GUADALCANAL AND HAWAII

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 61, 10 September 1945, Page 4

GUADALCANAL AND HAWAII

Japan's farthest east and farthest south in the Pacific Ocean present interesting moments in the grim game of .war. In the first place, at Pearl Harbour in 1941, Japan gambled on hit-and-run when she might have gambled on a much bigger stake; in the second place, in the Solomon Islands in 1942, Japan played for a bigger stake and was emphatically knocked back, though for a while the Guadalcanal battle trembled in the balance. While the Japanese miscalculation at Pearl Harbour saved the Americans from the possibility of having Japanese armies as close as the Island of Hawaii, the Japanese defeat in the Solomons saved New Zealanders from the possibility of having to use their underground shelters; and it must ever be remembered to the credit of the United States Government that at a time i when America had received such a formidable injury from Japan's treacherous hit-and-run blow on December 7, 1941, America yet had the nerve to use her weakened navy to resist the Japanese not only in the eastern and central Pacific, but in the south, whereby New Zealand escaped scathless. American activity in the' south Pacific early in 1942, leading up to the landing on Guadalcanal in August, was something, of an echo of the nerve shown by Churchill when, though Britain herself stood alone and in danger, he diverted force by the long Cape route to hold Egypt.

The penalty, of course, that America would have paid, had Japan planned more boldly her eastern thrust against Pearl Harbour 'in 1941, cannot be compared with the penalty that Britain — and the whole world —would have paid if the British Isle, during the diversions to Egypt, had been captured by Germany. What makes Churchill's nerve so wonderful is the tremendous penalty that his bold policy would have incurred had Britain herself fallen. No such ruinous result could Japan have imposed on the United States in 1941, because even a Japanese seizure of Hawaii would have left the American arsenals, shipyards, and colossal industry intact. Hawaii or no Hawaii, American industry in due course would have crushed Japan. The Japanese "insular arc," had it included Hawaii, would have been penetrated by the American' naval-air weapon just as certainly. But had Japanese initial penetration included Hawaii and Fiji, the people of western America in the one case and of New Zealand in the other would have been likely to receive a much more intimate impression of what war means. For which relief, much thanks! The world now knows that Japan, on December 7, 1941, found things altogether too easy. "We expected," says Captain Imamura, "much greater defence of such an important base as Pearl Harbour. We were amazed. Our fleet was instructed to bomb and then leave. We had no troops with which to make a landing. If we had, perhaps we could have taken Hawaii." If they had, they would have been "thus far and no farther." But American damages would have risen by millions.

If Japan found too little resistance in the Hawaiian Islands, she found a good deal too much in the Solomon group. All the persistence which Japan had neglected to prepare for in the Hawaiian group, she did exert in and near the Solomons, but in vain. Transports she had, and men she had, also warships and aeroplanes to protect convoys passing from the northern Solomons to Guadalcanal, to evict the American marines. Night after night for a long time the convoy service ("the night express") ran south to Guadalcanal, not always getting there, and at times suffering heavily from Allied attack; nevertheless, Japanese reinforcements did reach the island battlefield, and the Japanese navy did have its share of luck, as when four heavy cruisers (three American, one Australian) were surprised and sunk, apparently by a smaller naval force. But under the long-term test Japan's effort to advance southward in the Solomons just failed; eventually it achieved less than the hit-and-run blow at Pearl Harbour and cost much more. For a time, however, the Americans fought with such heavy losses, particularly iii | aircraft-carriers, that the battle still I might have gone to Japan, but for the inadequacy of her total naval and air forces to cover all dangers on all her imany fronts. It is this inadequacy of total resources that the Japanese militants hope to correct within 20 years —if United Nations surveillance is so inefficient as to permit the restoration of Japanese war industry Ito begin.

At the finish of her war, Japan had too little air power. At the critical stage of the Solomons campaign, both sides had too little. Even in'l943 the United States navy was glad to have the help of the British aircraft-carrier Victorious (23,000 tons) "to cover the Allies' lines of communications to the Solomons in the event of the Japanese forces turning south." But Japan had discovered in 1942 her farthest south as weß. as her farthest' east. Japan now knows that no Pacific war can promise her anything in the future unless Japanese industry can outAmerica the Americans. And that is a very big target for the hard-working islanders to aim at. Still, there it is. What is left of the Jap threat is not to be ignored.