CENTRAL PACIFIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 87, 9 October 1943, Page 7

CENTRAL PACIFIC

JAP CONTROL CHALLENGED

WASHINGTON, October 8. The Allied assault against Wake Island challenges Japanese control of the central and West Pacific, declares the correspondent of the Associated Press. Claiming to give the opinions of American military authorities, he adds that the huge mandated island area on which Tokio's defence is based must now be considered vulnerable unless the Japanese fleet comes out to fight. However, United States military and naval experts believe that the Japanese fleet will stay at home. They predict that the Allies will take the keypoints of the Marshalls, Gilberts, and Carolines against strictly local resist-

ance, and will succeed after many months in cutting the enemy's economic jugular vein across the China Sea. '

"The explanation seems to lie in the fact that the Japanese navy, decisively beaten from the Bering Sea to the Indian Ocean, is unwilling to risk its warships except in order to prevent a direct threat against the Japanese homeland," sums up the correspondent. "The projected Allied advance in the central Pacific is expected to coincide with General Mac Arthur's drive northward from New Guinea and the Solomons, in which the immediate objective is believed to be Rabaul, with the Philippines as the long-range goal. "Some experts expect a simultaneous thrust towards the Kurile Islands by a combined Pacific fleet and air force which would be likely to produce the most violent Japanese reaction since Guadalcanal."