WAR STRENGTH

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 23082, 22 December 1944, Page 7

WAR STRENGTH

Japan’s Big Reserves All Not Yet In Fight The inevitability of Japan’s defeat is one thing; the imminence of Japanese surrender is quite another, writes Neal Stanford, "Christian Science Monitor" correspondent at Washington. While it cannot be said that Japan has not begun to fight, it can be said that Japan has not yet put its all into the fight. Official sources in Washington have disclosed that it can still increase its capacity to produce weapons of war. It is at war, but not 100 per cent, in the war. The United States could obviously in a crisis devote more of its effort to turning out war goods than it does. So can Japan. It has resources within easy reach that have not yet been exploited. It can use substitute materials and dip into stock piles not yet utilised. It has plant equipment that could considerably increase the production of planes, tanks, trucks and guns. Raw Material Stocks How is this so? Japan over the last five years has expended both manpower and materials in expanding its industrial plant. It has built up stock piles which can now be drawn on for enough aluminium to last six to 18 months, enough copper for a year ana five months, enough chromite for a year, enough manganese for two years, enough mercury for two years, enough molybdenum for one year. Its supply of aviation gasoline is estimated as large enough to last a year or more. And it is said to have enough rubber for five years and tin for eight. Japan’s weakness in ability to expand war production does not lie so much in the availability of raw materials, Washington officials believe, as its restricted ability to expand steel production. Its conquests since Pearl Harbour have opened raw material sources but have not increased steelmaking capacity. Japan’s steel capacity is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 13,"IO,000 tons of stel ingots and castings a year. In contrast, the United States’ capacity is 88,000,000 tons. Japan’s steel industry, however, cannot be starved out by Allied conquests in the Central and South Pacific. Over 9,000,000 tons of the ore Japan uses comes from Korea, Manchuria, and China. Only by cutting off such supplies—or damaging the plants by bombing—can Japan’s steel industry be harmed. As for her scrap pile, it is believed to bo quite adequate—thanks to pre-war American generosity. War industry, it must be remembered, is concentrated in Japan proper, in Korea, or in Manchuria. Labour for the war effort comes almost completely from these areas. May Take Years There is, then, the manpower. But it lacks the mobility, as well as ability, of American labour to become proficient in war work. Japan, official sources agree, can still pull in its belt a notch or two, car, still step up war production 10 or 20 per cent., can still find the manpower to produce tills increase, can rtill live off its fat, so to speak—its stockpiles—for some time. This Is not meant to be a pessimistic interpretation of I.he Japanese situation, but rather a realistic one. We are known to be months ahead of schedule in the war in the Pacific. Only by realising Japan’s stayin'; power can we get some idea of how near—or how far—the end of the '/ar is. From all available official sources, that end should be measured tn rather than months.