PACIFIC BATTLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1942, Page 4

PACIFIC BATTLES

EFFECTS ON JAPANESE STRATEGY OPINIONS OF BRITISH OBSERVERS. MORE IMMEDIATE THREAT TO CHINA. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) LONDON, JUNE, 15. Competent observers in Britain deduce significant changes in Japan's plans and strategy as the result of her defeats in the Coral Sea and Midway Island battles. Many of them express the belief that Australia has been by-passed and that China is now more immediately threatened than Australia. They also believe that Japan’s attemps to establish herself on the fringes of the Pacific conflict, of which the latest is the landing in the Aleutian Islands, are failing and that the shift in naval power will compel Japan to fall back in order to safeguard the conquests she has already made, as well as her central stronghold? from American sea and air power. The “Manchester Guardian” regards the Coral Sea battle as an important turning point and adds that the American victory at Midway ftland, at least for a time, will compel the Japanese to drop the idea of a large-scale offensive far from their own coasts, but their position for defensive action remains very strong. While holding that the phase of easy Japanese victory has now passed, British observers are still cautions in their comments on the extent of the Japanese losses. They are disinclined at present to endorse the enthusiastic American statements that the Midway action broke the backbone of Japanese sea power.