The Thrusting Power of Japan

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The Thrusting Power Of Japan

OEOPLE who live in the tropical islands and territories of the Central Pacific are personally and vitally affected by recent international developments events which show up the Anglo-American-Japanese situation with disturbing clarity.

That situation is well known, and may be briefly stated.

There are now 100,000,000 people in the small country of Japan. They cannot produce their own food—they must manufacture, sell their goods abroad, and thus buy foodstuffs. Japan wants additional territory and trade. Great Britain and U.S.A. are vitally concerned with the future of the Pacific, where their interests are as great as those of Japan—U.S.A., because their western seaboard, and Hawaii, are in the Northern Pacific; Britain, because of the situation of Canada in the North Pacific, and of Australia, New Zealand, and other dependencies in the South Pacific.

On December 31, there expired the Washington Naval. Treaty, one section of which provided that the parties (Britain, U.S.A. and Japan) should not build fortifications on islands 500 miles or more distant from their shores. Britain wanted to renew that pact. Japan, definitely, and U.S.A., inferentially, would not renew. Both professed eagerness for “the establishment of peace machinery and the maintenance of the status quo in the Pacific”; but both had reservations to make. Japan asked why she should be restricted to that 500 miles limit, when U.S.A. had been allowed to place the enormous Pearl Harbour fortifications in Hawaii, 2,400 miles from the American coast. Washington indicated an eagerness to “regain complete freedom of naval action.”

The discussion is still going on, perfunctorily; but the position is that the Treaty has expired, and the three nations have complete freedom to place fortifications where they wish. Building will start any day.

To better understand the situation, it is necessary to consider all that has happened since the Washington Treaty was signed in 1922 and renewed (by the London Treaty) in 1930.

Japan has become a great industrial nation, and her merchants and her shipping lines are increasingly reaching out for Pacific trade, to the serious embarrassment of Britain and U.S.A.—especially Britain.

Although Japan has withdrawn from the League of Nations, she holds on to the Marshall and Caroline Islands (entrusted to her under mandate by the League) and Japanese men and money have been poured into those groups—to such a degree that we can say that Japan now extends southwards to the equator, only a few hundred miles from New Guinea. Agents of the new Japanese South Sea Company, a trading and development enterprise, are busy, not only in Japanese territory, but also in the Philippines, East Indies, Borneo and Dutch New Guinea. Japanese sampans, gathering sea-products wherever they can find them, are swarming along the coasts of North Australia, New Guinea, Solomons, New Hebrides and Fiji—that fringe of islands that almost certainly is destined to protect Australia and New Zealand against the ruthless hand of Asia.

Since 1922, U.S.A. has built up the Pearl Harbour naval base, transferred her mighty navy to the Pacific Coast, and has established the world’s most notable aeroplane service, across the North Pacific, from ’Frisco to Manila. The Americans have given freedom and independence to the Philippines, and they have pledged their national honour that that independence shall not be interfered with.

Since 1922, Great Britain has further developed her dominions and colonies in the South Pacific, and has established the powerful Singapore base.

Look at a map of the Pacific; and, in the light of these things, the situation is terribly plain. Great Britain and the United States, by the simple logic of inescapable facts, have become the guardians of the status quo in the Pacific. Singapore, in the north-west, and Pearl Harbour, in the north-east, are the plain manifestations of that policy. Japan is hemmed in in the North-west Pacific. If she seeks territory or special privileges in any direction except westwards, she inevitably will be in conflict with the British, the 3 Pacific Islands Monthly, January 22, 1937 Dutch (who, in this matter, make common cause with Britain) or the Americans. She can go westwards, to China; but even China, these days, is aggressively on the defensive.

The Japanese, a proud and clever people, recognise the situation quite clearly. Sooner or later, their expanding population will compel them to fight for more territory.

The school of thought which dominates Japanese government at present would throw Japan immediately into a war against either Britain or U.S.A., alone, but any attempt by Japan to-day to seize new lands in the Pacific would immediately bring into the field against her Britain, U.S.A., the Netherlands and, probably, France. And so she holds her hand.

These are plain and simple facts, apparent to anyone who has watched events in the Pacific for the past two decades, and seen the logic of the incidents which attended the expiry of the Washington Treaty.

Britain and America, like Japan, are under no delusions. They understand the cruel problem which confronts Japanese statesmen. But what can they do? They cannot give up their already well-populated territories to Japan, and they cannot admit Japanese as settlers. If they were Europeans, the difficulty might be adjusted, but it is apparent that races so far apart as Japanese and North Europeans cannot live together as one happy, homogeneous community. The Anglo-Saxon nations are sincerely and anxiously ready to co-operate with Japan in creating a peaceful atmosphere (that is, in maintaining the status quo ) ; but if, as is likely, the non-fortification pact is not renewed, the significance of the development will be perfectly clear. It will mean, simply, that Japan believes that sooner or later she must fight for greater privileges in the Pacific, and Britain and U.S.A. must prepare accordingly.

The trade position, no less than the naval position, is bad and is tending to get worse.

Despite the natural determination of the British to hold their trade, Japanese goods and Japanese ships are being pushed into Britain’s South Seas territories. Uneasiness and friction are growing—it would be foolish to ignore the fact. Only the other day, the old-established E. and A. Line, running from Australia through Rabaul to Japan, announced that it was now being systematically deprived of freight by the Japanese, and could not continue without assistance.

We are safe enough, so long as Britain and U.S.A. make common cause in the Pacific. But, if there should be a breach