DANGER FACING JAPAN

Southland Times, Issue 25747, 10 August 1945, Page 5

DANGER FACING JAPAN

RUSSIAN STRENGTH IN SIBERIA

(Rec. 11.30 p.m.) August 9.

(Special Correspondent, N.Z.P.A.) There is reason to believe that Russian troops have been moving' east for the past two months or even more, says the military correspondent of The Times. It is unlikely that such a transfer would have been called for merely by the demand for security on Russia’s Far Eastern frontiers, since the gap created in the eastern garrisons facing Japan when the situation in the west was at its worst is thought to have been largely repaired at an earlier date. It may well be that Russia’s action in declaring war has been taken in order to give a decisive push to Japanese inclinations to surrender, inclinations which can easily be read into pronouncements made on the Japanese wireless.

It would certainly be impossible to exaggerate the extent of the threat to Japan implicit in the declaration. While Russia was engaged in a life and death struggle with Germany her situation in the Far East was such that it must have caused grievous anxiety to Moscow.

The railway north of Amur was flanked for hundreds of miles by the Japanese within easy striking distance in Manchuria. Today that once perilous position becomes a source of strategic strength. The Japanese Army in Manchuria is strong, and, to a certain degree, self-sufficing, but it is now virtually cut off from home. This means that even if it possesses enough supplies to prolong the conflict for some time —that is not absolutely certain—it can receive no reinforcements. The railway which it formerly threatened is today a route along which the Russians can deploy on a wide front. Sakhalin also, from its shape and position, represents a sphere pointed towards Japan, and especially the northern island of Hokkaido, which has suffered very much less than Honshu or Kyushu from American bombing attacks. Even if Russia were not herself prepared to send a great fleet of heavy bombers to the Far East she

might provide landing grounds for American aircraft, in which case it would be a sorry outlook for Jap-anese-held Continental railways. Except for a raid or two .over Korea these have not yet been seriously attacked, but if they could be blocked the Japanese Army on Amur would be put into the situation in which the German Army on the Rhine found itself early this year. Russia’s powerfully reinforced Eastern Army, which is threatening Japan’s northern strongholds in Manchuria, includes formations which beat the best of Japan’s continental armies in the border fighting in 1938 and 1939, says the Moscow correspondent of Reuter’s. Russian bombers are able to strike anywhere in Japan and Manchuria and are able to reach any Japanese bases in China, but the Russian commander and his immediate objectives alike are unknown. The correspondent points out in that Marshal Gregory Zhukov, the conqueror of Berlin, commanded the Russian forces which defeated the Japanese on the border in 1939. He first employed the Red Army’s tactics of cooperation between tanks and planes. The Japanese Kwantung Army was badly battered in the border engagements and the Japanese thereafter had a deep respect for the Russian Eastern Army. They openly declared that in the event of war against Russia they hoped to be able to ■ strike quickly against Vladivostock and objectives along the Amur River.