JAPAN’S DEFEAT AND PUNISHMENT

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 65, 11 December 1943, Page 6

JAPAN’S DEFEAT AND PUNISHMENT

In the statement issued after the Cairo Conference, at which Nli. Churchill, President Roosevelt and President Chiang Kai-shek resolved that Japan should be stripped of all her territorial gains “taken by violence and greed,” it was made clear that the strategy by which this object will be served had been formulated. “The several military missions,” the statement read, “have agreed upon future militaiy operations against Japan.” No further disclosure of intentions vas made, and none was to be expected. But a very interesting addition to the statement, in the form of a sort of unofficial postscript, has been provided by a high-ranking officer of the United States Army, who took part in the Cairo staff talks as the representative of General MacArthur, Commander of the South-West_ Pacific Zone. This officer, who is believed to be Major-General Sutheiland, General MacArthur’s Chief of Staff, indicated that Japan’s defeat is expected to be encompassed without direct assault on the homeland stronghold of the enemy. “What we are trying to do, he said, is to cut the Japanese lifeline, and particularly to stop the flow of oil from the Netherlands East Indies. 4 “Japan can be throttled by combined air and naval action and bv isolation, or by the retaking of the Netherlands East Indies, on which the enemy leans heaviest for his supplies. The Japanese would prefer us to make an all-out head-on attack - • ■ y ut instead we ate hitting against Japan’s air strength, her oil supplies and hermerchant and naval shipping.” Coming from such a source this summary is highly encouraging. It pictures the Pacific task as being capable of fulfilment, not at some distant date after a wearying process of gradual infiltration and reconquest, but within measurable time, and along lines which are already being tested and extended with steady success at key points along Japan’s outer perimeter. The suggestion that Japan will be unable to wage defensive war on a scale sufficient to ward off early defeat if. her communications with the East Indies are severed has not previously. been made in a responsible quarter. Besides opening up new strategical possibilities it emphasizes the importance of the operations in New Guinea, which are a necessary preliminary to the naval and air domination of the enemy’s communications with the East Indies. When the United Nations are in a position to strike effectively from the west, through Burma, toward Malaya, the sea lanes south from the Philippines will be threatened on both flanks, and ultimately Japanese garrisons in the East Indies may be isolated and by-passed. If Japan is dependent for a vital part of her newly-built military strength upon a single rich field of conquest, it is evident that her national economy and industrial power (from, which springs her military capacity) must be doomed if she is deprived of the whole ot her eastern empire. Thus the punishment ordained for Japan by the decision of the Cairo Conference may be seen as one of the greatest blows at overweening and rapacious ambition ever projected. Some 70 years ago Japan began wresting territory from China. By one act of aggression after another she crept toward, and finally swallowed up, Formosa. In 1895 she laid the basis for the eventual annexation of ’Manchuria, which together with subsequent conquests her 650,000 square miles of Chinese territory, containing dO.Oty.UOU inhabitants. Korea was seized by methods of blackmail and treachery, and mandates granted under the Treaty of Versailles extended hei grip southward. . , . All this aggressive expansion, together with Japan s conquests in the past two years of war with the United Nations, comprise the starring total of some 3,000.000 square miles of continental and island territorv, carrying populations estimated to aggregate 270 000,000. This is potentially one of the richest holdings in History but at the same time, in the circumstances of today, one of the most difficult to retain by military might. The Thrcc-Fowcr Declaration has sentenced Japan to deprivation of every square mile. It won <1 seem plain that the military planning in Cairo has produced a formula which perhaps sooner than we have dared in the past Io imagine —will enable that stern decision to be carried into effect.