The Pacific War

ON THE WORLD TODAY

How long will Japan last? Where will the main attack come from? How will Japan defend the long line of empire from Paramushiro to Java, and Rabaul to Rangoon?

Tokyo makes few attempts to hide the desperateness of the situation and seeks to rally its own people with the strength that comes through fear. To the great populations of the Southwest Pacific and of Southeast Asia, she more urgently than ever represents this as a war in which the Anglo-American powers are trying to take away from formerly subject peoples the freedom which Japan fought so hard to give them. The legend is already being prepared that the imperial powers of the West are destroying something which binds all Asiatic races together.

There is little on the military side of European operations which can bring comfort to the militarists of Japan. Most terrifying of all is the prospect of huge amphibious operations, with their ability to land on any coast regardless of ports. There are aspects of these operations which cannot be told until they have become common knowledge to the Japanese through painful experience, but the results are evident. There are many difficulties for Japan which are very like those Germany has faced.

Japan, like Germany, has suffered enough defeats to open up vital areas to Allied assault. She now is obliged to defend herself on many fronts, in many types of terrain, over vast areas, and against attacks which can come from many directions. All hope of regaining the initiative, the only possible way to protect her empire, has vanished.

How can Japan’s navy at one and the same time look after the long communications on which her supply of raw materials depends and block the approaches to such widely separated objectives as the Kurile Islands, the Philippines, Burma and Malaya, and the Netherlands East Indies? How can her planes defend all these territories and support her navy? There is clearly no hope for a country which cannot attack the sources of its enemies’ military strength or even challenge their lines of communication.

Honorable impossibility

Japan cannot trade space for time. The areas she loses are part of her war machine. The great sweep of islands from Sabang to Aroe, some 3000 miles long, protects vital bases and raw materials. We are well on the way to their conquest — a conquest which makes the defense of the Netherlands Indies extremely difficult for the Japanese.

Consider the drain on Japan’s resources involved in the defense of the Strait of Malacca, vital to the maintenance of her position in Burma and Malaya. Allied submarines and air power, and now the assembling fleets released from European waters, force the Japanese either to leave Southeast Asia to its fate or to attempt to hold their lines of communication with inadequate convoys.

In the north, Japan must defend the approaches to the heart of her industrial machine as well as the fishing grounds that provide a major part of her food supply. This 800-mile chain shields Karafuto and Hokkaido, where landings would mean the doom of Japan. Only 600 miles away from the home islands are the Bonins, already within our reach, and obvious bases for fighters and medium bombers.

There is no way of solving the crisis by strategy. The Koiso Cabinet attempted a solution along two lines: sweeping changes in the personnel of the administration, and changes in the structure of government. The liaison committee which had attempted since 1937 to coördinate the civilian and military branches of government succeeded apparently only so long as Japan was winning.

After Tojo’s fall, Koiso abolished the liaison committee and set up a new body called the “Supreme Council for the Direction of the War.”Its immediate task is to integrate military operations and industrial production. This is indeed the key to Japan’s troubles, for industrial production depends upon the direction of military strategy. But the military strategy is no longer manufactured by Japan.

The truth hurts

There is another task facing Koiso. Now that American bombers have brought the war to the main islands, the people have had to be told more about what has been happening. Hence the calling of an extraordinary session of the Diet “in order to instill the true war situation into the minds of the people.” It was high time.

Visitors to Tokyo, according to reports, can hardly recognize the city. Fire lanes have been ruthlessly cut across inflammable areas. Children have been evacuated by thousands. Instructions for the construction of air-raid defenses reveal the inadequate measures taken for the protection of the civilian population. Our planes have not only smashed through the inner defenses of the Island Empire: they have made a mockery of both the real and the propaganda victories of the past few years.

Nor is this activity limited to Japan alone. The people of Korea must now be requested, in view of the possibility of frequent air raids, to “cultivate a firm mental attitude and train themselves to remain calm.” All over North China and Manchuria the Japanese must teach the Chinese how to behave in case of air raids. Those who once dominated the air in these parts are trying to teach conquered peoples to distinguish between the noises of Japanese and American planes. These measures, which bring despair to the people of Japan, bring the first concrete signs of hope to the conquered.

Philippines and return

We are approaching the Pacific areas where there are large native populations and where the attitudes of conquered peoples become important. This means increasingly bitter fighting, perhaps much tougher than anything yet. Our eyes are already on the Philippines. Then may come the Netherlands East Indies, or a thrust at the coast of China. Instead of blasting away at Pacific islands, we shall be engaging large armies in areas big enough for maneuvers and in countries where we can hope for patriots’ support. In this respect also, the experience of Germany can give the Japanese little comfort.

In the Philippines there is good reason to believe that we shall be vigorously assisted by the guerrillas, who have maintained resistance since the fall of Manila. No American who was in the internment camps doubts that we shall be welcomed by those Filipinos who could not escape to the hills and were forced to live in Japanese-controlled areas. Manuel Quezon did not live to see the liberation of the Philippines, but President Osmena can expect to be the first president of a completely free and independent Philippine commonwealth.

The Philippines, however, are the only area in the Pacific towards which we have a clear and welldefined policy. It is one of the few matters of foreign policy upon which there is no doubt as to our purposes and no question as to our intentions. Recent resolutions in Congress providing for the maintenance of naval bases in the Philippine Islands make it clear that these bases are for joint defense; they are acquired by joint consent.

The political advantages of first liberating the Philippines are obvious. Here we shall meet the Japanese on territory favorable to our cause. If liberation of the Philippines comes with the assistance of the Philippine people, the East will be as thrilled when Manila is free as was the West when Paris threw off the German yoke. We have in the Philippines a symbol which can do much to revive the enthusiasm of many people in Asia. And we must use it.

Determination to reconquer the Philippines does not, it can be assumed, involve any deviation from our general strategy. The first essential to victory in the Pacific, as Admiral Nimitz has pointed out, is control of the sea approaches to Japan. One important task is to complete our domination of the islands that lie between the Philippines, New Guinea, and Australia (the Moluccas or Spice Islands).

The bombing of Davao is thus partly an attack on Halmahera. This form of offensive weakens Japanese ground forces by robbing them of their supplies. Compelled to depend upon small craft because of their naval and air inferiority, the Japanese provide vulnerable targets and isolated garrisons. What is happening to outposts in this area on a small scale is happening to Japan on a large scale.

The Battle of Burma

The only conquered people we have so far come into contact with are those of Burma. This is the most sobering side of the war against Japan. Here we have fought the hard way, in the way the Japanese expected us to fight in the Pacific. The air supported campaign against Myitkyina, in spite of tactical surprises, followed the pattern of long-drawn-out struggles against well-entrenched garrisons. No more than two thousand Japanese troops held up many times their number of Chinese, American, and British units for months.

It is the same picture in the Salween valley, where American-trained Chinese troops are paying a heavy price to dislodge hopelessly outnumbered Japanese garrisons. Taken as a whole, including the retreat from Imphal and Kohima, the North Burma campaign has been costly and disastrous for the Japanese. The success of Indian troops of the British Fourteenth Army has certainly destroyed whatever value the Japanese hope to get out of Bose’s Indian Revolutionary Army. Bose’s levies surrender willingly. But the Japanese have nevertheless succeeded in delaying the opening up of a route to China.

There are not many lessons to be learned from this campaign about the attitude of the Burmese. We have operated in an area where the population is mainly anti-Japanese and pro-British. There is no evidence either that the Japanese have successfully organized the Burmese against us or that the Burmese have been particularly helpful to us. It is highly improbable that American troops will see a great deal of the rest of Burma, for the reconquest of that country seems more logically to be a British operation.

They do surrender — when they can

There is one more conclusion to be drawn from the Burma campaign. The Japanese were using some of their best troops; yet, in conditions not conducive to the taking of prisoners, considerable numbers of Japanese actually surrendered. Many, it is true, were in a weakened condition, but they did not behave like their comrades on Attu who blew themselves up. Men returning from the Burma front agree that many more prisoners could have been taken if both Chinese and American troops had been more willing to do so.

Certainly the Japanese High Command is worried about GI Jo-jo. This undoubtedly accounts for the revived campaign to persuade him of the brutality of Americans. But all the elaborate indoctrination appears to mean little at the front lines. Japanese soldiers are apparently susceptible to surrender appeals when they are hungry and know that they are defeated. All they need is the conviction that they will be well treated and given good medical care. Hence this final play upon the brutality of the enemy.

The soldier is asked not so much to die for the Emperor as to die for fear of being tortured and having his bones sent as souvenirs to America. The fact that nearly all Japanese prisoners, when interrogated, expressed a desire to come to America is a further commentary upon the difficult job that Japan’s militarists set for themselves when they began to turn the Japanese people against us.

The fighting Fourteenth Air Force

Japanese drives in China began when the loss of Northern Burma was in sight. If they could not prevent us from driving through to China, they would destroy the air bases so laboriously constructed. They had in the Fourteenth Air Force a target well worth the destruction.

Few air forces are so versatile and so wide in the range of their operations. Limited not by lack of planes, but only by the amount of fuel that can be flown over the Hump, General Chennault has already done a job that far outweighs in value the loss of airfields constructed at great expense. Nearly a million tons of shipping have been sunk or damaged since the Fourteenth Air Force began its operation. The Straits of Formosa have long been too dangerous for big ships. The Fourteenth Air Force and the Chinese-American Composite Wing unquestionably rule the skies wherever they go.

Every conceivable kind of target creeps into the communiqués: trucks, machine-gun nests, roads, bridges, airfields, junks, armored cars, and military establishments. These targets are spread from the Malay Peninsula to the Yangtze valley. Capture of Kunming, headquarters of the Fourteenth Air Force, would be worth almost any price to the Japanese.

China still remains one of many roads to Tokyo. For all her troubles and the weakness of the Army, it will be foolish to assume that she is going to play a passive role in the final defeat of Japan. There are some, if not many, signs of encouragement. The armies of Communist China are allies worth cultivating. Permission for an American military mission to go to Yenan should not encourage optimism in regard to the improvement of Communist-Kuomintang relations, but it at least provides a bridge for more effective coördination of the Communist armies in the war.

America is necessarily so involved in all Chinese affairs that nothing can happen in China that does not affect us. Without taking a positive part in Chinese politics, we cannot help affecting them merely by virtue of spending money, operating airfields, and training troops in that country. We have a special interest in seeing that China’s relations with the Soviet Union are on a sound basis, both because of the future of our relations with the Soviets and because it is possible that they may be an ally in the war against Japan. But time is running short.