THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Tuesday, October 24, 1944. THE CHALLENGE TO JAPAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25674, 24 October 1944, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Tuesday, October 24, 1944. THE CHALLENGE TO JAPAN

The promise made by President Roosevelt and Mr Churchill in a joint interview with the press after the Quebec conference last month has been ratified with astonishing speed and astounding magnitude. None but the Allied leaders, strategists, and commanders could have believed that the undertaking then given, that Great Britain and the United States would marshall “ all available foi'ces” against Japan, could so swiftly have been brought to fulfilment on such a scale as has been indicated in the operations that have commenced in the Philippine Islands. With a supply line of at least 600 miles, compared with the short cross-Channel lines to the Continent of Europe, and with land forces numerically as "great as in the early stages of the invasion of Normandy, the Allies have struck into a major stronghold of the Eastern partner of the Axis. The risks of this operation' should have been greater even than those involved in the European landings. They remain very great, when it is realised that ih theory the flanks of the Philippine invasion forces are exposed to Japanese armies numerically at least twice as large. But. the Allied Command is evidently confident that the Japanese forces which are stationed south of the Philippines, in an arc from Saigon, Singapore, and the Netherlands. Indies into Japan’s mandates in the Carolines, have been virtually isolated. They are powerless to come to the assistance of the defenders of the Philippines, as they lack the sea and air strength that would enable them to run the Allied naval blockade and to challenge the American air forces disposed in the South-west Pacific islands and carrier air forces in the invasion area, where they will soon have the support of land-based aircraft. And what applies to this southern arc, fixed for the time being on the island of Leyte, promises to become applicable also to a northern arc encompassing the Japanese forces on the Asiatic mainland, from Thailand and Indo-China in the north-west through the China Seas to Japan itself. While the huge invasion fleet has made the Leyte Gulf its objective, American task forces have been directing shrewdly-calculated blows at Luzon Island, centring on Manila, and at Formosa and the Ryukyus. It will, obviously, not be possible to close down hard and fast on enemy communications from Japan, to Formosa, and from Formosa, IndoChina, and Malaya to the Netherlands Indies; but the cost of running the blockade will in the future be desperately heavy. The possibility that the Japanese may succeed in completing a land supply route from occupied China to Indo-China and Malaya exists at the present time; but such a channel would be under constant attack from Western China, by land and air, and the communications system could be at the best somewhat makeshift. A decision by Japan to hazard the Imperial Fleet in a do-or-die battle with the United States Pacific naval forces may yet be provoked by the need to force open a passage to the Philippines and the Indies. Admiral Nimitz has, by word and deed, invited this development; and Mr A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, has, in effect, seconded the invitation with his interesting revelation that a British fleet, capable itself of fighting a general action with the sea forces of Imperial Japan, is being assembled for duty in the Pacific. This means simply that if Japan challenged the United States Pacific Fleet and sent it to the bottom a British fleet of comparable strength would be -ready to take up the gauntlet. In jfact, the Allies have moved a giant sea-stride into the Nipponese . co-prosperity sphere" with such an assemblage of forces that the Japanese will be hard put to it to defend their empire at its nearest points to the Asiatic mainland and their island homeland. If the operations in the Philippines go according to plan—and General MacArthur’s plans are so well laid that he can already; claim that the Philippine Government is “firmly re-established” on its native soil — the war in the Pacific will have changed almost overnight from a battle for bases into an offensive aimed, in the words of the leaders at Quebec, at the destruction of the barbarians of the Pacific. These considerations are, of course, necessarily qualified by the knowledge that the Philippines campaign is still ■ only in its developmental phase, with much bitter fighting ahead, while beyond lies a mainland campaign in which the tough Japanese armies, millions strong, must be engaged. But the demonstration of strength already given in the Pacific, with the* war in the West still to be concluded, contains more than a promise that the Allies are now reaching the goal of all their striving and planning, when they will command military strength beyond that of any rival Power or predictable combination of hostile nations.