JAPS WAIT

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3175, 28 September 1942, Page 6

JAPS WAIT

THREAT TO SIBERIA NAZI DRIVE IN RUSSIA ' ARMIES NOW CONCENTRATED The view continues to be widely held in London that Japan will attack directly Berlin announces that Marshal von Bock’s drive in Russia has reached its objective, Sydney Morning Herald’s correspondent. Attacks are expected to be made from the Manchurian border towai*ds Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, with an intense air assault on Sakhalin Island.

It is known that the Japanese have been concentrating armies and aii* forces in Manchuria for several weeks. Recent conference of army, navy, and air force chiefs in Tokyo are believed to have dealt with a “Siberian adventure.”

' Tokyo newspapers are filling their front pages with long accounts of the German advances in Russia. The Nichi Nichi typically says: “Our day is coming. The Rising* Sun will soon rise over the red horizon.”

Sir Robert Clive, a former Ambassador to Japan, in an article in the Sunday Graphic says: “The Japanese may decide that the moment has come to try to realise an old ambition and seize eastern Siberia, or vast commitments elsewhere may make the attack at present too risky. “The Army may decide to recover the face lost by the Navy at Midway Island by an attack on Siberia, especially as they cannot ignore the potential danger of air attacks from Vladivostok.

“One thing is certain. The Japanese will not lightly plunge into) war ■■ against another Great Power. / The Army will need to be convinced that it has more than a 50-50 chance before it decides to 'take on the Russian Eastern Army in addition to other commitments.