SECRET BASE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25456, 10 February 1944, Page 4

SECRET BASE

JAPANESE AT TRUK YEARS OF PREPARATION LONDON, Jan. 21. Lost since the beginning of t£e world in the blue monotony of the Pacific, a curious group of volcanic islands has slipped with increasing prominence into the news lately. They are the group on which the Japanese have created their great naval ana air base of Truk, writes the wellknown London journalist Mr Simon Harcourt-Smith. The Truk group, which once belonged to Germany, lies some.9oo miles almost due north of Rabaul, and some 2200 miles south-east of the southernmost Japanese island of Kyushu. In 1914 Japan, eager for pickings, jumped as an ally to our rather reluctant side, says Mr Harcourt-Smith. We would have preferred her merely to limit the mischief of German commerce raiders in the Pacific, without going formally to war. Japan wanted fresh colonies—and she got them. Within the first few weeks she fen upon the German Pacific Islands. She did not get all of them; the Australians coming up from the south were a little too quick for her in the matter of New Guinea. The Imperial Government, however, agreed to Japan occupying the present mandated islands. Mandate Secured At the Peace Conference in Paris five years later Japan secured from the brand new League of Nations a mandate over all the former German islands in the Pacific north of the equator. , , , From the first Japan resolved to treat the mandated islands as full Japanese property. Only Japanese lines of steamers were allowed to ply to the islands. If a foreigner tried to go there every difficulty was put in his way with a thoroughness and a genius for devising disagreeable surprises that is peculiarly Japanese. Particularly hard was it to get to Truk, whence in the early thirties came strange rumours of great Japanese activity. To this day Truk remains so shrouded in’ mystery that the average Englishman, if he has heard of it at all, imagines it to be a single island, honeycombed with ' caves—a Pacific Gibraltar. Truk is something unique in the world. Imagine a triangle, each side of which measures some 40 miles, composed of coral reef sharp enough to rip the bottom out of the mrtst powerful battleship afloat. This feature, which is very rare indeed, was what first attracted the attention of the Japanese to Truk. In these 120 miles of coral rampart there* are only four openings—at the north, north-west, south, and west. -•- A Vast Lagoon

Through winding difficult channels you come suddenly into the vast lagoon 6f Truk, extremely deep, calm water where all the navies in the world could lie together in Comfort. This lagoon is studded with islands, more than 200 of them, of which only 11 are large enough to merit our attention. To them the Japanese have given names meaning the days of the week or the zodiacal signs.

The islands were originally aU of a pattern—a central volcanic coijW rising to 1000-1500 feet, with a smaller cone at either end, the whole densely planted with palms and mangroves. The transformation wrought by the Japanese has been prodigious. Mountains have been hollowed out to serve as aeroplane hangars and at least one island, 300 feet high in parts and threequarters of a mile long, has been levelled down to form an airfield 10 feet above the sea. "

Into the coral, shelters for submarines have been tunnelled, and everywhere, even on the numberless small atolls no bigger , than a fishing smack, are ack-ack batteries, searchlights and predictors. At Truk there are, apparently, dry and graving docks, foundries, and all the other facilities for repairing ; the largest units of the Japanese Fleet. There, indeed, most of it so placed as to block a frontal attack on Japan from the south; and since Truk ,is only half the distance from Japan that Pearl Harbour is, the Japanese Grand Fleet based on Truk could easily forestall any American descent from that direction. Assuming the fall of Rabaul in the near future, can we move against Tfuk with any hope of success? Almost certainly not. Difficulties of an Attack The whole issue of an attack upon the place would turn upon aircraft. We would be compelled to pit carrierborne against land-based fighters. But not even the deadly Seafire can compare for efficiency' with a machine that has the advantage of unlimited space for its take-off; while we should be compelled to concentrate a prodigious number of carriers before we could equal in quantity the Japanese strength at Truk. The possibility of sending submarines into the lagoon is very , remote. The channels would be almost unnegotiable fog- hostile craft, and could be easily obstructed. Nor is there -any chance of starving the place out. The lagoon abounds in excellent fish; upon fish and the sweet potato which they have brought into the islands, the Japanese could thrive indefinitely, . All too easily do we dismiss the Japanese as mere imitators, lacking imagination. But at Truk they saw possibilities which neither German nor Spaniard could perceive; and they have achieved such a miracle as has not been known since the building of the Great Wall. Of course they have achieved it at tremendous cost of human life. Such of the gentle, lazy islanders as Japanese “ culture ” had spared were worked to their graves hollowing or destroying mountains; and when the islanders had died out slave labour was brought in from occupied China.