JAPANESE ADMISSIONS

Waikato Times, Volume 194, Issue 22320, 11 April 1944, Page 2

JAPANESE ADMISSIONS

Military authorities in Tokio expect the “so-called Allied general offensive” in the Pacific to occur in the first half of 1944. Their ability successfully to meet it is apparently regarded as slender if recent statements on the subject represent real Japanese opinion. The Tokio radio says that'the “United States shipbuilding programme appears to have reached a point where the Americans are well able to use their navy in these waters successfully and decisively. We must now expect them to penetrate into our waters with strong naval squadrons and make sea-based air raids on Japan proper.” Besides being a warning to the Japanese people that the Allies will make deep inroads into the Japanese Empire, this is a singularly frank admission of Japanese inferiority and a statement scarcely calculated to sustain Japanese morale. If inability to prevent the American Navy taking control of the Pacific is admitted. Japan must have abandoned its dream of permanent conquest, for without control of the sea the new empire cannot be held together. This admission comes at an early stage in the war, when the Allies have only begun the counter-offensive. Everyone is well aware that the battle for the Pacific is far from its conclusion, but the important point is that if Japan is convinced that the Allies have the power to win back the control of the seas, is it worth while from Japan’s point of view to continue to suffer losses during a long slide toward defeat? Possibly the Japanese believe that they can hold all their gains on the continent of Asia. Unfortunately the gains recently made across the India-Burma frontier will encourage that belief. The sooner the Allies demonstrate in Burma and elsewhere on the continent that they can drive the Japanese back the sooner will Japan realise that in every sphere her aggression has been a colossal blunder.