A BLOW AT TRUK

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 123, 19 February 1944, Page 6

A BLOW AT TRUK

It is a truism that the war in the Pacific is much more difficult for the onlooker to comprehend than the war in European theatres. The reason for this is twofold. First, comparatively little is known of the multitude of Pacific places, which are now becoming significant and important as the United Nations’ offensive develops. Secondly, it is far from easy, even for a close student of maps and available data;- to comprehend the immense distances separating key points in the Pacific. So widely-scattered are these places that to depict them on a single map necessitates a considerable scale reduction; and such reductions are deceptive to the eye. They encourage a feeling that Pacific strategy is less complex, less awkward to formulate and sustain, than is in reality the case. In pondering the news that United States naval air forces have attacked Truk, the Japanese naval base in the heart of the Caroline Islands,/it is necessary to consider distances carefully. This daring exploit by our allies marks the appearance of another milestone on the road to Tokio. Undoubtedly the date of the. opening attackheralding as it does the turning of the tables against the enemy in the vital north-western inner area of the Pacific —will become historic. Moreover the have a psychological effect on the Japanese people—who have been taught to regard ’lruk a _ main bastion of the newly-conquered ocean “fortress region’’ similar to that caused by the American air raid on Tokio, the American advance in the Aleutians and, more recently, the American attack on the northern Kurile islands of Japan proper. The Truk attack, however, bears another similarity to those earlier thrusts. It appears as a stration of power, and an earnest of what is to come, rather than a direct development of the main operations now in hand. Truk’s distance from our Pacific “front line” remains very great. The combined operations which are being carried out with such admirable steadiness and success by American, Australian and New Zealand forces north-east of Australia have, as their immediate object the encirclement and cancelling-dut of Japanese-held Rabaul. General MacArthur, in his comment on the occupation of the Green Islands (north of the Solomons) by New Zealanders and Americans, said that “this culminates the successful series of flanking movements which began in the New Georgia Group, and which gradually enveloped all the enemy forces in the Solomons.” Clearly, however, the advance does more. It outflanks Rabaul on the east and is part of the movement, based on New Guinea and the Solomons, which will bite New Britain out of the Japanese main. Pacific line. ■ . Truk, on the other hand, remains well inside that line. From Rabaul to Truk is an airline distance of nearly 800 miles, and Truk is protected on the east by an immense ocean/territory more than 1200 miles in width, sprinkled with scores of Japanese-held islands. Actually, Truk lies at the rearmost corner of an enemy-defended ocean region of nearly 1,000,000 square miles. Realization of this brings into clearer perspective the task which lies ahead—the task of -crushing or bypassing Truk—which is an essential preliminary to the reconquest of Japan’s “fortress region.” But such realization also emphasizes the brilliance of the United States naval achievement in foraying to within air-striking distance of Truk, and carrying out a more or less sustained attack on that mysterious, hotly-defended axis-point of the enemy s now-imperilled Pacific power. *