OCCUPATION BY JAPAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26544, 20 August 1947, Page 5

OCCUPATION BY JAPAN

DOMINION AND AUSTRALIA NIPPONESE WAR OBJECTIVE TOKIO, Aug. 18. The first aifthentic Japanese plans for the ' conquest and occupation of Australia and New Zealand were revealed to-day by Lieutenant-colonel T. Mornane, a member of the Australian section of the international prosecution staff. Under the “ Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere,” Australia and New Zealand were to have become Japanese territories for the emigration of the Japanese race The information is contained in a document prepared in January, 1942, by the Japanese Government Total War Research Institute. When the Japanese Army and Navy burned all top-secret documents at the close of the war. this was the only one relating to plans for Australia that escaped destruction. After driving “aggressive Bntisn influences” out of East Asia, the plan called for extension to the outer areas of Australia and India. Both countries were to be given “ independence.’ Thailand. Indo-China, the Philippines, and Mongolia were to be given outright “ independence,” 'with such military and other controls as the Japanese deemed necessary. Burma was to be “ independent,” but would require some “ protective interference.” British Malaya and North Borneo were to be made parts •of Japanese territory. Hawaii, Midway, the Australian mandates of New Guinea, and the Eastern Archipelagos, New Caledonia. and other South Pacific islands having great military importance were to be made part of Japanese territory as necessary.