they

were not slow to see it, as their bitter defence of these islands testified—that the heart of their empire is under threat. The propaganda that the Japanese leaders are now putting out to their own people and to the Allies's a strange mixture of defiance and alarm. On the one hand there is an attempt to belittle the seriousness of the naval assault as something tempprary and ineffective and to hint thai air power and other measures are being kept in reserve to deal with more serious offensives. On the other, there is a chiding of the populace for giving way to discouragement and becoming “ idle, resentful, and “ resigned to an attitude of aimless, “ destructive self-interest and the “ abandonment and neglect of their “ duties ”. This indicates a badly frightened populace in need of some stimulus to greater effort and endurance. But the Japanese leaders can be in no doubt that the air assault and the naval assault now beginning will be sustained and increased in scope and intensity;

they can be under no illusion that the naval supremacy now asserted in their home waters will be abandoned. From the Aleutian Islands to the South China Sea a close blockade of the. Nipponese homeland has been established. Tremendous reserves of munitions, cf transport by sea and air, and other supplies have been built up in Allied bases and moved nearer and nearer to the Japanese islands. .The offensive now taking shape is only a preliminary to the grand offensive that will presently be launched with all the weight of Allied power and organisation behind it. The guiding principle of the grand offensive is, that the utmost weight of all employable arms shall be directed on the enemy at the .most vulnerable place. It has become obvious that the primary objective is Japan itself. But bearing all this in mind, it is not to be thought that any easy victory will be achieved or that any sudden' collapse may be expected. Japan’s position is critical, and it is recognised as such by the Japanese leaders; but this may present its own challenge to the fighting spirit of a pugnacious race. The enemy’s resources are by no means exhausted. His fleet, though greatly reduced, is still formidable; he has thousands of fighting aeroplanes as well as suicide planes and other defensive resources; he has still a very considerable potential of war industry to replace his losses. Above all, the Japanese have at stake their prestige in the eyes of their fellow Asiatics, who have seen in an amazingly short time historically the rise of Japan from a lowly status internationally to equality with the Great Powers, and her defeats of some of them m breath-taking offensives earlier in the war. Nothing will demonstrate to them more clearly the folly of Japan’s aggressive course than her utter defeat and humiliation in her own homeland.