JAPAN’S STRENGTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25213, 30 April 1943, Page 2

JAPAN’S STRENGTH

In the past few days there have been reports, admittedly more speculative than factual, of Japanese offensive preparations covering almost the entire Pacific battle area. A message from Chungking announced considerable Japanese successes in North China. An Australian correspondent stated that the reinforcement of Japan’s main bases in the South Pacific was continuing steadily, and that the enemy was building up his air strength to provide more adequate cover for his land operations. And from New York it was suggested that Japan was preparing her island strongpoints in the Aleutian chain as bases from which to attack the west coast of North America. At the same time there have been warnings to the Japanese themselves, from Tokio, that the American-held islands in the Aleutians continue to represent a grave threat to Japan, and that American “ boasts ” of forthcoming air attacks on Japanese cities should not be lightly dismissed. Doubtless there is an element of truth in all these reports, but the mystery of Japanese intentions in the direction of large-scale offensive undertakings remains unsolved. It' is just about two months now since Japan was announcing the beginning of a great campaign to crush Chungking’s resistance once and for all. But the attacks then launched have made little progress and observers are beginning to wonder whether the strain on Japan’s military resources involved by the need for spreading them over an area of conquest more extended than Germany’s, is not at last threatening to have paralysing effects. In a recent despatch from Chungking to the Manchester Guardian, Mr Gunther Stein gave the Japanese dispositions as 33 divisions in Manchuria and Korea, 32 incomplete, under-staffed and under-equipped divisions in China, including Hongkong, and 24 in the South-west Pacific, including Burma, Thailand and Indo-China. Altogether, Mr Stein estimated, the Japanese' had 100 divisions under arms, those not otherwise accounted for being in Japan itself. These figures support the estimate given by Mr Joseph C. Harsch, in the Christian Science Monitor, late in February, that Japan is still keeping approximately one-third of her land forces in Korea and Manchuria, “ with probably 20 divisions scattered over the islands front from Singapore to Kiska, and perhaps 30 along the China coast.” The concentration near the Russian border, he says, began immediately with the fall of Java, in March, 1942, and was widely presumed to presage a Japanese attack on Russia. But “ that attack never materialised, nor has the strength of the Japanese concentration along the Siberian borders ever been diminished, so far as is known outside.” Japan’s preoccupation with her northern frontiers, against Russia and against the United States, via the Aleutians, is understandable enough. But the problem of making the best use of the forces at her disposal, especially in view of her heavy losses of aircraft and naval and merchant tonnage, must be a harassing one indeed while she is obviously compelled, for reasons that may only be conjectured, to maintain a large army on a front that has been inactive for the greater part of the war.