Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1942 JAPAN DRIVES ON

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 17 February 1942, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1942 JAPAN DRIVES ON

EVEN before they had made certain of Singapore the Japanese were driving against Sumatra, the rich Netherlands island across the narrow Malac- ! ca Strait. By a series of bold and , unexpected moves they have already . taken Palembafig, in the south of Sumatra and the source of more . than half the Netherlands Indies’ oil , production. The lay of the country , round Palembang was considered un- , suitable for parachute troops, yet the j . Japanese landed them. This oil; , centre is over fifty miles up a shoal- i , ing river dangerous for large ships, j , Yet the Japanese attempted the pass- j , age in craft that could do the jour-' , ney, and succeeded. Having been \ , denied the main oil installations in . Borneo, which island they have now . virtually occupied, the Japanese; , hoped to take Palembang intact. Tn , this they might have succeeded had , their paratroops not been mopped up., , They got there by sea, however, onlv ; to find that the sturdy Dutch had; n-.ade what is probably the greatest; . single scorched earth sacrifice in his-1 tj tory and had destroyed installations, ; and wells from which their industry land enterprise had made to flow four; • and a half million tons of oil a year. 1 Beside this the destruction by the Russians of the Dnieper dam is saidj to pale into insignificance. The Japanese will drive on relentlessly so long as they keep control of the sea. While Singapore held out Sumatra was screened to some extent. Now there does not appear much to prevent the whole island being occupied. It is almost certain that Java, with its 70,000,000 people and its rich resources, is next on the, list. Some reports maintain that a, landing there has already been ac-i complishcd, though this is denied in' Batavia. Java is the headquar4, ~ ~ C rinH m"i 1 W M vnl I TllP ’

ter:- of General Wavell. The Javanese city of Surabaya is the last bigj naval and air base in this theatre I remaining to the United Nations' north of Darwin. A determined at- i tempt will be made to hold Java,: both for its material prizes and stra- j tegic position. It has been fairly I evident all along that, when Wavell j was appointed to the united Com-! mand, his appreciation of the situa-. tion led him to believe that Singapore could not be held, and he therefore chose Java for his base of operations and his start ing- line for any. forward move. Should the enemy 1 succeed in Java. Wavell will be; forced lo retire on Darwin and try to j build up his resistance from there.! All older plans for stemming such! a drive as the Japanese are making | must now be thrown into the melt- , ing pot because they hinged on Singa- ; pore and we no longer have Singa - : pore. It appears very likely, how- \ ever, that Wavell did not bank on j Singapore, He has, however, count- j cd on retaining Java. Study of the map we print 10-day ! will give a good indication of Japanese plans. Hitler published his broad intentions to all the world in “Mein ' Kampl',” but scarcely anyone took them seriously, thinking they were too bad to be true. Glimpses of Japanese ambitions have been brought into the open from time to time and pursuit of them, as far as it has gone, confirms that they are following a well-defined and not very recently-made plan. It is something like this: Stage I—Occupy the Philippines, Guam, Wake and Midway Islands, Borneo and Malaya; Stage 2 Occupy the rest of the Netherlands Indies, Australia, New Zealand, Burma and India, mainly in order to screen Japan from counter-attack., and seize strategic Pacific Islands j which would afford a bridgehead for I an attack on the United States; Stage 3—lnvade the United States by an j

assault from several different points, including the Panama Canal zone and Alaska. This grandiose scheme can be pul alongside those of Hitler. Like them, too, il may not work out in practice as il appears on paper. But up till now ; the Japanese have followed it very faithfully and once a huge plan of this kind, the result of years of intensive effort, is cut and dried, it is unlikely to be seriously departed from while all is going well. Japan is now starting out on Stage 2. She has swung her main attack south to the Indies and north to Burma. In the Indies our map to-day shows how she is filtering through the island groups which act as an umbrella to Australia. This island chain continues down through the Solomons, New Hebrides, Fiji and New Caledonia to New Zealand. For the present the Japanese are concentrating on linking up their island conquests I between Sumatra in the west and New ! Britain in the east. The arrowheads! on the map mark the furthest points reached in their southward drive. It is also clear that Java is the maim immediate obstacle in Japan’s path.' in this sector of a huge front! stretching in an arc from Rangoon to Rabaul.