The Pacific War

ON THE WORLD TODAY

SHIPPING is still a major factor in this war of global distances. It determines much of the pace and strategy of victory, and will largely govern the effective transfer of Allied fighting power from the European fronts to Asia. It is not merely a matter of shifting men and their weapons, and maintaining supply, although the greatly increased equipment of modern armies means multiplied demands on shipping. We must also prepare our Pacific bases to receive them.

This preparation requires the transport of enormous quantities of bulky construction materials and machinery of all sorts, which make heavy inroads on shipping capacity. Therefore, the comparatively mobile air forces, and the engineering and construction units, along with service forces of all kinds, will be among the first to be shifted to the Far East when they are released by victory in Europe.

The length and strength of German resistance, the way in which German defeat comes, and the needs of Allied occupation forces will also affect the availability of shipping. On the other hand, the needs of the Pacific war will govern the speed of demobilization of troops not suited for the Far East, and will play a part in any plans that can be made for rehabilitation and reconstruction in both liberated and enemy territories in Europe.

Sea power at large

The report of Vice Admiral Emory Land, War Shipping Administrator, indicated that although the American Merchant Marine has grown since the attack on Pearl Harbor from 1340 vessels totaling 11,850,000 dead-weight tons to a fleet of more than 3400 ocean-going vessels totaling over 35,000,000 tons, shipbuilding will continue at maximum rate even after Germany is finished.

The growth of our Merchant Navy has been one of the great achievements of the war. Slow as the accumulation of power necessary for sustained successful offensives may seem to us, there is no doubt that it has seemed astonishingly rapid to the enemy High Commands. Here, as elsewhere, our ability to do the unexpected industrially has allowed us to achieve military surprise.

What can be expected from China, militarily and politically? How will the Japanese economy stand the amputation of South Pacific resources and the intensified bombings by B-29’s and B-32’s from the comparatively close and easily supplied bases in the Marianas? How much aid can we expect from the peoples of Asia in driving out their Japanese masters? What part will Russia play in the Far Eastern war? The answers to these questions will affect the duration of the war, and its cost.

Will the elusive Japanese Fleet risk a line-to-line battle with growing Allied naval might? Probably not, except as a last resort to fend off invasion of the home islands. On this point we have the statement of Admiral Nobumasa Suetsugu, a naval strategist who was formerly commander-in-chief of the combined Japanese fleets. He is said to have predicted a long war, with repeated aerial battles, but with no major clashes between the fleets — at least until the “ripe moment comes for the Japanese forces to deal the final smashing blow to the enemy.”

But even more decisive in such measurements is the success of forces already in the field. The job to be done is still a big one; it may seem smaller when we recall what we have done with what we have had available. There is no way of estimating what superb planning can accomplish with the fantastic naval power we are mustering in the Pacific.

At one time, Truk seemed the greatest obstacle looming in our path toward Japan. We all remember the stories of its impregnability. It was the pivot of Japanese naval strength in the Pacific; a half million men would be required for its reduction. Truk is still in Japanese hands. But it is 2000 miles behind the battle lines, useless as a base to the enemy. Its garrison is a liability to Japan, performing no effective military mission, since it does not deny us the use of bases vital to our own progress. Truk not only illustrates the way in which much-touted aspects of Japanese strength have been nullified by Allied strategy; it also demonstrates the Japanese failure to recognize that sea power does not depend upon bases so much as bases depend upon sea power.

Halsey hits and hits

The operations of Admiral Halsey’s Third Fleet in softening up the Philippines drove home some other lessons that the Japanese have been curiously slow to learn, and which they must now learn in regard to the defense of the Japanese home islands themselves. Japan has relied on land-based aircraft, and immobile island defenses, against carrier fleets. It is now clear that powerful mobile carrier forces are able to deliver attacks very different from the hit-and-run raids that seemed the chief function of carrier forces early in the war.

New design and armament, new fleet formations, new planes and combat tactics, have greatly decreased the vulnerability of carriers. They are now capable of sustained attacks that can press home their advantage and do cumulative damage. The Third Fleet’s damage to Japanese air power and shipping in the Philippines was multiplied by the fact that our carriers could keep the sea in the area and return again and again to finish off grounded planes and crippled ships. This was carrier action of a different kind from the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Recent action shows that sea power can perform a new function. Our present naval strength in the Pacific makes it possible for carrier-borne planes to carry out true strategic bombing of Japan, which we tend to think of as purely the function of heavy landbased bombers. Our carrier forces ranged the length and breadth of the Philippines; the vital areas of Japan’s home islands offer no greater obstacles in area or geographical formation to sea-borne air attacks on industry, communications, and power facilities.

Japan reaches for Chennault

The Japanese Army has been winning important victories against the wearied Chinese, in a drive that has many objectives. Its success would cut China in two and make it very difficult for Chinese troops to support possible American landings on the China coast effectively. It would give Japan an overland route from Manchuria to Singapore and ease the burden on Japanese shipping. It would deprive China of some of her richest agricultural regions; though Japan might find it difficult to exploit these areas profitably, it would greatly increase China’s distress and further disrupt her economy.

By pushing General Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force back into the interior of China, the drive would hinder the bombing of coastal shipping and harbor areas, which has been so profitable an operation. Its success weakens the already shaky morale of the Chinese and strengthens the morale of Japan’s home front, which is badly in need of palpable victories.

What role will China play in the defeat of Japan? Is China capable of military action which will appreciably shorten the war? The prospects are not bright. However, we should be more than ungrateful if we did not recognize the great contribution that China made in the years between 1937 and 1941, when her gallant struggle gave us the time that we did not even know we needed. Though China’s principal contribution may be in the past, we should not measure it by her present weakness. Nor should we forget that, apart from present military considerations, the future of China is a large part of the future of Asia, and hence of the world.

Japan is driving into China not so much because Japan has a great modern army as because what she has is immeasurably superior to what China has. Yet the mere existence of China’s armies in the field is a drain on Japan. Even to get at the Chinese, much less fight them, the Japanese have to utilize significant proportions of their rolling stock, their automotive equipment, their fuel — and their manpower.

Every Japanese soldier who dies on the plains of China is one less man to defend the islands of Japan when the assault on the Island Empire begins. Knowledge of all this has been the reason why the Japanese delayed so long in attempting their present offensive.

China hangs on

China’s vast population, the willingness of the common soldier to die in defending his country against invaders, the courage and dogged determination that keep the Chinese in the line against the Japanese, are all positive contributions to the United Nations war effort. Yet this is not the kind of force that will break the armies of Japan.

We cannot expect China to fight a modern war of offense. She has not the armies to fight such a war. She does not have the army staffs or the officers of the line who are experienced in the type of war that has been developed by the United Nations during the past two years. She lacks the industrial structure and the communication system to arm and supply a modern army. What is more, she does not have the political unity essential for a modern nation fighting a modern total war.

There have been some indications that China may be in process of breaking her political deadlock. The recent session of the People’s Political Council in Chungking gave some evidence that the Central Government is beginning to yield to criticism. At the PPC meeting there was an atmosphere of freer discussion, healthier criticism of the acts of the Central Government, more realistic viewing of the Chinese internal situation, than has been observable in Chungking for some time. Veteran correspondents in China seemed greatly heartened by these developments.

The Communists and the puppets

But no significant changes in the government personnel in Chungking have been announced. So far there has been no house-cleaning. It is possible that the reactionary cliques reported to be influential in the Central Government have merely made verbal concessions in order to bolster their positions.

Recent statements from the Communists indicate that they feel strong enough to take a more aggressive position in demanding political reform by the Kuomintang. Evidently the Communists now think that they are in a position to attempt to dictate to the Kuomintang.

As the defeat of Japan comes nearer, a third factor in Chinese politics looms larger on the horizon. The puppet government in Occupied China, under the “presidency” of Wang Ching-wei, has controlled the richest part of China for more than four years, though under complete Japanese domination. The puppets have entrenched themselves firmly in the occupied areas and have built up a vested interest in the continuation of their power.

It will take more force, and certainly more ability to enlist allegiance, than the Chungking government has now, or may have for some years, to dispossess these Chinese quislings, although they have given no evidence that they possess any more political wisdom or patriotism than their European counterparts.

It is possible that China will still have to pass through the disaster and sorrow of civil war before attaining political stability. It will take statesmanship of an extremely high order to escape this disaster. It would be a tragedy for all Asia if China were to witness the defeat of her external enemy only to fall prey to internal disunity.

Dutch colonial policy

Heartening indication has appeared that some progress is being made toward solution of the dangerous colonial problem. Charles O. Van der Plas, a high Dutch official in the Netherlands East Indies, said recently: “Our Dutch officers are learning that it can be a privilege to serve under an Indonesian leader. In the new Indonesia, the last traces of discrimination will have disappeared. [In the Netherlands East Indies) Dutch, Indonesians, and Chinese will be comrades, united in their faith in freedom and prepared to fight for their ideals at the side of the Western democracies.” This is one of the most forward-looking statements yet made by a responsible Dutch official.

Born in the Indies, Van der Plas has long been known as one of the foremost Dutch advocates of an enlightened colonial policy in the Indies. His words manifest a striving to attain interracial coöperation which may be the basis for a solution of the Dutch colonial problem.

Neither the Quebec Conference nor the Churchill speech in the House of Commons which followed revealed anything concerning the British attitude toward the colonial dilemma. The intensification of the British campaign in Burma and the possibility of British landings in Malaya would seem to make it increasingly necessary for the British to enunciate views like Van der Plas’s if they expect to receive a full measure of coöperation from the local population in the war against the Japanese.

Filipino independence, when it is completed by the expulsion of the Japanese enemy, will be one of the most inspiring chapters in the political history of Asia. It will climax literally centuries of struggle against three alien peoples. Few peoples have fought so hard against such diverse and powerful foes for their independence. The Filipinos have struggled against the imperialism of a decadent Spain, our “manifest destiny,” and the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” of the Japanese.

The significance of Filipino-American friendship, the manner in which Van der Plas suggests an attack on the problem of colonial relations, and the long resistance of the Chinese to Japanese aggression will be three great barriers in the way of Japanese attempts to make the war in the Far East into a racial war, with themselves as the “defenders of Asia.”

The war in the Far East is not a racial war. Japanese Fascism is the real target of our efforts. If Japan’s militarists succeed in duping us and the people of Asia into believing that this is a racial war, they will not only succeed in prolonging the war, but will also salvage much from their defeat.