Fiji’S Escape

Japan's Strange Blunder in Early 1942

JT could now be revealed that the Japanese made a blunder, second only to their failure to follow up the Pearl Harbour assault, when they did not attack Fiji early in the Pacific War, said Sir J. Maynard Hedstrom, a leading citizen of Fiji, in an interview with the American United Press (said a radiogram from New York, published in “Sydney Morning Herald” on March 17), New Zealand, he said, had a small, well-trained, but poorly-equipped force in Fiji. It was increased after the beginning of hostilities, but the “real stuff” was a long time coming.

The first air protection provided was five Hudson bombers, sent from New Zealand, when things were blackest. The pilots frankly expected death within a few days or hours.

However, the Japanese inexplicably stopped at the Solomons and the Gilberts, when a few boatloads of soldiers and a warship or two certainly could have taken, and probably held, Fiji, and thrown up a menace to New Zealand and to American supply lines to Australia, making the whole Allied Pacific strategy more difficult.

Even if they were unable to hold the islands, the Japanese could have used a fraction of the men and ships they ex pended on Guadalcanal in destroying docks, warehouses, and other facilities, and making them useless for a military base for many months.

“We were as vulnerable as a whale’s underside.” Sir Maynard Hedstrom added, “but remained unmolested, for which we are too thankful to seek an explanation.

Now we can thumb our noses at the enemy and say: ‘Let them come. Britain and the Yanks are ready.’ ”