EXPLOITATION OF CONQUESTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22478, 13 January 1943, Page 5

EXPLOITATION OF CONQUESTS

Japan Hampered

Inadequate Mercantile

Marine

By Telegraph—N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright LONDON, January 11.

“Japan’s concern over her inability to provide ships for her ambitions is plain for all to see in recent writings and broadcasts from Tokio,” states a special correspondent of “The Times” in a message from India. “Japanese experts have declared that Japan must possess 20,000,000 tons of shipping in order to construct and develop the socalled co-prosperity sphere, which is another way of telling the Japanese that they cannot hope to exploit their conquests. “A Tokio broadcast recently warned the Japanese that although Japan occupied vast areas rich in material and resources she cannot build up ‘a certain victory and non-defeat wartime structure’ unless she can use those resources, which, in turn, depend on her ability to find ships." The correspondent continues: “There is a good enough reason for these Japanese misgivings. Japan, it is believed, came into the war with less than 7,000,000 tons of merchant shipping, which is about one-third of what the experts now advance as the minimum requirements for victory. The first year cost her 1,000,000 tons definitely sunk by the Allies and another 1,500.000 tons probably sunk. “Foreign estimates place Japan’s annual production of merchant shipping at 600,000 tons, which has probably been reduced by urgent needs for warships and heavy demands on the docks for ship repairs, so it will be a long time before Japan reaches her target of 20.000,000 tons. Not only is she hopelessly outmatched by Britain and American production figures, but, with the Allied offensive still beginning, she is losing ground in the replacement of losses.

“People living under Japanese occupation know that the Japanese cannot spare ships for the transport of food and manufactures between the territories of her ’Greater Far East.’ There is a glut of rice in Burma, and a glut of sugar in Java, with a dearth of both elsewhere, but all Japan can do is to tell these countries that they must become self-sufficient.”