BIG ENEMY FORCES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21549, 31 October 1944, Page 3

BIG ENEMY FORCES

BY-PASSED IN ISLES HARD MOPPING-UP TASK AUSTRALIANS WARNED J.lO a.m.) SYDNEY, Oct. 30. “The rapid advance made by General MacArthur into the Philippines nas encouraged in .this country a complacent anticipation oi tne ena of the war,” said General Sir Thomas Blarney, Commander-in-Chief of the Australian land forces, to-day. “Tms complacency has been all too apparent since the Australian troops stopped the Japanese advance in New Guinea in beptember, 1942, and negatived the .tnreat oi invasion to this country. “What Australians, and probably many others, fail to realise is tnai this is a strategical advance and that it has been accomplished only by bypassing major centres of Japanese concentration and potential resistance. Whatever victory may be achieved by the Allied forces in the Philippines or further north, it is incomplete to the extent that farther soutn substantial Japanese iorces, m and well armed, have to be eliminated before we can claim to have completed the task assigned to the forces of the United Nations in the southwest Pacific area. 90,000 North of Australia

“The number of Japanese who exist as disciplined, organised forces between the Philippines and Australia is very great. For instance, in a comparatively short arc which extends from We'wak in British r»ew uuhl. to the Solomons, .through New Britain and New Ireland, there is estimated to be 90,000 Japanese troops. On the western flank there are probably 18,000 in Dutch New Guinea and many more thousands in the Halmaheras, Celebes, Borneo and Netherlands East Indies. All our experience is that they will sell their lives dearly when the United Nations undertake the task of exterminating them.

■“These Japanese have not relied exclusively on normal military supplies. In the Rabaul area they have some 3000 acres under cultivation. There is reason to believe that their supplies are stored in underground shelters so deep as to be invulnerable to aerial attack. In New Ireland they have attempted to breed livestock. On Bougainville they have extensive areas under cultivation. “These are a lew of the reasons why I suggest that we must accept the Japanese colonisation of these islands as an accomplished fact.”