JAPANESE AT CROSS-ROADS

Southland Times, Issue 24599, 22 November 1941, Page 7

JAPANESE AT CROSS-ROADS

GENERAL TOJO’S STATEMENT

“MUST RISE OR FALL” (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) TOKYO, Nov. 20. The Prime Minister, General Hideki Tojo, explained to an Upper House committee that a large amount of reserve funds was being kept because Japan was confronted with an unprecedented crisis. She literally stands on the cross-roads and must rise or fall. Addressing a Lower House committee, Major-General Kenryo Sato, Chief of Military Affairs, expressed the opinion that Japan’s next war, if it occurred, would be aimed at breaking anti-Japanese encirclement and would be an unprecedently large-scale battle, for which reason it was urgently necessary for the Japanese people to promote a fighting spirit. He gave a warning that it would be impossible completely to shut out enemy planes, which undoubtedly would bomb Japanese wooden houses in an effort to break the people’s morale. For this reason Japan should maintain the greatest composure, irrespective of eventualities.

“The most recent statements in the Diet by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, Mr Sigenori Togo, suggest that Japan has modified her East Asian programme,” reports the Tokyo correspondent of The New York Times, Otto D. Tolischus. “Mr Togo declared that the Government does not

harbour territorial designs on nations in the Far East and General Tojo significantly said that it would be going too far to say that Japan’s ‘co-pros-perity’ programme aims at immediate liberation of oppressed races. General Tojo’s statement is tantamount to repudiation of the extremists’ demands to liberate East Asia from the white man and evict foreign barbarians.” TROOPS DISAFFECTED A Chinese Army spokesman asserts that intelligence reports disclose growing disaffection among the Japanese troops in China. He predicts that a general uprising is certain if the war continues. The first known Japanese antiwar organization has been formed at Suhsien, in the Anwei province. The leader of the organization, Mr Nishi Bashi, has been arrested. The Chinese spokesman said that the recent revision of the conscription regulations had resulted in the conscription of 400,000 Japanese and 260,000 Koreans into the army. He added that the latest reports indicated that at least 100,000 Japanese troops were in southern Indo-China, many of them along the Thailand border. The Hanoi Government has officially denied reports from Shanghai that Japan has demanded facilities for 50,000 more troops in Indo-China. Such a demand would exceed the FrancoJapanese agreement, hence it would have to be taken up between Vichy and Tokyo. Further Australian reinforcements, officially described as substantial, have arrived at Singapore. They received the news of the Middle East offensive with unprecedented enthusiasm.