JAPANESE BLUNDER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 63, 17 March 1943, Page 5

JAPANESE BLUNDER

WHEN FIJI WAS MISSED Recd. 11 p.m. New York, March 15. “The Japanese made a blunder second only to their failure to follow up the Pearl Harbour assault when they did not attack Fiji early in 1942,” says the United Press correspondent, J. M. Hedstrom, in a despatch from Suva. Before the Pacific war New Zealand had a small, well-trained but poorlyequipped force. It increased after tne beginning of hostilities but the real stuff was a long time in coming. The first air protection was provided by five Hudson bombers, sent from New Zealand when things looked very black. A pilot frankly expected death within a few days or hours. However, the Japanese inexplicably stopped at the Solomons and Gilberts when a few boatloads of soldiers and a warship or two certainly could have taken and probably held Fiji. This would have presented a menace to New Zealand and also the American supply lines to Australia, and made the whole of the Allies’ Pacific strategy more difficult. Even if unable to hold the island, the Japanese could have used a fraction of the men and ships expended on Guadalcanal’ for destroying docks, warehouses and other facilities, making them useless for a military base. “For many months we were as vulnerable as a whale’s underside, but we remained unmolested, for which we are too thankful to seek the explanation. Now, we can thumb our noses at the enemy and say ‘Let them come.’ Britain and the Yanks are ready.”