JAPANESE PLAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 66, 19 March 1942, Page 6

JAPANESE PLAN

AUSTRALIA INCLUDED GENERAL BENNETT’S VIEW ATT ACKING SPIRIT URGED. Sydney, March 8. A strong warning of an impending attack on Australia by the Japanese, was given in a broadcast address tonight by Major-General Gordon Bennett, who recently escaped from Singapore, where he had commanded the Eighth Australian Division. “Malaya and Singapore are lost,' said General Bennett, “but we can make good these losses if we take to I heart the lessons the fighting there taught us. I know that the officers and men of the Eighth Division will bear me out in this. “Recriminations about the failure to hold Singapore must be put in the background. Such time as we have is too precious to waste. At the same time we must regard that failure as a finger-post to guide us in our future efforts. “First,” continued the speaker, “I must emphasise that Australia is in very grave danger of being attacked by Japan. The Japanese have basec. their whole national policy on the programme of conquest contained in the Tanaka Memorial, which has been closely followed so far in the Japanese spread into China and the territories to the south. This Tanaka Memorial includes Australia as one of the objectives of the programme of conquest. Therefore let us not delude ourselves by wishfully thinking that we may not be attacked.” General Bennett referred to the type of thinking which had caused the inadequate defence of Malaya ana given rise to the assumption that the Japanese would attack only in ways and at places that would be convenient to the defenders. ‘The Japanese policy is to attack at the weakest spot, which in our case is the north," the speaker continued. He declared that the enemy’s policy would be first to establish air bases in the north-west and the north, attacking such places as Broome and Wyndham. The next move would be some hundreds of miles inland to establish a fresh set of aerodromes; and so from air base to air base until it was possible to launch assaults on the large cities of the south-east and south. “We cannot be too strong in thi north, even at the apparent expense of the defence of our southern centres,” said General Bennett. “We can defeat the Japanese if we attack them every time they attack us. Our experience was that they could not stand up to direct attack, especially by artillery.’’ The speaker urged the cultivation of the attacking spirit and the getting rid of sterotypec. methods and red tape. A most important lesson was that adequate air support must be insisted on. In Malaya the Japanese had had air superiority, not only in numbers but also in quality of equipment. Australian airmen were the best in the world, and the urgent duty of the nation was to ensure that they were given the best aircraft. The Tanaka Memorial. secretly issued about 1934, outlines the Japanese Imperial design of expansion in Asia and the Pacific. Although Tokio denied its authenticity, it is really the Japanese Mein Kampf— a blue print for conquest which includes Australia and New Zealand.