A POWERFUL ARMADA

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLXII, Issue 15240, 5 January 1943, Page 3

A POWERFUL ARMADA

JAPS AT RABAUL AUSTRALIANS DISTURBED. AT WITHHOLDING OF NEWS. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. SYDNEY, January 4. I “Japan lias enough transports and warships in the vicinity of Rabaul to launch a powerful offensive aaginst Australia by -way of New Guinea. This warning is given by Jack Turcott, the New York Daily News* war correspondent in the South-west Pacific. The enemy concentration at Rabaul was again attacked by Fortresses at dawn on 'Sunday. This was the fifth raid in eight days. Two hits were scored with. 1000-lb. bombs on a 10,000-ton vessel. Although cloudy weather did not permit complete observation of thy results the ship hit was later seen to he on fire. The first, news that the Japanese shipping' concentration at Rabaul was of formidable invasion proportions was released by the 8.8. C. during the week-end and confirmed officially only to-day. The Sydney Sun comments that the great number of Japanese ships should have been made known officially before the issue by Mr Curtin of the appeal to the United Nations “to spare more material for the war in the Pacific and to-reconsider ids strategic urgency. To the public, this appeal seemed to come out of the void—there was nothing within which to correlate it.”

The Sun urges that 1° withhold from the public facts of the military situation is to breed complacency, overconfidence and slackness. “Powerful and implacable forces still menace the Allied positions in this theatre,” decares the paper. Jack Turcott also says that “the advent of 1943 which is expected to be the year of Allied victories finds the South-west Pacific still occupying tUe position of junior partner in the war plans of the United Nations while Japan continues to loot the occupied countries. The theory that this part or the Allied world is safe is held because Australian veterans drove a couple of thousand Japanese across the Owen Stanleys, and a sizeable force of Australians and Americans is slowly whittling down the outnumbered enemy round Buna. If the Allies, after six weeks of direct .offensive, are still busy trying to conquer the Buna area, how long will it take to capture a-U the other bases which the Japanese have been fortifying since February ?”