Now Two Pacific

"Areas"

American-Australian in West and American-NZ in East

Adapted from an Address by R. W. Robson, Broadcast by BBC from London on June 8.

NEWSPAPER announcements during the past few days give us a fairly clear picture of the distribution of Australian and New Zealand troops in association with the Americans in the South-western Pacific.

The New Zealanders now have been given responsibility for garrisoning Tonga and Norfolk Island; and there have been New Zealand troops in Fiji since 1939. (Americans, New Zealanders and some very excellent native Fijian units now comprise the garrison of the Colony of Fiji—which, in a strategical sense, is highly important.) New Zealand also is responsible for the administration of Western Samoa and the Cook Islands, to the eastward of Fiji.

We are now advised that there is a New Zealand division with the Ameri cans in New Caledonia, and that troops from Guadalcanal have been sent south wards to New Zealand for recuperation, indicating that New Zealanders actually have joined the Americans in this par ticular battle area.

The fact that New Zealand is garri soning Norfolk Island is very interesting, because Norfolk Island is, and always has been, an Australian territory.

IT would appear that New Zealand, in association with the Americans, is helping to garrison all the islands from about the longitude of Norfolk Island, just eastwards of Australia, right across to French Oceania—because the presence of New Zealand troops has now been reported in Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, Southern Solomons, Tonga and Fiji, and the presence of New Zea landers in the New Zealand territories of Samoa and Cook Islands is presumed.

On the western side of that line of longitude are the islands of the New Guinea and Papua area, where there are Australian troops, also operating in close co-operation with the Americans. It is to be presumed, of course, that Austra lian forces are occupying the whole of northern or tropical Australia, from the Coral Sea right across the Continent to Darwin and Broome, which face the Japs in the Dutch East Indies.

THUS is may be seen that southwards of the equator, in the Pacific, there are actually two separate areas under American control. There is the South-west Pacific area, under General MacArthur, where American and Austra lian forces are operating together in per fect harmony, and which comprises all the region lying between the East Indies, New Guinea, New Britain and the North ern Solomons, in the north, and North ern Australia, in the south. And then there is what may be called the Central Pacific area, garrisoned by Americans and New Zealanders and extending right across the Pacific eastwards from about the longitude of Norfolk Island, and comprising the region generally east wards of Australia, south of the equator.

This division of the Pacific area should be borne in mind. It explains why com muniques relating to the Australian-New Guinea-East Indies front are issued by General MacArthur from his head quarters in the South-west Pacific, while communiques on the Guadalcanal area, and all points north and north-east thereof, are issued in Washington.