JAPANESE PLANS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20823, 30 June 1942, Page 5

JAPANESE PLANS

RAILWAYS CONTROL CHINESE COAST AREAS DEFENDERS NEED PLANES (By Teleitraph—Press Aean. —Copy right.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) (3 p. m .) SYDNEY, June 29. Japan’s strategy in China is not to knock out the Chinese but to get control of communications, states Lieut.Colonel Chin Wang, the ’Chinese liaison officer at General MacArlhur s Headquarters. Colonel Wang has been sent to the south-west Pacific by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. “China’s most urgent need is planes —at least 500 bombers, with a fighter escort,” he says. Foreign pilots would also be necessary since China could not train enough men to meet the demands of all the planes required for victory. Colonel Wang said that a secret road thrown out from China to connect with India as an alternative to the Burma Road was well hidden from the enemy’s eyes but was tortuous and difficult. A second front in the Far East was more than feasible. China favoured air raids from the Aleutians which, if pressed repeatedly, could make Japan squirm. The purpose of Japan’s savage incursion into China’s south-eastern provinces was threefold. First, it aimed at controlling more Chinese aerodromes, many of which were situated back from the coast: secondly, Japan hoped to stop the considerable smuggling trade that was going on around Shanghai, and’ thirdly, Japan hoped to obtain possession of the railway from Shanghai to Changsha. This was tremendously important, since if Japan won the railway she would have a safe land route for the transfer of troops and war materials from Manchurian bases to the Siberian and Indian fronts. From the Allies’ point of view, therefore, the importance of the issue in south-eastern China could not be over-estimated. If Japan won her goal, the Allied cause would have received a grievous blow. Air aid was China’s desperate need.