Midway Holds

Out

May Yet Provide Nail For Jap Coffin

IT has just been announced that, despite everything the Japanese have done Midway Island still is holding out This is important news. Some day soon we hope—the Americans will start a naval attack upon Japan from the eastwards. Then, naval and air bases will be urgently needed.

One may be found in the Philippines, where General Macarthur’s American- Pilipmo army is still holding Bataan peninsula, and commanding the Bay of Manila through Corregidor fort. Another may be found in Midway Island, 1,500 miles westward of Hawaii, and 2,500 miles south-east of Japan.

Some day, we shall hear the epic story of the defence of Midway against every thmg the Japs could bring. In January, the defenders severely damaged a Jap cruiser.

American long-range bombers could fly from San Francisco to Hawaii, to Mid way (1,150 miles), and thence the 3,000odd miles to aerodromes in China in order to make attacks on the centre of Japan, The loss of Wake has robbed the USA Air Force of an important stopping-place, but so long as Midway remains in American hands, it will be possible for American bombers to strike at the heart of Japan. That is its importance.

Incidentally, when the Japs occupied Wake Island on December 22, Tokio Radio announced that the island had been renamed “Ottori” (from the Jap verb “ottoru"—“to snatch or seize in a hurry").

Midway is really a group of islands, with one dominating the others. The total area is very small. Those scraps of land—uninhabited when discovered and long regarded as useless to man—are at the moment among the most important areas of the world.

Up to about five years ago, Midway was inhabited only by myriads of sea birds. But in readiness for the Frisco- China Clipper service, the island was equipped with a wireless station, a weather bureau, a hotel and facilities for repairing aircraft.

The next step was to fortify both Mid way and Wake. The Navy saw them as bases along which the fleet could fight its way to the Orient. But fortifications had not been completed when Japan struck. Wake’s defences then were quite inadequate. At Midway, much more pro gress had been made, and runways long enough for the biggest bombers had been put down.

Claire Boothe, the American authoress, who visited Midway shortly before the Pacific war broke, described it as “the second stepping - stone to America’s Manifest Destiny", garrisoned by “several lonely thousands of the unsung heroes of America’s unwaged war".

To-day, when America’s war is no longer unwaged, the men of Midway are no longer unsung. Nor are they suffering from boredom. They are, in fact, an island counterpart of the gallant men who held the fort at Tobruk.

Rev. F. J. Paton, who died recently in the New Hebrides, had a withered arm, an artificial leg, failing eyesight and lung trouble, and yet he died in harness —an achievement typical of the Paton missionary family. He had been recom mended for the OBE in recognition of his lifetime of devoted work.