THE JAPANESE WAR

Evening Star, Issue 25564, 17 August 1945, Page 8

THE JAPANESE WAR

Conquests Follow Pearl Harbour

Some ships were sunk at their moorings, others damaged, and Amen- . can naval power in the Pacinc was temporarily crippled. ■ Only after the attack had been delivered did Japan declare war on Great Britain and the United .States. Germany and Ttalv declared war on the American republic. Only the Germans were a little disappointed. They would have pre* ferred their Far Eastern ally to strike at Russia, and did not relish having America for an enemy. .They were light, because in America isolationism ws§ made to vanish in a night. , Serious. tragedy befell,, the British when on December 11 the new battleship Prince of Wales and the .battle cruiser Repulse were sunk off Malaya. Without air protection,, at that early stage, they fell victims to repeated attacks by large forces 'of Japanese naval aircraft. Simultaneously with the Pearl Harbour blow, Japanese forces attacked v Hongkong, Malaya, Thailand, Guam, the Philippines, and Wake Island. The 'Thailand Government agreed, after five ihours' fighting, to allow a passage through its country. Penang was evacuated, and on December 25 Hongkong fell. , Hongkong made a gallant defence. On the night of December 11-12 the small garrison had to withdraw from the mainland to the island in the face of Japanese attacks in overwhelming strength. Summonses to surrender were rejected on December 13 and 17, but on December 19 the enemy succeded! in gaining a foothold on the island itself, and the garrison,, though stoutly resisting for a week, assisted by a Chinese attack on the Japanese communications on the mainland, was compelled to • surrender on Christmas Day. 1942—REVERSE AND RECOVERY. A worse-tragedy was in store for the British. In Malaya the Japanese, commanding 6ea and air and showing remarkable skill in jungle warfare, had driven our forces from the peninsula ■by January-31. They began to attack Singapore', island) on February 4; they landed there on the night of February 8-#. and after less than a week's fighting and the loss of the aerodromes and water-supply, General Percival, with over 75,000 men, surrendered to General Yamashita on February 15.' An attack;, from the land side, madepossible by the fall of France, had not been anticipated when the forts were planned. No more impressive disaster hadl befallen the British Empire. Aided by' the Siamese and subsequently, by disaffected Burman elements, ttie Japanese invaded Burma, which was defended by less than two weak British and Indian divisions, reinforced in February by two still weaker Chinese armies. The enemy took Moulmein on January 31, and successively forced' the crossings of the Salwen, Bilin, and Sittang Rivers. These reverses ,and Japanese predominance by land, sea, and air,, made Rangoon untenable, and it was abandoned on March 8. Mandalay fell on May 1. Meanwhile the had seized Palembang and Sumatra, the large oilfields being destroyed. The fall of Batav& followed. On April 10 the enemy overcame an American army under General Wainwright, which, since the fall of Manila (January 2), had been gallantly holding out at Batan, in the Philippines, and on May 6 the last American defenders, on Corregidor, capitulated. These were anxious months for New Zealand and Australia. The invaders were in NeW Guinea. Soon they would I . ./ . '

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INVADERS PRESSED BACK Bombs on Japan The time which Japan chose for entering the war was adroitly calculated. Britain's hands were completely with her western foes. The war in Africa swung to and fro; the Russian retreat was not ended. The Vichy Government had given Japan naval and other bases in Indo-China. The Japanese were being hindered in their war against Chiang Kai-shek by an American embargo. America was a big Power to attack, but she was unprepared, and it was hoped by one treacherous blow to make her defenceless in the short war which Japan, like Germany before her, contemplated. To protest against the embargo a Japanese mission went to Washington in November, 1941. Under cover of the negotiations an assault in great force ' by sea-borne aircraft was treacherously launched in the early morning of December 7 on Pearl Harbour, the principal base of the American Pacific fleet.

be in the Solomons. Aeroplanes dropped bombs on Darwin; American forces were sent to supplement those of Aus r tralia, and the whole, on March 17, placed under the control of General MacArthur, the first defender of the Philippines. For promise of better things American planes, operating from carriersj bombed Tokio and other Japanese cities.

There was another danger. If Germany could occupy Egypt and pass the Caucasus the two Powers, Germany and Japan, niight join hands somewhere about the Persian Gulf. To offset the menace, in May British forces occupied Madagascar after some fighting with the Vichy French. The Japanese were not getting all their own way. On March 18 it was reported that naval forces which they had concentrated off New Guinea had been smashed in'ia. series of actions by American and Australian air forces, with the loss of 27 enemy ships wrecked or badly damaged, including cruisers and destroyers. In the Coral Sea, west of the Solomons, on May 7. and 8 American and Australian naval forces inflicted heavy losses on naval forces of Japan, who may have been attempting to invade North Queenland. And off Midway Island on June 8 American land-based' planes did heavy damage to a Japanese fleet, destroying at least two aircraft carriers. Midway marked the definite recovery of the United States Pacific Fleet after the surprise-of Pearl Harbour, and the initiative passed henceforth to the Americans. On August 7 their marines surprised and captured the newly-completed airfield on Guadalcanal, in the Solomons, a name, which continued to loom in the cables as the scene of bitter fighting for the next six months. Meanwhile a Japanese advance . from northern Papua had been driven back over, the Owen Stanley Range after threatening Port Moresby in mid-September. 1943-7-ALLIES MOVE NORTHWARDS. Except in China, where they mado three unsuccessful offensives, the Japanese were on the defensive throughout the year. They held in Burma, hut lost valuable outpost positions elsewhere. In the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, March 2-4, a Japanese convoy of 22 ships—l2 transports and 10 warshipscarrying reinforcements to Lae, in New Guinea, was sunk by General MacArthur's air forces, with loss of 15,000 troops., On May 30 the last Japanese were destroyed -on Attu, the most westerly of the, Aleutians, by the Americans. Kiska, the last island in brown hands, was retaken by Americans and Canadians on August 21. On August (i the Japanese airfield at Munda (Solomons) was subdued. Allied air forces on August 17 made a surprise swoop on aerodromes at Wewak, Northern New Guinea, destroying 120 planes and severely damaging 50. On September 15 Salamaua (New Guinea) was taken, on September 18 Lae, and on October 2 Finschafen. On October 13, in an attack on llabaul. General Mac Arthur's aircraft destroyed 177 planes and sank or destroyed 49 6hips and 70 harbour craft. And other successes followed. On November 25, after four days' fighting, American forces' completed the occupation of the Gilbert Islands, and on December 14 American troops seized the Arawe Peninsula, in New Britain. 1944—BACK TO PHILIPPINES. On February 2 United States forces landed on two" of the Marshall Islands, the first Japanese-administered territory to be occupied by them. On February 15 New Zealanders participated in operations by the Ameri-

cans which completed the occupation of the Solomons.

By March 19 the occupation had been completed of all vital areas in the Admiraltys. On April 24 it was reported that United States forces had made three new landings on the north coast of New Guinea, as a result of which Hollandia was captured, Wewak isolated, and 140,000 Japanese troops cut off. A new vantage point of crucial importance was gained when United States forces on June 15 landed on Saipan Island, a main Japanese base in the Marianas.- In an air battle associated with the operations 353 Japanese planes were-shot down. The operations fed to a naval battle, in which the United States- Fifth Fleet sank four and possibly five enemy warships, including an aircraft carrier and three tankers, and damaged nine other warships between the Philippines and the Marianas. On July 9 was reported the complete conquest of Saipan, after bloody fighting, putting the Americans within bombing distance of Tokio. By August 9 the conquest of Guam was complete, giving full possession of the Marianas. On September 19 the Americans landed on Morotai, in the Halmahera Group (Moluccas), and in the Palaus, east of the Philippines.. Their landing on Leyte (October 20), in the central Philippines, led to a main naval action in which the Japanese were worsted. 1945—BACK TO JAPAN. January 9, 1945, saw the Americans' back to Luzon, in the Philippines. Landings on islands northward of that group followed. On February 3 General MacArtbur's men were back in Manila, and on March 11 they landed on Mindanao, the most southerly and second largest island of the Philippines. On July 4 it was reported that all the Philippine islands had been liberated. A landing on Okinawa on April 1, after a 10-day assault, placed American troops within 320 miles of Japan. Some of the fiercest fighting of the war was required for conquest of the island, which was not completed till June 21, at a cost of 90.000 Japanese and 7,000 Americans' killed. Okinawa thereupon became the nearest and principal base for bombardments of Japan. On May, Australian and Dutch forces landed on Tarakan, an island off the west coast of (Borneo, containing large oil resources. The move against Borneo was the first bite by the eastern jaw of a huge pincers movement on Singapore, with oil as its secondary object. On May 13 the Australians took Wewak, a strong enemy fortress in New Guinea. Heavy bomb attacks were being made on Japanese cities. Early in June Australian troops landed at four points in' British North Borneo, including Brunei Bay. The landings at Brunei and Tarakan placed Allied forces not at the gates, but at the geographical centre, of enemyoccupied Celebes, Bali, Java, Sumatra, Malaya, and Indo-China. On July 1 Australian ground forces landed at Balikpapan. On June 30. following a series of Japanese withdrawals before the Chinese, the conclusion was expressed that the Japanese were writing off nearly half of-their territorial gains in China in preparation for last-ditch fighting in North China. Manchuria, and Korea. An armada of planes, reported to number 1,500, co-operated in the first combined operations' by British and American fleets' against the Japanese homeland in July. It was announced that Britain had sent her largest, fastest, and most powerful battleships into Far Eastern waters.

In the firstj seven months of 1945 the Far East air forces and attached units were officially reported to have destroyed or severely damaged 2,846,932 tons of enemy shipping and 1,375 aircraft. They flew Well, over 150,000 sorties, dropping 100,000 tons of bombs.

The second week of August was a decisive week for Japan. On August 5 a new species of atomic bomb, marking a revolution in both ,war and science, was dropped on Hiroshima, a city of 300,000 inhabitants, with large ordnance, machine-tool, and aircraft plants, and three-fifths of the city obliterated by one small missile. On August 8 Russia declared war against Japan, within a week of the conference held by Generalissimo Stalin, Mr Churchill, and President Truman at Potsdam, at which the matter was discussed by the [' Big Three." On August 9 an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. On August 13 the Japanese. Emperor accepted the Allies' terms for unconditional surrender.