CUT OFF AND DOOMED

Evening Star, Issue 25169, 8 May 1944, Page 3

CUT OFF AND DOOMED

JAP. GARRISON AT RABAUL CONTINUAL RAIDS. BY ALLIED PLANES (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent)! SYDNEY, May V. Rabaul, the most frequently stricken Japanese base in tue South-west Pacific, has been hit with 484 tons ol] bombs in the past five days. Scarcely a day or night has passed this year without the area being a target tor homber raids or fighter sweeps. The enemy garrison there, which is unofficially estimated at 20,000, is steadily losing its limited supplies. The Japanese made Rabaul their key hase for attacking the Solomons and Australia. Now, although the fortress appears to have been by-passed by tha Allies, and its garrison cut off and doomed, our aircraft continue to hammer its supply areas, harbour defences, and aerodromes, and to destroy, any small shipping venturing into nearby - waters. . Rabaul's. five main airfields, which were once assembly points for hundreds of planes, now accommodate only a few fighters. In the harbour, where great naval and mercantile fleets were .once based, Only barges can bu found, scattered along the foreshore. Rabaul is useless to the Japanese, and the purpose of this incessant Allied aerial battering is to keep it so. The defenders of Hoflandia and Dutch New Guinea did not have the fanatical fighting spirit of the Japanese in the earlier Pacific campaigns, and more than 150 Japanese prisoners, a record number for any operation in the South Pacific, have been taken since the landing at Hollandia on April 22. This large number of willing captives represents a new defeatist attitude by the Japanese soldiers, who are continuing Ijp surrender in groups. Tha number of enemy dead counted at Hollandia is fewer than 700, and the high.

proportion of prisoners to casualties is regarded by observers as a sign that the unbroken series of Allied successes has lowered Japanese morale. -